• Global Warming

Equally, the idea that humankind stands at the pinnacle of  theistic creation has been around for thousands of years. The enlightenment did not really challenge this view, it just took the God bit out.

Nature (whatever that is) does not care at all for us or our intelligence or our ability to explain and change the world, or our dominace of it. It is entirely indifferent. If humankind were to dissapear from this planet tomorow - life would go on.

Our problem (and it is our problem) is that we are a product of several billion years of evolution you don't have to be some "greenie nature worshipper' to understand that the history of the planet is embedded in our genes.

There is no doubt that we could make the earth over into any form we please, totally control our environment (Shades of Trotsky here) and change our own nature into that of space going supermen. Sounds good?

I think in essence that is what lies at the heart of the debate. Do we learn to live within our means in the biological sense or do we embark upon a course that leads inevitably to the creation of a master race that is totally divorced from and totally in control of its environment. such abrave new world.

Dalek  

Equally, the idea that humankind stands at the pinnacle of  theistic creation has been around for thousands of years. The enlightenment did not really challenge this view, it just took the God bit out.

Nature (whatever that is) does not care at all for us or our intelligence or our ability to explain and change the world, or our dominace of it. It is entirely indifferent. If humankind were to dissapear from this planet tomorow - life would go on.

Do we learn to live within our means in the biological sense or do we embark upon a course that leads inevitably to the creation of a master race that is totally divorced from and totally in control of its environment

Bill, as a person who earns his living by working on the absolute cutting edge of modern technology I can hardly be accused of being some latter day Luddite.

That natural born Cyborg stuff seems rather infantile to me, sort of like a modern day version of the Futurists of the 1930's.

I put it to you that there  is no alternative to living within our biological means ( these include the entire planet and its inhabitants) but that of an entirely synthetic life support system. Feasible but by definition sterile and bleak.

There is no halfway house, either we take care of the planet (I don't mean tree hugging and "nature worship"  here) or we make plans to artificially support 10b⁺ people in a few years time..

Now the position of the Greenhouse Deniers is that the planet can take care of itself - no need to do any planning or intervention apparently - God will provide.

I take a more positive view of human intelligence, I believe that we can (must) try to understand what is happeneing and that we should take practical steps to counteract the effects of our presence here and to reduce the impact that our presence has on the environment that is so much part of our nature.

Dalek

**I put it to you that there is no alternative to living within our biological means ( these include the entire planet and its inhabitants) but that of an entirely synthetic life support system. Feasible but by definition sterile and bleak.**

When we were hunter gatherers this world view was popular. Nowadays even people allegedly living by "subsistence agriculture" rely for survival and far more than survival on an overwhelmingly synthetic life support system. We do not just hunt and gather the food we eat like early humans emerging from animals. We are by definition a species that lives by collective labor - ie synthetically. Billions of people are sustained by an economy of commodity production in which each lives "artifically", synthetically from a collective social product.

The amount of "energy" we consume (and also produce) to live at vastly less bleak higher levels of culture than the remaining subsistence farmers (who nevertheless engage in synethetic agriculture, not hunter gathering), let alone our early post-hominid ancestors are so far beyond any "biological means" they could even conceive of that we are expected to understand that referring "to living within our biological means" could not possibly refer to living like ancient savages.

"The entire planet and its inhabits" refers to the "natural way" we live now, a few decades ago or at most a century or so ago. That "natural way" is unrecognizably different from how we lived centuries earlier let alone millenia and tens of millienia earlier. But history we are told has now ended.

It is sheer misunderstanding to imagine that dalek actually wants us to live within our biological means in the sense of living like semi-human animals tens of millenia ago dependent on nature rather than social labour synthesizing our livelihood and mode of living.

Its a metaphor. What he really means is simply that we should not advance beyond the way we live now. That we should limit ourselves to the mode of life we are currently capable of synthetically producing by our current mode of production. "Sustainable development" is the usual apologetic phrase rather than "living within our biological means".

This conservative, reactionary mentality is not called luddism. The luddites never asked humanity to live within our means. It is closer to Malthusianism.

The basic principle is the conservative principle of stagnation and the future being dangerous.

