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

Status
Thread Closed: Not open for further replies.
'Housing approved despite pollution warning to keep windows shut':


A south London housing development has been approved in an area where air pollution is so high that residents will be advised to keep their windows closed.

Nitrogen dioxide exceeds legal limits on the busy road where the development is planned, next to the A2 in Lewisham. An air quality assessment carried out on behalf of the developers found levels of 56.3 micrograms per cubic metre in the area – far above the legal limit of 40µg/m3.

The highest estimate of NO2 inside the development was also above legal levels at 43.7µg/m3, which would affect residents on the first floor.

The assessment includes the guidance: “With opening windows the developer should advise the future occupants that their health could be at risk due to relatively high levels of air pollution in the area.”

London gets most of the coverage in the UK, but i'm sure other big cities all over the world have the same (and worse) problems. It's crazy how obvious the problem is and yet how slow/complacent in reaction our local authorities are on the issue. This is directly killing people right now, in comparison to AGW that is going to be directly killing people over the 50-100 years. Get the dirty fuel vehicles off our roads, force the car and petroleum industries to foot that bill and transition pollution hot spots to zero emission vehicles asap.
 
'Housing approved despite pollution warning to keep windows shut':




London gets most of the coverage in the UK, but i'm sure other big cities all over the world have the same (and worse) problems. It's crazy how obvious the problem is and yet how slow/complacent in reaction our local authorities are on the issue. This is directly killing people right now, in comparison to AGW that is going to be directly killing people over the 50-100 years. Get the dirty fuel vehicles off our roads, force the car and petroleum industries to foot that bill and transition pollution hot spots to zero emission vehicles asap.
The human stupidity has no limits.

For the builders and also for the people who buy apartments in these kinds of places.
 
I think we will ultimately make the change that saves us permanently, i.e we won't leave it so long it becomes a human extinction level event, but most of the trappings of the modern world we have built up since the industrial revolution will suffer a huge hit. The modern markets for example will be gone, and everything built around them. But humanity will carry on existing. That is the course we are currently set for thanks to the work of the anti-climate change viewpoint.

I honestly doubt that. At the moment we are spending resources faster than they can be replenished. That obviously goes for fossil fuels but also a lot of other resources. Energy is important because we need energy for anything we want to change. Therefore energy should be a high priority. Right now we seem to be at a peak oil state. The shale oil will not be a solution in the longer run, due to EROEI. When we started the oil adventure, one barrel of oil could be used to produce roughly 100 barrels. Today with shale this ratio is more like approaching 1:2. When the ratio gets to 1:1 it is obvious that it's no longer rational to extract anymore. This is on top of the enviromental problems and the CO2 generated.

Also some of the proposals I've seen doesn't make any sense, if you dig a little deeper in the numbers. Lithium as a good example. We simply don't have enough lithium to replace ICEs. If we were able to extract all the known resources (we are not), that would give us an amount of lithium per person globally, which is roughly 2.5 kg. Not a lot. Also, if you do the numbers, we couldn't even cover the ICE milage today using lithium battery cars. On top of that, we don't recycle lithium. It's too expensive, dangerous and difficult. That means that after a "transition" to EVs, we would have run out of lithium.

When you look at the other elements, this is the case with a lot of them, the most challenging being phosphorus. Without phosphorus, no food production. Right now we dig phosphorus rock out of the ground, but we are depleting the reserve quickly. Instead we have to recycle phosphorus, which we mostly don't, except for manure. Even that phosphorus ends up in a human stomach later, whereupon it ends up in an ocean. From my model calculations, a solid estimate is that the Earth will be able to sustain life for roughly one billion people at the end of this century. Said more directly: If we don't wake up, just the phosphorus problem could very well be the end of humanity in this century. This is considered alarmist by some, but their contra argument, "economy solves it", is wrong. It's not that we are running out of any element. We just use them, and spread them into nature after use, and we will need a lot more energy to use it again. And trust me energy will be sparse.
 
