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THE Limits to Growth Thread

Discuss research and forecasts regarding hydrocarbon depletion.

Re: Green Economy vs 'Green Growth'

Unread postby ennui2 » Tue 26 Apr 2016, 18:50:44

This is the world we're actually living in.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016 ... ieu-paley/

Image

Yes, parts of the earth look like Wall-E already.

Image

Any coulda-shoulda-woulda talk about the proverbial good-old-days "before 1492" is less than worthless. We won't get back there outside of die-off.

P.S., if New Delhi weren't portrayed badly enough via that article as it is....
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Re: Green Economy vs 'Green Growth'

Unread postby dohboi » Tue 26 Apr 2016, 21:11:51

Yeah, I heard about that fire in the museum. Whole new levels of tragic.

We're buying more and more crap that is all completely replaceable, but then letting these types of precious artifacts as well as whole ecosystems and species that can not every be replaced go up in smoke.

:cry: :cry: :cry:
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Re: Green Economy vs 'Green Growth'

Unread postby onlooker » Sun 09 Jul 2017, 09:37:37

The Green Economy has been nothing but a gigantic scam and swindle
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Re: Green Economy vs 'Green Growth'

Unread postby Newfie » Sun 09 Jul 2017, 17:00:00

Doh,
Glad you bumped the thread. Me thtoo now a bunch of the stuff you put in "Happy Talk" belongs here.

Good to keep reminding ourselves of the basics.
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Re: Green Economy vs 'Green Growth'

Unread postby dohboi » Sun 09 Jul 2017, 22:21:22

Yeah, I mostly agree. But people were grousing that I wasn't ever posting anything positive, iirc, hence the happy thread.

The following is the kind of thing we will see more and more...basically green lipstick on a omnicidal industrial society mega-pig.

Billionaire Sanjeev Gupta appears to be carving out a new niche by buying out struggling metals manufacturers and returning them to profitability by powering them with cheaper energy sources – renewables of course.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-09/s ... ks/8691072

So now we can continue to rape the earth and turn her beauties and treasures into toxins and trash, but do it all with nice green energy...how nice! :) 8O :x :cry: :twisted: :badgrin:
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Re: THE Limits to Growth Thread

Unread postby ralfy » Sun 19 Aug 2018, 09:04:03

Dennis Meadows Interview, 2017.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4
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Re: THE Limits to Growth Thread

Unread postby Newfie » Sun 19 Aug 2018, 17:35:07

Wait, stop the presses, apparently the Trump Administration has discovered an infinite supply of fossil fuels. And they are nonpolluting also.

There are NO limits to growth! Who knew?

https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/us- ... imperative

WASHINGTON (AP) — Conserving oil is no longer an economic imperative for the U.S., the Trump administration declares in a major new policy statement that threatens to undermine decades of government campaigns for gas-thrifty cars and other conservation programs.


Does this mean the Conservative party is now the liberal party, since they denounce conservation?
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Re: THE Limits to Growth Thread

Unread postby onlooker » Sun 19 Aug 2018, 18:57:33

Well Mr Meadows is rightfully saying in Part 3, that we have already entered the collapse stage. I guess some will only concede that when a mass die off ensues. Remember, this is about the entire planet.
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Re: THE Limits to Growth Thread

Unread postby Yonnipun » Sun 19 Aug 2018, 19:17:47

onlooker wrote:Well Mr Meadows is rightfully saying in Part 3, that we have already entered the collapse stage. I guess some will only concede that when a mass die off ensues. Remember, this is about the entire planet.


I read the book last year and quite honestly I was somewhat dissapointed. I always had an impression from this book like we could possibly turn things over and have a sustainable modern civilization. This is simply not possible. Common sense, no need for Einstein level intelligence to reach to that conclusion.
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Re: THE Limits to Growth Thread

Unread postby onlooker » Sun 19 Aug 2018, 19:32:44

Yes I think we passed the point to salvage modern industrial civilization or prevent a mass die off. Basically, because of the end of cheap abundant energy, our population is too big. And the final most important reason is the environmental pillars that sustain the Economy and life itself are reaching tipping points beyond which irreversible pernicious processes will produce catastrophic harm to the Economy and much of life on Earth
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Re: THE Limits to Growth Thread

Unread postby theluckycountry » Wed 17 Nov 2021, 21:24:39

onlooker wrote:Yes I think we passed the point to salvage modern industrial civilization or prevent a mass die off.


I think modern industrial civilization is definitely a moon shot affair. After oil replaced coal people assumed we would always find a new energy source to replace the one we were depleting. Unfortunately the nature of fossil fuels allowed them to be used for vastly more applications than simple energy production, food being the most obvious. Somehow I can't see spreading enriched uranium or lithium on corn fields will keep yields high. If we had stayed with traditional farming methods, a transition, though painful, might have been possible.

