DrFrankenStrudel posted:

Not only do we have enough uranium occurring naturally in the states to power our country for at least a couple thousand years (read: not shipping billions of USD to the Middle East/Venezuela).

Mystic_Shadow posted:

I was trying to explain the value of nuclear power to my advisor (I am a graduate student in meteorology) and he kept saying it wasn't safe so we shouldn't go down that route. Then the Fukushima disaster happened and it really validated his point.

Even though I am still a strong supporter of nuclear power there's no way I can ever discuss it with people like him.

DrFrankenStrudel posted:

That said, they have been saying "We only have (insert arbitrary #) years of oil left!" for the last 50 years, so it's probably not going anywhere, anytime soon.

Mystic_Shadow posted:

I was trying to explain the value of nuclear power to my advisor (I am a graduate student in meteorology) and he kept saying it wasn't safe so we shouldn't go down that route. Then the Fukushima disaster happened and it really validated his point.

Even though I am still a strong supporter of nuclear power there's no way I can ever discuss it with people like him.

4liters posted:

I thought these are some interesting ideas, posted on another forum:

quote:

I concede to the latter point, especially with the fact that whoever comes after us will have to live with what we’ve done to the planet. If the goal of transition is to power down, decentralize and acclimatize to the new world, I think Heinberg says it best: “If humanity could choose its path deliberately, I believe that our deliberations should include a critique of civilization itself, such as we are undertaking here. The question implicit in such a critique is, what have we done poorly or thoughtlessly in the past that we can do better now?” Certainly there are useful technologies that have emerged in the past few centuries, but what of their cultural and societal impacts? How do we determine what to keep? Can we safely “remove’ these ingrained ideals, such as the elevation of efficiency over human value (e.g: man as an appendage of the machine), the addiction of material (in the commercial, capitalist sense) desire, the overwhelming, ubiquitous understanding of life and nature through numerical, monetary value?

...

upsciLLion posted:

This is a pretty handy refutation of that belief. http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html

duck monster posted:

Now back to climate change denialism

Lets laff along with Ian Plimer, climate change denialist.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/plimervsplimer.php

These quotes are classic when put side by side.

Gorilla Salad posted:

Just as recently as 2001, Plimer was still doing good science. I really wonder what happened to turn him into the parody he is today.

It can't just be the cushy mining dollars, this is a man who believed in fighting scientific fraud and deception so deeply that he sold his own house to cover the legal costs he incurred and still kept fighting. And being a professor at Melbourne university can't exactly be a badly paying gig.

How does he even face the other faculty, or the students?

Office Thug posted:

There's enough nuclear fuel in terms of uranium-238, thorium-232, lithium-6 and hydrogen-2 on earth to sustain the total energy needs of a population of 100 billion people at US levels of consumption beyond the end of our sun's life. Nuclear is arguably more renewable than renewables.

Tezzeract posted:

(...)People are scared of nuclear energy and until there is the grim realization that nuclear is the last best hope for mankind (after exhausting the possibilities of solar and fusion), it's not a viable option.

duck monster posted:

He's a libertarian, thats what happened.

Office Thug posted:

There's enough nuclear fuel in terms of uranium-238, thorium-232, lithium-6 and hydrogen-2 on earth to sustain the total energy needs of a population of 100 billion people at US levels of consumption beyond the end of our sun's life. Nuclear is arguably more renewable than renewables.

Dirty Frank posted:

I'd love to repeat this to folks who disagree with my pro nuclear stance, you have a source? Sorry if its already been given, it's a long thread.

Gorilla Salad posted:

Ewww.

This is the first I've heard of that. Do you have any links for that. I'm guessing he 'converted' around the same time his scientific integrity went into the toilet.

gently caress You And Diebold posted:

Interested in this too, everything I have read has spoken towards us having enough to last for quite a while, but nothing even remotely close to what Office Thug is speaking of.

