The Environmental thread + Conventional (HI-FI) wisdom is almost always invariably wrong

[PeterSt]

20 minutes ago, STC said:

most of the part has been cleared and planted with palm trees.

 

I'm afraid you refer to rubber plantage ...

I saw that all over in that area. The wood of the forest is not even harvested (too much trouble) but just set on fire. Next replace with rubber trees (and/or smaller plants to harvest - I forgot which). Very very sad (and stupid).

[PeterSt]

5 hours ago, STC said:

I am sure I know the difference . It is hard to find rubber estates as most of them were replaced with palm. 

 

OK, apologies. I only thought that Google Maps may show the the wrong thing because you said Google Maps showed it to you. I mean, all what is "bush" or even looks like that, is drawn by Google Maps itself. So it is faked. Maybe it depends on the current detail of the photos (this always improves) but when this started (2-3 years ago, I think), where Google estimated trees, they were/are just draw in into the picture. Could look like palms.

But you know for real ...

 

I now recall that the smaller plants were pineapple. Still not sure.

 

5 hours ago, STC said:

and came back with tears to see the destruction and neglect.

 

Already me as a tourist drives through it with such a sense. So for you it must be a 1000 times worse. I really sympathize. 

[PeterSt]

Here is an example of a place near by:

 

 

This is a parking lot next to a train station. No single tree is there, nor has any ever been there.

Smart eh ?

[PeterSt]

9 minutes ago, STC said:

Someone here mentioned about the burning of the rubber trees.

 

I think you confused with me saying that the original jungle is just burned to make place for rubber plantage. But I guess the latter is wrong (as per your telling).

[PeterSt]

This is the same spot, but rotaded towards some kind of horizontal view (I didn't even know this was possible).

 

 

There's still no single tree there. 

 

Btw, here:

https://www.google.nl/maps/place/Apeldoorn/@52.2081086,5.9705013,30a,35y,5.79h,79.29t/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x0:0x920b167ee5887269!8m2!3d52.2095781!4d5.9685879

Press ctrl and with left mouse drag downwards to receive the normal top view.

 

[PeterSt]

15 minutes ago, esldude said:

it is after I'll be here.  So I can't do much.

 

Huh ?

[PeterSt]

Would it be against forum rules to call you a Trumpeteer ?

Trumpeteers are amazingly good at talking things straight which are inherently wrong. Is that now the American Way ?

 

 

 

[PeterSt]

When I was 22 I started working at The Dutch Oil Company (NAM, a subsidiary of Shell). Already at that time (indeed quite long ago ) they foresaw the oil running out (yes we have/had that in quite some quantities) - same with the (natural) gas. I was there when they "invented" injecting steam into the ground, so more oil would boil up.

 

I clearly see myself discussing with a colleague, right in the middle of the pumpjacks, that we'd better not have children, because no energy would be left for them by the time they would be some older. This was very serious talk (as youngsters tend to think they can), and/but in the middle of a company who could know.

 

 

This train, the Oil train, ran every day to the Harbor of Rotterdam, until 1996 when no oil could be obtained any more from the earth. At least not from that particular place.

 

The gas seemed to never run out, and each couple of years further, more gas was found at actually the same locations. Good thing, because Holland gets a lot of money from that as most of it was exported to other European countries.

 

Google tells me that in 1986 we suddenly experienced an earth quake. Small, but real. Quite cool also (because we really didn't have one before). Don't ask me what the real thoughts about that were back in those days (how can it be ? etc.), but today it has become a real threat. More than a 1000 we had of them by now, the most severe one still being 3.6 on Richter only, but ... a 1000.

Say that half of the area has (half) destroyed houses.

 

At the age of 22 I could not have foreseen that this would be the reason that most suddenly we *have* to stop exploiting the gas. There's still there for maybe decades, but the more we get out the more the earth will collapse (hence the earth quakes).

Can we pay for importing it all ? I don't think so. And thus since one year or so (less I think) we all have to remove our gas boilers etc. and switch to electricity. Some-how. Nobody knows how for real. 

 

We can't say "het zal mijn tijd wel duren", which is the same as : I won't be there when it all stops, so I don't care.

It could be a good thing that we are suddenly forced to, but that's something else.

 

PS: Somehow at some nice day I must have forgotten about these contemplations at the age of 22; My son is sitting next to me. 

 

[PeterSt]

More off topic ...

 

I started my "career" when I was 18 (maybe even 17) at Rijkswaterstaat, which is the government department of "traffic" in general (and also about the water household we could be famous for). I just had started my first programming by means of the teletype (in EE high school  which I left prematurely). 

 

 

A few years later - I guess I was 22 again - I lived in my first house and now my neighbour worked at Rijkswaterstaat (I thus elsewhere) and he unveiled a secret to me;

He and his department were working in secrecy on a plan to have all cars move line being in a train, all virtually connected and without needing a driver. He showed me scale models where indeed all cars were positioned at exact equal distance on the highway. Btw you should know that at the department I was working, huge plotter jobs ran over night to show each subsequent meter of planned new highways, so in advance of the real build of the highway, the visibility (with corners and poles and the like) was OK. Such plotter jobs easily produced 500 meters of paper (roll). And when you paid attention, you saw that this covered 500m of highway.

I found this quite extreme "technology" (at the age of 18) and thus I also very far away could believe my neighbour. Possibly I believed in Start Trek too (hey, many things of that came about eventually).

 

My neighbour bet with me that in the year of 2000 (which year number in itself seemed futuristic to me), this would be reality.

Later I slowly started to believe in it myself for real, as I worked for a hobby on highway queue emulation.

 

And then there was Tesla. It took a couple of years more than the year 2000, but it obviously really happened (and if not yet for 100% real, it soon will be for sure).

