From Waitaki MP Jacqui Dean’s Facebook :
This morning I attended the opening of the Tasman Valley Road with Conservation Minister, Hon Dr Nick Smith. This significant upgrade was a collaboration of NZTA and DoC to improve safety and accessibility to one New Zealand’s most beautiful alpine regions. It will have great benefits for the surrounding communities.
This is #TeamKey working for New Zealand whatever the weather.
The announcement on the road says:
The completed $3 million upgrade of Tasman Valley Road at Aoraki/Mount Cook was officially opened today by Conservation Minister Dr Nick Smith.
“The major upgrade of the Tasman Valley Road is about improving the safety and accessibility to New Zealand’s most spectacular alpine environment. This new road will enable over 100,000 visitors annually to enjoy the magnificent mountain, lake and glacial views of the Tasman Valley, and the unique flora and fauna including mountain lilies and daisies, and our unique mountain parrot, the kea,” Dr Smith says.
“The upgrade unveiled today – a partnership project between the Department of Conservation and the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) – will improve one of New Zealand’s iconic ‘must-visit’ destinations, and provide significant benefits for the local tourism industry.
“The original road previously ran over a very dangerous and busy 2.2-kilometre bluff section, which has now been moved and realigned to run along the Tasman Valley floor, where it follows the contours of the nearby Blue Stream. This addresses a number of safety concerns associated with high traffic volumes on a narrow and winding section of road used by large buses and campervans. The new section also reduces the potential exposure to rock falls and avalanches.”
The capital costs of the upgrade have been shared by the Department and NZTA.
“This project is a great example of the Department working in partnership with other agencies to meet the aims of all involved. The upgraded road meets the strategic investment priorities for the Department with the area being an iconic site, while also meeting the NZTA’s priorities to make improvements where there are road safety issues and high traffic volumes,” Dr Smith says.
“I encourage many New Zealanders and other visitors to the area to make good use of this new road, and enjoy one of the great sights our country has to offer.”
Homepaddock 
Seldom have I seen the dissonance better enunciated.
This isn’t conservation, but then, the Department has been king-hit, gutted, and steered into adovating something called ‘prosperity’.
It’s the drive – the selfish short-term drive – for ‘prosperity’ which is the single driver of the need to conserve in the first place.
‘
Obvious Election timing (angling for conservation-instinct centre votes) aside, Smith is a long way from understanding true conservation, The Denniston ‘trade off’ is classic Smith failure; the resource is a one-off, once gone, always gone. There is no value on that, not long-term there isn’t, and particularly with an energy resource – without which money is worth precisely nothing. It is infinitely more valuable than a bit of this-season weeding, somewhere up the road.
Trading the family cow for five magic beans was probably spin put about in the same manner – note the need for golden eggs and Malthus-defying beanstalks; a fairy tale conveniently covering the fact that Jack just got disenfranchised. Diddled out of his birthright.
A somewhat pertinent parallel.
Flawed, it what it is. Fatally so. A joke. Preserve the tree by chopping it down, preserve a piece of biosphere by pushing more tourists through.
http://www.uvm.edu/~jashman/CDAE195_ESCI375/What_is_Sustainable_Development.html
We are late – very late – to get us an intelligent leadership, and to do so we have to have an intelligent debate. Given that the intelligent will be limiting their reproduction numerically (seeing what is ahead) and the less-so won’t, one-person-one-vote may never save us from self-destruction.
Interesting thought.
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How many children do you have Murray?
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good question.
Before we had any, we though about it carefully. The obviously sustainable choices were 2,1 or none. We settled on 2, because we thought 1 would be lonely.
That was 28 years ago, that decision. Many of our contemporaries decided to forgo. Now, that’s what we would choose, but no way did we think hunanity would continue to paint itself into such an obvious corner.
Population then was 4.9 billion. Oil consumption was 59mbpd. There was still time to morph, just. I doubt there is now.
