General / Off-Topic Recycle or Die! (the elite environmental thread)

[Zak Gordon]

The main issue with increased extreme weather is that it becomes too unpredictable, and that is bad for food production overall.

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'Biodegradable' plastic bags survive three years in soil and sea:

'Biodegradable' plastic bags survive three years in soil and sea

Study found bags were still able to carry shopping despite environmental claims

www.theguardian.com

Plastic bags that claim to be biodegradable were still intact and able to carry shopping three years after being exposed to the natural environment, a study has found.

The research for the first time tested compostable bags, two forms of biodegradable bag and conventional carrier bags after long-term exposure to the sea, air and earth. None of the bags decomposed fully in all environments.

The compostable bag appears to have fared better than the so-called biodegradable bag. The compostable bag sample had completely disappeared after three months in the marine environment but researchers say more work is needed to establish what the breakdown products are and to consider any potential environmental consequences.

After three years the “biodegradable” bags that had been buried in the soil and the sea were able to carry shopping. The compostable bag was present in the soil 27 months after being buried, but when tested with shopping was unable to hold any weight without tearing.

I've noticed our local super market start to use either 'old-fashioned' paper-bags or a plastic type that basically starts to break before you get home(!) so it is good we are changing out the more permanent bag types. I switched to those 'life-time' multiple use bags years ago and they are still going strong, so that is my preferred method. Sadly too many items often still come in single-use plastics (like organic banana's) and i hope that starts to change soon.

 

[WingardiumLevicoaster]

Biodegradable isn't a great solution. The majority need industrial composting. If you put them in your normal waste they won't break down very quickly. I have heard that it contaminates your batch of recycling too.. but of course councils are not going to accept coffee cups and bags in your food waste.

 

[Patrick_68000]

We'll get to the moon again (with people). It's there, we're here etc.

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Meanwhile extreme weather will increase to cause us all problems:

'US farmers count cost of catastrophic 'bomb cyclone' in midwest':

US farmers count cost of catastrophic 'bomb cyclone' in midwest

With grain stores ruined and many fields still under water from last month’s extreme weather, producers are facing devastating losses

www.theguardian.com

Difficult times are coming. So our actions matter in reducing these extreme events.

We are hungry, thirsty and cold !

This is what awaits us if we do not change our behavior

We must grow corn and soy on the moon ! We must ! Please !

 

[Patrick_68000]

Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn; Journey time 6 years, 261 days.

If everything goes normally.

 

[WeComeInPeace]

Hyperbole is your enemy.

I agree to a certain degree but people have to wake up. Right now the major issue on everyone's mind is the climate. However, that is far from the only issue we face. A Swedish group of scientist have made a list of issues. Each are potentially a threat humanity, called Planetary Boundaries:

Climate change
Biodiversity loss
Biogeochemical
Ocean acidification
Land use
Freshwater
Ozone depletion
Atmospheric aerosols
Chemical pollution

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_boundaries

I could personally add a few. Overpopulation, energy, pandemics and the occasional huge asteroid.

The problem, as I stated earlier is that these interact. The climate causes decreasing crop yields, and the rising population numbers means a larger demand for food. Freshwater is vital to any human, but we will have to irrigate more and more agricultural land, to keep up with the increasing demand. Biodiversity loss again means that the biosphere will struggle, and both agriculture and humans are part of the biosphere. We are removing forrests, giving more climate change, because we need to produce palm oil, biofuels etc. That leads to even more extreme weather, and so it goes on and on and on.

The problem in the center of all this is the size of the population. Since that is taboo for several reasons, and since we don't have any proper way of solving that, without grief and misery, we have painted ourselves into a corner. It's not that you can blame anyone. It's just the way it is.

So yes "Hyperbole is your enemy", but I honestly do not try that. Instead I try to point out that the situation is far more critical than most people think. Furthermore, there are powerful interests in not doing anything.

We can daily read about at least some of these boundaries, and we can read wishful estimates of the population growth and the temperature goals. Still, nothing happens, and even more bizarre, nobody dares calculate the consequences. I've done that, using well established computer modelling, and I'm literally horrified. Try and find predictions of what will happen if we don't react. I find them hard to find. "The Road" might be as close as you get.

Honestly I could do like the rest of my generation and go "Who cares. It's too late anyhow", but then I see a kid and think "It makes me sad to know, that you, with a large certainty, won't live to become old, but instead you will die because of famine".

Don't belive me? Google is your "friend", as long as you know how to be critical towards your sources. Hyperbole? I wish. On a personal level, I wish I hadn't gotten myself into working with this. Life was a lot more pleasurable before that, not knowing. That's kind of a paradox. I don't want to ruin anybody's good mood, but I also feel an urge to tell people the truth. Mainly because I haven't given up completely, yet.

