Fukushima, global warming, economic collapse ... this is our last dance by 1kiki

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Hello,

Of all human pasttimes, there are two that seem to be consistently observed through every age.

1) Declaring that everything will be fine.

2) Declaring that everything is over.

On the whole, from my limited vantage as I peer into history, things have tended to not be fine and to not be over.

--Anthony

Note to Self:
Raptor - women who want to control their reproductive processes are sluts.
Wulf - Niki is a stupid fucking bitch who should hurry up and die.
Never forget what these men are.
“The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.” -Thomas Szasz

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Wednesday, May 16, 2012 8:16 PM

RIONAEIRE

Beir bua agus beannacht

Queen has some pretty cool songs.

I assume you're my pal until you let me know otherwise.

"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya.

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Wednesday, May 16, 2012 9:08 PM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

Ditto Anthony. But we'll have to wait and see what Dec. 21st turns out like first, won't we, eh Anthony? You COULD be wrong this time... ;o)

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Thursday, May 17, 2012 4:28 AM

Maybe you should also throw in "Eve of Destruction" sung by Barry McGuire from 1965. Or maybe "Last Dance" by Donna Summer from 1978.

My point being that people are always saying that the world is going to end. And it never does.

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Thursday, May 17, 2012 8:57 AM

I enjoy Zager & Evans - In The Year 2525.

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Thursday, May 17, 2012 9:59 AM

STORYMARK

Quote:
Originally posted by CaveTroll:
Or maybe "Last Dance" by Donna Summer from 1978.

Good timing.

"Goram it kid, let's frak this thing and go home! Engage!"

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Thursday, May 17, 2012 5:29 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

So, to global warming.

CO2 absorbs heat, trapping it and keeping it from being re-radiated into space. The more CO2 there is the more heat will be trapped. In case anyone misunderstands the process, it's not like each molecule of CO2 traps a certain amount of heat and then it's done, like a sponge that's full of water. Each molecule traps heat continuously for as long as it's in the atmosphere. Humans have emitted an estimated 550,000,000,000 tons CO2 into the atmosphere. Each one of those tons is continuously trapping heat, day after day, decade after decade, century after century. It's not about opinion, it's simple physics.

And at this point, with all the CO2 in the atmosphere and all the Joules of heat energy that are continuously being absorbed, it's really not a question of 'is global warming going to occur', or even 'is it occurring now'. It's a question of how hot will it get, how much damage will be done to the biosphere we completely depend on, and what will it take out of us.

Some people like to pretend it's not real. And something completely unexpected could happen. The sun could reduce its output for example. But if I were betting, I'd put my money on James Hansen. http://www.ted.com/talks/james_hansen_why_i_must_speak_out_about_clima
te_change.html

Fukushima will be next.

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Saturday, May 19, 2012 6:43 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

I hate to be a buzzkill here, but I'm with Kiki on this.

We have three existential threats facing us ("Us" being the human species, not "Americans")

global warming
loss of species diversity
radiological pollution

I know that there have been many "end-of-the-world" proponents before, but those were all based on religion. These are based on science. Like the financial system collapse, big things are hard to see. I think we better sit up and take notice, as scary as it is.

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Saturday, May 19, 2012 6:51 AM

http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20120518/fukushima-dai-ichi-risk-
reactor-4-120519/

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
experts are warning that Japan isn’t out of the woods yet and the worst nuclear storm the world has ever seen could be just one earthquake away from reality.

The troubled Reactor 4 at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant is at the centre of this potential catastrophe. ...

A magnitude 7 or 7.5 earthquake would likely fracture that pool, and disaster would ensue, says Arnie Gundersen, a nuclear engineer with Fairewinds Energy Education who has visited the site. [...]

Essentially, he said, Japan is sitting on a ticking time bomb. [...]

“This is a ‘now’ problem, this is not a ‘let’s-wait-until-we-get-the-cash-flow-from-the-Japanese-government’ problem. The consequences of a 7 or 7.5 earthquake don’t happen every day, but we know it happened last year so you have to anticipate that it will happen,” Gundersen said. [...]

“We’re all in a situation of having to pray there’s not an earthquake. And there’s the other half of that, which is pray to God but row toward shore. And Tokyo’s not really rowing toward shore right now,” Gundersen said.

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Saturday, May 19, 2012 6:55 AM

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Quote:
I think we better sit up and take notice

Hello,

Well, if this is the end of things for us, noticing is hardly important. If this is our 'last dance' then nothing we do matters. The science of it all becomes no more interesting or pertinent than Revelations.

So the narrative can't be 'this is the end' because then the narrative is pointless.

But if the narrative is not 'this is our last dance' but instead 'we really ought to learn the foxtrot' then there is something to talk about.

--Anthony

Note to Self:
Raptor - women who want to control their reproductive processes are sluts.
Wulf - Niki is a stupid fucking bitch who should hurry up and die.
Never forget what these men are.
“The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.” -Thomas Szasz

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Saturday, May 19, 2012 8:06 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
If this is our 'last dance' then nothing we do matters. The science of it all becomes no more interesting or pertinent than Revelations. So the narrative can't be 'this is the end' because then the narrative is pointless. But if the narrative is not 'this is our last dance' but instead 'we really ought to learn the foxtrot' then there is something to talk about.