Not only did we limit ourselves, all that time ago to ‘replacement’, we have gone on to demonstrate energy-efficient living. Our house needs 1.6 kw/h a day, and rated an 8 when we put it through the Homestar test.
http://www.homestar.org.nz/node/add/homestar-free-test
Put yours through, and you’ll see just how far we have pushed it. Sorry, I walk the walk besides talking the talk. What I’m out of patience with, is folk who still advocate growth or think it’s possible.
🙂
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Very altruistic and noble MG but pray tell how we are to avoid human disaster if those who see such self responsibility as laudable while so many do not.
Start with those on welfare breeding on and then move onto other religions and cultures who similarly laud breeding on.
Growth is the only alternative to feeding the increasing world population, as sadly fertility, although naturally inhibited in animals under nourishment stress, does not seem be so successful in humans.
Btw we also made a rational decision to limit our family to two children over 50 years ago.
I for one, initially saw national responsibility in China’s one child policy before the unforeseen outcomes including gender inspired abortion, forced late term abortion and the tragedy around a natural desire for two or three offspring, as a good thing.
I guess I am asking for a solution to the serious problem of males coupling and moving on as if they reside in the savanna and not in the urban jungle. Too many cases in the opinion of an amateur geneticist who could understand problems around poor mating decisions and any potential protocols over the ability to match stocking rates to feed supply.
It seems castration and electric fences are off the table.
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chuckle. Growth can’t continue, so won’t. So pursuing it is of no use unless your circumstances are better because of doing the temporary thing.
In terms of fossil-fuelled overshoot, we won’t be better off, so we shouldn’t attempt it.
Good reading is ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ (Garrett Hardin)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
and the Jevons Paradox (William Stanley, astute fellow).
It raises the interesting question: we’ve just thrown money at yet-another bit of medical-research, the aim of which – like all medicine – is to keep people alive longer. The ‘unfit’, in Darwinian terms. In a species probably 3X overshot, should we actually abandon medicine? Keep our gene-pool higher quality?
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Growth can continue and will until something limits it.
Look at everything around you, unless you live in a cave, innovation has enable the creation of all those things.
Innovation will continue to do that until a limit halts it. You suggest energy is a limiting issue. Bur in the next breath recognise you’ve found alternative energy sources to fossil fuels.
As time goes by resource use will change as supply markets change.
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sorry, you don’t understand. Let’s separate out some facts.
Enery is everything. Don’t eat, die. Don’t filltank, roll to a halt.’
‘
Innovation created None of our energy sources. Tapped them, yes. Got more efficient, yes. Created, no.
Innovatin, as related to energy, can only be appliedto efficiencies. Each one – diesel engines for example – can only be a maximum of 100%, and in the case mentioned, thermodynamics suggest about half that as an upper limit.
Yes, I use alternatives, and frugally. My consumption-rate, though, is several orders of magnitude less than BAU – don’t factor growth in there!
That last sentence is a ‘keeper’. Thanks, made my night. I too think that the right-hand side of the Hubbert Curve (Gaussian, if you must) will indeed see a change in use and supply. 🙂
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Murray, I asked this lot last week what energy will power this ever growing future, they believe in. They gave faith based answers that someone will invent something (and neighbourhood nuclear, clean coal and 100 years of fracking)
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Magical pixie dust?
(Blue, of course)
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Cave dwellers – once only had one source of energy, a couple of sticks to rub together. I’m thinking that in todays modern society a few cave dwellers still exist. Self imposed fearing the sky is falling.
Let us see how many ways energy can be sorted for practical use in todays society.
Wind- used for electrical energy – there options for using wind energy including buying wind turbines to making your own from recycled washing machine engines.
Solar – PVs, for electricity generation
Solar water tubes – heating water for home heating, water heating for cleaning.
Kinetic- Many hybrid cars use kinetic energy to power themselves
Stored hydro- kinetic, We all use it.
Stored air – kinetic – Some prototype cars driving by this form
Stored hydro kinetic- some farmers tap into streams for their own power supply
Gas – cooking, heating etc
Gas – electric – we all use it.
Combustables – wood – mostly renewable.
Coal – Electric
Coal heating
Coal manufacturing
Oil – Used for nearly every possible thing, heating, transport, manufacturing etc etc
Nuclear – mostly for electrical items
Hydrogen – A new energy source that can drive electric cars.
