Reality?

[Tonyprep]

The last couple of decades have found me contemplating peak oil, global heating, biodiversity loss, etc, etc. One of the subjects that keeps cropping up is "sustainability" the meaning of which seems to have been perverted to support just about any view. The latest bizarre definition of sustainable comes from Hannah Ritchie who, in a TED talk, defines it as a lower footprint and a better standard of living for all. The definition has nothing to do which what can be maintained indefinitely, the true meaning of sustainable. Thus, it seems we just make up stuff to rationalise what we want to do.

My decades long consideration of these things has lead me to a basic truth (at least that's my current opinion; I'd love to be wrong): Humans are a species.

Since humans are a species, we can't expect them to act in a non-species way. Actually, there is no hard and fast definition of a species and evolution acts on individuals, not species, but the idea is convenient because we know individuals may act in odd ways that other members of the species don't. But this is how evolution works. Random mutation, filtered by some selection mechanism (usually, natural selection). A genetic mutation which gives the individual an advantage in survival and reproduction will tend to spread through the species and may result in a new species, over deep time. So the genes are only concerned with the now, get an advantage now, not in some mythical future, which can't be known. The primary resource for most organisms is food but other resources are used in different ways to make a life (e.g. for nest making) and gain an advantage.

So all species will access resources as quickly as they can.  Where useful resources are easy pickings, the species will thrive until some critical resource depletes. Then a different set of mutations may make some individuals able to make better use of what's available or move to find more. Humans are no different, except that they are far better at accessing resources than other extant species. So the boom in numbers that we see when useful resources become apparently abundant is to be expected.

If a species learns that accessing and using resources in a certain way may have a long term detrimental effect on their survival, what do they do? Nothing! They continue to act like a species, living for now, not a future that is uncertain. They can't act any other way. So denial of reality is really just a rationalisation of behaviour they have no real control over. Where individuals try to limit their resource use (e.g. by not having babies or not flying) their genes are less likely to be passed on. A species will never be dominated by genes that inhibit reproduction and resource use.

So some of us can be horrified by the inaction of most people to rein in their resource use but it makes no difference; humans will continue to act like a species.

So modernity will end, as it is unsustainable. This seems obvious to some but still most people want to somehow save the nice bits of modernity. There are no nice bits, so far as nature is concerned. We've never really learned that you can't do just one thing. There are always consequences. Since modernity is unsustainable, the best we can do is recycle as much as possible as our societies inevitably contract and simplify. Eventually, the only sustainable way of living is to consume renewable resources. No-one will like this. So-called renewable energy can't come riding to the rescue, since it isn't sustainable.

There will be some future species (or possibly some remnants of ours) which will try to do the same things that we did, 10,000 years ago. They won't have fossil fuels to accelerate their civilisations but there will be unsustainable civilisations in future, unless humans become extinct and no other species arises with similar abilities.

Nature is a cruel place, contrary to hope of living in harmony with nature. Most wild creatures would die a horrible death, eaten by predators or killed by disease and injuries. That was the lot of humans, also until fairly recently but it will the lot of increasing numbers of humans.

The only real question is how long will it take for the resource and environmental problems we've created really bite home and make the inevitable decline of our species obvious?

Is this reality?

[Knarf]

@Tonyprep

  I agree with your overview of humanities predicament. I also see the signs of collapse occurring all around me. Air, water, land, food, weather, inequality, resource depletion, soil depletion, poisons everywhere, and the potential of WWIII and/or another "Black Death". All of this is in all of our lives now, and we are had. Some people think we could collapse in the next 10 years. Without some drastic changes, IMO, it will be about 15.

  My "pie in the sky" solution is the rapid advancement of AI. We don't need a miracle, we need to find a way to make the computers with an energy source that won't extract too much energy that can decipher tons of data that is relevant to the problem. In doing this we can come up with ways to implement a sort of "degrowth Marxism". The computers can convince us of the practical ways of implementing a UBI. Of living and surviving with 1/10th of the crap we think we need now.