Then brother, let us please quickly learn the foxtrot!

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Saturday, May 19, 2012 8:11 AM

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Hello,

I am definitely in favor of learning the foxtrot. It's not just good for the world or humanity at large, but it can also be good for us as selfish individuals.

Imagine how much more cool stuff we could buy if we harvested free, renewable energies instead of paying people to dig up and truck a diminishing quantity of fossil fuel everywhere! It makes sense from every angle. Especially when I'm paying fifty bucks to fill my tank at the pump. 50 dollars is 1/2 of my weekly grocery budget. (Groceries, incidentally, would also be cheaper if we harnessed free, renewable energy to move foodstuffs.)

--Anthony

Note to Self:
Raptor - women who want to control their reproductive processes are sluts.
Wulf - Niki is a stupid fucking bitch who should hurry up and die.
Never forget what these men are.
“The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.” -Thomas Szasz

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Saturday, May 19, 2012 3:40 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

"Well, if this is the end of things for us, noticing is hardly important."

I couldn’t agree more. What is the point of knowing if you can't or won't change what you're doing because of it? (Unless of course you're going for the ego-ride of 'I know more than you' and 'I told you so'.)

But this is just me musing on the internet. The first step to doing something different is recognizing there's a problem with what you're doing now. Something I kinda' don't think people are doing, given the responses. There's no such thing, it's not so bad, it's not important.

Personally, I think it is that bad.

So, what to do. I'm lucky, I'm a lot older than you. A concept I got from SignyM is 'always have an exit plan', but I think age will be the default plan for me.

But if I were younger, I would probably scrap any long-term plans based on the world as it is today and make different ones. It might be useful to consider not having children. It might be useful to consider not investing heavily in real-estate - you might have better use for your money later on. It might be useful to consider that your future may not be in the US. It might be useful to join organizations that are trying to turn this problem around and blunt its impact. In short, it might be useful to consider this as a serious problem that needs to be accounted for in your life, rather than some theoretical issue down the road.

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Saturday, May 19, 2012 5:14 PM

Quote Kiki: "I think age will be the default plan for me."

Age for me, too. Unless Social Security leaves me homeless; that'd be hard.

My plan would be to move somewhere that I could build a sustainable habitat.
The family "ranch" would work, but I don't live there. Too old and tired to
build much. The plan is to sell it anyways. I have no say.

I have contributed to these problems in the past by being apolitical and
ignorant. I knew nothing of nuclear power; didn't occur to me that people
(not me) were overpopulating. I was aware of environmental issues, but I
figured TPTB would be knowledgible, reasonable: the Fed would fix it. Even
the refusal of Big Oil to go green used to astonish me.

It is best to do whatever I can now. Use clean power: I don't. Dunno if I
can afford to switch. All I do for the environment now is recycle, make rich
topsoil, garden. I could do more.

On my side of the street are many bees: bumble bees. They get some honey
bees on the other side of the street where it is sunnier. I dunno why.

Sometimes I talk to others. Either they are already on my page or they won't
listen, won't care.

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Saturday, May 19, 2012 6:00 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

And I did what I could, and what did it change? You and I have very indirect influence on what gets done. Not no influence, but very indirect.

The difference in how I'm thinking of this between then and now is that I used to think of it as a problem to be solved. Now I think of it as a fact I need to account for in my personal life.

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Saturday, May 19, 2012 6:15 PM

Planet Earth is starting to remind me of the Titanic -- 100 years ago.

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Sunday, May 20, 2012 2:40 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

So, on to Fukushima.

SignyM covered it pretty well. Should the spent fuel pool 4 fall down, the hoses rupture, the pumps fail or lose power, or any number of glitches happen to disrupt cooling, the world will see a massive, uncontained open-air reactor too hot to even think of trying to quench by burying from the air. Everything within a quarter mile will die within minutes from neutron beams and radiation. Fires will loft massive quantities of radiation into the air which will poison the total environment wherever the air reaches - land, air and water.

SFP 4 isn't dead and done. It's a disaster ready to erupt the moment efforts to keep it in check fall short - or luck just happens to run out.

I have a couple of parenthetical musings. Nuclear fusion is what keeps our planet's molten core molten. This is a force on a geologic scale. What ever made us people think we could toy with it and then put it aside? Isn't that just a little bit thoughtless? And for those who think the answer is reactors to burn spent fuel I have a question - if it's such a perfect solution to the problem, its perfection and beauty as a solution should be obvious to all. So why isn't it being done?

So, Fukushima has the capacity to change life on this planet as we know it. I certainly hope it doesn't happen, but then again, it could.

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Sunday, May 20, 2012 4:16 PM

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Quote:
I have a couple of parenthetical musings. Nuclear fusion is what keeps our planet's molten core molten. This is a force on a geologic scale. What ever made us people think we could toy with it and then put it aside?