The whole history of humanity is that we are a species that does not adapt its lifestyle to its environment but develops "unsustainablly" in ways that require transforming our environment our technological forces of production and our social relations of production. Our unsustainable development has already terraformed most of this planet so that it is no longer a "wilderness", substituted "synthetic" for "natural" products for everything we live on (including ancient things like domesticated wheat and other food staples) and will go much further both intensively here and extensively across the universe and at the same time it has totally transformed the way we relate to each other and will continue to do so.

Throughout our history there have been progressives wanting to speed up the movement forward and reactionaries demanding that we should live within our means. These ideologies are closely connected with the fact that ruling classes fear the instability and threat to their domination that goes with changes undermining our old mode of life while oppressed classes always want more from life than what their exploiters think they should live on.

Earth to Captain Arthur; before you take off in your star-ship for the conquest of the universe there are one or two things you should consider:

• The process by which our air (oxygen being the critical component) is recycled is entirely "natural" and biological*
• The process by which our water is recycled is 99.9999999% entirely natural and biological. (The water treatment we perform is mostly to remove pathogens with a tiny percentage of artificial desalination).**
• The critical phase of energy injection into our food supply is 100% solar energy (Photosynthesis) an entirely natural and biological process***

That we manage to exploit these resorces in a collective and "synthetic" way is not in dispute. I am astonished at the ignorance of these matters that you display.

It is the processes outlined in the dot points above that I am concerned to preserve, they are after all pretty well essential to our survival as a species. (No doubt your descendents will be safe in the Starship "Superpower" Arthur).

* We require the oxidation of Carbon and Hydrogen to provide us with energy; plants supply these  elements to us in a form that we can use and act to return the oxygen we use into the atmosphere by a process called "reduction" that is driven by solar energy. A number of negative feedback mechanisms operate to stabilise this process.

**The energy requirements for the artificial recycle of water for our present population would require the construction of several million power stations.

***Likewise the production of food fo our present population using artificial means (no photosynthesis) would also require the construction of several million power stations.

Like I say "I take a more positive view of human intelligence, I believe that we can (must) try to understand what is happeneing and that we should take practical steps to counteract the effects of our presence here and to reduce the impact that our presence has on the environment that is so much part of our nature".

Dalek ( Feet firmly planted on Planet Earth) 

David,

If you want to venture beyond planet earth you had better make sure that the conditions here are such that you can really concentrate upon your faster than light spaceship building program (sorry - I just burst into loud laughter and startled the person in the next office). The breeding program you envisage would soon overwhelm the poor old solar system.  The planetary pickings in our solar system are thin indeed so you would need to head off into the Galaxy.

 Are you seriously suggesting that there is no limit to exponential growth? I gather Mathematics is not your bag.

Dalek.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,837058,00.html: "Earth's magnetic field - the force that protects us from deadly radiation bursts from outer space - is weakening dramatically. Scientists have discovered that its strength has dropped precipitously over the past two centuries and could disappear over the next 1,000 years. The effects could be catastrophic. Powerful radiation bursts, which normally never touch the atmosphere, would heat up its upper layers, triggering climatic disruption. <snip> Normally theseare contained by the planet's magnetic field in space. However, if it disappears, particle storms will start to batter the atmosphere.[...] it will heat up the upper atmosphere and send ripples round the world with enormous, unpredictable effects on the climate."

Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist. (Kenneth Boulding)

The cube root of 2 is roughly 1.26 and even more roughly you can get a period of doubling by dividing a % growth rate by 70.

I think it was Ralph Nader who concluded that if you packed humanity tightly into a sphere and allowed it to grow at any positive rate it would eventually (and remarkably quickly) have a radius larger than the earth's orbit around the sun and expanding faster than the speed of light. (But I haven't been able to find the reference).

Obviously if resources are finite we will run out of them eventually even with a linear or zero rate of growth. Exponential just makes it (much) quicker.

Those with their feet planted firmly in the grave insist that we should take practical steps to counteract the effects of our presence here and to reduce the impact that our presence has on the environment.

Fortunately the rest of us are more interested in living and counteracting the effects of our environment on us by transforming our environment. We're also not stuck on preserving our species but becoming something more.

Exponential rates of growth are frustratingly slow for anyone who actually wants to get off this planet where the native hominids keep talking about the weather.