All of this will have to occur after the election this year, and after we all realize that there is no way in hell we are going to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps.

[RE]

The main obstacle to achieving "sustainability" is population size.  All that needs to happen is for conditions to change enough so that the total population of Homo Saps and our domesticated animals and plants remains at or below .0001% of the total biomass on the planet and the species will be sustainable.  About 2 orders of magnitude, leaving around ~100M meat packages ambulatory at any given time.

A sufficient increase in the Death Rate of people past reproductive age to 99% coupled with a Fertility Rate <1 for females should drop the population down to a sustainable level in a few generations, then after that these two parameters can self adjust to maintain a steady population of homo saps between  0-60 years of age of around 100M sustainable meat packages.

Famine, Pestilence and War will probably accelerate the population reduction so that it achieves a sustainable figure more rapidly, perhaps as fast as within a single generation.  Such a rapid reduction is not ideal since it would be very socially disruptive, but once all the corpses were picked clean by scavengers life would settle down to the new normal.

Quality of life would improve dramatically with the disappearance of fast food, Netflix and Rap music.  The disappearance of smart phones would lead to the gradual rediscovery of sex by teenagers.  We will have only have two genders, people with assholes and people who are assholes.

RE

[K-Dog]

Hanna says she is a data scientist.  Meaning she gave herself permission to cherry-pick a few graphs and ignore some others, because halfway through:

We need to move away from fossil fuels while feeding eight, nine, ten, billion people  at the same time.

Not possible.  Hanna has no graph to show how to do this.  Hanna Ritchie is a nice enough person.  As human intelligence goes Hanna seems to be on the high side of the curve.  Dummies don't give TED talks.  But Hanna smokes the hopium.

Hanna is a nebie to the world of doom.  Hanna does not understand how big eight, nine, ten, billion people is.  She is a data scientist really?  How does a data scientist not understand overshoot and that eight, nine ten billion is Overshoot-R-Us.

Fun fact:  People, livestock and pets dominate the overall picture of life on Earth. Homo sapiens with a total weight of 390 million metric tons, is slightly less than the weight of domesticated cattle which is 420 million metric tons.
Dogs rank fifth at 21 million metric tons but still constitute about as much mass as all wild land mammals combined.

Hanna's talk is 100% hopium.  She has not read up on Jevons paradox.  If she has she has not thought about it.  Hanna does not understand that when efficiency meets an exponential curve, the exponential curve wins.  Always!  The only way for humanity to endure, is to plant a new fruit tree in the garden of Eden! 

But that won't happen.  Modern culture has other ideas.  Modern culture wants to cut the penis off and go trans.  But going trans won't save shit.  Going trans will only confuse people and will provide no social benefit.  Other useless eaters will breed around trans as the movement goes the way of Shakers.

There is an advantage to being a long-term doomer.  Knee-jerk solution which are so attractive to a new doomer are seen as the empty promises they are. 

                William Stanley Jevons

Hanna is going to save the world by making sure wind and solar is cheap.  This is abysmal ignorance.  When the cost of using a resource decreases, it becomes more attractive for consumers and industries to use it. The increased affordability of a resource leads to higher consumption which offsets any initial gain in efficiency.

It is a contradiction.  People who become interested in the future are the same people who are most uncomfortable with the reality and mathematics of the actual situation.  Intelligent people are more facile with self-deception compounding the problem.  It takes about two years for a person to overcome hopium confirmation bias on average.  Some people never do.

Hanna is a data scientist with a severe case of confirmation bias.  How do I know?  Because she told us she is a data scientist, that is how. 

Hanna is saying she is right in a socially acceptable way so likely you did not pick up on it.  Credentials. 

Once we accept a person as an authority.  (I am a data scientist) we generally stop thinking about the substance of what they say and we simply accept it.  This is another hockey stick graph we have not seen I think, reason being: The more things get crazy the more people will be playing follow the leader and unfortunately any leader will do.  With leaders having an anti-populist agenda generally being more popular than boring politicians who have the best interest of the nation at heart.