Hello,

I don't know what to say about this statement.

I don't think I agree with your description of the core, and I don't think I agree with your evaluation of nuclear fusion. I don't think fusion is the critical atomic reaction that we are dealing with in the Fukushima disaster.

--Anthony

Note to Self:
Raptor - women who want to control their reproductive processes are sluts.
Wulf - Niki is a stupid fucking bitch who should hurry up and die.
Never forget what these men are.
“The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.” -Thomas Szasz

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Sunday, May 20, 2012 4:58 PM

KWICKO

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

An end of the world without dancing is an end of the world not worth having...

"I supported Bush in 2000 and 2004 and intellegence [sic] had very little to do with that decision." - Hero

"I've not watched the video either, or am incapable of intellectually dealing with the substance of this thread, so I'll instead act like a juvenile and claim victory..." - Rappy

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Sunday, May 20, 2012 5:03 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2011/07/18/nuclear-fi
ssion-confirmed-as-source-of-more-than-half-of-earths-heat/

Nuclear Fission Confirmed as Source of More than Half of Earth’s Heat

As for Fukushima, it wouldn't be as much of a problem if it were a simple case of zirconium fire of nuclear materials. But when the geometry of the fuel assemblies is disturbed - by earthquake, melting or other process - the nuclear fuel comes together enough to participate in a chain reaction.

But I really don't want to argue. I'm just thinking out loud, so to speak. Your mileage may vary.

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Sunday, May 20, 2012 5:09 PM

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Hello,

I see you meant to say fission initially, not fusion, which clarifies matters a great deal.

The Fukushima disaster has the potential to render vast areas less habitable. It can create sickness around the globe. I hope it will teach us to assume worst-case instead of best-case scenarios when we harness technologies.

Fukushima will not end us, but it will doubtless leave a mark on humanity and the world we live in. Hopefully we will learn from the scars.

--Anthony

Note to Self:
Raptor - women who want to control their reproductive processes are sluts.
Wulf - Niki is a stupid fucking bitch who should hurry up and die.
Never forget what these men are.
“The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.” -Thomas Szasz

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Sunday, May 20, 2012 5:22 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Oh drat. I did say fusion, didn't I. That would be the sun! Talk about global warming from that!

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Sunday, May 20, 2012 5:29 PM

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Hello,

LOL! I've done it myself. :-)

--Anthony

Note to Self:
Raptor - women who want to control their reproductive processes are sluts.
Wulf - Niki is a stupid fucking bitch who should hurry up and die.
Never forget what these men are.
“The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.” -Thomas Szasz

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Monday, May 21, 2012 7:07 AM

KWICKO

By the way, as much as I loved Queen, let's not forget to give David Bowie props for his part in "Under Pressure"...

"I supported Bush in 2000 and 2004 and intellegence [sic] had very little to do with that decision." - Hero

"I've not watched the video either, or am incapable of intellectually dealing with the substance of this thread, so I'll instead act like a juvenile and claim victory..." - Rappy

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Monday, May 21, 2012 7:08 AM

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Hello,

Or Vanilla Ice...

;-)

--Anthony

Note to Self:
Raptor - women who want to control their reproductive processes are sluts.
Wulf - Niki is a stupid fucking bitch who should hurry up and die.
Never forget what these men are.
“The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.” -Thomas Szasz

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Tuesday, May 22, 2012 6:29 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

"let's not forget to give David Bowie props for his part in "Under Pressure""

I just liked this particular performance better.

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Tuesday, May 22, 2012 6:50 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

So, as I mentioned, part of this is 'what to do'. It's kind of interesting. As with any important topic, government employees have been forbidden from expressing an opinion without prior approval. Which means of course that anyone with a government job in the nuclear industry, environment or health who has an opinion has been silenced. I mean, don't you find the silence as deafening as I do?

Despite that, apparently there is some pressure from one, maybe two, senators for the US to go and DO SOMETHING since Japan can't, or won't, adequately address the threat. The US and Canada are first in line downwind and downstream. So you would think that survival would be on everyone's mind. But the interesting thing is - in terms of what we call reality, daily experience nearly always trumps vital fact. It's easy to mistake what you see on TV, what you hear on the radio, what you buy at the grocery store and what you do at work for the essential basis of how your life is structured. Your routine gets far more weight in your mind than that threatening, festering situation on the other side of the world. At the national level, I imagine politics, re-election, and other immediate things take precedence.

Back to what to do. The first thing is to prevent the situation from blowing up - literally. Maybe a jingle or note to you representative, your senators and the president would be a good idea, to say hey, what does the US intend to do about this? The other thing would be to have a contingency plan, just in case.

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Wednesday, May 23, 2012 5:38 AM

Unfortunately, 9,000 miles of ocean does a lot to take people's minds off a looming nuclear disaster.

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Wednesday, May 23, 2012 9:16 AM

How about when (more) dead creatures start washing up on our beaches?

Nevermind. I live on the Sierra slopes and can pretend I don't see that.

