Posts by henry laurensen
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These people seem to be deadly serious. Big action indeed!
Personally, I believe a rapid financial crash combined with an initially slow, but then increasingly rapid fall in energy supply is the most likely scenario. Financial crisis can cause many of the effects Holmgren discusses in his scenario work in relation to energy and climate impacts.
http://www.theautomaticearth.com/crash-on-demand-a-response-to-david-holmgren/
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Seems that there is a debate out there ( yeah right out there) which deals with the issues in a wholistic sustainability framework. Just stumbled on this stuff :-
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Hard News: The Language of Climate, in reply to BenWilson,
Assumed that it would be the pre-hydro era . So probably coal.
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Hard News: The Language of Climate, in reply to BenWilson,
Quite a lot of energy about yesterday. That's what the thread is actually about isn't it ? :-) Population and energy.
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Hard News: The Language of Climate, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
eclectic tractors?
http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/18408/electric-tractorToo expensive to run , apparently.
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Getting back to the middle ground thing , Bart said this back up the page:-
So yeah, the planet will cope and most folks are pretty certain there will be life on the planet (unless we go to full Venus-like hothouse) but there is not certainty that the life that exists will be able to support our civilisation.
Assuming that there will be human life on the planet, it is a question of how many humans can be supported at what level of comfort. In other words it’s the same old sustainability of civilisation problem that we’ve been not talking much about for about 50 years. Certainly doing almost nothing about it.
There is more than one reason why it’s not sustainable ; climate being one. Energy being another.
This study adds population, water and agriculture:-And they are all intertwined to a greater or lesser extent.
Probably most people who have thought about it agree with this. We just don't know which one will get us first. -
Ever seen a Nissan Leaf? One would think that they would be good around Auckland , but $60,000 new for a small car?
Autotrader has 3 second -hand ones listed at $30, 000, $40,000 and $50,000.
With NZ headed towards 80% renewable electriciity it should have been a no-brainer , if the price was right.Maybe it's those distant weekends away that kill the idea ; the idea of a "work-car" is not new. It 's just that the "work-car" is usually the old inefficient low cost dunger.
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Hard News: The Language of Climate, in reply to bmk,
There were huge fuel efficiency gains in cars for a while; though they seem to have stalled lately.
The latest plug-in hybrid SUV claims 1.9L/100Km= 124miles/U.S. gallon = 149 miles/ Imp. gallon.
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A well-respected(?) sceptic (Richard G. Brown @ Duke University) made this statement (edited) recently :-
“. . . it is high time that we [broke] the “hegemony” of carbon-based fossil fuel producers [ . . .] because it is dirty, expensive, a waste of precious pre-synthesized organic molecules of enormous value UNBURNED, and not a suitable basis for a steady-state world civilization with a high global standard of living - the only kind of world that might one day transcend war, poverty, and widespread preventable human misery.
It is also good to prevent any single corporate interest group from amassing enough wealth and structural dominance that they become a political factor at the expense of the people they serve, a tail wagging the dog, and this has long since been passed with e.g. oil companies
So I’m all for solar (sustainable forever, basically); thorium (sustainable for at least 1000 years, long enough maybe to solve the fusion problem); fusion ; biodiesel IF it is sustainably profitable without subsidy and ecologically no worse than oil wells; conservation measures based on clever technology that are themselves life improvements (faucets that go on only while you use them, toilets that flush themselves, lights that only go on when there is somebody there to see the light, heat that goes on only when somebody is there that needs to keep warm).
A lot of this stuff has positive ROI just because the resources saved cost more money than the device with any reasonable amortization.”
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Hard News: The Language of Climate, in reply to Bart Janssen,
we don’t need to stop burning all fossil fuels to get carbon emissions to a point where we don’t damage the climate (too much).
It seems that the immediate goal should be to increase the efficiency of energy usage overall, but in particular the efficiency of fossil fuel usage.
<q> use technology to create other solutions to the problem instead.<q>
<q>The biggest piece of unsupported scaremongering . . . comes . . . from those businesses with vested interests . . . <q>
The middle ground where all (including deniers and vested interests, governments etc.) can agree on the goal would seem to be somewhere about here;; increased efficiency, reduced wastage and squandering , and finding cost -competitive alternative energy sources.
Who would lose?