I think using massive energy storage devices will be the way through much of that, and there are a number of options that don't just rely on lithium or some other rare resource, this is talking for country level energy storage (like the national grid) more than individual home storage. If we can transition our energy consumption and infrastructure we can have home scale simply supply (while consuming) via solar/wind etc and have nation scale storage using non rare earth elements etc. Private transport is indeed an issue and will need a solution to the current lithium problem.

As for phosphorus, we 'had it right' a few centuries ago. Instead of flushing our crap into the sea we should process it and use it to manure our agriculture (mixed in with livestock manure etc).

So many solutions to global problems are renewable/green in nature. it just takes a shift in thinking and acceptance of what we consider current day norms. We must change (as people and a society) to have a future.
 
I think using massive energy storage devices will be the way through much of that, and there are a number of options that don't just rely on lithium or some other rare resource, this is talking for country level energy storage (like the national grid) more than individual home storage. If we can transition our energy consumption and infrastructure we can have home scale simply supply (while consuming) via solar/wind etc and have nation scale storage using non rare earth elements etc. Private transport is indeed an issue and will need a solution to the current lithium problem.

As for phosphorus, we 'had it right' a few centuries ago. Instead of flushing our crap into the sea we should process it and use it to manure our agriculture (mixed in with livestock manure etc).

So many solutions to global problems are renewable/green in nature. it just takes a shift in thinking and acceptance of what we consider current day norms. We must change (as people and a society) to have a future.

We 'had it right' a few centuries ago, is what I would call truth with 'slight' modifications. It seems that the reason we started using agriculture several thousand years before that, was that Earth's population back then had spread almost all across the globe, and that even though the population was only in the magnitude of million(s), we had reached a point where what we could hunt or gather was becoming sparse.

A few hundred centuries ago famine was quite common in places like Europe, because of population density combined with low productivity in the agriculture, leading to some very bad years when the harvest was poor. That changed when we started using NPKs which meant that the outcome from one seed planted skyrocketed. Before NPK it was close to 1 seeded grain : 2 harvested grain in many places.

Today with a population of close to 8 billion mouths to feed, we have sort of painted ourselves into a corner. When people talk about becoming vegans, that's an excellent idea seen from all farm animals POV, but it will leave us even without manure, unless we recycle human phosphorus, which mainly end up in our urine. There are strong resistance against using "human manure" because people find it disgusting (yet). Culture is often a driving force of stupidity, and science is rarely taken serious. Anytime it comes to an argument between science and economy, money talks.

Don't get me wrong. I agree with you on many points, but I honestly think humanity is heading towards a wall with the pedal to the metal, hoping that science and economy fixes everything. That won't be the case this time. We are very poor at understanding the exponential growth function, and, to be honest, quite naive animals.

On the upside we are perhaps the most adaptable species on the planet, so I doubt that a total extinction is due. However, we are heading for a peak of ~10 billion people at around 2050, which is when the manure will hit the fan for real. That means that somewhere in the magnitude of 9 billion people could face dying from famine in the last half of the century. That's an unprecedented amount of dying. I honestly find that kind of depressing, but I see no solution, and trust me, I've looked hard, deep and long. You can't overrule the law's of nature.

Another upside is that we probably live in the most prosperous years of humanity right now, so enjoy if/while you can.

You mention energy storage on large scales, without using limited resources. Which are those?

(Sorry if I ruined someones day ;))
 
Last edited:
We 'had it right' a few centuries ago, is what I would call truth with 'slight' modifications. It seems that the reason we started using agriculture several thousand years before that, was that Earth's population back then had spread almost all across the globe, and that even though the population was only in the magnitude of million(s), we had reached a point where what we could hunt or gather was becoming sparse.

That last bit just reminded me of this interesting article:

Stonehenge: DNA reveals origin of builders


Just because it details how agriculture arrived in Blighty (european migrants that started out (genetically) from Turkey)).