. . .I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. ~Charles R Swindoll

If I have to react to others all the time, then they own my mind more than I do.
If I let others tell me how to feel, I lose my ability to choose happiness.
If I let others tell me who I am, I've vacated self-definition.
Finally, I realized how foolish I was to give others such power over me.

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Wednesday, May 23, 2012 6:06 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

I thought this was interesting:

http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-Possibility-of-Nuclear-Reactor
-Accidents-is-200x-Higher-Than-Expected-052312.aspx?et_cid=2663077&et_rid=290390323&linkid=http%3a%2f%2fwww.laboratoryequipment.com%2fnews-Possibility-of-Nuclear-Reactor-Accidents-is-200x-Higher-Than-Expected-052312.aspx

Catastrophic nuclear accidents such as the core meltdowns in Chernobyl and Fukushima are more likely to happen than previously assumed. Based on the operating hours of all civil nuclear reactors and the number of nuclear meltdowns that have occurred, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz have calculated that such events may occur once every 10 to 20 years (based on the current number of reactors) — some 200 times more often than estimated in the past.

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Wednesday, May 23, 2012 6:14 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Anyway, my third item was economic collapse. I don't actually think it'll be the end of the world. People existed before 'economies' did. But I think it indicates something about how we organize and behave as a structure, which isn't survivable, unless we do something different.

Same idea - different angle:
https://msx.aqmd.gov/owa/?ae=Item&a=Open&t=IPM.Note&id=RgA
AAAByUohtG9zSEbkaAAjHpHTiBwCvjf78xBHSEbjQAIBfuwncAAAAiHO0AAADOmT97F0dQ4iJ7Hb40qjJAA%2bAB1ReAAAA&pspid=_1337831047114_21499977

Report Says Resources Could be Gone by 2030 if No Change

May 23, 2012

We are all familiar with the stark array of graphs – carbon emissions, deforestation, water scarcity, overfishing – that detail how we are sapping the Earth’s resources and resilience. This 2012 edition of the Living Planet Report tells us how it all adds up – the cumulative pressure we’re putting on the planet, and the consequent decline in the health of the forests, rivers and oceans that make our lives possible.

Read complete report here.

We are living as if we have an extra planet at our disposal. We are using 50 percent more resources than the Earth can provide, and unless we change course that number will grow very fast – by 2030, even two planets will not be enough.

But we do have a choice. We can create a prosperous future that provides food, water and energy for the 9 or perhaps 10 billion people who will be sharing the planet in 2050.

We can produce the food we need without expanding the footprint of agriculture – without destroying more forest, or using more water or chemicals. Solutions lie in such areas as reducing waste, which now claims much of the food we grow; using better seeds and better cultivation techniques; bringing degraded lands back into production; and changing diets – particularly by lowering meat consumption in high income countries.

We can ensure there is enough water for our needs and also conserve the healthy rivers, lakes and wetlands from which it comes. Smarter irrigation techniques and better resource planning, for example, can help us use water more efficiently.

Most fundamentally, we need to establish water management regimes that involve a broader range of stakeholders, and that manage river basins as the complex, richly diverse living systems that they are.

We can meet all of our energy needs from sources like wind and sunlight that are clean and abundant. The first imperative is to get much more out of the energy we use – increasing the efficiency of our buildings, cars and factories can cut our total energy use in half. If we make those savings, then it is possible to meet all of our needs from renewable sources, so long as we focus on driving those technologies into the economy and ending the $700 billion in subsidies that keep us hooked on oil and coal.

June 2012 will see the nations of the world, businesses and a broad sweep of civil society representatives gather in Rio de Janeiro for the UN Conference on Sustainable Development. Twenty years after the momentous Earth Summit, this is a crucial opportunity to take stock of where the world is heading and how we’d like our future to take shape.

This can and must be the moment for governments to set a new course toward sustainability. It is also a unique opportunity for coalitions of the committed to step up – governments in regions like the Congo Basin or the Arctic, joining together to manage the resources they share; cities challenging and inspiring each other to reduce carbon emissions and create more liveable urban spaces; companies who are competitors in the marketplace nonetheless joining forces to drive sustainability into their supply chains and offering products that help customers use less resources; and pension funds and sovereign wealth funds investing in green jobs.
These solutions, and others articulated within this edition of the Living Planet Report, show that we all need to play a role in keeping this a living planet – with food, water and energy for all, and the vibrant ecosystems that sustain life on Earth.

