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

[esldude]

16 minutes ago, semente said:

 

Greedy millionaire-wanabees will tell you that Bitcon provides much pleasure...

 

I think that there's now sufficient factual evidence for putting the preservation of the habitat which sustains human life before our personal pleasures (I'm sure someone will come along and say that they don't have children and don't care what happens to the planet after they're gone, and a handful of deniers).

Not a denier.  Climate change is real enough.  But it is a tough problem.  Maybe the solution is don't have children and lower the world population. 

 

I don't think it is the total chaos and end of human life.  It can eventually get pretty bad, but that is more than 50 years away which does mean it is after I'll be here.  So I can't do much.  It will be dealt with by those people around then.  Not in favor of leaving trouble for those that come after,  but I've not seen any good answers that are really capable of being implemented.  Too many solutions involve some sort of benevolent dictator to make everyone do right, and those just don't have a good history of working out. 

[PeterSt]

15 minutes ago, esldude said:

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

 

Huh ?

[semente]

33 minutes ago, esldude said:

Not a denier.  Climate change is real enough.  But it is a tough problem.  Maybe the solution is don't have children and lower the world population. 

 

I don't think it is the total chaos and end of human life.  It can eventually get pretty bad, but that is more than 50 years away which does mean it is after I'll be here.  So I can't do much.  It will be dealt with by those people around then.  Not in favor of leaving trouble for those that come after,  but I've not seen any good answers that are really capable of being implemented.  Too many solutions involve some sort of benevolent dictator to make everyone do right, and those just don't have a good history of working out. 

 

Come on, you can't do much? If we all do a bit then we'll get to the much quite quickly.

 

There are many things one can do, simple things like reducing water waste, avoid plastics, compost and recicle, walk or cycle or take public transportation whenever possible, avoid flying for pleasure, fuel-saving driving, less shopping, less food waste, buy locally produced organic food, replace heating/cooling equipment with more efficient and cleaner one, insulate your home, wear warmer clothes in winter and lower home temperature, replace your 3-ton 4-litre SUV with a lighter more fuel-efficient car, demand more action from government and from business...turn off your hi-fi equipment when not in use?

 

Have you watched this documentary? It's preagnant with ideas!

 

 

[esldude]

51 minutes ago, semente said:

 

Come on, you can't do much? If we all do a bit then we'll get to the much quite quickly.

 

There are many things one can do, simple things like reducing water waste, avoid plastics, compost and recicle, walk or cycle or take public transportation whenever possible, avoid flying for pleasure, fuel-saving driving, less shopping, less food waste, buy locally produced organic food, replace heating/cooling equipment with more efficient and cleaner ones, replace your 3-ton 4-litre SUV with a lighter more fuel-efficient car, demand more action from government and from business...turn off your hi-fi equipment when not in use?

 

Have you watched this documentary? It's preagnant with ideas!

 

 

Never owned a vehicle that weighs even close to 2 tons much less 3 tons and I abhor SUVs.  

 

What is composting going to do for me or the planet?  I'm not a farmer and I bet you aren't either. 

 

No public transportation where I live, and I probably wouldn't want to live anywhere there is some. 

 

I don't waste food.  

 

All my amps are class D.  

 

Avoid plastics?  Are you sure?  How much more weight would modern cars have if they used metal and no plastics?  I actually have a plastic car and is very low polluting and highly efficient.  Plastic can save far more than it hurts in terms of energy use and excess carbon over the life of a vehicle. 

 

Let me try some other suggestions.  Don't heat or cool.  That is far, far better than just being efficient with heating or cooling.  Or at the very least only heat or cool enough not to die.  For cooling you probably can manage with no cooling.  For heating you'll need a little, but certainly no one needs more than 50 degrees F to stay alive.  More than that is ridiculously selfish.  Are you going to implement that right away?

 

As for the video you linked.  Pregnancy is bad it leads to resource hogging people.  So stop it.  And I didn't get past the first few seconds where they show that "recent reports indicate the  possible demise of the human race".  Okay, I get the climate change, I get the problems it will cause, I get that smart action now makes the future much better than if we don't.  But this human race demise is total bullshit.  Total bullshit.  Things may be hard, and many may perish, and I'm not in favor of that.  But not all people will die anytime in the reasonably near future.  Let us say 500 years.  And we simply don't know what will be possible even 100 years from now. So please stop with the garbage.  You have to get hooked up with reality to do something effective.  The attitude in the video is ridiculous and ineffective. 

