113 comments on Fierce pride - yes it works! (or, first ever bank-financed offshore wind farm inaugurated!)
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113 comments on Fierce pride - yes it works! (or, first ever bank-financed offshore wind farm inaugurated!)
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Great, all this effort, however...
I too have a "longevity" issue. Great having all this improved, you-beaut technology coming to the fore, but how reliable will it be? Won't the bearings alone need constant care? Sounds kind of expensive (repeat manufacture, transport, installation, service) if you have to replace this new technology every couple of decades.
In Australia, we're being asked to seriously consider plastic water tanks/bladders to battle our drought woes; yet they come with a ten year warranty at best. Repair or replace?
One of my so-called 8000 hour energy-saver globes failed last night after six months occasional use (the desk-lamp was bought at the same time).
Peak iron-ore, peak coal... Aren't these also future realities? I mean, surely we don't have enough stuff in the ground to keep building millions of these things, several times each century! It's fingers in a leaky boat stuff.
The ONLY solution to our growing woes is to move to a more sustainable human population (no I'm not thinking wars or culling, though there is that peanut down the street...). I was over in Bali recently, chatting with locals who came from big families and had many children themselves; so many mouths to feed. Why not begin the sustainability thing by pressing religious leaders around the globe that condoms aren't such a bad thing afterall.
Sure, may not be as easy as building a zillion ocean fans or sun-catchers, but would surely be a heck of lot less expensive!
Or maybe not.
I read somewhere, another three billion people are expected to populate this little blue-green planet by 2050. To get there, that's 75 million born on average each year, over and above the ones that replace those who die... Or 200,000 more humans each day. To feed, to clothe, to shelter.
TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND MORE HUMANS EACH DAY!!
THIS IS NOT SUSTAINABLE!!!
Agreed, population growth is not sustainable and worsens every coming "peak x" that we face. And yet, the fact that the UN is predicting a peak in world population by 2050 is enough to convince some Peak Oilers that population is not an issue. But most Peak Oilers are remarkably silent regarding population. Both on this message board and in their presentations.
That would be me, for one.
As you say, population is expected to stop growing and level out at 9 odd billion people.
That is sustainable - which is why I don't view population as a problem - and why I take a very dim view of population doomers...
Indeed. I don't see the 9bn figure as a problem in itself. The issue is how those 9bn people behave, what they do with themselves. If the 9bn attempt to behave in the same way as today's population then we haven't got a chance, we haven't got a chance with today's population continuing to behaving the way it does today.
Short of going out with a sub-machine gun, it seems a problem which will just have to be coped with, rather than dealt with, and so discussion is moot.
I believe this type of argument is the logical fallacy referred to as a "false dilemma". Either you kill people, or you do nothing. And in fact, those are not the only two alternatives. You have birth control, which along with mother nature - which kills people for us all the time - allows you to reduce population, or stop it from growing, without using a machine gun. Now the religions that proselytize fight birth control tooth and nail. But it's time for secular organizations to fight back against this religious dogma. The longer we allow population to increase the worse it will be for people in the future - and not surprisingly, the worse it will be for us in the present - more trash to deal with, more pollution to deal with, more divying up of finite resources and often non-renewable resouces, soaring land costs, crowding, and on and on. And this is regardless of how many empty assurances we get from population Pollyannas.
Few of the world's religions have had a great effect on people's reproductive behaviour, regardless of what their official positions are.
Some of the lowest birthrates in the world are in Catholic countries.
Iran has had massive falls in birthrates, as has the Mahgreb.
Whilst birht control etc are important, actually factors like female secondary education and urbanisation correlate much better with reductions.
Immigration will likely be restricted in a post peak world, but overall I expect birth rates to fall more slowly where it counts, in the developing world as many of the factors which have led to decreases are weakened whilst it is much more difficult to provide facilities for birth control.
What I disliked intensely were people in the west chuntering on about how profligate the poor were, which has been the cry for the past two hundred years, without looking at why they actually had several children, although they were in want.
In many cases the lack of a social security net or effective financial instruments for saving made this the only effective method of providing for their old age.
So a debate by all means, although I can't imagine any here being against measures like the provision of birth control, but I do hope it doesn't veer over into the sort of snotty elitism which has been prevalent in that sort of discussion.