Basic Al Bartlett stuff.  Al and others (Sid Smith) make a big deal about the day before an exponential growth event becomes painfully apparent, it is hardly noticed at all.

Hanna does not understand the energy density of fossil fuels and how their are no substitutes for fossil fuels given the overpopulated nature of a planet in overshoot.

Overshoot works like this.The character Mike Campbell in the 1926 novel "The Sun Also Rises" was asked about his money troubles and responded with a vivid description.

"How did you go bankrupt?" Bill asked.

"Two ways," Mike said. "Gradually and then suddenly."

Currently we be doing the gradual.

[RE]

We need to move away from fossil fuels while feeding eight, nine, ten, billion people  at the same time.

Not possible.  Hanna has no graph to show how to do this.

Hanna has a video.

AI will invent food replicators.

I don't think it's inability to understand the exponential function or energy density that is the problem.  It's the inability of people to accept the inevitability of death.  Is a species survival trait built in to all animals.  As soon as you tell people death is inevitable, all rational thought stops and they keep trying to come up with some way to avoid it.

RE

[TDoS]

The last couple of decades have found me contemplating peak oil, global heating, biodiversity loss, etc, etc.

Could have spent more time focusing on the important ones, did anyone ever notice ANY of the peak oils just in this century?

Thus, it seems we just make up stuff to rationalise what we want to do.

You aren't the only one who noticed, years ago, that doom, any doom, was a great idea to justify buying hunting and fishing cabins, bug out bags, gold guns and ammo etc etc. The suggestion wasn't taken well, as it had to much truth in it, seemed to me. But now could be the time?

Humans are a species. Since humans are a species, we can't expect them to act in a non-species way.

Seems a bit self evident, your argument is that all the doomers didn't even realize they had forgotten they are just human, and therefore do all the stupid crap that got us into the mess we are in, and certainly aren't about to do what it takes to get out of it.

So denial of reality is really just a rationalisation of behaviour they have no real control over.

Sounds reasonable. Buy any doom at hand so going all bonkers over the hunting or fishing cabin, gold guns and ammo, etc etc. seems justified.

So some of us can be horrified by the inaction of most people to rein in their resource use but it makes no difference; humans will continue to act like a species.

Makes more sense to be specfic..humans will just continue acting like humans. Not all species are as stupid as we are.

So modernity will end, as it is unsustainable.

Would have been nice if everyone has jumped to this reasonable conclusion rather than dragging in all the nonsense they have over the years. Of course modernity will end, one way or another. After all, the Sun is getting lighter every day we've been talking about doom, and it won't ever stop until it has destroyed the planet.

Nature is a cruel place, contrary to hope of living in harmony with nature.

Nature isn't cruel. You are imposing a human perspective to it. Nature isn't human. Nature just does what it does, things stay in a general natural balance. Life, death, etc etc. Humans just had a better scheme to improve their geographic range to develop resources to keep breeding rather than..turtles....or goats.

The only real question is how long will it take for the resource and environmental problems we've created really bite home and make the inevitable decline of our species obvious?

Doesn't you talking about it mean it already has?

[RE]

The last couple of decades have found me contemplating peak oil, global heating, biodiversity loss, etc, etc.

Could have spent more time focusing on the important ones, did anyone ever notice ANY of the peak oils just in this century?

Or he could have spent them trolling Peak Oil websites and regurgitating the same insults at "Peak Oilers" while at the same time agreeing that civilization is doomed. just not because of Peak Oil but because the Sun is losing weight or some other calamity, and not on a timeline that makes it worthwhile to buy a cabin for hunting and fishing.

Not all species are as stupid as we are.

No idea how you would measure intelligence n order to prove that statement, but in terms of behavior based on the way the Predator-Prey cycle works and the way Bacteria reproduce, not only do all animal species continue multiplying exponentially until resources are exhausted or they are killed off, it goes across to the bacteria & insect kingdoms as well.  The only living organisms which don't seem to have an overpopulation problem are plants, but since they are generally stuck in one place and die off when the weather changes, you can't consider them very bright either.

