Post AIDbE6jzH8vxZO2VkG by ByronCinNZ@mastodon.nzoss.nz
(DIR) More posts by ByronCinNZ@mastodon.nzoss.nz
(DIR) Post #AIBpBSu5QbRCTpTfoO by ByronCinNZ@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2022-04-06T23:43:59Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
I think it is time to consider the world go cold turkey on fossil fuels. Say by the year 2030. Not only would we have a hope of saving the planet and ourselves, the rush to stand up replacement approaches would create the biggest economic boom the world has known.
(DIR) Post #AIBpBTN9gWgpvz4t7Y by sj_zero@social.fbxl.net
2022-04-07T00:55:53.745521Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@ByronCinNZ I wanted to respond sarcastically and sardonically, but I won't.Reality is, fossil fuels aren't just some nice idea. We need them to live in ways you don't even know about until you don't have them.Over the next year, you're going to see a world where fossil fuels are limited because of a combination of the pandemic restrictions, high inflation from decades of money printing, geopolitical factors, Pollyanna optimism that we don't need to invest in fossil fuels anymore because solar panels and windmills exist, and investment reality that during the shale boom investing in new oil and gas had no payback so even the grizzled investors were shying away. Oil, gas, and coal are already near record highs, and they're going a lot higher. If you want people finding alternatives, this is exactly what you want. Here's the thing: Yeah, you might see people driving their cars less. You're also going to see food shortages. You're going to see civil wars. You're already seeing actual wars. You're already seeing riots. At some point, a whole lot of people are going to die, and that's not ending fossil fuels. That's just making them a bit more expensive.Now, you might go "Oh, just create more alternatives!" -- Right... How exactly is that supposed to work? We're going to be having big questions just about how to feed everyone over the next couple years, forget about having the excess productive capacity to create many, many times the power generation that already exists. Economic booms don't just magically happen. The excess productive capacity needs to exist first. Governments around the world have been cutting their people off at the knees for decades trying to do as much as possible to end reliance on fossil fuels during some of the best economic times ever, and all that work barely had any impact. Where I live, they massively increased electricity prices to install more solar and wind, and for most of the year there's basically no solar and a very small amount of wind. Nameplate capacities and actual production aren't the same when it comes to these renewables, and that's critical. There are places out there where near 100% of electricity generation is done using hydroelectric, and I advocate for more hydroelectric, but even if entirely moved all electricity generation to renewables, that doesn't mean we stop requiring fossil fuels -- not by a long shot. In 2009, I did some quick math, and if we wanted to keep the fertilizer business stocked with ammonia, that was 30% of *all* nuclear, hydroelectric, and other renewables(link at the bottom). Meanwhile, we use just 2% of annual natural gas production to create the same chemical feedstock for the one niche industry. Meanwhile, people can't use that capacity for heating and lighting their homes, running their other businesses, nothing.Beyond that, "green" energy is powered by fossil fuels. Anyone who works in mining knows full well that mining uses overwhelming amounts of fossil fuels, and the amounts of energy required in the places it's required won't allow you to "go green". Minerals tend to be in inconvenient locations that are remote, and often in places that are insanely hot or insanely cold. Often the minerals you require are 2 kilometers below the ground and you're moving hundreds of tonnes of rock around using vehicles you cannot practically replace with electric. What you're talking about, it would effectively mean an end to fossil fuel supply, but supply is not demand. The demand would continue. We still need food. We still need to heat our homes. We still need various things that you can't do any other way at an industrial scale. We will need to maintain our green electricity production.In addition, totalitarian dictatorships wouldn't buy into this idea. We in the west are presently funding Russia's war in Ukraine because we pretended we don't need fossil fuels and Russia didn't. Despite all the outrage over the invasion of Ukraine, Europe has to avert its gaze and bite its tongue and keep buying Russian oil and gas. Do you think those dictatorships would just sit back and do nothing as western liberal democracies cut their shins off? No, they'll happily step in and become the world's superpowers.I wish we didn't need fossil fuels. It's limited in quantity. It releases carbon into the atmosphere that was previously locked up. It isn't sustainable forever, and it represents borrowed time for our species. The reality is that whether I like it or not, we need them, and we will continue to need them for the forseeable future. You can't just arbitrarily stop using them, any more than you can arbitrarily stop breathing air at this point.As a species, all we can really do is keep working towards finding better ways, and to change the way we think of the idea of unlimited population growth and unlimited economic growth.https://lotide.fbxl.net/posts/6006
(DIR) Post #AIC0KKNrZYsK9tplR2 by ByronCinNZ@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2022-04-07T02:58:41Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@sj_zero Spoken like a true addict. Those consequences are worse with climate change. The past 30 years has taught us that incrementally changing our carbon footprint does not work. The can can always be kicked down the road and will continue to be. Yes, I agree that unbridled growth is the core of our problem.
