Climate Change Denial

[Nrkl]

Renewables (wind and solar) replacing fossil fuels fixes a lot.

It "fixes" some things, and it will create some new problems. The meta problem is the pace and scale of these "fixes". Doesn't matter how intelligently designed these fixes are. Nature and evolution has figured out the right approach long time ago. Have a wide variety of approaches specific to local conditions, have as small closed loop systems as possible. This will result in failures being contained locally. Right now we are, so to speak, putting all of our eggs in one basket. Sure, you have faith that that basket is intelligently designed by science and technology, and hence will not fail because we have modeled all the possible situations that the basket will face. Well, I have sombering news for you, there is no intelligent design that will trump the randomness and volatility of the world.

 

[Nrkl]

That's a paralyzing and ultimately hopeless perspective. And while you are correct that humans don't have a great record as far as unintended consequences, you haven't shown that all human activity is destructive. You seem to be advocating for "do nothing, you'll only make it worse." I think the good person will try, at risk of failure sometimes. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

I'm not advocating for doing nothing. I'm advocating for not trying to save the whole world. Brace yourself, your loved ones, and your community for a future where you cannot assume that everything that you need to survive is abstracted away. Maybe a bit paradoxically, accepting the inevitable and preparing for it will solve most of our environmental issues as a side effect. We are just addicted to modernity and the capital accumulation that enables.

 

[kpanda17]

Wrapping my head around your statements, I do agree life has to change.
Our EV ownerships have changed our lives, a step
More steps in process for each of us

Move away from consuming animal products

We need to evangelize to others life has to change
Each doing their part

 

[Nrkl]

Wrapping my head around your statements, I do agree life has to change.
Our EV ownerships have changed our lives, a step
More steps in process for each of us

Move away from consuming animal products

We need to evangelize to others life has to change
Each doing their part

Animal products, plant based products. This is neither as straightforward. There's a real role in nature for creatures that disrupt the succession process. Megafauna used to do this, but since we do not have those anymore, we can do good as people by emulating their effects on nature. By having diverse forest habitat and a pasture like habitat, we actually get more diversity, even if the pasture has lower diversity in isolation compared to the forest. And diversity, if anything, is what we should optimize for.

There's a mindset shift that is crucial for people to go through, which is to let go of the idea that we need to be sustainable. Being sustainable is essentially trying to driver our negative impact towards 0, whereas we should be maximizing our positive impact. Think of beavers. They have dramatic effects on their environments, but through disruption they create different habitats, borders between habitats (borders are richest in diversity) etc. Humans can and should be a keystone species enabling life on this planet.

 

[Nrkl]

Btw in this publication in Chapter 4, "Feedback delays in complex dynamic decision tasks", you have a good articulation of the problem with trying to act (fixing CC in this case) in a system that has feedback delays. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/200134353_Complex_Problem_Solving-The_European_Perspective

 

[JRP3]

So if you could in an instant change the energy sources from fossil fuels to renewables, all the problems would be gone?

I neither said nor implied that. Problems will of course remain because the full effects of fossil fuel use are not yet known and will continue after their use has stopped. That doesn't mean it's pointless to stop adding literal fuel to the fire.

 

[JRP3]

Animal products, plant based products. This is neither as straightforward.

It really is, best discussed here: We must face facts - meat is the problem

 

[Nrkl]

Animal products, plant based products. This is neither as straightforward. There's a real role in nature for creatures that disrupt the succession process. Megafauna used to do this, but since we do not have those anymore, we can do good as people by emulating their effects on nature. By having diverse forest habitat and a pasture like habitat, we actually get more diversity, even if the pasture has lower diversity in isolation compared to the forest. And diversity, if anything, is what we should optimize for.

There's a mindset shift that is crucial for people to go through, which is to let go of the idea that we need to be sustainable. Being sustainable is essentially trying to driver our negative impact towards 0, whereas we should be maximizing our positive impact. Think of beavers. They have dramatic effects on their environments, but through disruption they create different habitats, borders between habitats (borders are richest in diversity) etc. Humans can and should be a keystone species enabling life on this planet.

Btw fun fact about succession. In Finland, where I'm from, large chunk of endangered species are dependent on traditional animal based agriculture. So now instead of letting autonomous biological robots graze the meadows, volunteers spend time scything meadows clear from becoming boreal forest. Can't make this crap up

 

[Nrkl]

It really is, best discussed here: We must face facts - meat is the problem

Looks like the same people as on this thread. Maybe you can use my responses on this thread to educate yourself instead of me repeating myself?

 

[JRP3]

Looks like the same people as on this thread. Maybe you can use my responses on this thread to educate yourself instead of me repeating myself?

You haven't said anything informative.

 

[Nrkl]

You haven't said anything informative.