Tidal kinetic energy – for electrical items
And I think there are many many more than I am glossing over for the sake of a blog.
If you have a look through the list you will see most of those mentioned have been largely developed in the last 100 or so years. And many of them have become increasingly more available to the public as time has gone by and markets have allowed.
I’m guessing that cave dwellers would panic when their fire wood run low. And that necessitated the invention of the axe and wheel for a wheel barrow.
I’m hoping the modern chicken little day cave dwellers have got good axes, as denying the use of modern day energy sources will mean the unlikely discovery or adoption of future energy sources.
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Nonsense, MrE
You need to study energy, rather than clutch at straws.
I have studied energy. I can tell you that NOTHING will replace fossil fuels. Not only that, but that we won’t sequester co2 because it would take more energy than we can/will ever have surplus, to to the sequestering.
That is why we haven’t.
Tide (somewhat), hydro, wind, are secondary solar; there is no other sustained source (and actually fossil fuels are only stored solar – trees-to-coal etc).
You also make what I call a fool comment (with due respect) and it’s been explained hereabouts recently. Firewood was gathered quicker with the axe and wheelbarrow, but not one stick was produced. You fudge supply-technology with resource-supply.
Then you revert – and it’s very common – to denigrating the messenger. Always the mark of a weak argument, of denial. I live at a much more efficient rate of energy-use that you, at a Homestar rating of 8 (I dare you to put your own house through; I’m picking a person like you will own one rating between 2 and 4).
And there are no future energy sources. All there are are discoveries of ways to use existingly-available energy. That’s a cherry-pick-start, taper-off process.
Your list is interesting – but slightly confused.
Wind is for sure – but it only does electricity, the EROEI of using it for say electric cars is way worse than oil.
Solar – my house is passive solar, I’m writing this via solar PV. I don’t do heat from it though, nor transport. They would take some area – at 15% efficiency…
Storage – doesn’t matter what, it has to be sourced. Kinetic isn’t a source. An electric car in Australia, would be a coal car (85% coal-fired electricity there). Hydrogen isn’t a source. Pressurised air isn’t a source – and all conversions lose energy in the converting; typically as low-grade heat. (fossil energy supplied you breakfast, it let you walk down the street, you heated the air in passing – low-grade heat; irretrievable).
Gas/coal/oil are finite. Peak conv oil was 2005, peak coal predicted 2027….. You can only ‘manufacture’ coal, or do coal-to-oil, from another source feedstock, and the process will lose you energy. That’s one reason Germany lost WW2.(oil vs coal is one reason they lost WW1).
You seriously need to do some homework, too confused as to source, vector, EROEI. Happy to help – genuinely – ex here, if you are really interested.
Telling someone like me that theyre denying energy sources – good one.
http://www.nzlifestyleblock.co.nz/lf.nsf/article/getting-into-hot-water
go well
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Murray,
You say
“You need to study energy, rather than clutch at straws.” blah blah blah.” “That is why we haven’t. ”
Please turn you computer off. – Walk away from it. You are banging on a machine that uses solar power… An energy that supposedly does not exist to you. “We haven’t” created it. We can’t and wont because it cost more energy to produce than it creates.
You can’t say we haven’t. You can’t say we can’t. We have, we are.
The only thing in question is the rate at which change can happen, and whether total fossil fuel can be offset. I find it extremely bizarre that a man ‘off grid’ claims it can’t be done.
A study in energy is important, sure. But alone, without knowledge of technological gains, human nature etc, it is flawed.
Let me ask you, what have the gains in solar panel output been in the last 10 years? Gains per unit of area. What have the gains in energy output been of LED lights?
You say “You also make what I call a fool comment”
Then say “Then you revert – and it’s very common – to denigrating the messenger. Always the mark of a weak argument, of denial.”
Largely in society that is considered hypocritical behaviour. I tend to agree.
And please point out where I denigrated you. Just one example will suffice. Upon suitable evidence I will apologise.
