General / Off-Topic Is man made climate change real or not? Prove your belief here.

[Arry]

I'd dispute that's the main issue (although certainly a worthy factor to consider) - assuming you're referring to offshore wind generation.

While the total generation statistics (usually talked about in TwH in a certain calendar period) make pretty reading, the reality as things stand is somewhat different. If you do a production vs. demand analysis on an hour-by-hour basis over the last 24 months, you'll find that you need quite significant dispatchable capacity to cover the shortfalls in generation from renewable sources (and that's true across the UK, not just Scotland). In reality you should do that same analysis on a minute by minute basis at least.

So you then have a choice between having to have enough gas generation, diesel generation to cover the grid as a whole or no power in the shortfall periods. This is why renewables as they stand don't actually work.

However, this is only true until some sort of breakthrough in cheap energy storage happens. That's a proper game changer.

Did I say wind? Nope, I said tidal.

http://www.earthtimes.org/energy/scotland-build-worlds-largest-tidal-power-array/539/

This was 2011, they have moved forward, a bit since then. The issue, is the marine life, e.g. seals, etc..

 

[Robin of Spiritwood]

It seems that we agree on a lot of points
. Even if we banned having kids (a horrible thought) it would not be enough to reach the human carrying capacity of the planet before 2100 by naturally caused deaths.

I've been unsuccessfully trying to introduce the concept that we are poised upon the cusp of probably having to do just that, because of the incredibly rapid development in longevity research.

On the 8th of September this year, the first clinical trial in humans successfully reversed epigenetic ageing at a rate of minus 2 years in a 1 year period.
That is " escape velocity" , already, where we have an advance that gains time faster than we can age.

The planetary implicatons are severe.

 

[Robin of Spiritwood]

There has been two major incidents, •••

Given all that and some personal (lethal) experiences I've had with radiation, I hate it, but given the fact that the alternatives are even worse, I guess I have to find somewhere to dump my hate and get on with it. It's not that fossil energy is safe, and it kills more people even today than fission has ever done (including the bombs).

As a little aside, there's a researcher in Harvard looking into moving genes from tardigrades to humans, to confer resistance to radiation, right now...

 

[jasonbarron]

I've been unsuccessfully trying to introduce the concept that we are poised upon the cusp of probably having to do just that, because of the incredibly rapid development in longevity research.

On the 8th of September this year, the first clinical trial in humans successfully reversed epigenetic ageing at a rate of minus 2 years in a 1 year period.
That is " escape velocity" , already, where we have an advance that gains time faster than we can age.

The planetary implicatons are severe.

There's no way that's going to be made available to mankind as a whole. If it proves effective it'll just be a tool for the ultra powerful, and that's not going to impact the Earth's population much.

 

[znôrt]

If it proves effective it'll just be a tool for the ultra powerful, and that's not going to impact the Earth's population much.

yeah and they're going to need quite some police state first if they want a chance at keeping it.

As a little aside, there's a researcher in Harvard looking into moving genes from tardigrades to humans, to confer resistance to radiation, right now...

any link or additional info?

 

[jasonbarron]

yeah and they're going to need quite some police state first if they want a chance at keeping it.



any link or additional info?

Environmentalist>population control proponent>police state/totalitarian state advocate

 

[znôrt]

Environmentalist>population control proponent>police state/totalitarian state advocate

light bulb -> banana -> school bus

 

[jasonbarron]

light bulb -> banana -> school bus

I know you think you're being cute and dismissive here, but watch these conversations with my words in mind and I'll guarantee you that you will start seeing that pattern emerge.

 

[Robin of Spiritwood]

any link or additional info?

Sure, his name is George Church, he's being funded ? by NASA.

https://aerospaceamerica.aiaa.org/features/homo-sapiens-astronauta/

 

[MaxG10]

I would like to contribute a thought on the energy discussion evolving here.

I observe that most discussions circle around the "How can we guarantee to continue?" level.

It was autumn 1973 and the world was a different place of course, Nixon was still president in the USA, Watergate hearings were televised, a first, and due to the arabic oil desert-bandits cartell, for four Sundays in Germany no cars were on the streets, and during the week there was a limit of 100km/h oin the Autobahn in place for four months to safe fuel. I won't go into the nuts and bolts here, such as the Jom Kippur war et al., I just bring this up as an example.

Despite the global discussions and drastic developments in CC, the year 2018 had its fastest pace of global energy demand in this decade! Global demand went up 2.3% resulting in Co2 emissions increasing by 1.7% to 33 Gt. Then there is global electricity demand +4% in 2018 to 23.000 TWh

source: https://www.iea.org/geco/

Shortly after that remarkable autumn of 73, Gemany allocated 6 billion Deutschmark and proposed to quickly start building 40 nuclear power plants.

x x x x​

....I appologise, but it is early morning, and I just realised that it is impossible for me to continue this line of thought without going into political excursions, so I will stop here. It is all interconnected, even more so today than back in the 70s.

What I can say beyond doubts is this, without global participation of the main offenders, USA, India, China, Brazil, Russia, Europe and many more, the chance of succeeding to reduce inevitable future human suffering on an enormous scale is neglectable.