 

And I worked my entire career in the environmental protection business.  Solar and nuclear power are our best paths for future power generation and we are a generation or two late in implementing them.  You can't go back and do what didn't get done in the past.  Have to work with the now and the future.  Make smart choices and inform people.  The neat thing is smart choices usually provide a better result and save money and save on energy use.  The saving money and working better is what will get people on board.  You have to appeal to their greed and self interest.  You do that, and you'll not be able to stop them from doing the right thing.  Trying to scaremonger isn't going to do it.  It is counter-productive.  

[semente]

34 minutes ago, esldude said:

Avoid plastics?  Are you sure?

 

Yes. Bags, toys, clothes, bottles, useless stuff in general.

 

34 minutes ago, esldude said:

As for the video you linked.  Pregnancy is bad it leads to resource hogging people.  So stop it.

 

Pregnancy of (good) ideas? Why is that bad?

 

It's not human reproduction that is destroying our habitat, but human actions. Mostly due to greed (shareholder profit-oriented business) which benefits but a microcospic minority of the planet's population; it's made us the growth-obsessed consumer society we are now.

We have the tools and the knowledge and the wealth and yet had decades of growing cleavage between the top and bottom ends of society and created a massive canyon between us. People are not well-educated and this suits the system. It has them voting for populists and choosing emotion over fact, and buying. Like chicken in a factory. It also has them having many children. Poverty in developing countries or regions (because there are poor regions here in England as there are in the US that rival those in Africa) means little education and more children means more chance of a few surviving to adulthood and more people to support you once you retire and cannot access retirement pension or adequate free medical treatment or free elderly care...

 

You should watch the documentary.

As a documentary, it starts by reporting the (alarmist) spotlighting of the climate emergency by the media and goes on to investigate how small groups in different parts of the planet are operating changes to their lifestyle and that of their communities (i.e. the allotments in Detroit after the collapse of the industry) to bring a positive impact on the environment, society and their own lives.

PM me your details and buy you the DVD (mine is PAL and is doing the rounds).

[esldude]

7 minutes ago, semente said:

 

Yes. Bags, toys, clothes, bottles, useless stuff in general.

 

 

Pregnancy of (good) ideas? Why is that bad?

 

It's not human reproduction that is destroying our habitat, but human actions. Mostly due to greed (shareholder profit-oriented business) which benefits but a microcospic minority of the planet's population; it's made us the growth-obsessed consumer society we are now.

We have the tools and the knowledge and the wealth and yet had decades of growing cleavage between the top and bottom ends of society and created a massive canyon between us. People are not well-educated and this suits the system. It has them voting for populists and choosing emotion over fact, and buying. Like chicken in a factory. It also has them having many children. Poverty in developing countries or regions (because there are poor regions here in England as there are in the US that rival those in Africa) means little education and more children means more chance of a few surviving to adulthood and more people to support you once you retire and cannot access retirement pension or adequate free medical treatment or free elderly care...

 

You should watch the documentary.

As a documentary, it starts by reporting the (alarmist) spotlighting of the climate emergency by the media and goes on to investigate how small groups in different parts of the planet are operating changes to their lifestyle and that of their communities (i.e. the allotments in Detroit after the collapse of the industry) to bring a positive impact to the environment, to society and to their own lives.

PM me your details and buy you the DVD.

If human actions are destroying the planet, then how can you argue against less humans would result in less destruction?

 

I get the problem with growth.  There was a fairly advanced model showing how if we'd experienced 3% growth from the time of the pyramids in Egypt until now, we'd have already used up all the resources of the solar system and all the output of the sun.  Yet 3% growth is considered necessary for a 'healthy' economy.  It isn't sustainable at all.  

 

Detroit, yeah that is the place to emulate.  You lost me at this:

 

WHEN ALL OF THE MEMBER OF A COMMUNITY HAVE EASY ACCESS TO ADEQUATE  AMOUNTS OF AFFORDABLE, NUTRITIOUS, CULTURALLY APPROPRIATE FOOD.(sic)

 

Okay what is culturally appropriate food?  It is bullshit.  The people who think this way are fundamentally divorced from reality.  Sorry. 

 

 

 

WHEN ALL OF THE MEMBER OF A COMMUNITY HAVE EASY ACCESS TO ADEQUATE  AMOUNTS OF AFFORDABLE, NUTRITIOUS, CULTURALLY APPROPRIATE FOOD.

