Big Brother

[K-Dog]

Sadly I have to report censorship at The Sunflower Paradigm.

Did Ugo do it?  I doubt it.

Workin for the FBI  Google be working for de FBI.

The comment was up for several days.  Somebody figured out the Marxist bias in my comment and nuked it.    The comment had links, but was up for over a week.  I don't accept deletion for technical issues as reasonable since the comment was up for over a week.


I present the article and comment.

Debating Renewables: the Clash of the Straw Men



There has to be some reason why we tend to polarize every issue and divide ourselves into two opposite fields engaged in a struggle of strawmen. And yet, we keep praising the "open debate" even though we know that it doesn't work, it never worked, and perhaps never will.

Try it with renewable energy. You state that renewables are a good technology to produce energy, and you are immediately submerged by a tsunami of criticism from angry people who accuse you of wanting to destroy the planet and starve people to death in the impossible attempt to keep the economy growing. On the other side of the debate, some people really think that "sustainable development" is really nothing different from the good, old economic growth, except that it is painted in green.

Is it possible to strike a middle way? Marco Raugei, a scientist working on renewable energy, puts forward a plea for understanding each other in a recent paper published on "Biophysical Economics." With the prudence typical of the scientist, Raugei starts with, "There appears to be a growing polarization." My gosh! Marco, did you really say "there appears to be"  But the paper makes a very simple point, unfortunately almost always obscured in the clash of the titanic strawmen. It is that it is perfectly possible to use renewable energy to replace fossil fuels, but the resulting world will not be the same as it is today. And this possibility doesn't free us from the constraints that a finite world poses on economic growth. So simple, and so impossible to understand!

Let me propose to you a few excerpts from Raugei's paper: 
___________________________________________

From:

Addressing a Counterproductive Dichotomy in the Energy Transition Debate
By Marco Raugei, Biophysical economics, 8, Article number: 4 (2023)

    ...several academic authors have increasingly positioned themselves (either explicitly or implicitly, but often equally unmistakably) within either of two seemingly ideological "camps." These may be broadly characterized as, respectively, that of the "systemic pessimists" (i.e., authors who champion concepts such as carrying capacity, overpopulation, overshoot, peak oil, and peak resources, but who often downplay or even dismiss the potential of renewable energies) and that of the "technological optimists" (i.e., authors who mostly tend to focus on the rapid advancements in renewable energy technologies and the promise that these hold to decarbonize future societies, while often failing to address the broader context of other bio-physical planetary limits). While proponents of both camps often bring valid arguments and evidence to the table to support their viewpoints, they often seem to summarily dismiss the arguments and evidence put forth by the other camp, thereby ultimately allowing the discourse to degenerate into an unhelpful and, arguably, un-scientific "us vs. them" contest.


    In the 1970s, the Club of Rome (a group of current and former politicians, United Nations administrators, diplomats, scientists, economists, and business leaders from around the globe) commissioned the famous report "The limits to growth" (Meadows et al. 1972), in which the consequences of unconstrained population and economic growth were quantitatively investigated by means of a computer model based on five key interdependent variables: population, agricultural production, non-renewable resource depletion, industrial output, and pollution generation. Widespread and long-lasting debate and controversy ensued on many details about the model structure, parameters, and assumptions, but the key message was clear, and it was essentially found to still hold by several other authors who reviewed and updated the calculations (Bardi 2011; Herrington 2020; Hall 2022): the Earth's system is incapable of supporting infinite population and economic growth because of the finite nature of its natural resources.


    More recently, a range of authors have taken it upon themselves to reaffirm these fundamental concepts within the specific context of future energy scenarios. But a new dimension to the discussion had been added in the interim, as various independent studies, often based on life cycle assessments (LCA), had started to appear, pointing to high energy return on investment (EROI) of renewable energies, and specifically photovoltaics (PVs). By some, these results were interpreted as undermining the very foundations of the concepts discussed above, for if renewable energy were indefinitely viable then perhaps the "limits to growth" could be postponed indefinitely. As a result, what was originally a discussion about finite resources in a more general sense, started turning into much more specific arguments about issues like what is the proper EROI for PVs and/or other renewables; broadly speaking, the debate on the ultimate possibilities of renewable energies became unhelpfully conflated with whether or not there are limits to growth.