RE

[K-Dog]

We need to move away from fossil fuels while feeding eight, nine, ten, billion people  at the same time.

Not possible.  Hanna has no graph to show how to do this.

Hanna has a video.

AI will invent food replicators.

I don't think it's inability to understand the exponential function or energy density that is the problem.  It's the inability of people to accept the inevitability of death.  Is a species survival trait built in to all animals.  As soon as you tell people death is inevitable, all rational thought stops and they keep trying to come up with some way to avoid it.

RE

You are quite right.  I have gone down this rabbit hole.

I read The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker a few years ago.  The first book I read all online.  The premise is that the avoidance of death is a more powerful drive than sex.  Freud went down the sex rabbit hole, but that does not explain the reality of the human condition.  Death anxiety is a far more powerful force.

We also have a podcast.

Denial of death, denial of collapse.  You got it.

Here is a deeper dive.

[K-Dog]

Your replicator video pisses me off.  It turns out that denial is big.  Here is another video from the same assholes.

Do vertical farms have shadows   Vertical farms are a SCAM.  The solar energy that falls on a square kilometer is the solar energy that falls on a square kilometer.  No more, no less.  The most efficient use of this energy is to farm on a flat surface.  Vertical farms are smoke and mirrors.

This is the most irresponsible You-Tube channel I have ever seen.  A website that hosts nothing but snuff videos would be more civilized and dignified than this snake in the grass bullshit.

An entire You-Tube channel dedicated to pseudoscience. 

Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.

The forces behind this website embrace this philosophy.  If you can't do honest science and you don't respect education, you are free to do your own thing.  Make shit up.  You can be a total liar, but pretend to be serious.  Pretend to be serious and normal.

The best poser wins their game.

Satan hides in plain sight.

[RE]

Just in the last week a Netherlands court finally allowed a Dutch woman to commit Assisted Suicide despite being physically healthy.  She was autistic and despite years of therapy and drugs, suffered from constant depression.  Though legal on paper, they have a lot of roadblocks to prevent people from doing it who might change their minds or be cured somehow.  Her required treatments included electroshock therapy before they at last let a Dr Kevorkian help her pull the plug.

Far as taboos go for Christians, Suicide is even bigger than Original Sin of Sex.  Bigger than homosexual sex with a dog.  Express train ticket to hell.

Despite this really powerful social abhorrence of death, people contemplate suicide all the time, and the number of people who actually do pull the plug is steadily increasing as we move down the collapse highway.



add in drugs and booze, it's worse.



Clearly there is a point at which life is not worth living anymore, and more people are achieving that level of despair.  But what about the level right below that?  Where it's not SOOOO bad you're ready to put a bullet through your brain, but it just REALLY SUCKS every day just to be alive every day?  How many people in the society feel that way now?

RE

[Tonyprep]

Population size alone is not the determinant of sustainability. If that were so, krill, for one example, would be unsustainable. However, population size can make formerly sustainable behaviour unsustainable.

There is no solution to humans being a species. No species is more stupid than any other; they are all acting like species. And, OK, nature is not cruel, since it doesn't care one way or the other. But the way most creatures would end their days might be considered cruel to our civilised way of thinking.

As there is no solution, the best we can hope for is that the shit really hits the fan after we're dead (hopefully dying peacefully in our sleep).

I don't agree that awareness of inevitable death invariably leads to the cessation of all rational thought. This is partly because there is no such thing as rational thought; it only seems there is. Without free will there can be no rational thought process. But also because I think I'm thinking rationally yet I know my death is inevitable.

All of the approaches to our predicament that might help will have no impact, mainly because rational approaches would never be accepted by humans. In particular, only primitive living could be sustainable and that definitely is something people don't want.

[K-Dog]

But back to Hanna who wants low cost renewable energy.

In this video we are told low cost is not the issue if capitalism can't make a profit.  We are told this for the second time this week.  No surprise, there is a socialist thread here, and an understanding of economics that capitalist economics does not have.

