For a minute there I thought I had to get off my couch, when all the while the fact is we don't have to do anything much but keep things afloat for just a few decades more! In fact, we'd best shut up about PO, because if our offspring finds out we knew about it all along, they'll turn and wring our necks come 2036!
Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2008 4:25 am Post subject: Lovelock says Eat Drink and be Merry, for we are all doomed.
Lovelock believes global warming is now irreversible, and that nothing can prevent large parts of the planet becoming too hot to inhabit, or sinking underwater, resulting in mass migration, famine and epidemics.
The initiative sits comfortably within the current canon of eco ideas, next to ethical consumption, carbon offsetting, recycling and so on - all of which are premised on the calculation that individual lifestyle adjustments can still save the planet.
This is, Lovelock says, a deluded fantasy. Most of the things we have been told to do might make us feel better, but they won't make any difference. Global warming has passed the tipping point, and catastrophe is unstoppable.
Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2008 5:07 am Post subject: Re: Lovelock says Eat Drink and be Merry, for we are all doo
Hey
Quote:
Humanity is in a period exactly like 1938-9, he explains, when "we all knew something terrible was going to happen, but didn't know what to do about it". But once the second world war was under way, "everyone got excited, they loved the things they could do, it was one long holiday ... so when I think of the impending crisis now, I think in those terms. A sense of purpose - that's what people want."
Joined: Sep 17, 2006 Posts: 623 Location: No man's land
Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2008 7:37 am Post subject: Re: Lovelock says Eat Drink and be Merry, for we are all doo
Except there may not be much to drink and eat soon. _________________ "It is no measure of health to be deemed sane in an insane society" J. Krishnamurti
Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2008 1:25 pm Post subject: Re: Lovelock says Eat Drink and be Merry, for we are all doo
Quote:
n 1965 executives at Shell wanted to know what the world would look like in the year 2000. They consulted a range of experts, who speculated about fusion-powered hovercrafts and "all sorts of fanciful technological stuff". When the oil company asked the scientist James Lovelock, he predicted that the main problem in 2000 would be the environment. "It will be worsening then to such an extent that it will seriously affect their business," he said.
...and Shell executives are largely to blame for this environmental worsening.
The oil industry did play a large role in stifling the electric car, after all. They waged multi-million dollar ad campaigns critiscizing the technology by making it appear unsafe to consumers, supressed a battery technology that would have been viable with mass production of EVs, started up faux grassroots front groups who had the expressed purpose of preventing the mass adoption of battery electric vehicles in the US, and used these faux grassroots groups to prevent the development of charging infrastructure throught California and along Route 66(Automobile fuel exceeds 40% of America's total oil consumption according to the DOE. This is the oil industry's largest source of revenue.).
And that's just EVs. The oil industry also played a role in helping to stifle the adoption of wind power, stifle the adoption of solar power, using the government to supress industrial hemp, using their clout to negatively affect fuel economy standards, and even got America's mass transit system torn down so that a car was no longer optional for most people to live the lives they were accostomed to... They even own much of the car industry in terms of shares and have a large say in determining what gets built(it's more profitable to build products that consumers don't want but spend more in increased fuel sales than it is to sell more efficient products that meet the demands of consumers).
They've hired mercenaries to massacre people in 3rd world countries, to take their land and drill oil on it(eg. Nigeria). They've used governments to set up dictatorships so that they could more easily obtain oil to sell. They've used governments to oust democratically elected leaders and replace them with dictators so that they could access oil in these nations(eg. Iran in the 1950s). They've used governments to start wars in other countries so that they could obtain oil.
All of the oil spills, fires, wars, smog, and energy consumption associated with this industry are immense. The social costs when accounting for all of these things would make gasoline exceed $10/gallon(which makes a hand-built lithium ion battery electric car that can break even at $6-9/gallon gas not seem so bad, or a mass produced one that could break even possibly at under $3/gallon seem very good, or a NiMH one that if mass produced would break even at $1.30/gallon absolutely prove that we are being cheated out of our better future because this was viable in the 90s(See "Evaluation of Electric Vehicle Production and Operating Costs", Cuenca and Gaines).
Big oil deserves moreso of the blame for this than the consumer; the consumer merely wants luxury, but this luxury does not necessarily need to have the amount of consumption associated with it that it does! The consumption we have is deliberate and designed into our society to maximize growth for the sake of more growth, and not for increasing living standards.
We are doomed not just by our own doing, but moreso by the doing of our 'leaders' and those who paid for our leaders.
...and we can at least try to do something about it. Revi is an inspiration with the solar car he mentions. That technology is also scalable to vehicles that we are accustomed to, just not implemented in the same way Revi has. With enough education, people can demand that their urban centers be revitalized with mass transit again.