 

[WingardiumLevicoaster]

Might be a good place to share some zero waste tips/ eco tips
1. Switch to soap and solid shampoo.
2. If lucky enough to live near a zero waste shop, some cupboard goods can be bought without packaging.
3. Farmer's markets or shops and/or some supermarkets have loose fruit and veg
4. Local produce if possible
5. Cooking from scratch
6. Some places will let you buy meat or cheese in your own containers
7. Use charity shops and bootsales.
8. When buying new, try to buy to last
9. Reuse what you have
10. Try and travel sustainably where possible.
11. Cut down on meat and dairy and other environmentally damaging foods
12. Washing powder over liquids ( I don't believe in the soap nut/ eco egg stuff)
13. Choose to support ethically conscious businesses if you can afford it
14. Buy in bulk
15. Reuse glass jars. I have used them to store craft supplies, gift homemade candles or bath salts, store loose kitchen ingredients, homemade sauces
16. Stop using disposable wipes and use a flannel
17. Washable sanitary products and nappies.
18. Repair things
19. If something cannot be repaired, dispose of in the most ethical way.
20. Lobby for change

 

[WeComeInPeace]

Might be a good place to share some zero waste tips/ eco tips
1. Switch to soap and solid shampoo.
2. If lucky enough to live near a zero waste shop, some cupboard goods can be bought without packaging.
3. Farmer's markets or shops and/or some supermarkets have loose fruit and veg
4. Local produce if possible
5. Cooking from scratch
6. Some places will let you buy meat or cheese in your own containers
7. Use charity shops and bootsales.
8. When buying new, try to buy to last
9. Reuse what you have
10. Try and travel sustainably where possible.
11. Cut down on meat and dairy and other environmentally damaging foods
12. Washing powder over liquids ( I don't believe in the soap nut/ eco egg stuff)
13. Choose to support ethically conscious businesses if you can afford it
14. Buy in bulk
15. Reuse glass jars. I have used them to store craft supplies, gift homemade candles or bath salts, store loose kitchen ingredients, homemade sauces
16. Stop using disposable wipes and use a flannel
17. Washable sanitary products and nappies.
18. Repair things
19. If something cannot be repaired, dispose of in the most ethical way.
20. Lobby for change

A few more:

Stop travelling, unless you REALLY have to.
Think before you buy something. Do you REALLY need it?
Reduce your meat consumption.
Start reading, and try to connect the dots. Be skeptical, but not unrealistically optimistic. Be prepared to meet a lot of paradoxes.
Drop the car and get a bicycle or walk.
Reduce your water consumption.
Reduce your energy consumption. Isolate your house etc.
Reduce the amount of plastics you use (That's a hard one).
Stop having so many children!
Forget about "prepping".
Talk to each other.
Recycle!!!

 

[WingardiumLevicoaster]

A few more:

Stop travelling, unless you REALLY have to.
Think before you buy something. Do you REALLY need it?
Reduce your meat consumption.
Start reading, and try to connect the dots. Be skeptical, but not unrealistically optimistic. Be prepared to meet a lot of paradoxes.
Drop the car and get a bicycle or walk.
Reduce your water consumption.
Reduce your energy consumption. Isolate your house etc.
Reduce the amount of plastics you use (hard one).
Stop having so many children.
Forget about "prepping".
Talk to each other.

The kid one is hard for me. As I would like a child for purely selfish reasons. Given all I do for the environment.. I'm kind of justifying a child. But I know it's selfish.

 

[WeComeInPeace]

The kid one is hard for me. As I would like a child for purely selfish reasons. Given all I do for the environment.. I'm kind of justifying a child. But I know it's selfish.

Yes, as I wrote, "Be prepared to meet a lot of paradoxes". One kid is better than two or even more. FTR: I really like those tiny humans. I've been programmed by evolution to have empathy towards my tribe's offspring.

 

[WeComeInPeace]

I recently heard a lecture by Karen Seto:

https://urban.yale.edu

Karen was a lot more sensitive in her way of delivering the message than I am, but after the lecture, people were stunned. One asked "So what do we do?"

After thinking a couple of seconds she said: Think before you buy something. Do you REALLY need it? Everytime you buy something, you use resources and energy. Every time you take money or a credit card out of your pocket and pay for something, it will cause problems for the Earth.

I think she was spot on. Also this rule of thumb is "easy" to manage, if it wasn't for all the nice shiny thingies. Still it's the best proposal of what everyone can do that I've heard, and if everyone did as she suggested, it would change a lot.

 

[Felix DiCestria]

I could personally add a few. Overpopulation, energy, pandemics and the occasional huge asteroid.

The problem, as I stated earlier is that these interact. The climate causes decreasing crop yields, and the rising population numbers means a larger demand for food. Freshwater is vital to any human, but we will have to irrigate more and more agricultural land, to keep up with the increasing demand. Biodiversity loss again means that the biosphere will struggle, and both agriculture and humans are part of the biosphere. We are removing forrests, giving more climate change, because we need to produce palm oil, biofuels etc. That leads to even more extreme weather, and so it goes on and on and on.