This threat is as real as it get's, and indeed it should unite humankind, and should not be abused as a divisive force by special interst groups.

 

[Patrick_68000]

What I can say beyond doubts is this, without global participation of the main offenders, USA, India, China, Brazil, Russia, Europe and many more, the chance of succeeding to reduce inevitable future human suffering on an enormous scale is neglectable.

This threat is as real as it get's, and indeed it should unite humankind, and should not be abused as a divisive force by special interst groups.

Something inside me tells me that the elites have the ambition to get rid of a substantial part of the human population.

Why do they allow the destruction of the environment and even encourage it ?

I may be paranoid, but after all, the humans are capable of killing 60 million people in a single war.

I do not think a few billion fewer humans would disturb them.

 

[MaxG10]

Patrick, this is murky territory you stepped on, but let me say this, it is beyond doubts, because history is rich on examples, that there were always people who would not hesitate causing human tragedies on an enormous scale, and that they excuse the suffering of entire Nations later as collateral damage for the greater good. So yes, there are known groups and individuals who consider such "solutions" as valid, some of them are elected and empowered by the people, others are autocrats and despots bred by democratically elected representatives of the people and they never hesitate to engage with despots and autocrats for self interests and economic reasons, labeling it as diplomacy.

 

[Han_Zen]

There's no way that's going to be made available to mankind as a whole. If it proves effective it'll just be a tool for the ultra powerful, and that's not going to impact the Earth's population much.

If it can be sold to the masses, it will be sold to the masses. As cost goes down, more will get it.
Governments can't control a thing like that, if there is money to be made. If it's banned in you country,you go to Switzerland and and get it.

 

[Han_Zen]

Environmentalist>population control proponent>police state/totalitarian state advocate

Only a totalitarian state can control population by law. It would would require sterilizing those that has reached their quota on kids.
What you can do is to give benefits to those that keep their reproductive instincts in check.

 

[WeComeInPeace]

I've been unsuccessfully trying to introduce the concept that we are poised upon the cusp of probably having to do just that, because of the incredibly rapid development in longevity research.

On the 8th of September this year, the first clinical trial in humans successfully reversed epigenetic ageing at a rate of minus 2 years in a 1 year period.
That is " escape velocity" , already, where we have an advance that gains time faster than we can age.

The planetary implicatons are severe.

I remember when I started doing global system models on, among other, the population size. One of the first realizations I had was that the cure for cancer everyone is hoping for might have serious consequences on the population size. Back then it was already somewhat clear to me that we were probably above the carrying capacity, meaning that the planet biophysically couldn't sustain life for even the current population. Sustain as in the "long" run.

Overshooting the carrying capacity is pretty common in biology. A classical example in ecology is a group of sheep and a group of wolves both living in the same area. If the number of wolves becomes too high, they will eat more sheep, meaning that the sheep have fewer offspring. That will limit the number of sheep, leading to less food for the wolves. Then the wolves start dying from starvation, leading to a drop in their population size. That leads to fewer sheep being eaten, and therefore their population grows. All in all, in that example it seems to balance out through negative feedback loops, but the first part of the story is that there are too many wolves, meaning that their population size overshot their carrying capacity.

The whole biosphere is a LOT more complicated than that, but looking at humans, we have used external energy to boost our food production (internal energy). During the green revolution, we have started using artificial fertilizers (you need energy to mine, refine and produce those), and we've started using machines like tractors and harvesters in the global agriculture. That is fine and dandy it seems, because it has reduced the global hunger and malnutrition, but because we use energy in a way that is seriously non sustainable it should "raise an eyebrow". The more I modelled, the more it became clear to me, that we are way above the carrying capacity. I honestly don't know what the carrying capacity really is, but to the best of my knowledge it is somewhere between 1-4 billion, depending on how we use resources. With the way we currently behave, it's closer to 1 than 4.

Realizing that scared the crap out of me on behalf of the young generations, because no matter how eco friendly humanity becomes, it seems that we are still high above the carrying capacity, and you don't need to study much ecology to get to know the inevitable consequences of that. We can make all the modifications to the telomeres etc. we want, it won't ensure that immortality everyone seems to long for. There simply ain't food enough already, and if we lower the death rate then the overshoot of the carrying capacity will just become more, how shall I put it... "violent".

 

[znôrt]

I know you think you're being cute and dismissive here, but watch these conversations with my words in mind and I'll guarantee you that you will start seeing that pattern emerge.

well, it's a non-sequitur. totalitarian mindsets are pretty common. i live in what amounts to a totalitarian state in practice and it has nothing to do with environmentalism.

i do fear we will have a global planetary government at one point and it will be anything but democratic. climate change consequences will probably be a catalyst for that much like global insecurity, power struggles and technological advances. the real reason underneath, though, will be mere survival of the few over the many. but i surely could expect someone to blame environmentalism for that.

unrelated, but it might amuse you, i just learned that greta has now her own official 'caganer'.
it's a select club:

Spoiler

 

[WeComeInPeace]

Only a totalitarian state can control population by law. It would would require sterilizing those that has reached their quota on kids.
What you can do is to give benefits to those that keep their reproductive instincts in check.