Enough is enough. If we can eliminate big oil before nature does it for us, we are no longer doomed. _________________ The unnecessary felling of a tree, perhaps the old growth of centuries, seems to me a crime little short of murder. ~Thomas Jefferson
Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2008 1:58 pm Post subject: Re: Lovelock says Eat Drink and be Merry, for we are all doo
If every car were electric we'd still have coal fired power plants ruining the atmosphere and the negative effects of 6+ billion people consuming natural resources. That's not an excuse to do nothing, but I think it's naive to just look for a single bad guy and a single magic solution.
Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2008 2:47 pm Post subject: Re: Lovelock says Eat Drink and be Merry, for we are all doo
mos6507 wrote:
If every car were electric we'd still have coal fired power plants ruining the atmosphere and the negative effects of 6+ billion people consuming natural resources.
True, but the ruining and negative effects and resource consumption needed for the same amount of benefit would be greatly reduced.
Sherryboschart.com has available links to seven studies that claim EVs reduce CO2 emissions from 17-59% compared to gasoline powered cars if getting all of their electricity from coal(number varies with study). They can get electricity from much more efficient sources and even carbon-neutral sources too, making it practical to make their CO2 emissions during operation effectively zero(near zero, when you account for the emissions associated with making the car and the wind/solar systems).
Quote:
That's not an excuse to do nothing, but I think it's naive to just look for a single bad guy and a single magic solution.
If a diode burns out in a bridge rectifier, it is not naive to pinpoint the problem on that single diode. It is not naive to conclude that the obvious magic solution to restore functionality is to replace it.
There exists a similar problem regarding our oil use. Granted, it's a much more complicated system, way more variables, but the overall principle remains the same. _________________ The unnecessary felling of a tree, perhaps the old growth of centuries, seems to me a crime little short of murder. ~Thomas Jefferson
Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2008 2:54 pm Post subject: Re: Lovelock says Eat Drink and be Merry, for we are all doo
Since I read his book, The Revenge of Gaia, I find that my mind often imagines what the conditions will be like for the human cultures that may continue within about 60 degrees latitude north. Parts of England, Wales, Ireland, and particularly Scotland might well be able to carry on. Similarly, the Scandinavian countries.
Probably Lovelock is right about the Chinese moving into Siberia. And northern Russia could be a repository for culture.
On the North American continent there might be quite an amalgamation of disparate peoples in the far north.
On the other hand, existing cultures of northern Eurasia might not be able to cohere, due to being inundated with people from the south.
For example, I am aware the Finland is very invested in classical music--quite a few symphony orchestras and such. Just this week I heard the performance of a Finnish French horn player, Esa Tapani, and was heartened to think that excellence in classical music might continue in Finland.
Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2008 4:24 pm Post subject: Re: Lovelock says Eat Drink and be Merry, for we are all doo
Strange Lovelock thinks nuclear power is the way to go when he of all people would know power plants aren't immune from his own predictions of environmental and climate catastrophes. Does he not care about the possibility of other animals and plants surviving even if all humans are doomed?
Joined: Apr 06, 2006 Posts: 2953 Location: 3 miles NW of Champoeg, Republic of Cascadia
Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2008 6:46 pm Post subject: Re: Lovelock says Eat Drink and be Merry, for we are all doo
Lovelock has offered to store the high level waste from a nuke plant on his farm. He's not too concerned about its effects down the road, it seems - more Doomerism. Or he thinks that if we make a few square km uninhabitable for a few million years, it's an acceptable loss to keep civilization running.
Hey Toecutter. Ruthless businessmen are nothing new - Venetian merchants' fee to the Fourth Crusaders for travel to the Holy Land was that they'd have to sack Constantinople - which they did. I'm not surprised by how the oil companies' have behaved over the last century - it's who they are. They've bit the apple or swallowed the pill. _________________ Cogito, ergo non satis bibivi
I'm just gonna find a cash machine.
Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2008 7:35 pm Post subject: Re: Lovelock says Eat Drink and be Merry, for we are all doo
Quote:
Hey Toecutter. Ruthless businessmen are nothing new - Venetian merchants' fee to the Fourth Crusaders for travel to the Holy Land was that they'd have to sack Constantinople - which they did. I'm not surprised by how the oil companies' have behaved over the last century - it's who they are. They've bit the apple or swallowed the pill.
The time is long overdue to banish them from Eden then. They have done enough to harm everyone in it.
Peak oil is much less of a problem if we use those alternatives to oil that are currently viable in place of oil. They won't solve everythingf and more advancements will be needed, but they can greatly ease the pain of the decline provided work begins BEFORE the decline becomes serious. Petty political roadblocks posed by entrenched industries/governments and a degree of ignorance on part of the public(have little knowledge of what is possible and the scope of the problem, but it's not their fault, either) are what's in the way. Destroy these barriers, and the outlook for our world may not be so bleak. _________________ The unnecessary felling of a tree, perhaps the old growth of centuries, seems to me a crime little short of murder. ~Thomas Jefferson
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