The problem in the center of all this is the size of the population. Since that is taboo for several reasons, and since we don't have any proper way of solving that, without grief and misery, we have painted ourselves into a corner. It's not that you can blame anyone. It's just the way it is.

So yes "Hyperbole is your enemy", but I honestly do not try that. Instead I try to point out that the situation is far more critical than most people think. Furthermore, there are powerful interests in not doing anything.

We can daily read about at least some of these boundaries, and we can read wishful estimates of the population growth and the temperature goals. Still, nothing happens, and even more bizarre, nobody dares calculate the consequences. I've done that, using well established computer modelling, and I'm literally horrified. Try and find predictions of what will happen if we don't react. I find them hard to find. "The Road" might be as close as you get.

Honestly I could do like the rest of my generation and go "Who cares. It's too late anyhow", but then I see a kid and think "It makes me sad to know, that you, with a large certainty, won't live to become old, but instead you will die because of famine".

Don't belive me? Google is your "friend", as long as you know how to be critical towards your sources. Hyperbole? I wish. On a personal level, I wish I hadn't gotten myself into working with this. Life was a lot more pleasurable before that, not knowing. That's kind of a paradox. I don't want to ruin anybody's good mood, but I also feel an urge to tell people the truth. Mainly because I haven't given up completely, yet.

The problem with this is that ecosystem modelling is horrifically complex, (I studied it at University, the equations make Quantum Mechanics look tame) and almost all values are probability based with error bars that expand exponentially with interaction.
You state that the predictions are crawling with paradoxes but don't recognise that those indicate errors in the nature of the interactions or the data.
Chaos tends to make the predictions hazy at best and they should never be stated as being set in stone.
Yes what is happening to our precious blue stone is terrible, but there is hope, there are always things which the models miss and can't account for.
I can't see living under a rock as a solution.

 

[WeComeInPeace]

The problem with this is that ecosystem modelling is horrifically complex, (I studied it at University, the equations make Quantum Mechanics look tame) and almost all values are probability based with error bars that expand exponentially with interaction.
You state that the predictions are crawling with paradoxes but don't recognise that those indicate errors in the nature of the interactions or the data.
Chaos tends to make the predictions hazy at best and they should never be stated as being set in stone.
Yes what is happening to our precious blue stone is terrible, but there is hope, there are always things which the models miss and can't account for.
I can't see living under a rock as a solution.

I've also studied eco system modelling, and yes, those are highly complicated. I wouldn't consider myself able to do those reliably. Neither do I think we have the knowledge to mess with Mother Nature. I don't envy the scientists making models of the climate either. I even find The Club of Rome's model too complicated.

However, you don't need to do that to get an outline of things to come. Instead you can focus on some of the things we know for sure, and know the interactions of. Like no food, no life. Or that the amount of elements is constant, but that entropy is not. Or that to lower entropy you need to use energy. Or that we are running out of easily accessible energy without an alternative. When you combine those you often use the term "Business as usual models", and those are broadly accepted. You can use models and statistic to "prove" something wrong. However, that's not my agenda. I wish it was.

You might call it a rough outline, and you could hope for something currently unknown in the error bars, but you could also prey to the Spaghetti Monster. As long as your models deals with the most important factors, and those are set in stone, the models are our best tool for predicting the future. When I do modelling, I always do sensitivity analysis, and I always throw the model away if it's messed up by uncertain data etc.

Chaos is not unpredictable. It's still completely deterministic once you go to the size of molecules and above. It's just very hard to calculate using the classical reductionistic method. That's why System Theory has become so popular in many sciences. Also it seems that local chaos in subsystems cancel each other out in many cases, when you look at the whole system. The larger the system, the more "inertia" it normally contains, and the less sensitive it is to chaos deep down in the subsystems. An example is the population that has been growing steadily, even though an earth model contains a lot of chaotic subsystems, and even though quantum mechanics seems to be ruled by the RNG.

I hate the idea about "living under a rock", and honestly I personally don't. I'm not sure that it's necessary either, but the way we behave currently is bound to end in tears. Error bars and chaos won't change that. If something will change it, it has to be ourselves.

 

[Arry]

Biodegradable isn't a great solution. The majority need industrial composting. If you put them in your normal waste they won't break down very quickly. I have heard that it contaminates your batch of recycling too.. but of course councils are not going to accept coffee cups and bags in your food waste.

Biro-degradable, is a bit of a grey area. That look good and sound good, but a major percentage of them; just degrade down to micro-plastic parts. Which eventually get into the ecosystems.