- Jim Leape, Director General , WWF International

Chapter 1: The state of the planet

Biodiversity has declined globally
• The global Living Planet Index declined by almost 30 percent between 1970 and 2008.
• The global tropical index declined by 60 percent during the same period.
• The global temperate index increased by 31 percent; however this disguises huge historical losses prior to 1970.
• The global terrestrial, freshwater and marine indices all declined, with the freshwater index declining the most, by 37 percent.
• The tropical freshwater index declined even more precipitously, by 70 percent.
Human demands on the planet exceed supply
• Humanity’s Ecological Footprint exceeded the Earth’s biocapacity by more than 50 percent in 2008.
• In recent decades, the carbon footprint is a significant component of this ecological overshoot.
• Biocapacity per person decreased from 3.2 global hectares (gha) in 1961 to 1.8 gha per capita in 2008, even though total global biocapacity increased over this time.
• Rising consumption trends in high-income groups around the world and in BRIICS countries, combined with growing population numbers, provide warning signs of the potential for even larger footprints in the future.
Many river basins experience water scarcity
• Examining scarcity on a monthly basis reveals many river basins that seem to have sufficient supplies based on annual averages are actually overexploited, hampering critical ecosystem functions.
• 2.7 billion people around the world live in catchments that experience severe water scarcity for at least one month a year.

Chapter 2: Why we should care

Our wealth, health and well-being are dependent on ecosystem services
• Many areas of high biodiversity also provide important ecosystem services such as carbon storage, fuel wood, freshwater flow and fish stocks. Human activities are affecting the continued provision of these services.
• Deforestation and forest degradation currently account for up to 20 percent of global anthropogenic CO2 emissions, including losses from forest soils.
• Only a third of the world’s rivers that are longer than 1,000km are free flowing and without dams on their main channel.
• A nearly five-fold increase in global marine fish catch, from 19 million tons in 1950 to 87 million tons in 2005, has left many fisheries overexploited.
• The frequency and complexity of land use competition will rise as human demands grow. Throughout the developing world, there is an unprecedented rush by outside investors to secure access to land for future food and fuel production.
• The loss of biodiversity and its related ecosystem services particularly impacts the poor, who rely most directly on these services to survive.

Chapter 3: What does the future hold?

Scenarios present a variety of plausible future alternatives
• The past few decades have been warmer than any other comparable period for at least the last 400 years.
• Limiting the global average warming to 2ºC above preindustrial levels is likely to require emission reductions larger than 80 percent below peak levels. If emissions continue to grow, large regions probably will individually exceed a 2ºC increase in average annual temperatures by 2040.
• The declining Living Planet Index and rising Ecological Footprint emphasize the need for more sustainable policies. Scenarios can help us make better informed choices for the future.
• Scenarios highlight the importance of conserving biodiversity to protect ecosystem services.

Chapter 4: Better choices for a living planet

There are solutions for living within the means of one planet
• Natural capital – biodiversity, ecosystems and ecosystem services – must be preserved and, where necessary, restored as the foundation of human economies and societies.
• WWF’s One Planet perspective proposes how to manage, govern and share natural capital within the Earth’s ecological limits.
• 16 “better choices” from a global One Planet perspective are highlighted, together with priority objectives for realizing these goals.

Source: WWF

More on this later.

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Thursday, May 24, 2012 4:28 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:

A prediction based on 2 events over 60 years? Nice chart. It uses scary colors very effectively. But my respect for the Max Planck institute has just dropped precipitously.

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Thursday, May 24, 2012 8:12 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

There were two additional melt-downs (partial or full isn't known) in NW Japan in addition to the three at Fukushima Daichi. Three Mile Island also had a partial melt-down. Now, as you well know, needing two hands to count is difficult, but I made the supreme effort and by laboriously putting the numbers together it looks like seven meltdowns or partial meltdowns in 60 years not three, and four of them (that we know of) were catastrophic (including reactor 2 at Fukushima). If you want to argue over levels of catastrophe in a melt-down, and why some aren't really serious accidents, be my guest.

On top of that, if you got your brightest minds together and they made a calculation 20,000% off, do you think that deserves just a shoulder shrug? Or does it perhaps need a re-examination of the assumptions behind the calculations?

No need to respond, btw. I don't expect anything intelligent from you.

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Thursday, May 24, 2012 8:20 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

So, to get back to economic collapse.

Why do we have global warming? Why do we have nuclear reactors? Why do we face economic collapse?

I think it’s a story of clever, but not very intelligent, chimpanzees. When you look at us from far away, we’re animals with two things on our busy minds – increasing personal reward, and decreasing personal cost.

From talking with others about evolution, and thinking, I suspect that those species that can access the most resources the fastest are extremely successful in the short term. (Since evolution has no long-term ‘plan’ there’s no immediate barrier to that.)

As technology accumulators, we have technology that enables us to use vast amounts of resources and have tremendous short-term success. As short-term reward-driven pain-escaping creatures we have no reason to do differently. As language-using social primates we inhabit self-sustaining mental structures only loosely related to reality (which is why millennia of people spent a large portion of their resources building, decorating and stocking pyramidal-shaped homes for the afterlife, for example). And as energy structures where the best accumulators of resources – people we’d call rich – use their dominance of those resources to get more resources (like Goodall’s chimp on a pile of fruit, except with a plan and technology in addition to the will to dominate), we are in a positive-feedback system that makes it hard for us to do differently.

I think that all animals expand to the limits of their resources. Our species route happens to be different due to our technology. I think at some point short term evolutionary success, no matter how fantastically successful at the start, runs up against long-term limits. And that’s where we are today. * IF * we can use our intelligence to intentionally alter our behavior we could escape going through nature’s pruning process. Given the above though, I think our ability to react appropriately to our new reality will be hampered.