    In fact, some of these authors (e.g., Seibert and Reese 2021) have tended to paint renewable energies as a pernicious distraction from the key issue of global overshoot of the Earth's carrying capacity, therefore also brushing aside any suggestion of renewable energies' ability to significantly reduce global warming and environmental degradation (vs. the continued use of fossil fuels). ... "technological optimistic" authors may have studiously and rigorously investigated the potential of renewable energies to deliver modern societies from the grip of fossil fuels, but they have failed to consider the wider issues that would continue to affect the world, even in a future world largely supported by renewable energies. In fact, the hitherto dominating paradigm of unfettered growth in material consumption and rampant exploitation of many natural and ecosystem resources is incompatible with fundamental bio-physical constraints (Rockström et al. 2009; Steffen et al. 2015), and it remains ultimately unsustainable irrespective of which energy resources are used to power it.


    ...the current polarization of views points to a false dichotomy that risks devaluing both positions, and it trivializes what should instead be the most important research questions of all, namely: to which extent a more sustainable future is indeed possible, and which systemic changes (including, but not limited to, phasing out fossil fuels) will be required to achieve it. ... Ultimately, it is high time to admit that both sets of core arguments loosely ascribed in this article to the two opposed ideological "camps" are probably simultaneously true, to some extent at least. And from this simple realization follows what should have been obvious all along, i.e., that adopting a more balanced "middle way" approach is the only truly sensible way forward for a healthy and genuinely scientific debate.



The complete paper by Marco Raugei is available at this link.

Comments:

GustavoSeptember 10, 2023 at 12:07 AM

Subyacente a la dicotomía observada hay un "sentido" intersubjetivo social-cultural que es la raíz del problema y que, por las características, dificultará cualquier alternativa de solución. Los seres humanos culturalmente están en permanente competencia por los recursos cualquiera sean estos, desde ideas hasta tierra, personas, minerales, etc. Cuando digo "culturalmente" me refiero a una dinámica sobre las comunicaciones que producen comunicaciones en el marco dado por el sentido de la competencia que conforman un sistema autopoietico cerrado. No es posible resolverlo dentro del sistema. La dinámica es, actualmente y siempre probablemente, autodestructiva lo que no asegura que se detenga. La cultura de la competencia prevalecerá luego del fin inevitable de la civilización, aunque éste fin es una oportunidad de cambiar el sentido.

k-dogSeptember 11, 2023 at 9:12 PM

You end with : "The culture of competition will prevail after the inevitable end of civilization, although this end is an opportunity to change direction."

In my comment below I mention a video in which Bill Rees makes this point. Indigenous people who appear to live in harmony with nature do so AFTER they make all their mega-fauna extinct. Harmony (sing it), is found at a lower level of sustenance than prior generations enjoyed. If anything is learned, necessity and the bitter facts of life is the teacher, and our social bubble is not yet instructed.

The deleted comment follows.  I suspected there could be trouble so I saved a copy:

Is it possible to strike a middle way?

No!

No is the answer.  If wishes were horses, fools would ride.  But in this world, fools can't ride, despite what Marco wants. 

Marco imagines a 'climate debate' to be between two idealists with different ideologies.  If such were the case, one side could persuade with superior logic and arguments, but this is not so.  One side of the climate argument represents true facts and one side actually does not.

Marco Raugei dismisses those who champion concepts such as carrying capacity, overpopulation, overshoot, peak oil, and peak resources as people with straw men arguments.  It is to his advantage to do so.

But these are not straw men arguments.  Overshoot is real.  Overshoot is real, and Overshoot correctly describes the material condition of humanity at this time.

