Environmental Realism
I am for not wasting the planet's resources, but I am also for the use of reason in how we deal with environmental issues. I am not going to get around on a bicycle or hitchhike or take a bus for days instead of taking a four- or five-hour plane ride.
Arnold Ahlert writes at FrontPage that a few radical environmentalists are having second thoughts. (McKibben is not one of them):
Bill McKibben, the founder of 350.org, expressed the reflexive, pie-in- the-sky response of radical environmentalists to this politically inconvenient reality. "We need a dramatic shift off carbon-based fuel: coal, oil and also gas," he contended. To what, remains a mystery.Lynas is also seeing the light in the energy arena. "Nobody can look you in the eye and say you shouldn't be worried" about nuclear energy, he says in the new documentary "Pandora's Promise." Yet he, along with author Richard Rhodes, writer of the Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Making of the Atomic Bomb"; Stewart Brand, Whole Earth Catalog founder; and Michael Shellenberger, a man Time magazine labeled a "hero of the environment," have decided nuclear power is an integral part of our energy future-unless one embraces the Luddite attitude of enviro-radical Bill McKibben. "We might decide that the human enterprise has got big enough, that our appetites need not to grow, but to shrink a little, in order to provide us more margin," he writes in the Guardian. "What would that mean? Buses and bikes and trains, not SUVs. Local food, with more people on the farm so that muscles replace some of the oil."
The NY Post's Kyle Smith gives McKibben a well-deserved smackdown. "Sorry, but only a few hippie hipsters want to raise their own chickens and pedal to work, and even they aren't giving up their iToys," he contends. "Meanwhile, the peasants of India and China want meat and electricity and cars and hospitals, in the tens of millions. A planet that uses less energy is not an option."
... Sadly, Rachel Carson, who wrote "Silent Spring," a seriously flawed tome regarding the dangers of chemical pesticides, notably DDT, did manage to produce enough of a political following to get that insecticide banned in many countries.
The consequences were disastrous: tens of millions of lives were lost to malaria and other diseases. A Harvard study estimated that high levels of malaria reduce economic growth by 1.3 percent annually-meaning that four decades of DDT bans have made developing nations more than 40 percent poorer than they might have otherwise been with effective insect control.
Again, science took a back seat to radicalism. For Carson, et al., the dosage level of DDT was irrelevant, as was the reality that alternative pesticides were equally toxic to other wildlife. Dr. Henry Miller, the Robert Wesson Fellow of Scientific Philosophy and Public Policy at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, puts Carson's effort in perspective. "The legacy of Rachel Carson is that tens of millions of human lives-mostly children in poor, tropical countries-have been traded for the possibility of slightly improved fertility in raptors," he writes. "This remains one of the monumental human tragedies of the last century."
Memo to the radical environmental weenies: let me know when you give up electricity. Then I'll take your talk a bit more seriously.
I may come around and laugh at you, as well.
I R A Darth Aggie at June 17, 2013 10:09 AM
Well, here's the challenge all over again:
Try not to snark about other people. Try to explain the problem, or why you think there isn't one. Try to explain why you think a person is more valuable than an eagle. Define your values.
Tell me where you want to live: a world with humans only, one with just you and the animals, or somewhere in between.
Radwaste at June 17, 2013 10:38 AM
I don't know whether Ahlert mentions the need for more control over the birth rate, but he should.
A couple of quotes:
From the Hunger Project: "Hunger doesn't keep the birth rate down; it keeps it up." (I.e., when people know their children will likely NOT die before adulthood, they have fewer children.)
And while of course we'd never tolerate malaria in the U.S., I can't help but remember a cartoon that shows two deer at night looking over the lights of a big city:
"Why don't they thin their OWN herd?"
lenona at June 17, 2013 11:29 AM
You want to solve 90% of the worlds problems overnight?