 

[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. 

 

[manisandher]

Off topic...

 

I've just started reading 'Energy and Civilization' by  Vaclav Smil. Hoping to get myself a little educated on the subject.

 

Mani.

[semente]

2 hours ago, esldude said:

If human actions are destroying the planet, then how can you argue against less humans would result in less destruction? 

 

I get the problem with growth.  There was a fairly advanced model showing how if we'd experienced 3% growth from the time of the pyramids in Egypt until now, we'd have already used up all the resources of the solar system and all the output of the sun.  Yet 3% growth is considered necessary for a 'healthy' economy.  It isn't sustainable at all.  

 

Detroit, yeah that is the place to emulate.  You lost me at this:

 

WHEN ALL OF THE MEMBER OF A COMMUNITY HAVE EASY ACCESS TO ADEQUATE  AMOUNTS OF AFFORDABLE, NUTRITIOUS, CULTURALLY APPROPRIATE FOOD.(sic)

 

Okay what is culturally appropriate food?  It is bullshit.  The people who think this way are fundamentally divorced from reality.  Sorry.

 

Perhaps you should watch the documentary and make up your mind after.

[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.

[marce]

2 hours ago, semente said:

 

Yes. Bags, toys, clothes, bottles, useless stuff in general.

 

Some of us are stuck with using plastic products every day... Had an ECO warrier ranting at me in the street because I said I had to use plastic products every day and there was no alternative for me at this time...

 

The problem with other plastics is that probably every consumer product has some plastic in it and said products are not built to last... I can remember my childhood, when plastic products first appeared and where considered cheap, but then we had milkmen, so mild bottles were recycled, you paid a deposit for your pop bottles, and wrapped your bacon in paper... Have we progressed?

 

[semente]

1 hour ago, marce said:

Some of us are stuck with using plastic products every day... Had an ECO warrier ranting at me in the street because I said I had to use plastic products every day and there was no alternative for me at this time...

 

The problem with other plastics is that probably every consumer product has some plastic in it and said products are not built to last... I can remember my childhood, when plastic products first appeared and where considered cheap, but then we had milkmen, so mild bottles were recycled, you paid a deposit for your pop bottles, and wrapped your bacon in paper... Have we progressed?

 

I agree that plastic makes good containers but there's also a lot of junk made in plastic that we don't need and can avoid.

Governments should put pressure on Business to reduce plastic.

[marce]

Looking round my kitchen (counting the things that don't have plastic in them... plates, cups etc. everything else has some plastic), I think a better alternative would be to develop plastics that do degrade or use plastics that can be reused and have some form of encouragement to get them re-cycled.  Something like Tomra do in Norway is a good start:

https://www.tomra.com/en-gb

Reverse vending machines.

I have a plastic bag fastened to my side 24/7😣 and a plastic bag every night with no viable alternative at the moment so have to live with a bag for life.😀

[gmgraves]

14 hours ago, esldude said:

I understand why you might go with that.  In the case of electronic reproduction however there is only the signal it is presented with.  If you had something that alters a signal to make it sound more real that is good, but high fidelity it isn't.  Your definitions seems more of "sounds real" than a matter of fidelity. 

Not really. Since I make my own recordings, and have more than a few, my definition is based upon my recordings sounding as much like the original event (I was there, after all) as is possible. Also, “sounds more real” is the definition of High-Fidelity. I realize that much electronically “realized” music does not exist as an actual event and, as you say, is only a signal, but that’s largely irrelevant. If live, unamplified music sounds real when played back, then electronic music will be accurate to the original signal as well. At least that’s how I see it.

[gmgraves]

10 hours ago, esldude said:

Not a denier.  Climate change is real enough.  But it is a tough problem.  Maybe the solution is don't have children and lower the world population. 

It is THE solution to most of the world’s problems! It’s interesting. I remember in the late 1960’s one couldn’t turn on the radio without hearing about population control. There were ideas about how to accomplish a reduction of world population ranging from mandatory regulation of the number of children a couple can have (like the Chinese did) to taxing couples severely for each additional child they have (probably the way most democracies would address such a program), then suddenly, the topic was dropped, and you rarely heard about it any more. 

 

I did did my part. I remained single and childless (at least, as far as I know. There are none that I can claim  )!