Marco Raugei knows the number of people who actually think growth will destroy the planet is about 0.01%.  How many people correctly believe humanity is in overshoot?  In America, I'll guess 10,000 total.  Add a few more zeros, and you might have the number of millions who along with Marco think GROWTH IS GOOD.

This is not a debate between two straw men.  This is a debate between power and impotence.  Between actual existing material conditions and idealistic bullshit people in power would prefer you believe.

This video captures the essence of today's post.  https://youtu.be/ID-P1_AwczM

At 27 minutes in, the temperature of the interview gets warm, and lesser people would have started screaming at each other.

The environmental footprint of green energy in a world of eight billion would be unsustainable.  But as there are simply not enough resources to give everyone on the planet the same lifestyle everyone on this blog enjoys, we will not find out.  I am sure an average reader of this blog is in the upper 10% of global affluence.  The rest of humanity won't get to the same affluence, but wants to.  This is a problem.  Countries which deny their young men a path to success will find this out first.

By the time material conditions show a green paradise is unattainable, the world will be in chaos.  As Bill Rees says in the video, 'the mainstream' (those not even involved in debate) will bring us all down.

Actual material conditions, not the quality of argument (or lack thereof) defines our future.  Only one man in this argument is made of straw.  Historically, humanity grows until limits stop growth.  This is the way things play out, there are no exceptions.

https://chasingthesquirrel.com/doomstead/index.php



Censorship is why the Doomstead Diner is hosted in our own space.  We own the Doomstead and do what we want.  Google owns 'blogspot' and  Google is controlled by 'THOSE GUYS'.  Who do what they want.

[TDoS]

Censorship is why the Doomstead Diner is hosted in our own space.  We own the Doomstead and do what we want.  Google owns 'blogspot' and  Google is controlled by 'THOSE GUYS'.  Who do what they want.

Indeed. So, good for the goose, good for the gander kind of argument? I suppose those who can do it to million or billions are just more noticable, and irritates others who want to do the same thing but aren't capable of achieving a scale beyond....3 or 4?

[K-Dog]

Censorship is why the Doomstead Diner is hosted in our own space.  We own the Doomstead and do what we want.  Google owns 'blogspot' and  Google is controlled by 'THOSE GUYS'.  Who do what they want.

Indeed. So, good for the goose, good for the gander kind of argument? I suppose those who can do it to million or billions are just more noticable, and irritates others who want to do the same thing but aren't capable of achieving a scale beyond....3 or 4?

You should be kept away from sharp objects.  The concept of me having free speech here as owner and author, but you not being able to do what you want is something only adults can understand.

[TDoS]

Censorship is why the Doomstead Diner is hosted in our own space.  We own the Doomstead and do what we want.  Google owns 'blogspot' and  Google is controlled by 'THOSE GUYS'.  Who do what they want.

Indeed. So, good for the goose, good for the gander kind of argument? I suppose those who can do it to million or billions are just more noticable, and irritates others who want to do the same thing but aren't capable of achieving a scale beyond....3 or 4?

You should be kept away from sharp objects.

And you 160 year old sucker rod production systems.

The concept of me having free speech here as owner and author, but you not being able to do what you want is something only adults can understand.

According to you, you DON'T have free speech here because the MIB occasionally break in, erase things, rearrange stuff, and disappear post/articles and links and whatnot.

So now, you, the owner of the place being hacked into, and author of the things being erased and removed or whatever, have had your free speech restored? How do you know? Did the MIB send you a note telling you they were giving it back and promising to never again do these bad things to you ever again?

[RE]

Complaining about censorship is a violation of the rules.  I will give you time in the cooler for quiet meditation tonight. 

RE

[K-Dog]

Complaining about censorship is a violation of the rules.  I will give you time in the cooler for quiet meditation tonight. 

RE

A total violation of the rules.  Complaining about censorship here is a form of censorship.  It is a troll tactic that tries to claim the right to pee in your pool.  I shall explain. 