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Friday, May 25, 2012 3:02 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

This goes along with the discussion in Feeding the Planet Without It and the Why I'm Not Voting For Obama thread:

PEOPLE aren't intelligent. Individually, people tend to want to maximize personal gain and reduce personal cost. Groupwise, people tend to act like termites, and since most of our groups tend to be headed by sociopaths our group actions aren't viable in the long-run. It's not that SOME people aren't capable of appreciating the future, but MOST people will not take the most minimal of steps to be proactive.

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Friday, May 25, 2012 4:34 AM

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Quote:
* IF * we can use our intelligence to intentionally alter our behavior we could escape going through nature’s pruning process.

Hello,

You need to give your greedy, pleasure-loving chimps some personal, pleasurable, greedy reasons to change. Then you need to give these chimps (who exist partly in a fantasy disconnected from reality) a new reality to believe in with advertising campaigns.

You already know how the chimps work. So work with the chimps.

--Anthony

Note to Self:
Raptor - women who want to control their reproductive processes are sluts.
Wulf - Niki is a stupid fucking bitch who should hurry up and die.
Never forget what these men are.
“The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.” -Thomas Szasz

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Friday, May 25, 2012 4:56 AM

1Kiki
That's the way to win an argument, go with the personal attack. But, just as with a pupil, I will ignore your baseless attack. You may be angry because you can't defend your assertion with logic.

We've gone over this ground before. Meltdowns where containment has not been lost are a completely different order of magnitude from Fukushima or Chernobyl. To my knowledge there have been no other accidents with a catastrophic loss of containment. In some of the other accidents there was venting of radioactive gas into the atmosphere. But the levels, even immediately outside of 3 mile island, were minimal. Given the track record of the Soviets and the recent non-disclosure by the Japanese government, I'll take their figures with a grain of salt.

That's not taking into account cause of the accidents. Most of which can be traced to human error, except for Fukushima.

Meltdown causing events ? Events causing meltdown.

There were reports of Soviet Russia stacking cooled, spent fuel rods in a slit trench. Unfortunately it rained and the pyramid shaped pile of fuel rods in a slit trench at the disposal site was submerged in rainwater. Boom. Runaway cold water accident. No nuclear power plant for miles around. Does this count as a nuclear power accident? Doesn't matter anyway. It never officially happened.

I'm well aware of the cumulative effect of even minimal percentages of an event. But it is still based on a supposition. That is, there is an identical chance of an event occurring for each power plant in operation. How many nuclear power plants do the world's navies have in operation? Hundreds? Thousands? Given the number of power plants there should have been dozens of accidents given the ratio of accidents that Max Planck supposes. But there were not. Do you have any additional data to support the Max Planck supposition? Additionally, this sort of blank assertion would also have to assume that all designs have the same inherent safety, which is NOT true. Modern French and Indian reactors are safer by design than US reactors (Fukushima) and miles safer than Soviet era designs.

Max Planck threw some numbers together, designed a pretty graphic for the ignorant to ooh and aah over and expected everyone to applaud. Anyone who is capable of critical thought can see they left enough holes in their argument to drive a truck through.

Unless you have more data to support their graphic? Or were you trying to win an discussion on bluster and personal attack?

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Friday, May 25, 2012 9:14 AM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Troll

If you want to have a discussion and be taken for something other than a stupid troll, it would help if you bothered to acquaint yourself with facts, like how many meltdowns actually have occurred in the last 60 years. Hint: it's not 2. And if you want to deride an article and the institution behind it, it would help if you actually read that article - there was a link - and had some basic reading comprehension. They gave Chernobyl and Fukushima as EXAMPLES, not as the total count.

"Most of which can be traced to human error, except for Fukushima."

You mean design problems are NOT human error?

Chernobyl had a 2 serious design problems, and the Russians were testing the limits of one of the problems: 1) loss of power meant loss of cooling, and backup power took too long to come on-line - they were testing to see how much power they could get out of the turbines in that gap while the turbines spun down. The OTHER design problem that they didn't know about was that 2) the control rods had a gap where there were no moderators, leading to spikes in fission in the first few milliseconds as they were inserted. Big OOPS on those.

Fukushima, and indeed ALL operating reactors share a common design problem - loss of power means loss of cooling. And, as we have learned (we HAVE learned this, have we not?) meltdowns occur within hours of loss of cooling. If you don't have backup power on the ready that will kick in immediately and be able to go for as long as it takes to restore grid power - weeks in a major event - meltdowns are inevitable.

And these aren't human-caused --- how again?

Oh, and I see you're OK with little meltdowns, b/c in what passes for thought with you, little ones don't indicate problems.

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Friday, May 25, 2012 9:58 AM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

AnthonyT

By your post I see either you didn't understand my point, or reacted very negatively to it.