Big Gav,
To be concerned about where mankind is headed is surely a natural reaction, particularly to a forty-year-old Joe like myself who suddenly is made aware that obvious limits to things actually exist. As a bloke with an average IQ trying to help his kids choose the right path in life - if there is such a thing - who has been mostly influenced by MS info and business-as-usual these past decades, I simply seek answers to questions that revolve around BIG numbers that others throw up - and 200,000 EXTRA humans EACH DAY, for the next FORTY YEARS or so, seems like one of those numbers.
9 billion people worries me (there's alarming congestion even now).
85 million barrels a day worries me.
4200 planes IN THE AIR over the US at the time of 9/11 worried me.
Trillions spent on war-efforts.
100 million sharks destroyed every year.
And on and on...
My point in contrast to this topic - 24 propellers, each with a short, 20 year life-span - even though large in scale themselves, that the NUMBER OF THEM and HOW LONG THEY LAST seems "kinda small" (again, thanks to the builders for the effort and no offense intended). And surely there must be more practical ways to plan for a less-is-more future. Present ALL the options, like stop having babies for a while (in Australia, we hand out $6000 baby bonus'!). Instead of simply blowing billions on things that soon need to be replaced.
To be honest Big Gav, I'm offended at being called a "doomster", nay-sayer, whatever (bit like hopping on-board an environmental project, receiving a government subsidy and being called an "opportunist". It's simply not fair). 'Cause to me, much of this - both questions and answers - still doesn't make a great deal of sense for the long haul.
Or maybe I just need a calculator with more digits on it so the big numbers don't seem as scary.
Regards, Matt B from Melbourne
Joe,
A lot of us here have been considering these issues, including population increase, for some time - in my case around 40 years, so it really doesn't move things forward to shout at us with BIG PRINT.
Regardless of the monies paid as a baby bonus, most of the developed world has a static or falling birth rate.
The real remaining problem is in the developing world, where unfortunately they have no pension plans, and so in rural areas security of a sort is only to be bought by making sure that you have sons and hoping they take care of you.
Unfortunately whilst economic recession is likely to reduce birth rates still further in the developed world if past experience is any guide, still harsher conditions in poorer areas may well slow the rate of female higher education and urbanisation, often critical factors in fertility reduction.
The way out of this may be difficult to see, but the fact that it is rarely discussed here should not be taken as indicating unawareness of the issue, but perhaps an acknowledgement of it's intractability.
Fair enough. Just don't see how a few big fans and sun-catchers, each with a use-by date, are going to make much of a difference. And sorry about the big print: Lots of things I learn these days seem to have (or warrant) an exclamation mark. Afterall, I've been oblivious up until recently...
Regards, Matt B
It's like anything else: a few will make a small difference; a lot will make a large difference.
There were over 10,000 turbines installed last year, and the industry's been growing at 25%/yr for a decade. More wind capacity was installed in the EU than any other type of generating capacity last year, and it generates about 4% of the EU's overall electricity.
It's far beyond the level of "a few big fans". It is, at this point, a mature and mainstream generating technology.
On this board we frequently see main posts and comments that say that we are in trouble. Not enough oil and soon, not enough coal and natural gas, for our current population. Each time someone says something like that, we need you to make your case that there is nothing to worry about. Rebut each of their concerns and arguments.
No, it's not sustainable. While I love TOD, posting here amounts to little more than fiddling while Rome burns. Precisely as there's nothing which can be done about the exploding population, the root cause of our dilemma. Of course a die-back is in the future. It's arrogance and hubris which thinks otherwise. Hopefully complete extinction can be avoided.
Besides, imagine how boring things would be without a little doom on tap. Infinite growth - not possible, and a long cycle of decay looms.
Precisely as there's nothing which can be done about the exploding population, the root cause of our dilemma.
I think birth control and ending government subsidy of children are very viable solutions. And in the case of the US exploding population, which is mostly from immigration and births of immigrants, stopping immigration is also viable. And it will stop, just as it did during the great depression. Either a new depression or the peaking of coal and natural gas will turn off the "we would collapse without immigration" rhetoric.