More the reason not to repeat myself over there

 

[Nrkl]

It really is, best discussed here: We must face facts - meat is the problem

But I understand where you're coming from, I used to be there too! The left-brained approach you're taking is one of the many problems of focus on CO2. In a CO2 spreadsheet all animal agriculture looks like a bad idea. But when in a real world experiment, where traditional animal agriculture has disappeared, the consequences are much more negative for the environment than the proposed benefits of plant based agriculture. Essentially we are destroying diversity increasing habitats and increasing diversity destroying, mechanized monocrop agriculture. Looks good on paper when viewed from CO2 point of view, in the real world not so much.

 

[mspohr]

So if you could in an instant change the energy sources from fossil fuels to renewables, all the problems would be gone? I respect your optimism, but your take is not consistent with complex system dynamics. Letting yourself see the real situation is not easy, because it requires for you to accept that there is no future for the current way of life. The good news is that a different way of life can be much more rich and fulfilling for everyone involved. It just doesn't look good in contemporary metrics like GDP growth.

It's stupid to think anything will provide an instant fix.
We are in deep due to years of abusing the ecosystem.
It will take lots of different fixes and a lot of time but we should do everything we can because otherwise it will get a lot worse.

 

[JRP3]

Looks good on paper when viewed from CO2 point of view, in the real world not so much.

It's not just CO2, it's also simply efficient production of nutrients. But again, already heavily covered in the other thread.

 

[DrGriz]

So if you could in an instant change the energy sources from fossil fuels to renewables, all the problems would be gone? I respect your optimism, but your take is not consistent with complex system dynamics. Letting yourself see the real situation is not easy, because it requires for you to accept that there is no future for the current way of life. The good news is that a different way of life can be much more rich and fulfilling for everyone involved. It just doesn't look good in contemporary metrics like GDP growth.

Here you are again, making perfect the enemy of good. As if humans can't work on adaptation to the new reality at the same time they cut down on burning FF.

 

[Nrkl]

I find it curious that I, who advocates for ending of fossil fuels, takes the existential risk of human caused problems seriously, get so much push back on this thread.

I’ve explained a couple times already that I’m not advocating for status quo. First and foremost We should stop creating problems through solving things. Especially when doing it at a speed and at a scale that causes an inevitable systemic Collapse.

Why i thin there is no hope for change? Because here we have people hijacked by their left brain to believe completely absurd things about nature. Such as us designing more “efficient” systems than what evolution has, through trial and error, come up with over millions of years.

 

[mspohr]

I find it curious that I, who advocates for ending of fossil fuels, takes the existential risk of human caused problems seriously, get so much push back on this thread.

I’ve explained a couple times already that I’m not advocating for status quo. First and foremost We should stop creating problems through solving things. Especially when doing it at a speed and at a scale that causes an inevitable systemic Collapse.

Why i thin there is no hope for change? Because here we have people hijacked by their left brain to believe completely absurd things about nature. Such as us designing more “efficient” systems than what evolution has, through trial and error, come up with over millions of years.

You keep saying changes won't work.
Stop spreading FUD.

 

[DrGriz]

I find it curious that I, who advocates for ending of fossil fuels, takes the existential risk of human caused problems seriously, get so much push back on this thread.

I’ve explained a couple times already that I’m not advocating for status quo. First and foremost We should stop creating problems through solving things. Especially when doing it at a speed and at a scale that causes an inevitable systemic Collapse.

Why i thin there is no hope for change? Because here we have people hijacked by their left brain to believe completely absurd things about nature. Such as us designing more “efficient” systems than what evolution has, through trial and error, come up with over millions of years.

Perhaps if you were a bit more specific, rather than saying "We should stop creating problems through solving things" which paints nearly every human activity with a broad brush.

"Solving things" includes "ending of fossil fuels." So, what is your point, exactly? You come across as though you are Michael Crichton.

 

[Nrkl]

Perhaps if you were a bit more specific, rather than saying "We should stop creating problems through solving things" which paints nearly every human activity with a broad brush.

"Solving things" includes "ending of fossil fuels." So, what is your point, exactly? You come across as though you are Michael Crichton.

By solving things I mean new interventions. Such as, instead of ending FF and reverting to a previous way of doing things, we introduce a new way. Solving via positiva instead of via negativa. Adding instead of subtracting.

So what's the problem with that? Not necessarily anything if it would happen in a slow and distributed manner.

Why should it be slow you ask? Because if we make via positiva changes to a system before we understand all the intended and unintended consequences, we will be accumulating consequences of our interventions causing oscillations and systemic instability. This was well demonstrated in the book I referred to earlier about Complex decision making. It's also the same dynamic in the famous MIT beer game that is part of most people's journey to systems thinking MIT Sloan Beer Game Online | MIT Sloan. Think of what a well-intentioned intervention of introducing FF caused in unintended consequences, now we are just making these changes much much faster.

Well how about it needing to be distributed? There is a saying I'm sure in every language along the lines of the english one, "don't put all your eggs in one basket". What it essentially communicates is that it is not wise to have the same approach everywhere, because we can never know with full certainty how the world around us behaves, how our actions affect ourselves and our environment.