To explain about increasing personal reward, and decreasing personal cost, I think there are some things we would both understand as fitting in that model. We would both consider eating as much high-calorie food as we want (carbs, fat and protein), having sex whenever possible, and laying ourselves down and relaxing at every opportunity as belonging to that category. But normal people also find cooperation, tending and caretaking, bonding to infants, having a sense of security, having a sense of competence, achieving understanding etc to be rewarding. So I'm counting those things as increasing personal reward and decreasing personal cost, even if they seem altruistic, social, and effortful rather than selfish, lazy and individualistic.

And as SignyM posted, statements about people in general don't apply to every individual. My point was that given the nature of our social organization, while there are some people who see the future we're headed to, I don't think there are enough. There has to be a large enough number to overcome the built-in advantage of those with lots of resources at their disposal, the people who actively benefit from the system as it is even if they're relatively powerless, and the inertia of people who don't care either way but just want to continue with their accustomed routine.

ETA: I also think people missed the boat at the discovery of very basic technologies. The bowl, fire, the pounding rock, perhaps basic agriculture, all GUARANTEED human survival at a level beyond the edge of death (which is where animals live) AS LONG AS people didn't multiply to the limit of their resources and acquire more than they needed. That was the turning point of the nature of human existence, from one of insecurity like that of animals, to one of security.

If 100% guaranteed security for all for as long as imaginable isn't reward enough to cause people to alter their behavior and avoid human-caused problems, I don't know what is.

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Friday, May 25, 2012 11:31 AM

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Hello Kiki,

I did not see that I reacted negatively?

You cannot expect big-picture thinking from people who are indoctrinated to enjoy the pleasure of the moment. *Nobody can be bothered to think of the end of the world for very long. Perhaps the length of a post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie. You are right that humans tend to behave like animals in terms of survival. Where I think the disconnect comes is in applying this insight.

You have an entire population of survival/pleasure thinking animals. This population is already indoctrinated to receive messages that tell them what to do. So you have to choose a method of attack and a message that will reach these people and move them.

Quote:
If 100% guaranteed security for all for as long as imaginable isn't reward enough to cause people to alter their behavior and avoid human-caused problems, I don't know what is.

This statement, to me, indicates that you do not understand how to best apply your own insights. I find that it is frequently the case that the people with the most knowledge about how to improve the lives of human beings have the least understanding of how to implement it.

The oft-mentioned 'powers that be' have a program in place already that is designed to tap into the very nature of humans that you have deduced. At the risk of sounding evil, I think that saving this world will require using their program.

Consider the people who make us dance like puppets. Security/Defense folks who sell wars on terror and drugs, big corps that make us enjoy being taken advantage of, pharma companies that make you crave a new drug that causes explosive diarrhea, food companies that mislead you into buying their product with misrepresentations. Politicians who again and again make us believe enough to vote before betraying us and assuring us it won't happen again.

Think about how they get us to reflexively do what they want. Then adopt all of their techniques and sell a new kind of product. Something that won't kill us. A product we've never really been sold: A Future.

--Anthony

*Nobody is a hyperbolic statement meaning 'many of us.'

Note to Self:
Raptor - women who want to control their reproductive processes are sluts.
Wulf - Niki is a stupid fucking bitch who should hurry up and die.
Never forget what these men are.
“The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.” -Thomas Szasz

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Saturday, May 26, 2012 8:35 AM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Here's the thing with my proposal:

The upside is that it's directly real-world guaranteed, not 'perhaps, at some point' as an indirect result of following some myth (and that myth might be religion, feudalism, capitalism or other scheme). Everyone is guaranteed not only a life of resource security, but also every benefit from their work, from the day they are born to the day they die. This guarantee flows from the logic of the paradigm.

The downside is that everyone, or virtually everyone, has to follow this paradigm. Enough people have to follow it so that a person who doesn't won’t be able to accumulate enough cooperators to amass enough resources to allow them to amass more resources. Enough people have to follow it to exclude and nullify those who don't.

This to me implies a knowing choice. For one thing, it's not favored in evolutionary terms. The reason is that it's a long-term system, and evolution, as I believe, favors short-term high-level use of resources. And to make that choice, people have to understand that this system is what's responsible for their security and happiness, and know the consequences of letting it break. And, as a result of the process of evolution, this applies not only to small groups of people, but to all societies across the planet. So even if you could convince virtually the entire world to follow this paradigm, how do you continue it into the future? It would be a little like vaccination. Once it's in place, the consequences of not following it become lost in time by simple lack of direct experience. How do you know what systematic privation is as a result of systematic greed unless you've experienced it? And unless you know what the consequences are, how do you make a knowing choice?

Sadly, while this is the logical utopia arrived at by many thinkers, it's chances of being realized are virtually zero.

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Saturday, May 26, 2012 8:45 AM

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Hello,

Can you sell your idea without referring to the world ecology or the environment or evolution or stuff like that?

You need to grab an audience that isn't usually tuned into these kinds of concerns. You need to use fear, lust, greed, and anger as tools. Good salesmanship is the only way to accomplish your goals without relying on a strong authoritarian system that will crush individual freedom.

--Anthony

Note to Self:
Raptor - women who want to control their reproductive processes are sluts.
Wulf - Niki is a stupid fucking bitch who should hurry up and die.
Never forget what these men are.
“The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.” -Thomas Szasz

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Saturday, May 26, 2012 8:52 AM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Maybe I could make it a religion and threaten eternal damnation?

ETA - referencing a book I've referenced b4 - 'Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed' - every society that I can remember that changed their society to escape collapse had that change come about due to a ruler who issued a decree.

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Saturday, May 26, 2012 9:48 AM

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
Maybe I could make it a religion and threaten eternal damnation?

ETA - referencing a book I've referenced b4 - 'Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed' - every society that I can remember that changed their society to escape collapse had that change come about due to a ruler who issued a decree.

Hello,

Well, religions are a good way to motivate some people.

It sounds as though you're saying that it is necessary to surrender freedom to avoid destruction.

--Anthony

Note to Self:
Raptor - women who want to control their reproductive processes are sluts.
Wulf - Niki is a stupid fucking bitch who should hurry up and die.
Never forget what these men are.
“The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.” -Thomas Szasz

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Saturday, May 26, 2012 10:02 AM

Quote Kiki: "Here's the thing with my proposal: . . . The upside is . . ."

Kiki, I did Not understand what you said in that post. You were speaking your own language.
I often speak my own language, and people don't hear or understand. But some of them get
mad and say they don't want to listen to me.

Tony's right, "You need to use fear, lust, greed, and anger as tools" to communicate with
the most people.

You are right, "to escape collapse, had that change come about due to a ruler who issued
a decree."

To survive, we need a) a wise, strong, grassroots movement, or b) a benevolent dictatorship.
The dictatorship would seem to have a better chance of success; it's less confused.

ETA: Tony, "you're saying that it is necessary to surrender freedom to avoid destruction"
Oonj: I think we, the species, have proven that repeatedly. Mob rule doesn't work.

=========================
I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. ~Charles R Swindoll

If I have to react to others all the time, then they own my mind more than I do.
If I let others tell me how to feel, I lose my ability to choose happiness.
If I let others tell me who I am, I've vacated self-definition.
Finally, I realized how foolish I was to give others such power.

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Saturday, May 26, 2012 10:33 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Well, it starts with a couple of ideas that seem pretty true to me.

1) All animals live on the edge of available resources in nature. It doesn't matter whether they're herbivores, carnivores, scavengers or omnivores. It doesn't matter if they fly, swim, walk or crawl. To illustrate this, imagine a lush evergreen veldt. For simplicity’s sake there are no predators. Now imagine two lucky grazers, male and female, that come upon this resource. They'll reproduce at their top rate until there are too many grazers for the vegetation to support. Even under initially ideal circumstances, sooner of later an animal species will hit the limits of necessary resources.

2) Humans escaped resource insecurity caused by fluctuating water and food supplies and weather through simple technology. The bowl or waterskin was probably the most critical as people die fastest without water (except air, but air isn't going to run out soon). The pounding rock and stick were probably next as they were tools that let people get food from normally unavailable sources. Animal skins for shelter were probably next. At some point a sufficient accumulation of simple technology freed humans from immediate threat of running out of resources.

At that point people were like the two grazers in the middle of the evergreen veldt. Absent globally catastrophic events like super-volcanoes or large meteorites, they were in the environment that they were adapted to, but buffered against local adversity by their technology. They were in a relative Eden.

There were only 2 things that could bring that to an end. One was expanding their population to the new limits of their resources. The other was accumulating far more than they needed, and so mimicking a much larger population.

I think that if people had understood that they had passed into a new type of existence and created a philosophy of 'just enough' humanity would have been guaranteed not only indefinite survival, but individual survival and even comfort and ease. Using just enough resources to meet your needs and having just enough children to replace your numbers would have meant humanity could have lived indefinitely in abundance.

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Saturday, June 9, 2012 11:21 AM

How hard is it to dismantle 150 nuclear reactors? Europe’s about to find out. =>
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/how-hard-is-it-to-
dismantle-150-nuclear-reactors-europes-about-to-find-out/2012/06/09/gJQA2EH0PV_blog.html

Last year, after the tsunami and reactor meltdown in Fukushima, Japan, many
European nations decided to phase out their existing fleets of nuclear power
plants. Germany and Belgium are aiming to end all atomic generation by 2030.
Switzerland is shooting for 2035.

Yet the mere act of shutting down those reactors is going to pose a huge chal-
lenge in the years ahead. According to a new report from GlobalData, Europe is
on track to decommission nearly 150 nuclear power plants in the next two decades.
Some, like those in Germany, are being mothballed for political reasons. Others,
in France and Britain, are simply getting old. Yet dismantling a nuclear reactor is
an arduous, time-consuming task — typically costing between $400 million and
$1 billion per plant. And it’s not clear that Europe is fully prepared for the onslaught
of retirements.

In a recent issue of New Scientist, Fred Pearce offered a handy step-by-step guide
on how to take apart a nuclear reactor . . .

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Saturday, June 9, 2012 11:25 AM