Free speech is not something that has a nuanced understanding in America.  In America free speech is confused with a right to say whatever you wish anywhere you wish.  That is wrong.  Free speech is your right to speak where appropriate without interference from others.  That is what the screaming of 'fire in a crowded theater' conundrum about free speech is supposed to emphasize.

If TDOS wants to start a website about how America will never run out of oil because we have never pumped more oil than we do now he has a right to do so.  He does not have a right to publish that message here.  He can come here to debate his point of view if he is respectful, and he does not ignore us whenever he feels like it.

Or not.  RE and I can decide to permanently ban TDOS's ass anytime we want.  TDOS has a lot of trouble with the respectful part of debate.  He enjoys attacking our personal characters.  Since TDOS only has to piss one of us off, making bets on his days being numbered would not be foolish.  I am not writing this to make our troll understand.  Or RE since he already does.  Others who come here, if any, may find this interesting.

You think you understand free speech?  Own something that publishes as well as being someone with a message to publish, and perhaps you might.  This website is a qualifying example.  My understanding of what free speech is, and is not, expanded greatly once I was on both sides of the contradiction.



She can pee in my  pool if she wants to.  I'll even get a pool. 

[RE]

If TDOS wants to start a website about how America will never run out of oil because we have never pumped more oil than we do now he has a right to do so.

I have suggested this on numerous occasions, and if he was really serious about getting his POV out in the PeakOil blogosphere, he would do so.  When we were booted or had our posting removed from websites like PeakOil.com & Clusterfuck Nation, we set up our own websites so that we could continue to provide our World Class understanding of the issues impacting on collapse to the blog and forum reading public.  Tdos could do the same thing anytime, but he doesn't. Because his objective is not to inform readers, it's to disrupt the flow of information from this one in any way he can.  One way to do that is to get into a meta debate about free speech.  Another is to make character attacks either on us, or on any other World Class experts we make a link to or pull a quote from.

According to him, he has extensive material published on the web on his favorite topic, except it's not available for reading by blog readers because he's too chickenshit to reveal his real name and link to this vast depository of World Class Peak Oil information. lol.  But you can trust him, it's all highly respected material that is read by other World Class experts in his field.

All he needs to do to have a shred of credibility is take 10 minutes to set up his own EndlessOil SMF on creataforum.com for free and start it off with links to all his articles, then drop in the commentariat of PeakOil.com or here when his latest ban expires and publish the link to the forum.  POOF, he'll have the same free speech we have here, he will be Admin there, Power of God on a Forum. lol.

Instead of this common fucking sense solution to his recurring problem of being a disrespectful asshole and getting himself more time in the cooler, he waits for his sentence to finish andwithin 2-3 posts gets his sorry ass booted right back in there.  It is a Failure to Communicate.

RE

[K-Dog]

When we were booted or had our posting removed from websites like PeakOil.com & Clusterfuck Nation, we set up our own websites so that we could continue to provide our World Class understanding of the issues impacting on collapse to the blog and forum reading public.

Exactly right.  And thank you for not making Clusterfuck Nation a link.

[TDoS]

If TDOS wants to start a website about how America will never run out of oil because we have never pumped more oil than we do now he has a right to do so.  He does not have a right to publish that message here.  He can come here to debate his point of view if he is respectful, and he does not ignore us whenever he feels like it.

TDoS isn't an idiot, and knows quite well that peak oil is a mathematical given. And it is ridiculous pretending that the message of "gee folks are calling it early because they don't know dick about oil" is the same as "oil will never run out".

And start a website? That makes more sense than presentations at national conventions and conferences among geoscience professionals who understand the difference between the two perspectives I just clarified for those who seem to think are synonmous?

[RE]

And start a website? That makes more sense than presentations at national conventions and conferences among geoscience professionals who understand the difference between the two perspectives I just clarified for those who seem to think are synonmous?

It makes a lot more sense than wasting your time here where the few people who read the website find you to be lacking in credibility and trollish in your behavior.  Since you're so well respected by geoscience professionals, stick to them if you are too chickenshit to start your own website and use your real name.