Now dieoff is guaranteed, unless Brussels can pull a rabbit out of a hat with their "Forth Industrial Revolution" and create humans that feed on sunlight?
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Re: THE Limits to Growth Thread

Unread postby Pops » Thu 18 Nov 2021, 11:53:30

My thought is its pretty obvious we've exceeded our limits. The fact that Ehrlich's Population Bomb predictions were thwarted only by using fossil fuels, fossil fertilizer and fossil water in many places, tells us that we have exceeded our sustainable carrying capacity. IOW, only by tapping into resources concentrated over millennia have we benefitted from this one-time reprieve. We are too many to revert to sustainability on this planet. The question isn't whether will we decline but will it be via decreasing births or increasing deaths?

I don't believe that in the short term we will crash, momentum and sunk investments are too big. Our societies may or probably will erode as they've always done. But for example, only half of the global grain crop is consumed by humans directly, an incredible 40% goes to animals and 10% to feed internal combustion engines—both a hugely inefficient use of our very sustenance. Some will starve but it will continue to be due to waste (however you define it) and unequal distribution rather than low yields... for now.

I've said for years that the population curve will continue to bend and low replacement will outpace any increase in death rates. And considering death rate is continuing to fall and birth rates are too I feel a speck optimistic at least. This is US death rate and life expectancy at birth:

Image

Global life expectancy:

Image

But even at the best case the curve is loooong, maybe too long:

Image

The thing I fear most is a global reenactment of the Irish famine. Capitalists WILL seek the most profit and count government bribes as just another cost of business. The potato crop in Ireland did suffer a blight, but potatoes were only about 20% of the ag output in the 1840's. The crops raised by Irish tenant farmers were exported because the ownership could get better prices elsewhere and the politicians could get better wigs by letting them.

Witness the export of natural gas and oil in the US as prices rise worldwide. After 150 years of extracting fossils it wasn't until 2014 the drillers bought enough congressmen to allow unregulated exports (TRRC imposed shipping limits before 1972 to stabilize price) What else was going to happen with a supermajority of our "representatives" going to the highest bidder? Its capitalism baby!

I think there are still only 2 ways to go on a personal level, get either small or get big. Either get a plot of land and a job to keep it or get in bed with the people running the show and hope they stay on top.

.
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Re: THE Limits to Growth Thread

Unread postby theluckycountry » Thu 18 Nov 2021, 19:30:25

I think if you put a population curve on top of an oil extraction curve you'd see a close correlation pops. If that's the case then one could expect them to decline at the same rates after they peak.
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Re: THE Limits to Growth Thread

Unread postby Newfie » Fri 19 Nov 2021, 08:35:58

Pops,

Hobby Farms. Wealthy folks have them. They often have horses. Thats when I knkw the land is over priced, when I see pet horses.
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Re: THE Limits to Growth Thread

Unread postby Pops » Fri 19 Nov 2021, 09:33:50

theluckycountry wrote:I think if you put a population curve on top of an oil extraction curve you'd see a close correlation pops. If that's the case then one could expect them to decline at the same rates after they peak.

You could be right. The global death rate is about 7.5% now. The rate is increasing as births decline and the population gets older. Depletion is in that same range, 5-8% (discounting fracked well's 75-ish percent). Increasing contraception use could raise the attrition rate considerably. Even in the US only a few percent see contraception as morally wrong. (Not that it won't become a new crusade underwritten by 1%-ers to who will just happen to also want to eliminate taxes)

--
The thing that makes fossils so great is the concentration. Peakers talk all the time about EROEI and how back in the day we only input one barrel of energy to get 100 barrels of oil. But most of the energy "returned" is wasted, ICEs get about 20% well to wheel efficiency if I remember. Those new, heavy plastic lettuce containers in supermarkets —made possible by the miracle of fracking, get no milage at all.

Most of the energy I use is wasted to be honest. I won't go into just how much crap I impulsively buy, resources I blithely consume, and energy I casually waste, but it is considerable. Even at that I figure I consume less than many rich worlders (I haven't commuted in a quarter century and don't try to make a lot of money) but many times more than most everyone else in the world. Point is, I figure I and all rich world people can get by on much less and less concentrated energy before we starve. We won't like it, we may kill each other because of it, but not driving 40 miles per day isn't going to crash civilization as long as it happens gradually.

I don't think...
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Re: THE Limits to Growth Thread

Unread postby JuanP » Fri 19 Nov 2021, 22:58:33

Pops wrote:
Point is, I figure I and all rich world people can get by on much less and less concentrated energy before we starve. We won't like it, we may kill each other because of it, but not driving 40 miles per day isn't going to crash civilization as long as it happens gradually.