Then we are off to who has the greenest credentials. Wanting to have a measure of manhood. Because that is what matters in more, in a debate. Who has the largest co-pper.
Let me tell you something. I can’t compete with you, I have a larger co-pper than you. But you do grossly, grossly underestimate me, and I will leave it at that, avoiding the elitist discussion as much as possible.
I find it bizarre that much of your comment is about who has read the most about energy, or who has the most energy efficient house. You are clearly a openly proud man, a trait rare in New Zealand males. Although I’d say it comes off poorly when it is followed by baseless poor judgements of others. I’ll congratulate you on being a openly proud man. But those other behaviours…..
Kinetic isn’t a source – umm – Hydro.
Umm kinetic cars store slowing energy. That offsets moving energy. Its a source.
Hydrogen is not a source? But the chemical reaction it causes is. Bit like fossil fuels really. Not currently all that efficient. But… How much have solar panels improved?
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“Let me tell you something. I can’t compete with you, I have a larger co-pper than you.”
?????????????????????????????????????????????????????
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Because humor is seemingly wasted I will try and make it easier…
“Wanting to have a measure of manhood. Because that is what matters in more, in a debate. Who has the largest co-“
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oh boy, where to start. Sigh.
Facts – we will end up with renewable energy (I have never stated otherwise). Logic tells us that finite sources must fail. Either we will go there by squandering the lot, exponentially-quickly, or we will have scared ourselves enough to agree to desist. I expect the former.
But renewable energy doesn’t do transport as we know it – the EROEI of charging batteries and carrying them, doesn’t compare to the power-to-weight we get from oil. It also needs infrastructure. You need to do the morph before you peak the use of the previous, and long before that if your next EROEI is going to be lower. The previous energy has to build the new infrastructure.
We are past that (it takes all we now produce to keep us going, with aging infrastructure and never more of it than now), so to build the new we will have to triage. Do some research on America’s aging infrastructure, check out your own Council – I’ll bet it’s struggling. Forget funding for depreciation, think energy.
New infrastructure also requires other resources:
Click to access Copper-Science-2014-Kerr-722-4.pdf
note the plumettinG roi.
“I’m hoping the modern chicken little day cave dwellers” – were you not including me in that? Sorry, I kinda assumed you were…… If you don’t think that was a put-down, we live on different planets. (which could be quite useful – the Avatar message was about just that; the need for another planet. Actually, though, doubling the supply doesn’t stave off exponential growth for too long……)
Hydro relies on rain, which is solar-derived. Kinetic is therefore a vector.
Your comment on hydrogen doesnt make sense. It has to be made somehow, and the energy required to do that is so great that you can forget BAU. Do some homework on EROEI – all oils ain’t oils, as they say.
http://energyskeptic.com/2013/2012-global-eroi/
Solar panels havent improves much at all. They will, but it takes a long time before the build energy is recouped – just like with a Prius vs an old Corolla. Questions about alumina, rare-earths, fossil-fuel content in the build. Photosynthesis/DNA-unravelling may make it better, but we’re about out of time and scale for that.
Finally ‘are’. Just because you have done something so far (lived since you were born, say) that is no guarantee of said condition continuing. Accelerate toward a brick wall (a good analogy to exponential growth in the consumption of a finite planet) and it’s all good until you impact. Only a fool (or an economist) keeps their eye firmly on the r/v mirror.
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“But renewable energy doesn’t do transport ”
Um hydrogen
“Do some research” – Your not prepared to try and convince me? You have views but you don’t have a source of evidence for them?
“New infrastructure also requires other resources” Then thank goodness we have relatively cheap fossil fuels to facilitate that, yes?
““I’m hoping the modern chicken little day cave dwellers” – were you not including me in that?” I don’t think your house is a cave.
“Your comment on hydrogen doesn’t make sense. It has to be made somehow, and the energy required to do that is so great that you can forget BAU. Do some homework on EROEI – all oils ain’t oils, as they say.”
Hydrogen requires heat and water to be created – that heat doesn’t have to be from fossil fuels. We can get heat from all sorts of sources. Gosh we even live on a molten planet, bursting with heat energy. Whilst the hydrogen may be net of production – technology, innovation, etc. Why so much doubt?