We need to transform nature much faster than that.

For conservatives on the other hand stasis or "sustainability" is the goal.

Mao Tsetung put it very well:

The history of mankind is one of continuous development from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom. This process is never-ending. In any society in which classes exist class struggle will never end. In classless society the struggle between the new and the old and between truth and falsehood will never end. In the fields of the struggle for production and scientific experiment, mankind makes constant progress and nature undergoes constant change, they never remain at the same level. Therefore, man has constantly to sum up experience and go on discovering, inventing, creating and advancing. Ideas of stagnation, pessimism, inertia and complacency are all wrong. They are wrong because they agree neither with the historical facts of social development over the past million years, nor with the historical facts of nature so far known to us (i.e., nature as revealed in the history of celestial bodies, the earth, life, and other natural phenomena).

Quotations Chapter 22

Lenin on The Working Class and Neo-Malthusianism puts it more sharply:

vvvv

This is the radical difference that distinguishes the psychology of the peasant, handicraftsman, intellectual, the petty bourgeois in general, from that of the proletarian. The petty bourgeois sees and feels that he is heading for ruin, that life is becoming more difficult, that the struggle for existence is ever more ruthless, and that his position and that of his family are becoming more and more hopeless. It is an indisputable fact, and the petty bourgeois protests against it.

But how does he protest?

He protests as the representative of a class that is hopelessly perishing, that despairs of its future, that is depressed and cowardly. There is nothing to be done ... if only there were fewer children to suffer our torments and hard toil, our poverty and our humiliation—such is the cry of the petty bourgeois.

The class-conscious worker is far from holding this point of view. He will not allow his consciousness to be dulled by such cries no matter how sincere and heartfelt they may be. Yes, we workers and the mass of small proprietors lead a life that is filled with unbearable oppression and suffering. Things are harder for our generation than they were for our fathers. But in one respect we are luckier than our fathers. We have begun to learn and are rapidly learning to fight —and to fight not as individuals, as the best of our fathers fought, not for the slogans of bourgeois speechifiers that are alien to us in spirit, but for our slogans, the slogans of our class. We are fighting better than our fathers did. Our children will fight better than we do, and they will be victorious.

The working class is not perishing, it is growing, becoming stronger, gaining courage, consolidating itself, educating itself and becoming steeled in battle. We are pessimists as far as serfdom, capitalism and petty, production are concerned, but we are ardent optimists in what concerns the working-class movement and its aims. We are already laying the foundation of a new edifice and our children will complete its construction.

^^^^

Arthur, David; Malthus was as nasty a bit of work as you could come across. Marx, Engels and Lenin did a really good demolition job upon him. He did do one good thing; and that was to draw Darwins attention to the exponential growth of unchecked populations. Darwin himself acknowledges this debt and saw it as pivotal in his theory.  Perhaps you should study the theory (Evolution) that you espouse so loudly. Your characterisation of me as a latter day Malthusian seems to be the product of some fever or other.

Now to global warming: Firstly you accuse me of subscribing to "sustainable development" when all I want to point out is that at the present time we have no option but to rely on photsysnthesis and the various globally based biological processes that sustain us. (Maybe you have a secret "biosphere 3" that works and that does not require massive infusions of O² to keep going? Do you call it the Leo Strauss?).

Transforming our environment: Who is trying to impede progress here? Those of us who are developing and commoditisng new technologies for transport and energy generation and distribution are constantly battling with the very same people who support your Global Warming denial program.

Coal fired power generation? It is a 19th century technology that should have been phased out years ago. Your denial of GW supports this industry (That is - by the way - massively subsidised by Governments in all countries). Uraniun fuelled nuclear power ? Certainly not a long term proposition and it is plagued by thermal inefficiencies and waste disposal problems and requires even bigger subsidies than coal. (Thorium fuelled nuclear is better but as you cannot make a bomb with it no- no one wants to subsidise it).

You talk about transforming stuff and you take an ideological position on GW that actively supports the status quo! An ideological position that supports and is supported by every rusted on conservative and right wing nutbag. 

It seems to me that there is enough genuine scientific concern about the effects of the increase of anthropogenic CO² for us to ethically use this concern to massively advance our transport and power generation systems.