I don't think...


A very good point, Pops, and I agree with you completely. There is a lot of overconsumption and waste in the world, and not just in rich countries. I believe the average American could consume five to ten times less resources than they do today, and have a perfectly acceptable quality of life, maybe even better than they do today.

Today my wife and I spent 7 hours helping a wheelchair bound recently widowed old woman to move. We had been preparing for this for weeks. She hired 3 movers and a large truck. We worked very efficiently. Even the security guard that works at the lobby of the condo she moved to told us how impressed he was at how fast and efficient we were, and that he had never seen anyone move in so well in the more than 40 years he had been working there. The amount of stuff she moved was unfreakingbelievable. I would have donated or thrown away more than 90% of it just to not have to pack it, move it, and unpack it. I tried to talk her into it to no avail. Most of the stuff that most of us own is useless junk.
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Re: THE Limits to Growth Thread

Unread postby theluckycountry » Fri 19 Nov 2021, 23:01:20

Pops wrote:Most of the energy I use is wasted to be honest. I won't go into just how much crap I impulsively buy, resources I blithely consume, and energy I casually waste, but it is considerable.

Point is, I figure I and all rich can get by on much less... We won't like it
.


It's interesting pops, to look at the down and outs, the homeless in camps (not on the street) For the most part they are sort of happy and they get on with things. As long as people have enough to eat and a roof over their heads, and are in a community of people in the same social strata, they seem to accept their lot. It's only when they are thrown into a living arrangement where they are surrounded by wealthier people, that they seem to want to go out an steal everything not nailed down.

The government makes life hard for the homeless but if they just set up lots of small camps out back of airports or industrial areas, far from other people, I think most of the problems would go away.
Poverty will be one of the big trends in the future, already is! They might as well get a practical system going now rather than all these BS welfare checks, government housing and other aid that is unsustainable in the long run. Set up camps beside rubbish tips and let them have their pick of what's dumped. They can recycle metals for food $$ perhaps?

Anyway, it's just a thought...
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Re: THE Limits to Growth Thread

Unread postby Pops » Sat 20 Nov 2021, 08:58:22

I really envy people who aren't acquisitive. My nephew for example likes to go places and see things. I like to stay home and build things. But what I really like is buying tools and spending money on house stuff. The best part about flipping houses (in small number) is I get to buy things.

I don't really hate humans for being human, just being conscious and as self-aware as we are is pretty amazing. I just wish we could tune ourselves up a bit before we ruin everything.
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Re: THE Limits to Growth Thread

Unread postby theluckycountry » Sat 20 Nov 2021, 09:28:33

I think we were all that way when we were young, young and free. I owned little more than a motorcycle up to age 25, then the first house and the roots began to grow. Now in early retirement I too love tools and bikes and watches and telescopes and ... I'd buy a boat but I know I'd never use it. I think having stuff has one downside, it makes me less interested in people, who are mostly *ssholes anyway. I'd rather spend my time doing car maintenance that talking with my neighbors, and spend my time wandering the hills doing photography than walking a little rat dog around the block. As I say, it's probably a downside, but is it really?
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Re: THE Limits to Growth Thread

Unread postby Newfie » Sat 20 Nov 2021, 10:02:57

2016 we retired and moved onto the boat. We didn’t have much furniture as we lived much as college sophomores; LOTS of milk crates in the scheme. But we retained the building and used the basement as a storage shed/work area. Lots if stuff down there to maintain the house and boats.

Now, 2021, we are selling the house, a 4 unit apartment. I have been humping shit outta here for 2 weeks. My Wife has been ditching patient records she was required to keep for 7 years. Still some left. Some stuff is going into a 16x 7-1/2 cargo trailer; lathe, table saw, band saw, drill press, some valuables and memorabilia. We built a bed into it so we can sleep there if needed. The rest is getting split between consignment shops, a reclamation charity, and the dump. It is not in us to throw out useful stuff it it can be put to good use.

My parents were Depression kids and saved a lot. Hundreds of gallon mayonnaise jars and lots of tools. Mom saved JFK crap, teddy bears, dolls, and worthless china. I had to clean it all out. Freaking huge pile.

On the other hand it was a time of self cleansing, part of the grieving process. It helped with the grief. My kids won’t have that opportunity.

We still have lots. We have the 2 boats, our (12x24) hunting cabin and our summer cottage in Newfoundland.

Now we are facing a potentially serious medical issue. It looks like there is a likely way through. So I gotta move the boat closer to the medical facility. Not looking forward to a 100 mile trip in winter requiring close navigation. On the other hand, we can simply move our abode.
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