So now we are, by getting rid of FF, actually introducing new, novel ways of doing things at a speed and scale that is much much faster and bigger than what has been in the past. That in itself is a dynamic that is only accelerating!

One of the ways I think of this is that the effects of our actions are like soundwaves, and if we keep moving faster and faster, eventually those waves will be packed into one big wave causing a sonic boom. Just as with airplanes, if we keep at this as we are, it is inevitable that that boom will happen. If its small ones distributed over space and time, np, but if its one mega boom it will be problematic.

Another issue with the current active solution to FF is solar activity. Unfortunately this is in Finnish, and paywalled, but Minna Palmroth in it tells about her research and Carrington events, which are these peaks of solar activity that happen every few hundred years. Our electrified society has not yet experienced any of these. What she says in the article is that we do not know what will happen. It might be that its a blackout of a few days, or a few days. So this is an event that will happen some time in the fairly near future. Only question mark is how big will the impact be on our society. But when everything will be electrified we might be much more fragile to these events.

 

[Nrkl]

By solving things I mean new interventions. Such as, instead of ending FF and reverting to a previous way of doing things, we introduce a new way. Solving via positiva instead of via negativa. Adding instead of subtracting.

So what's the problem with that? Not necessarily anything if it would happen in a slow and distributed manner.

Why should it be slow you ask? Because if we make via positiva changes to a system before we understand all the intended and unintended consequences, we will be accumulating consequences of our interventions causing oscillations and systemic instability. This was well demonstrated in the book I referred to earlier about Complex decision making. It's also the same dynamic in the famous MIT beer game that is part of most people's journey to systems thinking MIT Sloan Beer Game Online | MIT Sloan. Think of what a well-intentioned intervention of introducing FF caused in unintended consequences, now we are just making these changes much much faster.

Well how about it needing to be distributed? There is a saying I'm sure in every language along the lines of the english one, "don't put all your eggs in one basket". What it essentially communicates is that it is not wise to have the same approach everywhere, because we can never know with full certainty how the world around us behaves, how our actions affect ourselves and our environment.

So now we are, by getting rid of FF, actually introducing new, novel ways of doing things at a speed and scale that is much much faster and bigger than what has been in the past. That in itself is a dynamic that is only accelerating!

One of the ways I think of this is that the effects of our actions are like soundwaves, and if we keep moving faster and faster, eventually those waves will be packed into one big wave causing a sonic boom. Just as with airplanes, if we keep at this as we are, it is inevitable that that boom will happen. If its small ones distributed over space and time, np, but if its one mega boom it will be problematic.

Another issue with the current active solution to FF is solar activity. Unfortunately this is in Finnish, and paywalled, but Minna Palmroth in it tells about her research and Carrington events, which are these peaks of solar activity that happen every few hundred years. Our electrified society has not yet experienced any of these. What she says in the article is that we do not know what will happen. It might be that its a blackout of a few days, or a few days. So this is an event that will happen some time in the fairly near future. Only question mark is how big will the impact be on our society. But when everything will be electrified we might be much more fragile to these events.

This whole sun storm topic is very fascinating. Here's a ChatGPT translation of the relevant part of the article

Spoiler: Article

Palmroth's latest big problem is related to storms. Not the normal ones that create waves at sea or even hurricanes that break protective barriers, cause floods, and tear off roofs on the coastlines of the oceans. But the space storms that originate from the Sun and have unpredictable consequences on Earth.

These storms cannot be predicted. Or they can, but too late and inaccurately.

The worst recorded space storm in history hit Earth in 1859. It was named the Carrington storm after the observer. Even the Caribbean saw auroras, and communication systems were disrupted. Some were destroyed.

At that time, it took about 17 hours for the storm cloud to travel from the Sun to Earth. Therefore, even if the storm's formation were detected immediately, there would be less than a day to prepare.

"We may have to return to a world without electricity and rely on paper maps for a while."Therefore, Palmroth's group focuses on understanding what the worst space storm could cause and how to prepare for it.

Little is known about this topic. However, it is known that the problems would be global and significant. It is possible that power grids and satellites would be damaged or cease to function. How long this would last, no one can say.

"We may have to return to a world without electricity and rely on paper maps for a while."

So, we are in a somewhat similar situation as before the coronavirus pandemic. Virologists had been warning of the threat of a pandemic for years, but preparations had not been taken seriously. It was acknowledged as important, but there was always something more urgent to do.

Space researchers have warned of a new Carrington event, but preparedness has been, to put it nicely, lackluster.

"I have been talking about this for fifteen years, but now. Now it seems that people have started to become interested."

Carrington-type superstorms hit Earth approximately every 100-150 years. Such events occurred in 1770 and 1859. A slightly smaller storm grazed the Earth exactly one hundred years ago in May 1921.

So, it's gradually approaching the time for the next one. Of course, nobody knows the exact timing, but Palmroth speculates that the storm could occur during the current or upcoming solar cycle, possibly between 2030 and 2040.