“We cannot solve problems with the same thinking we used to create them”
Albert Einstein
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FFS MrE hydrogen is an energy carrier not an energy source! Using the earth’s molten core, yeah thats called geothermal energy (we are already doing that one). Using geothermal energy to make hydrogen fuel will mean a loss of energy in the conversion. Kinetic energy in hybrid cars is just recovering some of the energy from whatever fuel you used to move the car in the first place. And you had the cheek to call Murray Grimwood a cave dweller! BTW the sky IS falling on this fossil fuel powered western civilisation but most people don’t want to think about it and those making money from business as usual are hellbent on making sure the public don’t understand (seems to have worked on you)
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RBG –
“hydrogen is an energy carrier not an energy source” you say potatoe I say potaaaatooooe.
Water for hydro is an energy carrier not an energy source.
Your point is?
“Using the earth’s molten core, yeah thats called geothermal energy (we are already doing that one). Using geothermal energy to make hydrogen fuel will mean a loss of energy in the conversion”
Yep yep… We cool the earths core! OH KNOW!!! The sky is falling the sky is falling!!!. Wait a minute. The earth is falling, the earth is falling!!!
“Kinetic energy in hybrid cars is just recovering some of the energy from whatever fuel you used to move the car in the first place.”
Yes it is. Although it is using kinetic energy that would normal be wasted in heat (braking) . Ergo it harnessing kinetic energy that is usually wasted.
“And you had the cheek to call Murray Grimwood a cave dweller!”
No I didn’t. Point to it.
And I don’t think you should say that to Murray. Ill defend him. I think his house is well thought out.
“BTW the sky IS falling on this fossil fuel powered western civilisation but most people don’t want to think about it and those making money from business as usual are hellbent on making sure the public don’t understand (seems to have worked on you)”
Uh Duh… Catch up – we have both agreed the fossil fuels will not last. That is not secret. Find me one person that thinks fossil fuels will last for eternity.
The question is: if they can be replaced fast enough or if at all. I say yes. Murray seems to say no.
Catch up RBG. Less chicken littling, more thinking please.
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hydrogen is not renewable energy. (you don’t listen, it’s a vector. What energy was used to create the supply? If grid-power, then in Australia it’d be 85% coal, if USA 42-5% coal).
I did give you an EROEI link – did you ignore?
Can you not separate ‘cheap’ from ‘easily available’? The failure – it’s common – is to mentally transfer ‘wealth’ to ‘proxy’. Wealth is the aquisition of processed parts of the planet. Dollars are an expectation that you will be able to buy same, IN THE FUTURE’. If the high EROEI energy isn’t there to supply the goods/services, your dollar isn’t underwritten.
Yep, it comes down to difference of opinion, except that one has to be wrong.
http://www.otago.ac.nz/physics/news/otago054499.html
I’ll do another post with some links, or this’ll be medicated……..
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http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/09/discovering-limits-to-growth/
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/10/the-energy-trap/
Prof Murphy is worth some time, the second link needs careful and repeated reading. It nails it.
Folk who study whole systems (like Murphy, and another good one is Prof George Mobus (question everything, typepad).
They are anything BUT chicken littles, and their arguments are hard to rebut.
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MrE. I say potato, you say fork. One is a source of food and the other is one of the ways by which you get it into your mouth. My point is that you don’t seem able to understand the difference.
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Hydrogen is a renewable energy. It starts off as water, and ends up as water. Sure it may need another energy source along the way but that can be renewable too. You can call it a vector if you like, but the truth is that this argument is semantics. Hydrogen can be used for transport and can be a renewable energy.
To me the argument is a bit like saying hydro is not a renewable energy, because it needs a dam made by energy to extract it.
Or fossil fuels are not an energy source because they need an energy and the presence of other chemicals to exhaust the energy (spark and oxygen).
Can we get over the semantics. It gets boring real fast.
And sure I skipped the EROEI link. That’s because it is out of date tomorrow or the next day. Because of innovation.