That this would be combined with full electric cars, my neighbour did not predict.

 

Btw, I don't think that sufficient batteries can ever be produced to let all the cars in the world drive on. And this is outside of the miserable circumstances in the countries where the raw materials for the batteries are exploited.

I guess that Hydrogen will be the future of that.

[PeterSt]

1 minute ago, esldude said:

Chemicals are bad if they significantly increase crop yield? 

 

Maybe you missed the fact that these days a crazy amount of insects are dying. This includes bees.

Now I don't know whether you ever heard the story of the Birds and the Bees, but it doesn't seem right to me that the bee is disappearing. It really is, and it is because of that nice crop yield thing.

[PeterSt]

And the front page of this is worth reading:

 

http://bees-decline.org

 

[PeterSt]

3 minutes ago, semente said:

This one is also worth watching:

 

Just for fun ... It could be against ethics, but what if you'd change the title of this thread ...

[PeterSt]

@sandyk, you are the last of The Wild.

[PeterSt]

The US has too many babies. 18b dipers per year. That really is too much.

[PeterSt]

Paul, come on now. This is where you live ?

 

[PeterSt]

So, you guys seem to eat 5442 hot dogs in your life time. I maybe 2 or 3 a year. I plan to reach 100 so that is ~250 hot dogs in my life time.

Btw, I suppose that one of them was thrown at me at independence day because I happened to pass by.

 

[PeterSt]

I have now seen 30 minutes of milk, beef, chicken, hamburgers, potatoes, bottles, aluminum. plastic and a million candy bars of which latter I consume nothing. Than I saw the 3/10 in the top left corner and found myself demotivated.

 

Yesterday we could finally have the first BBQ of 2019 because of sheer cold weather so far. No global warming in sight right now. Last year it was 7 weeks in a row of sun with IIRC only 1.3mm of rain and 3 or 4 days with a few clouds. Better than Florida. That surely never happened (for a country where 3 days of sun in a row urges for a Thunderstorm).

 

But it is true. I am not going to change anything about that.

 

 

[PeterSt]

9 minutes ago, Paul R said:

So? How many sausages do you eat? 🤪

 

With say 20 BBQ occasions a year ? ... 20 or less.

[PeterSt]

2 minutes ago, Paul R said:

Oh my - speechless. I can send you a frying pan... 😁

 

The German are the Sausage eaters. I am not even sure what we eat mostly (with the notice that I / my family is not representative at all). Good steaks (various kinds), lam chops or leg of lam. Chicken leg, beef (as in stews), other big meat, goat. It also depends what we run into. Mostly pork for general (pasta or chinese etc.) dishes. Shrimp. Currently we have a freezer full with deer (all parts). So this is typically what would go on a BBQ (like yesterday).

FYI: These days we can order meat over the internet (Amazon not (yet) involved).

Ah, now I think of it, we often mimic the typical English breakfast. The more fat the better it is. This surely involves sausages.

 

The video speaks of 5 eggs a week per person. Something wrong there. I'd make that 15 at least.

 

We make all the bread (including pizza, pita) ourselves. Also pasta. We grow all the herbs imaginable. We grow a few vegetables but this is only for trying out. We make all the beer ourselves. Liquors (based on existing brandy). Next up will be an illegal distillery (I am serious).

Blahblahblah

[PeterSt]

OK. So since our waste is separated (like for plastic) this now allows for easily collecting all this plastic, put it in containers and send ships with it out to e.g. Malaysia ?

Speaking about side effects ...

 

 

PS: In Bangladesh they now have Tidal too ? 

 

 

[PeterSt]

4 hours ago, shtf said:

Sorry to reign on your conventional wisdom parade.   

 

Nice phrasing.

[PeterSt]

 

[PeterSt]

Scotty ...

[PeterSt]

9 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

when the "global warming thing" started

 

After the last Ice Age.

[PeterSt]

16 hours ago, esldude said:

My impression is things are different and more complex than need be in Europe.  I'm sure Europeans feel differently.  C'est la vie.  

 

Of course I can't be the person teaching people English here, but since C'est la vie is French anyway ... this is not really how it is to be applied. So it could be a fact all right, but not really a fact of life or being.

People get ill some times. They also die. C'est la vie.

 

Over here the government went over the top IMO because since 5 years or so houses get certificates. Like C (the worse), B, A, AA, AAA+ (the best) etc. labels for energy consumption. They thought to do this from a distance by means of looking at the year of build. So a common house from the 30's would be inherently C and a house from a couple of years old and fairly small would be an AA. The idea is that a buyer could review this rating before he buys the house. The other idea (because this is how our government operates) is that people would improve the insulation etc. because else the house would not sell easily, later (because the potential buyer can see the rating).

If you did all to improve your 30's house and made it into a (perceived) A rating, you could hire an official instance and a formal report would change the already formally registered C into an A etc. Too bad is that hiring such an instance  easily costs 10K euros.

Because government is government run by government people (they are a different species) it would be so that a new house with all the appliances possible to make it green, would still receive e.g. a B rating just because some moron thought that the size is a factor. Thus, if my house would be 10 times larger than the common one, the emission would be 10 times more as well.

What ?

-> No problem, just hire that instance and let make that formal report (which is now even more expensive because of the size of the house).

 

Btw, this is not much related to being nannied as I see it. But over here we just agreed to comply to whatever emission rates "per 2025" etc. and in the end this is a good thing. A bit the opposite of what Trump (anti-Paris agreement) tries to achieve for some reason. Must be the American freedom ?

So Yes, I think I see where the "nanny" comes from. But ...  I could even add a C'est la vie to it (as in a sad fact of life).