I'd take some small issue with the reasons you give for 'why' agriculture took over from hunter/gatherer (in truth they existed side by side for a very longtime, and still do in some places), as i've read reports into exactly all that and from pollen and animal bones (etc) it seems there was often still plenty of food around for the traditional hunter/gatherer, and probably it was about convenience (being able to live in one place etc) and maybe just the fashionable new thing to do? Anyway if we started to use our sewerage to enrich our farming lands, instead of flushing it out to sea, that might be a good idea. I don't think we'd want to go back to the slop pots and poo-carts of a few centuries ago (i know i would not) but we could 'spin' a modern version that is sustainable, better for the environment and has an all-round benefit.

You mention energy storage on large scales, without using limited resources. Which are those?

Old-school tech solutions i forget the exact name off (stuff like using water and mine shafts and counter-weights etc)
 
That last bit just reminded me of this interesting article:

Stonehenge: DNA reveals origin of builders


Just because it details how agriculture arrived in Blighty (european migrants that started out (genetically) from Turkey)).

I'd take some small issue with the reasons you give for 'why' agriculture took over from hunter/gatherer (in truth they existed side by side for a very longtime, and still do in some places), as i've read reports into exactly all that and from pollen and animal bones (etc) it seems there was often still plenty of food around for the traditional hunter/gatherer, and probably it was about convenience (being able to live in one place etc) and maybe just the fashionable new thing to do? Anyway if we started to use our sewerage to enrich our farming lands, instead of flushing it out to sea, that might be a good idea. I don't think we'd want to go back to the slop pots and poo-carts of a few centuries ago (i know i would not) but we could 'spin' a modern version that is sustainable, better for the environment and has an all-round benefit.



Old-school tech solutions i forget the exact name off (stuff like using water and mine shafts and counter-weights etc)

The reason why we went from hunter gatherers (HG) to agriculture is still not settled. So wasn't the true proven existence of black holes until recently, though few scientist doubted their existence, and there will probably be loads of flat earthers still doubting. Wait and see. Any transition takes time, but you don't see a lot of HGs these days where I live, nor where I've traveled. Actually you have to travel quite far to find HG tribes. I know, because I've read about them as well.

Gilgamesh is the oldest written story we have about life in the old days. That's ~4.500 years and shows that he and others back then were fighting the same problems as many contemporary humans. The main being his own mortality, and his awareness of it. I obviously can't know for sure, but I would say that there is a pretty good chance that HGs, even pre stone age, had similar thoughts. That makes them interesting because HG could very well become the way some humans survive in the future. Sort of like in "The Road".

Recycling phosphorus is a major task. We don't yet have any technological solution that is any good. The best I've heard yet is to pee in a bucket. That came from someone who thinks the whole idea of recycling is a joke, similar to when Fred Hoyle coined the term "Big Bang". Recycling takes energy and in most cases other resources. Since we are low on both, that makes sustainable recycling "difficult", but as you stated "recycle or die". Also, any recycling means a loss of the resource during each cycle.

The severity of what we are facing becomes clear when you start looking at all the other "major tasks" we're facing. Climate, energy, food, transportation, overpopulation, biodiversity, water and air polution, to name a few. Solving just one of those is a "major task", but combined they become nasty. In most cases they interact in a negative manner. The energy problem leads to more climate change. Climate change leads to lower food production. Lower food production leads to unrest and war. Unrest and war leads to more children being born. More children means population rise or child mortality. Higher population leads to higher demands for food, energy and water, and so on. On top of all that, people hope/expect to become richer while doing it. Otherwise any plan is rejected, because "the consequences of negative economic growth are worse than horror".

All those major tasks have to be solved within decades. I find it hard to believe they will, when people can't even agree on climate change, which is a pretty obvious problem now. That is kind of what I mean when I express my doubts about our capabilities or our understanding of the magnitude of what we are facing. When I was a kid many years ago, the grown ups told us children, that they hadn't solved it back then, and that it would be up to us. Well, we messed up.