Only as long as you have resources to give them benefits.

Some years ago there was a pretty interesting UK TV series called "Utopia". Now follows serious spoilers about that story, so don't read it if you want't to see it, or haven't already done so:


The series was about a somewhat random group of people discovering that another group of people called "The Network" have a plan. They are a group of politicians, billionaires, scientist etc. meeting at secret locations to discuss the future of humanity, especially the problem of overpopulation. Their plan is to release a very deadly very contagious virus that will quickly spread causing global panic. Then they will release a vaccine. The vaccine "cures" the virus, but it (secretly) also contains a protein making 90-95% of the people who receives it sterile. Then the series sort of opens the question whether this is a good solution for humaty.

It also raises several other questions, one of them being whether the alternatives are less inhuman, and how do we even try to evaluate what is good for humanity. Are individuals allowed to take such decisions on behalf of the rest of the World while keeping them in the darkness etc.

The series has a couple of VERY disturbing scenes, so be warned, but it is very much an eyeopener to how complicated the current situation is, especially from an ethic perspective.

 

[Darkfyre99]

I remember when I started doing global system models on, among other, the population size. One of the first realizations I had was that the cure for cancer everyone is hoping for might have serious consequences on the population size. Back then it was already somewhat clear to me that we were probably above the carrying capacity, meaning that the planet biophysically couldn't sustain life for even the current population. Sustain as in the "long" run.

Overshooting the carrying capacity is pretty common in biology. A classical example in ecology is a group of sheep and a group of wolves both living in the same area. If the number of wolves becomes too high, they will eat more sheep, meaning that the sheep have fewer offspring. That will limit the number of sheep, leading to less food for the wolves. Then the wolves start dying from starvation, leading to a drop in their population size. That leads to fewer sheep being eaten, and therefore their population grows. All in all, in that example it seems to balance out through negative feedback loops, but the first part of the story is that there are too many wolves, meaning that their population size overshot their carrying capacity.

The whole biosphere is a LOT more complicated than that, but looking at humans, we have used external energy to boost our food production (internal energy). During the green revolution, we have started using artificial fertilizers (you need energy to mine, refine and produce those), and we've started using machines like tractors and harvesters in the global agriculture. That is fine and dandy it seems, because it has reduced the global hunger and malnutrition, but because we use energy in a way that is seriously non sustainable it should "raise an eyebrow". The more I modelled, the more it became clear to me, that we are way above the carrying capacity. I honestly don't know what the carrying capacity really is, but to the best of my knowledge it is somewhere between 1-4 billion, depending on how we use resources. With the way we currently behave, it's closer to 1 than 4.

Realizing that scared the crap out of me on behalf of the young generations, because no matter how eco friendly humanity becomes, it seems that we are still high above the carrying capacity, and you don't need to study much ecology to get to know the inevitable consequences of that. We can make all the modifications to the telomeres etc. we want, it won't ensure that immortality everyone seems to long for. There simply ain't food enough already, and if we lower the death rate then the overshoot of the carrying capacity will just become more, how shall I put it... "violent".

I've often said we've been eating "fossil foods" for a while now: food planted and harvested using fossil energy, fertilized by fossil nutrients, and watered by fossil water. A larder sequestered over the course of hundreds of millions of years, consumed in just over a hundred.

And I can't decide whether this is a good thing or not. On the one hand, what we're doing isn't sustainable. On the other hand, it doesn't have to be, if we come out the other side with sustainable solar or fusion power, and that kind of innovation can only come from a large population. It's a huge gamble that a world with complex life gets to make only once.

Personally, I'm cautiously optimistic.

Solar use and energy efficiency awareness seems to be exploding in the business world, and fusion research is now moving into the private sector as well. Energy saving technology seems to be ubiquitous, and cheap, compared to even 20 years ago. More and more businesses are realizing that being green is actually good for their bottom line, and where business leads, everybody else follows.

I just wish we'd gotten to this point 20 years ago. Failing to switch from fossil fuels to fission when it would've had a bigger impact has made the future much more uncertain IMO eyes.

 

[MaxG10]

On the planet's capacity, this is an intersting view. On a side note, I quite like The Conversation, usually useful and unhyped academic exchange, but talking straight.

7.5 billion and counting: How many humans can the Earth support?

The global population is climbing faster and faster. What will this mean for future generations?

theconversation.com

 

[jasonbarron]

Only a totalitarian state can control population by law. It would would require sterilizing those that has reached their quota on kids.
What you can do is to give benefits to those that keep their reproductive instincts in check.

We give out plenty of benefits here in America, but it's to the people having baby's in the form of welfare. Not that Americans, statistically speaking, are part of the population "problem," just putting that out there because we all know that nobody in the areas where there are massive population booms is going to voluntarily dial it back. Every rock solid environmentalist on this thread knows darn well that population must be CONTROLLED and that it must be implemented by a governmental force "for the good of the planet." Hence my formula environmentalist>population control>police state.

You show me a single person who claims to actually think we have a climate crisis who doesn't believe population control should be implemented by some sort of one world order and I'll show you a person who doesn't have the balls to publicly stand by their convictions.