(DIR) Post #AIC0KL56ylTCK24IqW by sj_zero@social.fbxl.net
2022-04-07T03:00:45.225008Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@ByronCinNZ Yeah, I'm addicted to food and heat and drinking water and not being in the middle of civil wars.I think that's acceptable for most people. I think most people would say "Yeah, I'm addicted to not freezing to death, and that's A-OK."
(DIR) Post #AIC0tOBdQSqY5WphCa by ByronCinNZ@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2022-04-07T03:03:16Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@sj_zero Do you believe that climate change is not a more serious threat?
(DIR) Post #AIC0tOjJPFmjlyaah6 by sj_zero@social.fbxl.net
2022-04-07T03:07:05.274854Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@ByronCinNZ Climate change may someday be a problem. If I can't get food for a couple months, or drinking water for a couple weeks, or even if I go a few days without heat, I'll be dead right now. Get caught up in a civil war, and I wouldn't last 5 minutes.Yeah, being definitely dead today is a more serious threat than possibly being dead tomorrow.The idea of "oh, what the hell, let's just stop using fossil fuels" is imminently genocidal.
(DIR) Post #AIC3PPqWzU5SPVMROa by ByronCinNZ@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2022-04-07T03:18:03Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@sj_zero What I am arguing here is that the continued use of fossil fuels is a high likelihood of being genocidal. Our situation is similar to a smoker who waits until they have lung cancer before deciding to quit.So we set a date in the future when we quit and we stick to it. We meet our obligations to the future to leave a livable planet
(DIR) Post #AIC3PQL1A8TPw3cmum by sj_zero@social.fbxl.net
2022-04-07T03:35:17.924062Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@ByronCinNZ We won't live a livable planet if we go through with such a genocidal plan. In the process of trying to survive the genocide, every tree will be cut down, every animal that's edible will be slaughtered, every plant will be dug up. We know this because it's happened a number of times before. there will be nothing left, just inedible grass and corpses. Your plan to save the planet will result in unprecedented ecological destruction.We didn't start burning fossil fuels because they're nice and we wanted to. We started burning fossil fuels because at the time there was no chance that we could survive on renewable sources of energy. Coal in particular is a horrible fuel source. It left everything sooty, made the cities smoggy, it made people sick, but unlike wood it was available (people had cut down every forest that wasn't owned by the king in England) so people used it en masse to heat their homes. We started burning oil distillates because we had nearly hunted whales to extinction. We have many times the world population now that we had then. Now not only do we rely on it for heating and light, but we rely on it for the chemical process industries that let us exist.I guess that's all assuming that the world governments are able to use enough violence to actually enforce this genocide. It's entirely possible that any government that agrees to such a plan would just end up dead by its own citizens.
(DIR) Post #AICOVqqnbHAUwCOd0a by ByronCinNZ@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2022-04-07T04:36:41Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@sj_zero Actually we did start burnig fossil fuel because it was nice. When someone threw a bit of coal in the fire and found it burned longer and hotter than wood, they likely literally said, "that's nice". They could have continued to use sustainably harvested coppice wood as was the norm, but coal was cheaper, warmer and less work. in otherwords, it was nicer. This led to increased population pressures, which led to more treefelling ...