The Groper posted:

Well, assuming that we master multiple types of fusion reaction for power production, this paper suggests that we could last 150 billion years on nuclear power. https://www.iop.org/Jet/fulltext/EFDR00001.pdf However, it doesn't delve too deeply into diminishing marginal rates of return on the extraction of deutrium and lithium from the oceans, and it pegs consumption to 1995 levels for its estimate, but it remains accurate in that fusion is the be-all end-all power source.

e; I'm really not sure where the 100 billion people estimate comes from, though, since I doubt we have the resources to actually construct the number of plants that would be needed to sustain that load.

Dirty Frank posted:

Can't assume fusion though, any data on expected lifetime of resources assuming fission?

Your Sledgehammer posted:

Do you think you could look a member of the Hadza tribe in the face and say this to them? Assumptions like that one need to be questioned every time, because just like now, they are frequently thrown around without any evidence whatsoever to back them up. Whether or not something is "inferior" is a value judgement, plain and simple, and I personally feel that the one you are making is unwarranted.

quote:

A year ago, I would have agreed with you and probably would not have questioned my own view at all, but we've reached a juncture as a species where the unwillingness to ask such questions has proved disastrous. Those of you who favor Dusz's assumption, I would invite all of you to question that assumption and do a little poking around on the net or in a library about immediate return societies. I did so and was deeply surprised and humbled by the counterintuitive conclusions that I came to.

The dystopic future that you are afraid of is now, and unfortunately, we're all going to have to experience it. However, if you're referring to a post-collapse primitive world itself as a dystopia, then you're woefully missing the kind of wild idealism and optimism that is inherent to the primitivist critique. To illuminate this, a question to ponder - is there any difference between human happiness and the fulfillment of human instincts? When I say "human happiness," I mean the deep sense of contentment that most of us hopefully experience at some point or other in our lives, not the fleeting moment of good feelings I felt when I finally beat Super Mario Bros. 3. When it comes to things like food, shelter, sex, love, social interaction and acceptance, and the ability to explore and display your own unique personality, I think that an open-minded consideration shows that noncivilized societies provide all of the above in a way that is physically, mentally, and emotionally more healthy than civilization.

There is no doubt I am being hypocritical here. However, I see the exploration of a noncivilized lifestyle as a potentially lifelong project, and it is one that I am currently working on.

"One more big bandaid will surely cure the patient."

The analogy of an extremely ill patient that displays many different symptoms is actually pretty helpful to understanding the depth of the primitivist critique. Ecological destruction is just one of many issues that it addresses.


You're advocating genocide.

Not at all. Claiming that the ship is sinking is not the same as sinking the ship yourself. My stance towards civilization is and always has been one of peaceful protest and nonviolence.


The average lifespan of noncivilized people is much lower than civilized people.

For one, this is only true of the more recent, highly developed civilizations. Secondly, this disparity in average lifespan can be largely attributed to a higher rate of infant mortality among the noncivilized. A quick game of "Would you rather?": Newborns dying every now and again or 5 billion people dying in an unimaginable apocalypse? Nature shows us that there will always be some mechanism that limits population.


The noncivilized are deeply impoverished.

They do not see themselves as such. They are only materially poor. Material wealth does not track well statistically with happiness.

quote:

As I alluded to earlier, anthropologists divide the societies they study into two categories - immediate return and delayed return. Delayed return societies store food, immediate return do not. It's a continuum, with some existing at either end, and some existing in between. What they find over and over again is that delayed return societies invariably produce centralization and hierarchy. A few of the many possible endgames of hierarchy and centralization are things like "too big to fail" banks and sovereign debt crises.

I'd also encourage you to take a look at John B. Calhoun's studies about population density and its effect on behavior. He crammed rats into enclosures with high population densities and the results were things like males becoming hyperaggressive and going on killing sprees. Compare this to civilization and I think you'll see what I'm getting at.

quote:

I would find it to be more ethical for this discipline to be replaced with self-discipline, where people learn to direct their efforts for a cause of their own choosing. In that sense, our ideas aren't that different. With the one exception that since I think certain human endeavors have greater intrinsic value, I think the culture of a society should favor more civilized forms of self-utilization.

quote:

Most every political movement can identify problems. Often, the major problems in society are all transformed into a myriad of different interpretations of the problem. Problems in our society do exist. So a very general problem - such as the decay of modern society can be interpreted as follows (and in many different ways even within the movements I am going to mention). Some socialists will say it is the failure of capitalism. Some Ron Paul libertarians will say it is not enough free markets. Some fundamentalists will say that it is because people have turned away from their god. Some radical environmentalists will say it is the failure of civilization.