If you want to talk about scientific gravy trains you should investigate the fusion boys who have been working away for 60 years and so far have produced zip. A more modern cabal is the Fuel Cell for cars program; now that's a sweet little earner that will never produce a viable product. 

Firstly you accuse me of subscribing to "sustainable development" when all I want to point out is that at the present time we have no option but to rely on photsysnthesis and the various globally based biological processes that sustain us. (Maybe you have a secret "biosphere 3" that works and that does not require massive infusions of O2 to keep going? Do you call it the Leo Strauss?).

Uraniun fuelled nuclear power ? Certainly not a long term proposition and it is plagued by thermal inefficiencies and waste disposal problems and requires even bigger subsidies than coal.

So, to what extent could we rely on nuclear power? The current estimated resource of 14.4 million tonnes would only provide about 5 per cent[446] of 21st century energy production assuming 2 per cent annual growth and no increase in the energy obtained from each tonne. Furthermore, it would be used up by 2090 if the current share of 6.5 per cent were maintained or not much later than mid century if in a few decades time we pushed out capacity to a 20 per cent share.

However, it does not seem too wildly optimistic to envisage nuclear power being able to provide larger shares of this century's energy. Given more exploration and better extraction technologies the recoverable conventional resource could be considerably bigger than present estimates. Moderate increases in the energy harnessed from each tonne of uranium could also make a difference. Of course, the larger the share contemplated the more it would have to rely on the development of new technologies such as breeder or thorium reactors or the extraction of uranium from sea water. With such innovations the resource could become huge and a major provider of energy later this century or in the next. (page 117)

Thorium fuelled nuclear is better but as you cannot make a bomb with it no- no one wants to subsidise it

If you want to talk about scientific gravy trains you should investigate the fusion boys who have been working away for 60 years and so far have produced zip.

David,

You say "

I can't see how the biosphere or its basic systems are greatly threatened by a bit of climate change.
No the biosphere and its basic systems are not greatly threatened by climate change. Apart from some unlikely catastrophe life will go on under most climate change scenarios. We are the ones threatened -not as a species perhaps but as a civilisation. However a large climate change might have unforseen consequences.

What do you think were the conditions that allowed (forced?) humankind to emerge as a separate "intelligent" species from its primate ancestors at the end of the last ice age? Climate change certainly had a huge role to play in this. It was clearly one of the conditions for change. Maybe giant intelligent rats would emerge to wipe us out after a serious climate change event? (Joke).

For our kind of intelligent life to continue on planet earth and for it to travel into space you need time to build your spaceships or Dyson Sphere or ringworlds or whatever. Until then you need to pay some attention to caring for and maintaining your environment as you cannot control it yet.

Nuclear power

From an engineering perspective nuclear power (Uranium) is little different from coal fired plant, it has similar steam turbines and similar efficiencies (less actually). The "new technology" reactors are all fifty years away. Most of the uranium that is mined to fuel the reactors finishes up glowing in a dump somewhere. From memory only a few percent of the potential energy in uranium is released in conventional reactors. To get the utilisation from uranium that you postulate, you have to go firstly the "enrichment" route and then the Breeder route , this creates Plutonium that is A. Very good for bomb making and B. as radioactive as all get out and with a half life of squillions of years. (Enriched uranium can also be used for bombs). The problem with breeder reactors is that they themselves can explode.  Isurance companies are a tad reluctant to insure this class of machine. Leaving aside the dangers from waste; the uranium cycle is complex, costly in the extreme and creates the conditions for the manufacture of nuclear weapons. All this for 5% of global energy production?

Thorium is a slightly different matter, Australia has lots of it, so does India You need a cyclotron to get it going and if you shut down the cyclotron the reaction stops - very safe (unlike self sustaining fission reactions). Also the waste is more benign I understand.

Artificial geo-thermal is a far more efficient way to generate energy than almost any other, it requires no fuel, generates no waste at all (Except for the tailings from the holes you drill- these make good fill) and requires no particular technological or scientific breakthroughs (Except to overthrow the 19th century methodist idea that you canot generate energy without burning something). Geo thermal in Australia is mostly "fossil" heat left over from the radioactive decay of thorium -ages ago, the radiactivity has now decayed to zero.