(DIR) Post #AICOVrOTa46gce9WV6 by ByronCinNZ@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2022-04-07T04:50:48Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@sj_zero Next we had lost common knowledge of coppices and other methods that sustained the previous populations. Populations grew beyond what these methods could support. Land was cleared to feed the increase. ... and thus we became adicited. Hard to role that back but ultimately this choice will be forced on us by natural limits if no one else and nature can be a bitch. Better we limit ourselves first
(DIR) Post #AICOVryHQwkMPgu7JA by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2022-04-07T07:31:28Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
I want to focus in on all the important things @ByronCinNZ and @sj_zero have agreed on in this discussion. * fossil fuel supply is finite * burning fossil carbon causes catastrophic climate change * renewables can't magically replace all fossil fuel use* exponential growth of human population and causes ever worsening problems and can't continue. Population degrowth is probably unavoidable.* the quest for eternal economic growth is a big driver of most of these problems.@alienghic
(DIR) Post #AICP5BPFAPyqpDM3kG by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2022-04-07T07:37:09Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
I also want to highlight @alienghic 's point that there are already billions of people whose life is supported without much (or any) fossil fuel use. I'd add that there are studies showing that most of the world is already fed using renewable methods, including one of the most important; local production for local need (not boutique "Organic" products exported globally). Living off industrialized farming is the exception not a necessity. @ByronCinNZ @sj_zero
(DIR) Post #AICX3bidAJYhUEBNo0 by sj_zero@social.fbxl.net
2022-04-07T09:07:31.017761Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@ByronCinNZ Better for whom?If your friends and family die because you made the decision to end all fossil fuels abruptly, if you have to watch them starve to death, or you have to be the one to bury their frozen corpses after they die of exposure, are you going to do it while going "well, at least I did the right thing"?When people are dying by the billion, are you going to happily walk up to the podium and say "Some of you will die, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make"?It's easy to say, but I don't really believe that. Especially given the stance on covid authoritarianism held by some of the most vocal climate change policy proponents.
(DIR) Post #AIDVuuuaX29Hbs1meO by ByronCinNZ@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2022-04-07T20:24:56Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@sj_zero Your hyberbole is showing, but thanks for the dialogue. It does help hone my arguments
(DIR) Post #AIDVuvam0BtPihlTP6 by sj_zero@social.fbxl.net
2022-04-07T20:29:23.555997Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@ByronCinNZ I appreciate the fact that we were able to have a good conversation. One of the specific reasons I'm on fediverse is I'd prefer having conversations with people who can agree with me or disagree with me because I'm not always right and I do have my mind changed at times. On most corporate sites they maintain one echo chamber or another, which isn't helpful at all.I'm not a pushover, I'm not going to agree with the first shiny object I see, but my mind has been changed on a lot of things in the past few years, and what it took was a good argument.
(DIR) Post #AIDVuxMJQvVvCR0x8q by ByronCinNZ@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2022-04-07T20:28:45Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@sj_zero Your argument for the continued use of fossil fuel is an argument kills people - probably more people. Just out of your eyesight. You are telling your children and grandchildren, "I don't care if you or your kids die. I want my comfort now!"
(DIR) Post #AIDX021taxO55URsES by jasper@mastodon.nl
2022-04-07T13:10:12Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@sj_zero @ByronCinNZ I think you underestimate the lack of political will. In the netherlands we still heat _greenhouses_ for tomatoes and whatnot with gas.You say 2% of methane for ammonia, that's not that big a fraction.Mining equipment, especially transport, has run on electric power. For instance using trolley systems https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/07/trolleytrucks-trolleybuses-cargotrams.html has some links.
(DIR) Post #AIDX02qwXADjdoKdnc by sj_zero@social.fbxl.net
2022-04-07T20:41:34.643924Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@jasper @ByronCinNZ A lot of the environmental industrial complex is fancy accounting to leave out the reality of the matter. I'm aware of one mine that claims to be 100% electric. They magically leave out the million BTU natural gas burners they have to keep the mine air from freezing in winter or the mine trucks transporting the ore 300km to the nearest processing facility. A lot of mines are in remote locations, so you might be using electric vehicles, then you power them using diesel generators. Besides, these vehicles don't even come to exist without fossil fuels. Ignoring mining for the moment, steel production was another one of the things I tested, and (I forgot to take into account coke production which comes from fossil fuels) just replacing fossil fuel based furnaces to refine the steel with electric would take another third of the world (in 2009, haven't updated my math) nuclear and renewable power capacity. It keeps coming back to the things we need to live coming from this one resource, you can't just shut it off.Poor decisions that lead to expensive electricity will always lead to an increase in fossil fuel use. Thanks to mismanagement of electricity where I live, one person I knew well was paying $700/mo electricity bills (and the power before and after the mismanagement was hydroelectric, so it would have been renewable energy). He switched to fossil fuels to heat his home and his heating bill dropped 90%. There isn't enough carbon tax possible to offset that difference. We do have lots of solar panels though! They look really cool and don't do anything 9 months of the year!That's not an outlier case either. My little sister has the same sort of electricity bill (carbon neutral nuclear there!) and she's looking at fossil fuels to heat her home because of course she is! She isn't a millionaire, she's having to choose between food and heat.The way to move to electrical is to make electricity economical to use. I had a number of houses with electric furnaces in a place with properly managed electric, and it was great. Powered by hydroelectric. A lot of places won't be able to use electricity if the price of electricity is so high you'll go out of business because we're overpaying solar producers for the privilege of owning magic boxes. You're just going to drive more people to fossil fuels.The fact that fertilizer is only 2% of natural gas production is a good part of my point -- this one little industry that uses a tiny amount of natural gas production would take a major amount of the entire planet's nuclear and renewable electricity generation to replace.