Eg – many PV panels have a solar efficiency of 18%. Where Im told some are now 72% – with an apparent potential of more.
You might spend your day worrying about Armageddon. I don’t. I spend my day wondering if I can do things smarter, more efficient, cheaper, better. And I genuinely believe – Humans are clever. We’ll sort it. We don’t know what we don’t know. Tomorrow we’ll know more.
The problem with physics is it is a developing science too. If you disagree, consider the Higgs boson particle. Think about CERN.
I dislike the term Homo sapien sapien. I would prefer Homo Percipio Percepi Perceptum.
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Mr E says “Hydrogen is a renewable energy” WRONG!
And- It’s not semantics, its just that some people are ignorant dickheads and you are one of them.
BTW- Hydro energy comes from solar powered evaporation of water (ie rain). You can have as many dams as you like, but if it doesn’t rain you won’t get any energy from your dam.
I’ll spend my days somewhere other than this blog from now on. It’s populated by cretins anyway.
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“And- It’s not semantics, its just that some people are ignorant dickheads and you are one of them.”
Rather than respond to the defamatory comment, I will cite a great man. Murray Grimwood.
“Then you revert – and it’s very common – to denigrating the messenger. Always the mark of a weak argument, of denial.”
“BTW- Hydro energy comes from solar powered evaporation of water (ie rain). You can have as many dams as you like, but if it doesn’t rain you won’t get any energy from your dam.”
Oh well that means there is no such thing as “Hydro energy” doesn’t it! Is it Solar.
Then again the sun is a chemical reaction and the major chemical is Hydrogen… So Hydro is Hydrogen energy. But wait a minute the sun generates energy by nuclear fusion, so it is nuclear energy. That’s it! Hydro is nuclear energy. New Zealand generates it’s electrical energy from Nuclear power.
If I was close to you, I’m wondering if I could smell the uranium emitting from your ears.
This is one of the reasons why I enjoy commenting on blogs. It gives me a good laugh.
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Innovation as applied to energy, can only produce efficiencies in it’s use. Physics itself, as in it takes a certain amount of work to raise a truck of X tons up a hill X feet high, cannot be altered.
Your comment that you didn’t look at the EROEI links, MrE, was an admission of chosen ignorance. I can’t think of a worse epitaph.
Nor, as an energy-buff, can I think of a bigger waste of cranial capacity and resources that the Hadron Collider.
Kind of like funding the Purser to investigate the fading-rate of deck-chair colours.
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‘Physics itself …… cannot be altered’.
I wonder if they thought that before they discovered the electon, electro-magnetism, nuclear fusion, that light was not only a wave but a particle.
You see Murray, by understanding physics better was can utilise the physical properties of things around us better.
“Nor, as an energy-buff, can I think of a bigger waste of cranial capacity and resources that the Hadron Collider”
I now understand your thought process. Science, the understanding of particles, of energy, of energy and matter creation, – it’s a waste of time. We’re doomed. Turn off the lights, keep it in your pants. The world doth endith.
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Mr E, Murray may be a person that believes head of the US patent office, Duell, said in 1899 that “everything that can be invented has been invented”.
I prefer what he actually said and believe it is as true today as it was then:
In my opinion, all previous advances in the various lines of invention will appear totally insignificant when compared with those which the present century will witness. I almost wish that I might live my life over again to see the wonders which are at the threshold.
Even the IPCC suggests adaptation is the future, and as a species we’re bloody good at it.
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On another post Murray referred to the Great Oxygenation Event.
The link says that following this event, “[e]ventually, aerobic organisms began to evolve, consuming oxygen and bringing about an equilibrium in its availability.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxygenation_Event
I suppose we could wait for similar organisms to evolve and consume all the extra carbon dioxide humans have produced through our activities. Or we could use our remaining finite fossil fuel resources to speed up the process.
The greenies won’t like it, but genetic engineering could be used to produce such organisms without waiting (and taking the chance) for evolution to do it for us. GE organisms, it has already been proven, are capable of consuming CO2 to effectively shit out hydrocarbon fuel similar to diesel. The process can be solar driven. No different in theory to how fossil fuel reserves were laid down (ie. photosynthesis). Maybe slower, maybe more expensive, but so? The cost is relative – money only a proxy – as Murray often points out.