Humans have gotten this "smart" feature build into them, as a result of billions of years of evolution. We worry most about the near future and our closest surroundings. From a evolutionary POV, that's "clever". It increases the individuals chance of survival and reproduction. However, it doesn't solve anything we're up against in longer terms, but evolution is blind trial and error. Sometimes it guesses wrong, and sometimes it gets stuck. Who cares about humanity in 2070, when the real problem here and now is how to unlock those engineers in ED so that you can boost your jump range?
 
And speaking of just how thin (but not impossible) our chances are to survive the next few hundred years, this was a frank article:

'Mark Carney tells global banks they cannot ignore climate change dangers':


The global financial system faces an existential threat from climate change and must take urgent steps to reform, the governors of the Bank of England and France’s central bank have warned, writing in the Guardian.

In an article published in the Guardian on Wednesday aimed at the international financial community, Mark Carney, the Bank’s governor, and François Villeroy de Galhau, the governor of the Banque de France, said financial regulators, banks and insurers around the world had to “raise the bar” to avoid catastrophe.

They said: “As financial policymakers and prudential supervisors we cannot ignore the obvious physical risks before our eyes. Climate change is a global problem, which requires global solutions, in which the whole financial sector has a central role to play.”

The warning comes as concern over the impact of climate change and the lack of urgent action is increasing, reflected in the Extinction Rebellion protests and schoolchildren’s strikes across the world.

So i hope that is pretty clear. The concerns i've been expressing all through this thread are actually pretty valid, not so much 'recycle or die' as perhaps 'change or die'?
 
“A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that's just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it's a joke.”
― Soren Kierkegaard
 
Re: The OpEd in the Guardian based on Carney's piece in the same - I rather feel that they've misunderstood the primary risk that Carney/NGFS is talking about, and they've also failed to pick up on a significant other piece that the BoE is talking about in the same vein.

Put simply, what this NGFS is doing is assessing the risks and making recommendations from a fiscal and macro-economic point of view based on the projections being made. They don't validate those projections or subsequent concerns about them - that's circular logic.

See: https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/speech/2019/sarah-breeden-omfif
Also see: https://www.banque-france.fr/sites/...s_first_comprehensive_report_-_17042019_0.pdf

Two major areas of financial risk are identified, along with a future opportunity.

Physical:

Increasing insurance losses to extreme weather events based on data from a prior publication suggesting that global claims increase fivefold from $10bn pa in the 1980s to $50bn in 2015. (That same prior publication also points out that changes in weather are actually only one of many factors in the increase in claims - the primary other factor is the expansion of industry itself.) Further increases in claims need to be planned for based on the scenarios being presented by many of the groups; such as the RCP8.5 projection of a 4 degree global temperature rise by 2050.

Transition:

Costs and risks associated with our response to climate change, such as the (direct quote from the speech) the change in energy costs from the transition [that] will have a significant affect on many businesses. Sarah Breeden's speech transcript (and the NGFS document) talks about up to $20tn of stranded assets across various economic sectors.

Essentially the risk here is that existing investments might be threatened/devalued and some sort of investment taxonomy is needed to be agreed going forward. This is the major risk to the financial sector - not the physical risks associated with extreme weather.

Finance opportunities:

Here's the kicker that I'm surprised the Guardian didn't mention: $90tn of global investment needed by 2030 and BoE (and other central banks) is selling that as a finance opportunity. Assuming that investors will want a dividend (they will, let's say 5% although a quick Google search shows that Green investment bonds are frequently offering returns in excess of 10%) then that's a guaranteed $4.5tn (~$400bn per annum) return to investment houses/individuals, generally paid for by various public purses and/or utility costs.

It leaves a bitter taste, that.
 
The financial sector is wired to do what it does, so off course people in it are going to maneuver to profit from it. A bit like the quote We come in Peace made just above ;)

Essentially the risk here is that existing investments might be threatened/devalued and some sort of investment taxonomy is needed to be agreed going forward. This is the major risk to the financial sector - not the physical risks associated with extreme weather.

I don't think you can clearly distinguish between these aspects though. AGW and it's growing very real physical threats are intrinsically linked with our actions (or lack of actions). Certainly there is going to be headless chicken panic reactions across all sectors of society as things roll on and bigger climate change events take place, in this environment everyone is set to lose. That's why the problem is as grave as it is, and the 'serious' money people are kind of just waking up to smell the coffee on that.