Why do you say that nuclear power is plagued by waste problems? High level waste is not huge in volume and could be stored in virtually indestructible containers.
I think there is a bit more to it than that.  So far the US has not succeeded in finding a suitable repository Yucca mountain is a fizzer. I happen to know the guy who had charge of the UK high level waste disposal program he tells me that it is an entirely intractable problem.

If you want to talk about scientific gravy trains you should investigate the fusion boys who have been working away for 60 years and so far have produced zip.
The ITR site completely proves my point, so far after 60 odd years these guys by their own admission have 90% of the job to do. A scientifically literate reading of their guff reveals that they are no closer now than they were 20years ago to a continuous energy supply. I am not commenting on the eventual feasibility of nuclear fusion that actually generates energy (outside the sun). It may well be possible but I suspect our great great grandchildren will be waiting for it too. 

I mentioned fuel cells for motor cars as a gravy train. They fall down on the basic physics. A fuel cell based upon proton transport (also Oxygen transport systems) has to be an energy source not a power source. Thus it is totally unsuitable for vehicles that must accelerate. Unless of course you use an energy storage device  that has a power delivery capacity as well; if you do this you don't need the fuel cell. This has not stopped the Professors from milking billions of dollars for completely futile programs.

The two programs are strikingly similar, both are funded by decision makers who long ago forgot whatever science they learned in first year. Both create nothing.

P.S. I just love the world this enriched uranium generates; In the US they use black painted armoured trains with guns overflown by helicopters with machine guns and lots of National Guard troops spread around just to transport  a few tonnes of enriched uranium - such a brave new world - such economy.

This is an ordinary suburban street in a beachside suburb of brisbane. The water you see is sea  water that has risen upp through the storm water drains in an average tide (not even peaked yet). The date is wrong thephoto was taken last week. These houses were built  20-30 years ago.

But, dalek, would Al Gore have won an Academy Award for his movie had he used this as an example rather than the ridiculously exaggerrated ones he did use?

Looks like the tides may be getting higher around Brisbane. Or maybe the drains need repair work. Or maybe warmer weather is going to compel a lot of Brisbane folk to move house.

Nothing in any of this to warrant an end to the unsustainable development that has brought us humans 'out of the caves' and into the light of the stars.

Barry

Barry, Al Gore is a wanker, we all know that.

I investigated the phenomena of the water in the street when I saw it last Sunday, it was during a normal tide and not at the peak. The water was sea water that had backed up through the concrete drains into the nature strips. I returned later and noted that judging by the flotsam on the road the water had almost covered it and the nature strips. When the houses were built the drains were installed to take stormwater into the sea (not to bring the sea on to the nature strip). One of the residents told me that if it rains at high tide their entire front yard is flooded. engineers tell me that the concrete drains will have to be replaced, pumps installed and a sea wall built within the next 6-10 years or the homes will have to be abandoned. This is a working class suburb Barry and no doubt deserves your flippant response??

You see just becuase a wanker like Gore supports something that does not make that something wrong. I suggest you read the page opposite the editorial in todays Financial Review.

Dalek

Dalek, yes: bring on the pumps and install a sea wall. It can be done! (We're still all going to die, though).

Having grown up in a low-income migrant working class family in the one suburb (Brunswick, Melbourne) for nearly 30 years, I am certainly not flippant about any problems affecting the workers. Why, dalek, the view from my bedroom window for most of my life was a tall brick factory wall about a metre away from my parents' house. And to think, some of the leaders of the Communist Party of Australia (M-L) used to tell me that my class background gave me vast vision!

If I can master the technology, I will post a photo taken of my garage, c1975, at the back of my parents' house in Brunswick, when it was badly flooded. A whole lot of cars came floating out of a neighbours backyard - they were 'hot', if you know what I mean. My own car was soaked, as the water level reached way above the floor.

We needed new pipes in the street, as there had once been a creek running at the back of the houses. New pipes were installed and, from what I hear, it hasn't happened since.

Yep, new pipes, plus pumps, maybe a sea wall or two. Humans can fix it. The answer is not to live sustainably within the framework of crude Nature.

And this is where I part company with both you and Al.

Barry