10 hours ago, esldude said:

 

I don't think it is the total chaos and end of human life.  It can eventually get pretty bad, but that is more than 50 years away which does mean it is after I'll be here.  So I can't do much.  It will be dealt with by those people around then.  Not in favor of leaving trouble for those that come after,  but I've not seen any good answers that are really capable of being implemented.  Too many solutions involve some sort of benevolent dictator to make everyone do right, and those just don't have a good history of working out. 

I think that severely increasing the taxes on those who have more than one child, coupled with huge tax breaks for couples who remain childless or who stay single, would work. Remember those few cases that fall between the cracks are not that important as long as the vast majority of the earth’s population follows through on the plan. Economic sanctions and incentives would be enough, I firmly believe. No dictator beyond the IRS necessary!

[gmgraves]

5 hours ago, semente said:

I agree that plastic makes good containers but there's also a lot of junk made in plastic that we don't need and can avoid.

Governments should put pressure on Business to reduce plastic.

Something needs to be done about packaging, period. I’m one person and the amount of trash that I throw out weekly alarms me. Every time that I go into the kitchen to fix a meal or a snack results in some can, bag or styrofoam tray being discarded!

[Ralf11]

Gumbo is culturally appropriate food

[esldude]

delete

[esldude]

9 hours ago, manisandher said:

Off topic...

 

I've just started reading 'Energy and Civilization' by  Vaclav Smil. Hoping to get myself a little educated on the subject.

 

Mani.

His book on Power Density was pretty good.  

[esldude]

11 hours ago, semente said:

 

Yes. Bags, toys, clothes, bottles, useless stuff in general.

 

 

Pregnancy of (good) ideas? Why is that bad?

 

It's not human reproduction that is destroying our habitat, but human actions. Mostly due to greed (shareholder profit-oriented business) which benefits but a microcospic minority of the planet's population; it's made us the growth-obsessed consumer society we are now.

We have the tools and the knowledge and the wealth and yet had decades of growing cleavage between the top and bottom ends of society and created a massive canyon between us. People are not well-educated and this suits the system. It has them voting for populists and choosing emotion over fact, and buying. Like chicken in a factory. It also has them having many children. Poverty in developing countries or regions (because there are poor regions here in England as there are in the US that rival those in Africa) means little education and more children means more chance of a few surviving to adulthood and more people to support you once you retire and cannot access retirement pension or adequate free medical treatment or free elderly care...

 

You should watch the documentary.

As a documentary, it starts by reporting the (alarmist) spotlighting of the climate emergency by the media and goes on to investigate how small groups in different parts of the planet are operating changes to their lifestyle and that of their communities (i.e. the allotments in Detroit after the collapse of the industry) to bring a positive impact on the environment, society and their own lives.

PM me your details and buy you the DVD (mine is PAL and is doing the rounds).

It might be useful to read this book. 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0756J1LLV/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_d_asin_title_o09?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

 

 

Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think 

[Ralf11]

Actually, things are worse than most people think: 

- They think catastrophic effects from climate change are 50 or more years away.

- They think climate change can be reversed with electric cars and the elimination of fossil fuels.

 

 

[esldude]

6 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

Actually, things are worse than most people think: 

- They think catastrophic effects from climate change are 50 or more years away.

- They think climate change can be reversed with electric cars and the elimination of fossil fuels.

 

 

2000 watt society?

 

https://phys.org/news/2013-05-road-watt-society.html

[semente]

[Paul R]

1 hour ago, semente said:

Oi - not head in the sand, but more caution about what is being missed. 

 

For example, we do not want to accidentally trigger a new ice age with blind climate engineering. We already have 100 years or more of that experience behind us. You can grow food pretty much anywhere it is warm, but not on glaciers. 

 

Also, separating the politics from the science is difficult. But you really don't want a bunch of grubbing politicians deciding climate issues based upon whatever the most benefit to them would be, do you? 

 

It is difficult to answer why simple actions are not being taken. Seriously, paint your roof and driveway white. That will do more to alleviate current global warming trends that people in first world countries taking pains with plastic. 

 

Do realize our entire civilization is based upon high-density energy sources. Three-quarters of the world - or more - would starve without those energy sources. 

 

Cultural sensitive food?  If people are starving, they don't get to be picky about the nutrition available to them. Be that wheat vs rice or pigs vs chicken. Cultural sensitivity is a *luxury* - reserved for times when people are not starving.