[K-Dog]

I don't agree that awareness of inevitable death invariably leads to the cessation of all rational thought. This is partly because there is no such thing as rational thought; it only seems there is. Without free will there can be no rational thought process. But also because I think I'm thinking rationally yet I know my death is inevitable.

We have will.  It is not free, but we can reach rational conclusions and act on them.  Having no free will is not the same as having no will at all.  My choice about giving two fucks about my rational conclusions is far from free, I agree.  But I still can reach rational conclusions, and if I enter into a feedback loop where I respect and seek rational conclusions.  I begin to be free.

Rational conclusions I am free to ignore.  Or not.  Depending on my will, even though it not be free. 

[RE]

Population size alone is not the determinant of sustainability. If that were so, krill, for one example, would be unsustainable. However, population size can make formerly sustainable behaviour unsustainable.

Krill have predators.  A million krill is a nice snack for a Blue Whale.  When they overpopulate and eat up whatever it is they eat, they die off, a few survive and ocean currents  blow them to a new neighborhood where they rinse and repeat.

Homo Sap is Apex predator on the planet now.  We've even defeated many of the microscopic predators which used to keep our numbers in check.  The only predator we have now is other Homo Saps.  However,WMDs present the possibility of war bringing death to everyone, you can't really win with them.  The small brush wars aren't a big enough killer to keep population in check, nor are even car accidents.  Our population has apparently responded to this by becoming unwilling to reproduce at replacement level.  How society will deal with this and the demographic problems attached are one of the big questions we face over the next 20 years.

There is no solution to humans being a species. No species is more stupid than any other; they are all acting like species. And, OK, nature is not cruel, since it doesn't care one way or the other. But the way most creatures would end their days might be considered cruel to our civilised way of thinking.

We don't need a solution to being a species, we need more dead people faster.  We'll get this solution one way or the other.  The only question is how far the knockdown goes before population stabilizes and rebounds.  The biggest death vector is likely to be famine.  That's our predator, other people eating food we need, then us killing those people.  Then the predator prey cycle takes over.

As there is no solution, the best we can hope for is that the shit really hits the fan after we're dead (hopefully dying peacefully in our sleep).

Personally, I hope to be alive long enough to say "I told you so", then be eaten for dinner by the CNAs here in the Gulag.

I don't agree that awareness of inevitable death invariably leads to the cessation of all rational thought. This is partly because there is no such thing as rational thought; it only seems there is. Without free will there can be no rational thought process. But also because I think I'm thinking rationally yet I know my death is inevitable.

Not everybody is irrational.  Plenty of rational people out there want to commit suicide.  If you're still living an OK life, you're not homeless, not in horrible physical or mental anguish, it's rational to want to live also.  But you don't stop driving your car, because nobody else is doing that, so society remains on a suicidal trajectory.

All of the approaches to our predicament that might help will have no impact, mainly because rational approaches would never be accepted by humans. In particular, only primitive living could be sustainable and that definitely is something people don't want.

You can't always get what you want, but sometimes you get what you need.

RE

[TDoS]

The last couple of decades have found me contemplating peak oil, global heating, biodiversity loss, etc, etc.

Could have spent more time focusing on the important ones, did anyone ever notice ANY of the peak oils just in this century?

Or he could have spent them trolling Peak Oil websites and regurgitating the same insults at "Peak Oilers"

Obviously Tony spent time on peak oil webites, otherwise I wouldn't know his username from more of them than I recognized yours. I am not the only one familiar with this topic. And how it was entertaining for awhile, and reasons why it faded away for more interesting doom scenarios.

Not all species are as stupid as we are.

No idea how you would measure intelligence n order to prove that statement,

Of course I have an idea on how to measure intelligience, and no more need to prove it than you do. Personal preference works that way when it comes to statements with multi-dimensional and multi-species angles. Just as you have an idea on how you measure human intelligience (you tend to like people who know and can use the English language inside and out) I also have the same capability. And obviously it isn't just how well some knows English.