Plastic bags, climate change, renewable energy,

Dales Cannon

lightbrain about 4pm
Staff member
A good summary of the utter fallacy around biomass energy production:




Remember this kids - biomass energy production is bullshit accounting.

BTW, I watched the BBC vid via nefarious means last night. Please do so too...
I had a discussion with a former colleague (different country, same company) who was a key player in the biomass supplemental firing at Drax. He argued it was a good thing. I cruched the numbers and showed him he was full of it. His argument finally was he had a Phd in combustion engineering so therefore knew better. Absolutely ridiculous. Foredts in the old Eastern bloc are being stripped for this. The concept of renewable saplings harvested annually is an ideal but still doesnt stack up.

As for the comments about direct injected 2 strokes. Do they still burn oil? What lubricates the bearings?
 

hifiandmtb

Sphincter beanie
Yeah but which humans?

If there were only 100 humans on this planet who wanted to reek distraction, they could still make it happen...
 

Calvin27

Eats Squid
Yeah but which humans?
Just set a global target to slow and reverse population growth the same way you have a target for emissions reduction. It won't be popular but it's necessary. Countries could figure out what works for them and then implement policies to suit. For Australia it could look like gradual removal of child subsidies say after the second and third child.

It seems like a massive infringement on people rights but it's a lot better to bite the bullet now than contend with a resource constrained future.
 

hifiandmtb

Sphincter beanie
In several generations it’ll all be ultra-fucked anyway. Your policy is sensible, but too slow.

I don’t think anyone has a population solution that directly fixes the 50% reduction by 2030, 100% reduction by 2050 problem.
 

droenn

Fat Man's XC President
As an aside, I saw some modelling about populations levels expected to peak at 10 billion - higher levels of education for women and less people in poverty alter the rate of increase to level around 2050 and even drop slightly once birthrates are below 2 per woman.

It still a lot of people...
 

John U

MTB Precision
As an aside, I saw some modelling about populations levels expected to peak at 10 billion - higher levels of education for women and less people in poverty alter the rate of increase to level around 2050 and even drop slightly once birthrates are below 2 per woman.

It still a lot of people...
I was taught at uni that the planets estimated capacity was 6 billion humans. It’s a difficult number to deduct but the number of species nearing extinction would align with the planet being well overpopulated already.
Humans give themselves to much credit for being able to solve any problem. Killing the host is not really an intended outcome.
Not even China has the one child policy anymore.
 

droenn

Fat Man's XC President
Depends on rates of consumption - if we all wanted to maintain the life we lead now and apply that to all humans - 1 billion is the number I'd argue as the carrying capacity.

So too many people, and too many of us living with too much excess.
 

Haakon

Keeps on digging
Yeah but which humans?
Just the next ones. Stop having kids ffs...

Yeah, blah blah economy blah blah who will look after you. Trivial problems compared to the issue at hand.

But alas that movie Idiocracy describes western cultures and developing nations actually work on the kids looking after the oldies...

In short, we’re fucked. Unless we get a really effective plague and/or war.
 
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