Notice the sections of wider movements I mentioned. Alongside their specific interpretations of the problem, they also have a very specific solution in mind. It seems rather obvious to me that the problem-solution is a connected pairing. In other words, when you become certain that a certain solution is the "right one", you henceforth gain a predisposition towards interpreting the problem in a certain way. You enter a certain "culture", a common understanding of subjects. This means that you assume a level of communal subjectivity. Not that this is wrong, I am just saying it happens, it is an occurrence of life.

The thing is, that from your posts, it seems very obvious to me that this phenomenon has had a very strong effect on you. Especially in the way you describe your turn to radical environmentalism as something of a "conversion experience", it is quite clear there was a split where you left your previous intellectual understanding to the current one, and from that event (those events) your problem-solution pairing shifted.

quote:

That wouldn't be a problem on it's own. However, it seems to me that your mindset has shifted far enough to be decisively irrational in some elements. First, I will concur that we cannot completely evaluate solutions because it is most of all tied within our subjective values. So let's examine the problem instead. I am claiming that your cultural-intellectual mindset has insufficient bearing in rationality, as best as humans can estimate that.

I will bring one distinctive example of this. You say in one post "I believe a collapse is inevitable, and I am deeply saddened by it". I will first say that there is no absolute argument against this, as it would appeal to a standard none of us have available when discussing complex real world issues.

What I can say is that according to the highest (not absolute, mind you) standard of idea verification, scientific analysis (feel free to dispute this) the statement is irrational. Now before you assume anything, I am not saying that scientific consensus disbelieves the environmental crisis. They don't, it's the opposite. I am also not saying that there are no notable elements of the spectrum of scientific thought that say the problem has dire ramifications. What I am saying though, is that you would have to go to a great fringe of scientific thought to locate the opinion of "absolute collapse is inevitable". This means that such a statement, to the best standards that human beings have, is extremely unlikely to be correct. As a result, I can call you irrational.

quote:

The conclusion from this is that despite what thoughts are oscillating inside your head, your illusion of being correct and having understood the problem in a correct way, is just that, an illusion. A more distant illusion than most, as measured by the best standard for objectivity that humans have. There is nothing to take away from this, despite what you believe, other than the most obvious - the existence of a phenomenon where a human being thinks like you. That's all.

The Groper posted:

Again, it depends on rates of return on extraction from seawater. Off the top of my head, (I can check one of my textbooks later) current uranium supplies will last roughly 200 years at 2001 levels of nuclear power consumption. (note that this estimate would drop heavily if we switched to full nuclear like sensible apes) Uranium extraction from seawater would last us ~60,000 years without reprocessing. Once you get into fast-breeder reactors, the time afforded to us goes up considerably, from 200 years to ~20,000 for our current reserves, and probably up to a million+ years if the entire planetary supply is available to us.

deptstoremook posted:

You're already being irrational and assigning your intuitive intrinsic value to certain albeit unnamed endeavors, so I could be perfectly happy to dismiss your argument as a performative contradiction.

quote:

Let's set aside the part where you decide that rationality is an unimpeachably objective designation and at the same time defined by the constructions of academic consensus. And let's bring in another example: I actually believe that a deliberate genocide is being committed by capitalists against the poor and working classes of the world.

quote:

I guess there's no scientific data to back me up here, but proclamations like mine or Sledgehammer's fall outside the strict definition of rational inquiry you've set up. Would you propose that we not say these things, or try to say them in a way that appeases "rationality," or what? Because to restrict activist study to the results and language of academia and science articles is a really bad idea.

quote:

And here, perhaps, is where the strain of your position starts to show, and it seems that you've just written 1,000 words to say "you're crazy and wrong and stupid (beep boop)." Honestly your robot act is already threadbare and probably the worst way of debating or discussing that was ever developed.

quote:

It would be rational, I suppose, to sit around and wait for the corrosion on the gears of industry and growth to grind the machine to a halt. But by then there might be nothing (or less than nothing) left. Under the sign of rationality we would have to wait for peer-reviewed evidence of the imminent collapse (although such collapses have never been seen by the cultures undergoing them), I guess.