Worldwide kill every politician and government bureacrat
Worldwide kill every muslim male over the age of 15 and every muslim woman over the age of 18 wearing a burka
Outside of any first world counrty kill all muslim males over the age of 5 and women over the age of 25
Nerve gas the vatican
After that randomly kill 3 in 5 males and 4 in 10 females world wide.
Its creul but effective, the population of the world would be cut by more than half and three of the biggest impedements to the advancement of humanity would be gone.
Assuming you dont want to take that step, ramp up nuclear and find a way to make solar work
lujlp at June 17, 2013 11:50 AM
Yeah, when your bathtub is overflowing, the first thing you should probably do is turn off the water. If you're not willing to discuss population issues, you're not serious about this.
It's seen as nihilistic or cruel or blasphemous to say there are too many people on the planet. I think it's just hard for people to adjust to the idea, because in recorded history we've never been faced with it before.
In 1970, the year I was born, there were 3.7 billion people in the world, and now there are nearly twice that many. By some estimates, the number of people who can be comfortably supported by available fresh water supplies has already been surpassed, meaning there are already people being "uncomfortably" sustained.
But what can you do? Everyone thinks it's "everyone else" who should quit having so many kids. And if you simply don't want any, people look at you like you're selfish or damaged in some way.
Pirate Jo at June 17, 2013 1:22 PM
Overpopulation argument:
http://www.simplyshrug.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=63:the-overpopulation-myth&catid=31:general&Itemid=50)
Cat at June 17, 2013 4:46 PM
Have some numbers.
Then, look at this chart, and recognize that without food distribution enabled by fossil fuels, this curve would not exist - nor would the city bias shown in the first article cited.
Anything that kills the distribution system starves about 3 billion right away.
Doubt me?
What happens where you live today if food trucks - dozens, maybe hundreds of them - can't get within 10 miles of you right now?
Radwaste at June 17, 2013 6:10 PM
What happens where you live today if food trucks - dozens, maybe hundreds of them - can't get within 10 miles of you right now?
Posted by: Radwaste at June 17, 2013 6:10 PM
And what happens if we have another Carrington event, or a really large meteor hits the earth, or we enter the next ice age?
People adapt to the change, or they die. It has been that way for a hundred thousand years at least.
It is unfortunate that people who are dependent on an industrial food supply who live a long way from agricultural production areas will be the most likely to perish, in the case of any catastrophic event that disrupts either the growing or the distribution, but it is not a very good argument for population control. A command economy with politicized food distribution guaranteed famine for millions in the 20th century.
Sad to say, the one really good way to get your population under control is affluence. First world people are barely replacing themselves.
Isab at June 17, 2013 7:06 PM
I went through junior and senior high from 79-85. Back then we were bound for a global ice age unless we (humans) change the things we are doing. Now we are bound for global warming unless we (humans) change the things we are doing.
Why should I believe any of the climatological scientists?
We have been running out of fossil fuels since before 1976. Even back then if we dammed every river, put up a windmill everywhere, and layered the whole United States with solar cells we would maybe get to about 15% of the electrical needs of the country in 1980. And the "green" technologies have only gained about 20-35% since then.
But the coal projection has always been in the 200-300 year range. The petroleum was in the 30-40 year range but is now climbing into the 50-70 year range.
Somehow the political leadership refuses to acknowledge the changes in fossil fuels and wants to go to green tech. Why?
Nuclear technology, run by competent people is truly green. But not a single new reactor permit has been approved in over thirty years.
The fossil fuel refining plants have been essentially at capacity for 15-20 years. But a new refinery plant has not been approved for over 30 years. Why?
So your electric bill in the middle of a mild summer used to be $75 a month, but is now $200. Is that a political cause because coal fired plants are being shut down by the EPA?
Who is impacted by the price increase of energy -- the rich? Or does it fuck the middle and lower class?
Jim P. at June 17, 2013 7:32 PM
"Why should I believe any of the climatological scientists?"
You shouldn't.
You should look at their data, and see if it backs up what they say.