 

[WingardiumLevicoaster]

Biro-degradable, is a bit of a grey area. That look good and sound good, but a major percentage of them; just degrade down to micro-plastic parts. Which eventually get into the ecosystems.

many things are just 'degradable'

 

[Felix DiCestria]

You might call it a rough outline, and you could hope for something currently unknown in the error bars, but you could also prey to the Spaghetti Monster. As long as your models deals with the most important factors, and those are set in stone, the models are our best tool for predicting the future. When I do modelling, I always do sensitivity analysis, and I always throw the model away if it's messed up by uncertain data etc.

Chaos is not unpredictable. It's still completely deterministic once you go to the size of molecules and above. It's just very hard to calculate using the classical reductionistic method. That's why System Theory has become so popular...

Have any predictions made via this methodology been verified and with what accuracy?

 

[Shinji Ikari]

The kid one is hard for me. As I would like a child for purely selfish reasons. Given all I do for the environment.. I'm kind of justifying a child. But I know it's selfish.

Meh, having 2 or less isn't that bad considering a quick drop in population can cause many struggles in the future, granny might need you support, the problem comes when you have 4 grandparents and no brothers/sisters to help you support them. The ratio of working population to retiered population shouldn't be too low.

 

[WeComeInPeace]

Have any predictions made via this methodology been verified and with what accuracy?

Well when I do models, I start out building a hypothesis in my head, sort of the mechanism I'm looking at. Then I build the model, and feed it with data from 1900. If it doesn't fit the empirical data for the last 118 years, it's wrong. The accuracy varies, but does it matter whether 7 or 9 billion people will starve?

Also you do different scenarios, and of course you can't predict that they will all come true.

On the model I'm working with now, I even have to include economics, which I find "slightly" non-scientific. Therefore I have to deal with different scenarios, but none of the outcomes look good. Again, I wish they did. That is my main motivation for doing them in the first place. Finding whatever we might have missed in an error bar. I hate sounding like Philippulus the Prophet, but I guess it's part of the job.

 

[WingardiumLevicoaster]

Meh, having 2 or less isn't that bad considering a quick drop in population can cause many struggles in the future, granny might need you support, the problem comes when you have 4 grandparents and no brothers/sisters to help you support them. The ratio of working population to retiered population shouldn't be too low.

That's true actually.. and in the UK the birth rate is lower than it once was.

 

[Felix DiCestria]

Well when I do models, I start out building a hypothesis in my head, sort of the mechanism I'm looking at. Then I build the model, and feed it with data from 1900. If it doesn't fit the empirical data for the last 118 years, it's wrong. The accuracy varies, but does it matter whether 7 or 9 billion people will starve?

Also you do different scenarios, and of course you can't predict that they will all come true.

On the model I'm working with now, I even have to include economics, which I find "slightly" non-scientific. Therefore I have to deal with different scenarios, but none of the outcomes look good. Again, I wish they did. That is my main motivation for doing them in the first place. Finding whatever we might have missed in an error bar. I hate sounding like Philippulus the Prophet, but I guess it's part of the job.

What about provision for emergent groups, or are the models only capable of predicting decline?
Eg; If we looked at models of the Galapagos, Finches could have been predicted to die out on a regular basis, however what we actually see is changes in feeding behaviour and morphology as the population adapts to the ecosystem.

 

[WeComeInPeace]

What about provision for emergent groups, or are the models only capable of predicting decline?
Eg; If we looked at models of the Galapagos, Finches could have been predicted to die out on a regular basis, however what we actually see is changes in feeding behaviour and morphology as the population adapts to the ecosystem.

I think people got emergence wrong in some (many) cases. When they say that life is an emerging property, that is correct in the same way as the property of a watch being able to show the time when all the parts are put together. It's not that you can't explain a living cell using a reductionistic approach, starting from the bottom with the particles. It's just bloody complicated. If you had never seen a watch before, you could still learn quite a lot about it by observing it, and after some time, you would probably notice that it correlated with the movement of the Sun.

Likewise I'm a strong beliver in the classic "Correlation does NOT imply causation". But... Sharks don't eat more people when they taste of ice cream. However if you look deeper, you will find the reason why the amount of sold ice cream correlates with shark attacks. The more you dig into system theory the more humble you get, but you also realize that there are a lot of mechanisms we don't know about.

As I wrote, I try to primarily focus on things that we know for sure. Those are set in stone. Like: The Earth is a "closed" system receiving energy from the Sun. It radiates roughly the same amount of energy in the form of IR. The mechanism that makes the system work is that the photons from the Sun have low entropy, and the emitted IR photons have high entropy. The 2. law drives this planet. That is "simple" physics. It won't change in the foreseeable future, and if it does, the climate will be the least of our worries

I've studied quite a lot of Philosophy of Science, and when it comes to epistemology, I agree with Robert Audi, in his down to earth approach to the subject:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOfU1IlSUgw