RE

[TDoS]

And start a website?

It makes a lot more sense than wasting your time here where the few people who read the website....

I never told you why I linger among certain old school peak oil claimants/doomers. And because you don't know the why, you don't know why it is NOT time wasting.

....find you to be lacking in credibility and trollish in your behavior.

The cumulative training, scientific and professional experience across all your members across all your website incarnations aren't capable of reviewing my work, let alone critiquing it. You are free to prove me wrong of course.     Your high school was pretty good, who knows, you might succeed where all the company petroleum geologists, geochemists, international experts, academics, college professors, PhDs and USGS did not. 

Since you're so well respected by geoscience professionals, stick to them if you are too chickenshit to start your own website and use your real name.
RE

I use my own name all the time. I'll admit, I'm careful when on websites. Sometimes they'll track you down using your IPs on your posts as you travel, track you to national conferences, use some deductive reasoning and database analysis to tell everyone who you are when you would prefer they not.

And then realize why the previous paragraph I wrote is completely accurate, and don't know whether to shit or go blind.

[Vegematic Deluxe]

 Although I agree that continued growth is completely unsustainable, I question the assumption that there are only about 10,000 people who realize this. Most confirmed doomers eventually get exhausted proclaiming a truth that nobody wants to hear.  I believe that even with the massive suppression of truth, there are no doubt huge numbers of people who refuse to don the rose colored glasses and understand the unprecedented disaster our species is facing.
 The difficulty for many is in being able to get the message out to a corporate controlled media determined to mislead and obfuscate.  Many people may have a good understanding of the effect unfettered capitalism is having on the planet, yet simply tacitly participate in the system out of economic necessity.  Of course, this is precisely how the system is designed.  Most are just too exhausted to fight it.   

[K-Dog]

I question the assumption that there are only about 10,000 people who realize this.

Compelling research by Erica Chenoweth, a political scientist at Harvard University, says that civil disobedience is the most powerful way of shaping world politics.  Chenoweth found that nonviolent campaigns are twice as likely to achieve their goals as violent campaigns. Chenoweth claims it takes around 3.5% of the population actively participating in protests to ensure serious political change.

More than ten thousand but less than 10 million or the world would be different by the above.  That's quite a spread, but if the number of well informed is even a million.  I'd be surprised.  If there were a million well informed squirming with truth there would be organized political activity.  Like in the occupy movement days.  We would find each other. 

Nobody wants to hear the message you say.  I agree, and that means very few actually understand our predicament.  The religion of modernity puts no limits on growth, and cultural hegemony silences the blasphemy of thinking the existing system is anything less than perfect.  Belief in the infallibility of technology is rampant, and even radical socialists and others outside the mainstream believe if things were 'fixed' there would be enough stuff to go around.  They are all wrong about that.

I'll move my number up to 100K but any higher, and I play the Trump card.    The Trump card absolutely shows the number of well informed people in America is less than a million.  And considering the duopoly has almost the entire population in thrall I content that the vast majority of citizens of the North American Continent live in intellectual ignorance. 

If we had more than 100,000 well informed people we would hear more than crickets.


And we would find each other offline.

Generations before us saw natural wonders we can't imagine.  Rivers boiling with fish.  The passenger pigeon.  Buffalo as far as the eye can see.  Mammoths and mega-fauna we do not even know about.  Memories gone, memories lost like tears in rain.  In our own time the oldest among us have seen things newer generations don't know about.  There is an entropy to knowledge, a forgetting.  Literacy is also in decline.  Video killed the radio star.  Video is fine, but reading is fundamental.

The number of well informed is not as many as we would wish.  We have wishful thinking, and imagine the number is larger than it is.  How many people know who Derick Jensen is?  If we had a test for doomers that would be on it.  You only get a few seconds to answer or:

[RE]

Although I agree that continued growth is completely unsustainable, I question the assumption that there are only about 10,000 people who realize this. Most confirmed doomers eventually get exhausted proclaiming a truth that nobody wants to hear.  I believe that even with the massive suppression of truth, there are no doubt huge numbers of people who refuse to don the rose colored glasses and understand the unprecedented disaster our species is facing.