(DIR) Post #AIDX04BXa4I5lyybXk by jasper@mastodon.nl
2022-04-07T13:19:07Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@ByronCinNZ i think what you have is a form of capitalist realism. (tho i don't remember the book well enough to figure if reading it will help you)@sj_zero
(DIR) Post #AIDZJs7wK18q4jrcmW by jasper@mastodon.nl
2022-04-07T21:04:42Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@sj_zero @ByronCinNZ I get it, if you use electric, you make the most dismal choices, and hook it up to a diesel generator and use trucks instead of cargo trains. This is the fault of electricity.lol "electric furnaces"
(DIR) Post #AIDZJsnPpoJo9NGkQi by sj_zero@social.fbxl.net
2022-04-07T21:07:34.403919Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@jasper @ByronCinNZ No, it's the fault of the environmental industrial complex trying to package up the feeling of saving the planet and selling that rather than actually doing the hard work of making the planet better.There's an image out there of a "paper bottle" that has all this text printed on a paper mache bottle, and someone cut it in half, showing a normal plastic bottle inside. That's what you have to be careful of.Nothing "lol" about electric steel furnaces. They're in service in some areas.
(DIR) Post #AIDZiw2gtyIpSTMNLk by sj_zero@social.fbxl.net
2022-04-07T21:12:07.899683Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@ByronCinNZ I see what you're saying and it's an argument I can get behind in the right context, but I still don't believe you realize how much people rely on fossil fuels to not die.Without fossil fuels, there's a lot of dead kids and grandkids. You're going to be lacking food. You're going to be lacking heat. You're going to be lacking clothing. You're going to be lacking medicine. A good chunk of the world looks like Easter Island. It's happened before.As I said before, I expect we'll see a preview of this in the next 12-24 months since the supply side restriction is effectively reducing fossil fuel use.You can't flip that switch anytime soon and not commit genocide and start world wars and have mass graves filled with the starved and the frozen and the sick. A lot of countries pretend they're carbon neutral, but it's an accounting trick. They ban using the fossil fuels, then get someone somewhere else to use the fossil fuels, then import the finished product. It sucks that we can't just fundamentally change everything to be better, but that's reality. It takes a lot of hard work to make sustainable change that isn't just accounting tricks. And it takes hard decisions, such as creating hydro dams even though we know it harms ecosystems.
(DIR) Post #AIDZs5n41pIYIUPuqm by sj_zero@social.fbxl.net
2022-04-07T21:13:47.224572Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@jasper @ByronCinNZ https://www.walesonline.co.uk/business/business-news/whats-difference-between-blast-furnace-11139393Steel furnaces
(DIR) Post #AIDaRNz6NIzyrQsQNs by jasper@mastodon.nl
2022-04-07T21:19:14Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@sj_zero @ByronCinNZ i meant the one for houses. But ok..
(DIR) Post #AIDaROYCGp4UcHIS5Q by sj_zero@social.fbxl.net
2022-04-07T21:20:08.441184Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@jasper @ByronCinNZ Oh. Yeah, those exist too. When I lived in the area with well managed inexpensive hydroelectric power, more of the places I lived had electric furnaces than didn't.