It is hotter in the city; there are more cities than ever before; energy is expended on the surface which has not been, before. It really is that simple. Photographs show diminishing ice coverage, where increases in ice coverage simply were not shown in the previous era.
And you would never excuse a fertilizer plant for discharging sulfur dioxide "because volcanoes do that". Saying everything is hunky-dory, it's natural isn't right - it's fallacious in several ways.
Radwaste at June 18, 2013 12:34 AM
"You should look at their data, and see if it backs up what they say."
We know from the Climategate emails that the data is not only incorrect, but fraudulent. There has been no long-term trend since about 1970. Data from infrared atmosphere studies and correlation to solar observations shows, since the dawn of the satellite era, a strong correlation between average troposphere temperatures and solar activity. And the atmospheric trends that East Anglia et al were so confidently predicting in the 1990s have not come to pass at all.
It beats me that so many supposedly learned men and women think that carbon dioxide, once in the atmosphere, stays there forever. If that were true, Earth's atmosphere would have gone into thermal runaway millions of years before humans evolved. Haven't those people ever heard of rainfall?
Cousin Dave at June 18, 2013 7:02 AM
There are many points to discuss on this thread, but I'll hit only one . . . .
JIm P. writes,
"The petroleum was in the 30-40 year range [projected reserves, I imagine you mean] but is now climbing into the 50-70 year range."
"Somehow the political leadership refuses to acknowledge the changes in fossil fuels and wants to go to green tech. Why?"
Possibly because in the 70's oil was selling at aout $20 a barrel or so. The projected reserve numbers you show above (which could be debated, but lets just run with it) are only economically viable for the firms that pull it out of the ground when it sells for $90 - $110. At this price, the systems that depend upon fossil fuels become pretty vulnerable to all sorts of economic ick.
Short answer: We don't just need lots of oil, we need lots of **cheap** oil, and while we have plenty of the former, we aren't ever going to see the latter again.
And that's a real problem. Green tech is one *possible* solution, but saying, 'Problem? What problem??' is not realistic.
railmeat at June 18, 2013 2:02 PM
Short answer: We don't just need lots of oil, we need lots of **cheap** oil, and while we have plenty of the former, we aren't ever going to see the latter again.
And that's a real problem. Green tech is one *possible* solution, but saying, 'Problem? What problem??' is not realistic.
Posted by: railmeat at June 18, 2013 2:02 PM
More than half of the current price of oil is nothing but inflation. Yes, it it worthwhile extracting more when the the prices are higher.
And still alternative technology is not going to replace oil and natural gas because first, it is not resiliant, and secondly it is not cost effective yet, And any government mandate to convert is just throwing taxes down a rat hole or at non viable Ponzi schemes. Over fifty percent of green energy companies have failed, and most of the rest are just barely hanging on because these alternative sources are not mature, and they are not cost effective.
Isab at June 18, 2013 5:29 PM
"We know from the Climategate emails that the data is not only incorrect, but fraudulent."
Sorry. Untrue.
This is the latest in a series of articles by Phil Plait about the issue. Read back on his site. He addresses "Climategate".
The bottom line: it is hotter in the city. There are more cities than there were. Energy is being expended by the terawatt, right here on the surface.
There are photos now. Ice? Going away. From orbit, you can see seas of lights. That's energy expediture, and generators throw away bunches more energy as heat when making electricity.
And just as you wouldn't excuse Exxon from a spill because there are tar pits at La Brea, you shouldn't try to excuse us by claiming volcanoes emit gases.
Question for the audience: How many cubic feet of CO2 and H2O vapor does your ONE car produce burning 10 gallons of gas? Show your work.
I continue to be amazed that people cannot understand that when you burn something, it's hotter right where it's burning, and that's hotter than it was before. Do you get it?
Radwaste at June 18, 2013 7:17 PM
The problem with focusing on oil alone and dismissing coal is that coal used to be cheap and plentiful.