Climate change is not a thought exercise, or flight of fancy from green bearded hippy types ;) It's real, it's here and it's coming. So the question is just how bad do we want it to be?
 
I am aware that I sound like Philippulus the Prophet but I guess that "goes with the job". Even my close friends get tired of listening to me when I talk about the future and I do understand why. I have been working with these subjects for some time now, and honestly I had no idea of the seriousness of the situation when I started.

Economic growth has been regarded as a Golden Calf for centuries, and to a certain degree it was true. Living standards have become better, but we have paid a price that few people were aware of. However those days are close to being gone. Economic growth and energy consumption goes hand in hand.

I know this hurts feelings, but economy is not a proper science, considering the fact that it builds on some axioms that even economists agree are wrong. Still it overrules anything else. In a way Yuval Noah Harari is right when he compares economy to a religion. The best example of the current conflict of interest was given by the economist Kenneth Boulding:

“Anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.”

On the other hand people are horrified by the lack of any growth. That also makes sense, because the modern economy only works as long as there is growth. Otherwise it will collapse, and you can look around the World and see mild local cases of that.

Therefore economy and ecology are mostly seen up against each other. Here the economists miss the point. If they don't consider ecology there wont be any economy.

Edit:

The thing that got me, was when I started researching what it would really mean to live sustainable. Meaning that you don't use up more resources than are regenerated. I know people who think they try, but they are not even close. I fact I haven't seen any clear description of how to live a sustainable life. Just look at the Carbon Footprint. Sustainable optimistically means ~1 ton per world citizen. An average US citizen therefore will have to reduce that by 94%? Or the Chinese by 85%? Or the average Indian by 36%?

Just to set 1 ton into perspective. An average human exhales roughly a kg CO2 per day. That's 0.4 ton per year. With all the activity and the amount of manual labor we are facing without fossil fuels, that figure is going to rise.
 
Last edited:
I don't think you can clearly distinguish between these aspects though. AGW and it's growing very real physical threats are intrinsically linked with our actions (or lack of actions).

You've missed the point of my post.

The risk (to the financial sector) isn't the physical threat. The physical threat is, even using frankly ludicrous RCP8.5 scenarios, relatively easily manageable and/or a product of the expansion of industry/retail fiscal coverage.

The actual fiscal threat exists because of the reaction to the projections being made and what the governmental response to that is. The actual problem is one of policy and policy response. Put another way, this report and the risks it identifies exist solely because of scaremongering (based on RCP8.5 scenarios) and the anticipation of governmental organisations taking that scaremongering at face value.

This is a damn shame, because it will divert resources and policy options away from actual environmental problems (e.g. biodiversity and deforestation) at the expense of introducing incredibly regressive policy options.

Climate change is not a thought exercise, or flight of fancy from green bearded hippy types ;) It's real, it's here and it's coming. So the question is just how bad do we want it to be?

I'd quite like it to be more serious than what we propose to do about it, or can control.

The direct costs, corresponding opportunity costs and subsequent implications of the sort of actions being advocated for are immense; more than I think the world at large could bear especially when the returns are so poorly defined. Future projections, especially based on RCP8.5 (which most seem to be), are fodder for the media. What physical evidence exists to say that this is an existential threat? Next to naff all as far as I can see.

Can you promise no extreme weather events if fossil fuel production is shut down in its entirely and replaced with some utopian anti-industrial replacement? Can you promise that a new ecological threat won't pop up in it's place? Can you promise to stop sea level rise? Can you promise to stop temperature rise? Of course you can't.

Even with 60-odd years of scientific research behind it, we still have no idea how much of the change we're seeing is natural. We can't explain why much of the change we're seeing pre-dates the significant introduction of CO2 emissions (~1960/70). And, for sure, we know a proportion of the observed change is natural. There is no such thing as a steady climatic state. Climate change will always be with us. It always has been throughout the history of our species.