Technological solutions are indeed possible. Some just don’t like the method so they try to make out it is impossible. They need to get over that because the alternative population control options which have been discussed recently on this blog are truly repulsive.
If you want things to turn really horrible here on Earth, deny people children. We need children to make us whole and complete, sensitive, caring, selfless, and empathetic. Without children life is not worth living.
Ask your wife, Murray.
Ask Robert Guyton – 70 – who takes delight in pregnant bellies and his own grandchild.
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sigh.
Efficiencies in energy-use can only be 100% at best, and won’t get there. What part of that isn’t understood? Regardless of ‘discoveries’, that is.
Technological solutions need energy. Never forget that. And necer forget that it was the craving for energy that is creating one of the problems – ignored why? Because there is no planB for energy, as there was with Ozone……..
Children? If you overshoot, you die off. Doens;t matter how smart you are, or whether you adapted thus far. Old woman/fly.
So you have to have less. The problem is that the later in the overshoot process you stave off that decision, the more you have to ‘less’. Emotions don’t alter life/death/habitat/resource issues, although they might influence whether a society chooses to fit-in or fail.
Jared Diamond is the best read:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse:_How_Societies_Choose_to_Fail_or_Succeed
and if you don’t get the difference between energy and technology and efficiencies, try Tainter:
Click to access tainter%20-%20collapse%20of%20complex%20societies.pdf
Well worth the read, that one, Tracey.
Just for the record (see comment on another post today) I don’t have a ‘wife’. I’d thought out that ‘state/church/third party’ thing before teaming-up, as had my partner of 33 years. Potential partners who understand the nuance of excluding institurion from relationship are few and far between, but gold when you find them.
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Murray,
In your physics learning did they teach you that energy is never lost, it simply changes forms?
What is fossil fuels today becomes heat and carbon dioxide tomorrow. 2 other potential forms of useable energy.
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Heat is lost to the earth as thermal energy.
I despair at the ignorance, but my love for my fellow man keeps my pecker up.
One day, Mr E(coli) you’ll catch up (I believe).
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So, Murray, you’re OK with the State getting involved in matters of reproduction but not in your relationship with your partner?
That makes no sense at all.
I prefer it the other way around. Legally married but the State can have no say over what I do with my womb.
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“Heat is lost to the earth as thermal energy.”
And here I thought we were worried about global warming!
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Robert says energy is lost.
Uh … Duuuuuh!
People heat their houses using stored ground energy.
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Tracey – you can do better than that. Apply logic, why don’t you.
The current system(s) got us into overshoot, reosurce depletion and over-pollution, including anthropogenic climate change.
Therefore the current systems have to be stopped, or radically altered.
If we were all intelligent enough to limit ourselves to replacement progeny, the planetary paddock would be sustainably stocked. It isn’t, so we arent. That leaves either the state (or some control/rules structure) or a survival of the fittest slug-fest.
Fittest these days means having more AK47’s and drones.
You want the latter approach, go right ahead. Somehow in denial. that it won’t happen? Then you better have a reasoned rebuttal to the links I provided, above.
MRE – come back when you’re informed. I’m just back from a lecture – didn’t see you there. Pity, it covered most of what you don’t understand.
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Your own words Murray, your own words:
“Then you revert – and it’s very common – to denigrating the messenger. Always the mark of a weak argument, of denial.”
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“If we were all intelligent enough to limit ourselves to replacement progeny, the planetary paddock would be sustainably stocked. It isn’t, so we arent. That leaves either the state (or some control/rules structure) or a survival of the fittest slug-fest. Fittest these days means having more AK47’s and drones.”
Murray, you’re presenting an either/or scenario – a false dichotomy.
One problem with your logic is that there is nothing to stop people with lots of weapons increasing their populations through having families beyond replacement quantity. So they end up with lots of people AND lots of weapons (not an either/or choice). No amount of submission to structure and rules by people within a different regime will affect the other if they do not wish to likewise submit.
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