Have you heard of the Patriot Coal Corporation? They were spun off from Peabody Energy. They had to file Chapter 11. The United Mine Workers (UMWA) union is saying that Peabody overloaded Patriot with debt in the spinoff and they should still fund the UMWA retirees. This is despite the fact that in 2007, Patriot sold 22.1 million tons of coal. In 2013 their production will be less than 6 million tons. Of course they make less money.
Then if you look at the challenges they face their environmental remediation cost has jumped from about $300M in 2009 to over $700M in 2012.
Then there is ethanol. The farmers all went to producing corn, soybeans and other grains for conversion to ethanol when Congress dumped $250B+ into production plants. No one thought about that fact that HFCS and so many other food products depend on those grains.
So now the price of food jumped; the price of gas didn't drop; the E85 MPG is about 15-20% less than gas; Congress wasted $250B; and small farmers were/are squeezed because they can no longer buy cheap grains for the animals.
So how about this. We dissolve the EPA and the Dept of Energy. If the Cuyahoga River lights up, it's Ohio and Pennsylvania's problem. The Nuke Reg Commission becomes a uniformed service just like NOAA.
Anytime the federal government gets involved in the free market, it is a 900 pound gorilla that can change rules at a sneeze.
Jim P. at June 18, 2013 7:22 PM
But what can you do? Everyone thinks it's "everyone else" who should quit having so many kids. And if you simply don't want any, people look at you like you're selfish or damaged in some way.
Posted by: Pirate Jo at June 17, 2013 1:22 PM
_____________________________________
Speaking of which (a bit OT) when it comes to Dr. Helen Smith's new book "Men on Strike" and the subject of men who are boycotting marriage and parenthood, what many men's rights activists (MRAs) won't admit is that there are an awful lot of women who don't notice and don't CARE about the strike, because THEY don't want marriage or children either! It's just that they aren't the women who are complaining about the "man shortage," so their numbers may easily be underestimated.
lenona at June 19, 2013 6:52 AM
Raddy, I've debunked all of that so many times before (Artic ice is not going away; it's increasing) that I'm not going to bother again. Your continuing to repeat it does not make it true. The Climategate emails are so damning ("researchers" openly discussing how to rig their data to make it support their pet theory) that it's just not even questionable anymore.
Cousin Dave at June 19, 2013 9:35 AM
Actually Arctic ice has decreased substantially while Antarctic has spread (at the same time that it's shelving).
Anyway - interesting article here:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2013/05/why-climate-change-means-more----and-less----ice-for-the-antarctic.html
"Last year, the Arctic ice cap shrunk to a record low, with only 24 percent of the Arctic Ocean covered by ice, a 50 percent drop from its 1979-2000 summer average. At the height of the 2012 summer, Greenland had experienced melting across 90 percent of its surface."
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at June 19, 2013 4:12 PM
I trust PBS for unbiased news about the same that I trust a steak set down in front of a wolf won't be eaten.
http://neven1.typepad.com/blog/2013/04/perception-of-the-arctic.html
Jim P. at June 20, 2013 6:47 PM
Cousin Dave: apparently not. Next time you're near a power plant, feel free to tell yourself it's not making heat. Based on your position, I suspect you don't even know what the engineering definition of heat is. Hint: not "temperature".
The engineering question is completely seperate from the political issues.
How about the question? How much CO2 and H2O do you make from ONE gallon of gasoline? You can get within a couple of cubic feet at STP. Do it.
Cheers,
Rad.
Radwaste at June 21, 2013 3:56 AM
Once again - apparently not.
Radwaste at July 18, 2013 2:40 PM
" The Climategate emails are so damning ("researchers" openly discussing how to rig their data to make it support their pet theory) that it's just not even questionable anymore."
I'm not surprised that you have completely stopped research, having read what you want.
There is NO OTHER DATA than discussed in those e-mails. Right?
Of COURSE there is.
Radwaste at May 14, 2015 8:43 AM
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