So, to address the bit I've quoted directly: yes - there's a huge flight of fancy here. Certainly in terms of the risks, ill-defined solutions/returns and with a smattering of anti-industrial rhetoric thrown in. (And to be clear - not in that CC exists, or that we contribute to it. Those elements are self-evident.)

To also address the point I was making; how bad do I want it to be? What return do I need to pump up my investment portfolio? 7% guaranteed by the tax payer would be awesome. You plebs keep paying your taxes, okay!
 
Even with 60-odd years of scientific research behind it, we still have no idea how much of the change we're seeing is natural. We can't explain why much of the change we're seeing pre-dates the significant introduction of CO2 emissions (~1960/70). And, for sure, we know a proportion of the observed change is natural. There is no such thing as a steady climatic state. Climate change will always be with us. It always has been throughout the history of our species.
It's not that climate or CO2 levels in the atmosphere hasn't changed before. It's the current change rate that is alarming. The question of when something can be considered proven is rather philosophical, but I think it's safe to say that a large part of the current temperature change is due to man made CO2.

How do you consider the physical threat "relatively easily manageable"???
 
“A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that's just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it's a joke.”
― Soren Kierkegaard
We can say that we will be dead laughing.
 
I'd say it's pretty safe to say you are right.

However, once you start digging into Philosophy of Science, you quickly realize how close to impossible it is to prove something 100%. Instead science use statistics to say that scenario A is more likely than scenario B. Often you see a line at "95% likely", but some discoveries, like the Higgs particle, demanded much higher values (AFAIR it was sigma 5 or 6).

Since there is also a (good) culture in science of not lying, everytime science states something, we feel that we have to leave room for the theoretical chance of being wrong, however minute it is. I wish everyone was so humble. That would change a lot, but to get there one have to understand some rather complicated subjects, and I even know scientists who only know statistics as a tool, and not its deeper consequences or its origin or axioms.
 
I know where you're coming from WeComeInPeace and agree.
There's always the possibility of unknown unknowns, science must take that into account. No matter how overwhelming the amount of evidence is, as it is now with AGW. Of course this where the CC deniers seize their opportunity to indulge in their comforting delusions...
 
You've missed the point of my post.

I completely got the point of your post. I just don't agree with that point ;)

Can you promise no extreme weather events if fossil fuel production is shut down in its entirely and replaced with some utopian anti-industrial replacement? Can you promise that a new ecological threat won't pop up in it's place? Can you promise to stop sea level rise? Can you promise to stop temperature rise? Of course you can't.

Because it would not be true. If we stopped all CO2 industrial output tomorrow we'd still be on course for decades (centuries?) of increased extreme climate change events. That is where we are right now. Still if we don't find a way to transition from traditional economic and development models (dirty industry etc) and adopt sustainable energy production asap, those effects are going to become much worse, civilization ending even (which is what the economists and bankers are thinking about (finally) as per the recent stuff from the Bank of England guy). We can pretend this is not the case (for comfort, or personal concerns over investments etc), but that won't stop the reality.

It's not that climate or CO2 levels in the atmosphere hasn't changed before. It's the current change rate that is alarming. The question of when something can be considered proven is rather philosophical, but I think it's safe to say that a large part of the current temperature change is due to man made CO2.

How do you consider the physical threat "relatively easily manageable"???

Talarin does not believe climate change is that big a threat, to answer your question (just in case they don't reply themselves). They read the reports about it (the IPCC etc) and i think just put the most serious examples down to 'hyping' the actual danger e.g. AGW is just not that big a deal. Still as we are seeing, many of the people and institutions that run the world are waking up to the fact that things are not good and are becoming a danger to pretty much everything we have built (from Banking sector to the Military etc, all these bodies have done risk assessments and know what we are heading towards).

Luckily the public awareness on the issue is changing and i think after another 5 or so years of the current stage of extreme weather we will see real pressure put on the politicians to do what we can to reduce the effects down the coming decades, young people are leading that discussion as it will effect them the most.
 
Status
Thread Closed: Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom