BF2S Forums D&ST - Science

Larssen wrote:

It's not as simple as a relationship between state enterprise and corporations, it's that the entire national economies and the geopolitical power of these countries often depend on fossil fuel extraction, refinement and sale. Asking the saudis, australians, russians for example to cease all resource extraction is asking them to enact very wide ranging economic reforms (and to give up crucial political/international power). These reforms are sure to put a lot of people out of work, diminish these countries' control of their regional partners, and unsure of providing suitable alternatives. In the best case, countries like these will commit to very long term, slow, gradual shifts. In the worst case they'll actively work against you. Not just because of practical & coldly rational reasons - ideology will follow suit or even act as a starting point. The argument will be that western powers mean to undermine the economic/political prosperity of these countries, that it's a new attempt at colonialism, that climate change is either a hoax, not that bad or uncontrollable anyway, that it won't affect them, that they may even gain from it, etc. Disinformation and even manipulation of energy pricing will follow suit.

You'll also find countries that will make empty promises. Sign the document, and either structurally underreport emissions & do some accounting magic, or ignore the deal and move on. Fact is coal and oil can still be profitable for a very long time.

Honestly these agreements will be about as respected & honoured as most UN dictated international norms/laws/rules are. Considering the stakes, no chance we'll reach the Paris accords' lowest target, probable we'll also miss the second target.

yep, i said the exact same thing about the global fossil-fuel-based order at the start of this discussion. which is why i linked a bunch of contemporary ecological writing on 'fossil fuel fascism' too, as the squeeze from the climate crisis produces nationalistic, you-before-me fervour and an attempt to preserve geopolitical hierarchies.

there can be little question that there needs to be a reckoning between the global north and south on this matter. we essentially are a bunch of rich, industrialized,  high-polluting nations deciding how best to not tackle a problem that is going to wipe out hundreds of millions of people in poor, pre-industrial, low-polluting nations. when people like dilbert start ranting about 'the dark advancing hordes and their uncontrolled breeding', it leaves a slight tang in the mouth. this is our mess and we're too ensconced in our own privilege to properly tackle the problem.

don't think the world is overpopulated but Dilbert has a point regarding carrying capacity. We already have a crisis housing, educating, and keeping safe the people we already have.

political problems requiring political solutions. this is just bad-faith deflection in the context of this argument. the reason america struggles to house all of its citizens isn't because of a lack of resources or space. it's because putting everyone in affordable housing would destroy the speculative property bubble.

the 'hard limits' on this planet in terms of carrying capacity are of course real. but we are nowhere near the theoretical limit and we have enough wealth on this planet to equitably share resources and tackle climate change in the bargain. the problem is political obstruction: it would require an entirely new world-system and a new collective approach to solving our problems. birth rates fall with development but the richest on the planet don't seem in a hurry to part with their wealth and help the rest of the world to reach the necessary standard of development. america could house, educate and 'take care' of her populace in a trice if she had the political werewithal.

Bottom line is most countries are overpopulated, a country shouldn't have more people than it can feed, supply with power from its own resources etc.

well this is just an argument for massive de-globalization, which isn't ever going to happen. it's hardly only the brown overbreeding races and randy asians who are guilty of massive importation of food. and this argument seems pretty uncharitable when you consider that the behaviour of the northern industrial nations has directly affected the food-bearing abilities of much of the equatorial regions. 'hurr durrr just stop having more people than you can support! whilst we continue to desertify your region'.

Last edited by uziq (2021-11-15 05:25:56)

uziq wrote:

Larssen wrote:

It's not as simple as a relationship between state enterprise and corporations, it's that the entire national economies and the geopolitical power of these countries often depend on fossil fuel extraction, refinement and sale. Asking the saudis, australians, russians for example to cease all resource extraction is asking them to enact very wide ranging economic reforms (and to give up crucial political/international power). These reforms are sure to put a lot of people out of work, diminish these countries' control of their regional partners, and unsure of providing suitable alternatives. In the best case, countries like these will commit to very long term, slow, gradual shifts. In the worst case they'll actively work against you. Not just because of practical & coldly rational reasons - ideology will follow suit or even act as a starting point. The argument will be that western powers mean to undermine the economic/political prosperity of these countries, that it's a new attempt at colonialism, that climate change is either a hoax, not that bad or uncontrollable anyway, that it won't affect them, that they may even gain from it, etc. Disinformation and even manipulation of energy pricing will follow suit.

You'll also find countries that will make empty promises. Sign the document, and either structurally underreport emissions & do some accounting magic, or ignore the deal and move on. Fact is coal and oil can still be profitable for a very long time.

Honestly these agreements will be about as respected & honoured as most UN dictated international norms/laws/rules are. Considering the stakes, no chance we'll reach the Paris accords' lowest target, probable we'll also miss the second target.

yep, i said the exact same thing about the global fossil-fuel-based order at the start of this discussion. which is why i linked a bunch of contemporary ecological writing on 'fossil fuel fascism' too, as the squeeze from the climate crisis produces nationalistic, you-before-me fervour and an attempt to preserve geopolitical hierarchies.

there can be little question that there needs to be a reckoning between the global north and south on this matter. we essentially are a bunch of rich, industrialized,  high-polluting nations deciding how best to not tackle a problem that is going to wipe out hundreds of millions of people in poor, pre-industrial, low-polluting nations. when people like dilbert start ranting about 'the dark advancing hordes and their uncontrolled breeding', it leaves a slight tang in the mouth. this is our mess and we're too ensconced in our own privilege to properly tackle the problem

I don't believe a reckoning over climate change will happen. It's very unlikely this will develop beyond a summit every X years that will solemnly look back on another few years of missed targets. Once the issue really starts heating up due to massive floodings, severe droughts etc., it'll simply be past the turning point already. Poor people are indeed most likely to get the shaft.

I can't really say it's all the fault of elites, the global systems we have are simply incapable of coordinating on the scale that is necessary to tackle this issue. Too many conflicting voices and blocks in actual conflict, running their own ships, overlaid with an economic model that rewards cost efficiency above all else and does not factor in the environmental cost of the exploitation of the natural world.

In our countries neither does the voter. You'll routinely see a stat how the richest 1-5% are responsible for most of the pollution - you won't see average joe look in a mirror and say 'hey that's me'. While in terms of global average income, he definitely is. Everyone in the west is to blame in that sense. And for the emission reduction needed to take place for the most ambitious scenario to be achieved, we all would have to drastically change our lives & societies in ways that I don't think any of us are really prepared for. My bet honestly is that we'll reach over 3 degrees of warming, unless some magic tech solution suddenly takes hold.

The "tech ruling class," rofl. Bezos, Zuckster, etc. Mansion-dwellers the very picture of opulent consumption, our hope at curbing the worst effects of global climate change. Yes, definitely give them the keys to the kingdom. Tech giants don't have nearly as much power as they should. Facebook, Microsoft, etc. need dictatorial control over national policies worldwide.

I can't buy some models of Alienware but another guy can have like 35 rooms in his house, and we bow to that.

So a bunch of sociopathic pig men who think of humans purely in the sense of numbers. Sounds like no atrocity could stem from that.

Dilbert_X wrote:

Larssen wrote:

You'll routinely see a stat how the richest 1-5% are responsible for most of the pollution - you won't see average joe look in a mirror and say 'hey that's me'. While in terms of global average income, he definitely is. Everyone in the west is to blame in that sense. And for the emission reduction needed to take place for the most ambitious scenario to be achieved, we all would have to drastically change our lives & societies in ways that I don't think any of us are really prepared for. My bet honestly is that we'll reach over 3 degrees of warming, unless some magic tech solution suddenly takes hold.

The average person won't change, uziq will cling on to his AC, meat diet, air travel, hi tech products, the right to have as many kids as he wants.

There can be tech fixes - need to hand over the world to a tech ruling class - but they will be negated by expanding population so why bother?

If the global temp could rise by 5C maybe dinosaurs will come back.

you have some seriously weird fixations. 'clinging onto AC, air travel and having as many kids as he wants'. lmao. i notice that your own lifestyle is always unimpeachable in these matters. it's always someone else – never you. you make out like i'm the one who has spent his entire life living in a country where AC is a must (that's you, not me; never had a home AC unit in any of my places in the UK), and who burns up travel miles all the time (you drive a car; i walk and use public transport for everything ... oh yeah and i used one plane ticket in the last 7 years, one journey as part of that massive 4% total emissions which the air industry taken as a whole contributes; shall i blame your florida spring for the equivalent entirety of the global freight and shipping industry again?).

as for 'have as many kids as he wants', i know that as an upper-middle-class western bourgeois, there's little need for me to have a large family. i've never envisioned or wanted a large family. 2 at most (if it even comes to that). that's because people at the top of the global population pyramid typically don't have many children, dilbert. i'm not a catholic. i'll probably join the rest of my peers in having <2 kids on average, thus contributing to a general population decline in my demographic.

i have tried to point out for umpteen pages now why your 'moral system' is faulty and insufficient. you bring everything down to the odious lifestyles of other people, and focus excessively on the personal-lifestyle aspect. worry about your own sky-high average per capita emissions before blaming everything else on puzzling nonsense categories such as 'millennials with huge families' and 'yes but black people need forced sterilization'. it's YOU, WE, US who have contributed the most to the climate change picture over the last 100 years.

Last edited by uziq (2021-11-15 22:59:48)

our whole industrial way of life, and all of its emoluments and amenities and luxuries, has been stacked up on huge amounts of resource extraction (not unusually from the third-world/global south) and burning/processing of same. we have literally been invoicing the environment and atmosphere for our cost of living for 200 years and filing it on our balance sheets as 'gross profit' instead. to not factor that into any reckoning of the 'climate emergency', and instead point at africa and india and accuse them of breeding too much, is really a bit rich.

the industrial west, in cynical tandem with partners like the OPEC nations, have continued to cash-in our tomorrows for massive advances today. that's on us and it is reflected in the levels of material wellbeing and affluence in our countries (no matter that we have politically fucked it and rampant inequality is the norm; the wealth was still extracted from the ground and stashed in our coffers, our infrastructure, our grand projects).

you really act like you're entitled to a comfortable life in australia and as if the climate crisis is everyone else's fault. accusing ME of being reliant on AC and high travel costs, hahaha. you live in a fucking suburb in a baking hot continent. you say that you 'live within your means', 'aren't selfish', 'don't eat meat', etc, whilst being wholly, wilfully blind to the fact that your first-world standard of living has an immense environmental burden. those overflowing brown hordes certainly lived within the tolerances of the environment for centuries without razing ecosystems or depleting the rainforests, savannahs or outbacks; it's we who had the massive 19th century population explosion first, we who built the 'dark satanic mills', we who rapidly dreamt up ways of living which are far in excess of any 'natural' harmonious tolerance. you ignore all of it and point the finger accusingly at developing nations for having the temerity to need cheap coal in order to ensure their populations don't starve to death.

Last edited by uziq (2021-11-15 22:39:03)

what does that have to do with climate change? latrines and fire pits aren’t contributing to carbon emissions.

uziq wrote:

what does that have to do with climate change? latrines and fire pits aren’t contributing to carbon emissions.

Most of India is still cooking over what are practically open fires.


Its a huge problem for CO2, air quality and deforestation.
http://www.cwejournal.org/vol6no1/enhan … ce-chulha/
https://epod.cid.harvard.edu/news/india … ing-stoves

You're probably breathing in Indian cooking fire smoke right now.

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

give it to a bunch of materials engineers and dysfunctional business people.

You don't understand, engineers also have responsibility for thermodynamics, heat engines and electrical machines, we can transmute energy from one form to another.

Engineers are literally wizards.

China is now the dominant force in the world, Russia isn't far behind.

The west will collapse under the weight of LGBT tyranny.

there are gays and gay culture in asia …

i think there’s a persistent misunderstanding in the west about that stuff. south asia has a long history of homosexual relationships, transgenderism/hermaphroditism, cross-dressing, etc. there are literally groups of men in india who dress as women and work as prostitutes.

of course their social status is often low and they exist in a constant tension with mainstream societies. but, more often, the sort of virulent hatred and rejection you see is because they see a ‘western’ type of homosexuality gaining ground. they see it as an importation from the big bad west and a corruption of their traditional society.  you know, the sort of ‘international’ gay style: rainbow flags, campness, western behaviour with public displays of affection, etc. it’s part of a broader fear and rejection of western ‘relativistic, postmodern, amoral’ etc, behaviour.

even a hell-hole like afghanistan under the taliban had long decades of homosexuality, particularly pederasty and man–boy love between elders and youths. traditional islamic societies have made accommodations with this taboo behaviour, in their own way. it’s ‘western’ LGBTQ and the sort of values that a young indian or young chinese might get from the internet or western media that gets them into a real froth. (see also the way china cracks down on youth cultures that take their fashions from korea or the west.) so whilst it’s true that the brawny hindu nationalists and chinese communists officially condemn this behaviour, it’s also true that hindu culture has had a concepts of homosexuality and an ‘acceptable’ form of effeminate male behaviour for thousands of years.

don’t get me wrong: it is probably better to be gay in the west than these traditional asian cultures, especially if you want to live a ‘free’ life according to democratic expectations. but the west only recently started on this ‘legal rights’ universalist angle; to think that these ancient societies haven’t evolved their own social dynamics or frameworks to accommodate homosexuality, over hundreds or even thousands of years, is a very silly and shallow ‘liberal progressive view of history’ mindset.

Last edited by uziq (2021-11-16 17:31:25)

Dilbert_X wrote:

uziq wrote:

what does that have to do with climate change? latrines and fire pits aren’t contributing to carbon emissions.

Most of India is still cooking over what are practically open fires.


Its a huge problem for CO2, air quality and deforestation.
http://www.cwejournal.org/vol6no1/enhan … ce-chulha/
https://epod.cid.harvard.edu/news/india … ing-stoves

You're probably breathing in Indian cooking fire smoke right now.

nicely cherry picked link by the way, lmao. i love how you clearly just google this stuff on the fly and hope it sticks. professional researcher dilbertius.

the articles talk about the efficiency and cleanliness of indoor stoves, with regards to INDOOR air pollution, and the energy expenditure/use of outmoded chulha cooking. you know, the main emphasis is on the impact on people's health when they're sitting around noxious or dirty stoves all day long, or about helping people to cook more effectively. that's a public health issue, to be sure, but indians making naan bread isn't melting the ice caps. jesus fucking christ.

Last edited by uziq (2021-11-16 18:10:52)