(DIR) Post #AIDbE4ZzJLkMrnLUsi by ByronCinNZ@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2022-04-07T21:22:06Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@sj_zero So we should be working harder now to make those changes that really matter. I would argue that the wars and mass deaths you fear will be worse and happen sooner if we don't seriously and substantially start making that shift now. The best way to avoid those wars and mass deaths you mention is to move away from our overuse and over reliance of a limited unequally distributed resource that enables us to live beyond a level of sustainability
(DIR) Post #AIDbE5FonpCuxWuu5A by sj_zero@social.fbxl.net
2022-04-07T21:28:56.739910Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@ByronCinNZ I agree, and I think the only disagreement we have here is the timeline and the method. To me, I see it as such a fundamental change in so many different areas of basic survival that there's simply no way to wave a magic wand and make it go away in 8 years. The right thing to do is to make the tough choices and make practical carbon neutral or renewable energy widespread despite the immediate environmental costs or the risks, and on the back of inexpensive and plentiful carbon neutral energy start to rebuild industries around that resource. Magic black boxes we put on our roofs to save the world are just the environmental industrial complex at work, we can't waste our limited world resources on that when we have so much data saying it isn't practical.As things stand, instead we're placing all our money in magic black boxes and we're shutting down the fossil fuel industry prematurely because we spent a bunch of money on magic black boxes. Beware the environmental industrial complex, they will suck you dry and destroy the planet in the meantime.
(DIR) Post #AIDbE6jzH8vxZO2VkG by ByronCinNZ@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2022-04-07T21:23:38Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@sj_zero When you are accelerating towards a solid brick wall it is a good idea to put on the brakes.
(DIR) Post #AIDfDuDyD8LKZFDstk by ByronCinNZ@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2022-04-07T22:10:02Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@sj_zero It is a moonshot to be sure. But solutions to most of the problems are more readily available than you indicate - or at least closer to fruition. Many, such as nitrogen fertilized that leads to environmental damage (especially waterways as source of human consumption) and long term soil depletion need to be replaced anyway. Eight years is not too short of a target. BAU is not a viable option. We can do better. But work is needed on many fronts.Huge transformations have happened before
(DIR) Post #AIDfDuleBvHWFgymOG by sj_zero@social.fbxl.net
2022-04-07T22:13:42.179465Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@ByronCinNZ It isn't a moonshot, it's an alpha centuri shot. If you intend to hang onto all the other pet environmental causes at the same time, it's a Large Magellanic Cloudshot.
(DIR) Post #AIDqiMy10fP7tWUNHM by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
2022-04-08T00:22:14Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@alienghic> It's likely making sure people have access to family planning and that girls have access to education is enough to stop population growth.Agreed. Amartya Sen documents evidence for this in his book Development as Freedom. @ByronCinNZ @sj_zero
(DIR) Post #AIDt33RazSsnKpJejY by sj_zero@social.fbxl.net
2022-04-08T00:48:38.586157Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@strypey @alienghic @ByronCinNZ I recall reading somewhere a compelling argument that the reason families in less developed countries have lots of kids is that kids represent wealth for them. If you own a farm, you can have your army of kids as free labor. By contrast, in a developed country, kids are a luxury. If you have kids in a city, you have all the costs of raising a child but you won't be making a penny off of them. That means that industrialization does increase energy use, but it stems population growth. If governments stopped trying to force populations to grow and instead let them find a balance, not only would there be less energy use, but we know from history that the lot of the common man would improve.
(DIR) Post #AIE3ds6N7fnePhaDvE by sj_zero@social.fbxl.net
2022-04-08T02:47:20.314712Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@alienghic @ByronCinNZ @strypey One thing that seems downright sinister to me is the idea that government is acting like they're doing you a favour by helping to pay someone else to raise your kids for you.I don't mean like school, I'm thinking like government daycare programs. I mean.... why even have kids if you're not going to be able to raise them? It's like when Obama said he smoked pot. "Of course I inhaled. That was the point." Of course you raise the kids you have, that's the point.I understand that shit happens and sometimes you end up a single mom or dad, but that should be the exception, not the norm.
(DIR) Post #AIE5Onh3QkemJ1gN9M by sj_zero@social.fbxl.net
2022-04-08T03:07:01.623360Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@alienghic @ByronCinNZ @strypey For sure, a major thing we need to do as a society is to be social again. The detachment people have has many negative effects.