Depends on what you mean by "realize"?  If all you mean is that a person can see the society they live in is failing and that we're heading for a reckoning, the number is far larger than 10K, and getting bigger all the time.  I can see the change in the people I talk to IRL, I can see it in pop culture and in fiction.  I definitely see it in the participation in groups like Extinction Rebellion and even Right wing Natalists.

If however you mean people who really understand Collapse, what underlies it inside our current culture and the mechanics of how all the different manifestations fit together the number is far smaller.  Even some of the very best academics and historians like Jared Diamond and Joseph Tainter who have written detailed books analyzing collapse of prior cultures and the scientists of the club of Rome who authored the Limits to Growth Study and Richard Duncan who proposed the Olduvai Theory or Rachel Carson who wrote Silent Spring have a relatively narrow focus and only see collapse through the narrow lens of their specialty area. For a complete understanding of the economic, social, political and scientific reasons we are utterly and completely fucked, you are talking a number far smaller than 10K, you can probably count the number of people on your fingers and toes.

You don't necessarily need to know the entire history of the Middle East going back to Biblical times and the modern history of Colonialism and resource wars that have led up to the current conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians in Gaza to protest against it though, nor should you need to have a complete understanding of the real estate market to protest against homelessness or detailed knowledge of geochemistry to understand how dependence of fossil fuels has created an unsustainable consumption level of energy and protest against that.  The more things you understand though and the more relationships you can draw in, the better the chance you can bring together the critical mass of people necessary to effect change.

Unfortunately, even with the understanding, trying to get the word out when the most powerful forces in society want it surpressed is a mighty difficult thing to do, so developing any kind of organized resistance to the self destructive trajectory of our civilization is close to impossible.  All we have is a bunch of fractured pockets of opposition to some ofthe more obvious and egregious problems.  At this point, it doesn't seem very likely that any sort of effective, organized resistance and change of BAU will occur before we inevitably run into a cascade failure of many systems failing at the same time.

The best we can do is to keep tabs on it and understand it as best we can, then explain it to whoever will listen.  Perhaps it will help them negotiate their own future as events progress.

Save as Many as you Can.

RE

[K-Dog]

If however you mean people who really understand Collapse, what underlies it inside our current culture and the mechanics of how all the different manifestations fit together the number is far smaller.

The number is indeed small.  Jared Diamond * has some exposure.  For the purposes of argument I'll guess 17 people in a thousand have heard of JD.  Of those 17 are any of them doomers?  No they are not.  You need four times 17 or 68 people on average who have heard of Jared Diamond to find a doomer.

The pool of people needed to find a doomer is now at 4000.  It is going to take even more than that who will understand that the deep state actively suppresses doomerism, and that doom is baked in the cake even if more become aware of it, because of Silent American Censorship ** .

But lets stay with the one in four thousand people is a seriously informed doomer.  Not a run of the mill 'activist' who just needs an issue to bitch about without any real understanding of it.  Mommy and daddy issues float their boat.  Not an understanding of the graph on the left.  You meet them, and you think they understand, but they do not.  This is OK.  Sane people think there is more sanity than there actually is.

The population of Canada and the US combined is about 377,000,000.  This number divided by 4000 gives:


94,250

Less than my compromise number by 750 people and I did not choose 17 and 4 to make the numbers work out.  I picked them because I think they are reasonable guesses.  This suggests the number of people who know about active Homeland Security Censorship are limited to those who actually experience it, and not all of them.

* Do all doomers know about Jared?  No, but I assume most do.

** Veg is one of these privileged few.  He knows his you Tube Channel will be stuck at 1000 subscribers for all eternity.  Algorithms have seen to it.  Who wrote those algorithms, and why?  Unfortunately I know.