To be more direct, you're using the old liberal tactic of waiting for consensus, agreement, and dominant logic to prevail so that you don't actually have to engage with revolutionary or activist positions. It's just another dodge except you've wrapped it up in an irritating gimmick. That's all.

MaterialConceptual posted:

This is an article on the intellectual bankruptcy of the "smart growth" mainstream environmentalists. It focuses on the "rebound effect" (Energy savings lead to more energy consumption) and how renewable energy does nothing to address all the other environmental problems we face.

quote:

In other words, while energy efficiency fails to be good for the environment because it leads to economic growth, we should still pursue it because…it leads to economic growth, and this is good because it will make us richer.

quote:

As if that were not enough, the next problem is the way in which Nordhaus and Shellenberger concentrate solely on one element of the environmental consequences of economic growth—carbon emissions. In this they perform intellectual sleight of hand. They are quick to criticize other environmentalists for arguing that there are limits to economic growth, but the only limit they pay attention to is atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. About a range of other limits—such as biodiversity, availability of freshwater, and soil nitrogen—they have nothing to offer. This is unsurprising: these wider limits cannot be overcome, even in theory, by investments in low-carbon technologies financed by ongoing growth.

Dusz posted:

eh4 posted:

This is a key method of denialists to frame the debate also. What can you do about the oceans temperature or the shift in currents except by denial and redirection? Like the Australian Opposition leader Tony Abbott, whose principal pronouncements on climate change are "CO2 doesn't weigh anything" and "we will get behind other economies with this great big tax based on a lie".

MaterialConceptual posted:

Wait, are you accusing the author of being a denialist? The only denialists here are the "smart growth" people who insist that some technological improvements taken BY THEMSELVES will solve all our problems.

eh4 posted:

I can't even work out how you jumped to that conclusion.

TheFuglyStik posted:

Even more maddening is the development of what I'll call mainstream environmentalism. From what I've seen, it's a "buy this, drive that, pat yourself on the back and brag about how green you are" philosophy. I may be committing the same offense I talked about above, but I don't think an environmental movement rooted in consumerism can solve anything when it is based upon the underlying problem itself. It doesn't do anything of real consequence, other than make yourself feel noble and drain your pocket more in the checkout line at Wal-Mart.

quote:

I've debated free-market environmentalists in the past, and the common thread is that the free-market part of their belief system carries more weight than the environmental side when forming opinions. I believe it firmly ignores the fact that corporations as they exist now have a primary duty to produce profit, environmental concerns be damned aside from putting a leaf on packaging for buying a carbon offset or sourcing 20% of our cardboard from recycled materials.

Maluco Marinero posted:

The thing I've noticed about consumerism, is that there's something everyone. Whether you're into dirt bikes, joulies to keep your coffee warm (what), the smartphone upgrade treadmill, designer prams, cloth nappies, there's someone out there trying to support your consumption habit.

Ecological awareness brings in new markets of consumerism with composting bins, organic food, Eco-this that and the other, but consumerism goes on strong by morphing to fit the audience.

It will need to hit a hard limit to stop.

eh4 posted:

I don't see much hope of getting anywhere unless the authority persuasion game is won on the environmental side.

eh4 posted:

I can't even work out how you jumped to that conclusion.

TheFuglyStik posted:

I've debated free-market environmentalists in the past, and the common thread is that the free-market part of their belief system carries more weight than the environmental side when forming opinions. I believe it firmly ignores the fact that corporations as they exist now have a primary duty to produce profit, environmental concerns be damned aside from putting a leaf on packaging for buying a carbon offset or sourcing 20% of our cardboard from recycled materials.

Maluco Marinero posted:

Said this a while ago in this thread. The only option I see on a personal level is to not play that game as much as possible, tighten up your wallet and question every purchase.

Yiggy posted:

Its not a happy thought, but at what point do you just accept that you can't do anything, and go about your life?

Yiggy posted:

Its not a happy thought, but at what point do you just accept that you can't do anything, and go about your life?