Will the internet survive energy contraction?

TFian said:
It will be interesting to see the die off that happens there.
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Not the word I'd use. :(

Global warming will be devastating to humans, or rather, the habitat that humans require to thrive.

Climate change has a spectrum of dangerous consequences spread over centuries into the future. Hansen warned of in first suggesting that we had to get back under 350 before the Arctic icecap melted irreversibly.

Hansen warned of tipping points and a point of no return. From what I can see according to the science I read the Arctic icecap is melting even faster than the estimates even several years ago - maybe no summer ice at all in 30 years. he increased heating feeds Arctic amplification. Methane from melting permafrost and shallow ocean bottoms may then be released to the degree that it is a powerful positive feedback. Might not. The icecap melt could also lead to global climate shifts, eg, the slowdown of ocean currents transporting heat is the primary but not only possible consequence. Might not. What if we are near or over that tipping point and the resulting climate dislocation and degradation and destruction of ecosystems is (possibly or to varying degrees probable) civilization or even humanity threatening because of our emissions today and our inability to take appropriate action?
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Dam the Ob river - and the other big Siberian rivers - and divert them south, reducing freshwater inflow to the North Atlantic, preventing failure of the North Atlantic Conveyor, and providing huge amounts of fresh water for Central Asia.

For starters.

We'll see about that...
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No we won't. You have yet to provide a coherent mechanism for this, much less hard evidence.

How is it speculation based on a single anecdote?
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By being speculation based on a single anecdote.

It's a rather thorough study.
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You didn't read it, did you? It's not any kind of study, much less a thorough one. He just made the whole thing up.
 
PixyMisa said:
Not the word I'd use. :(
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Well yes, it's horrible, but it will be interesting I think to see what the aftermath is.


PixyMisa said:
Dam the Ob river - and the other big Siberian rivers - and divert them south, reducing freshwater inflow to the North Atlantic, preventing failure of the North Atlantic Conveyor, and providing huge amounts of fresh water for Central Asia.

For starters.
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What do you mean by Dam the Ob river? How will this be a solution?


PixyMisa said:
No we won't. You have yet to provide a coherent mechanism for this, much less hard evidence.
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I'm pretty sure the melting of the polar caps will have a much more devastating effect than just on coastal areas. In fact I have an interesting book on this very subject, though I'm sure you won't like the conclusions. More on that later..

PixyMisa said:
You didn't read it, did you? It's not any kind of study, much less a thorough one. He just made the whole thing up.
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How did he make it all up? What anecdote?
 
The Grand Archdruid has written up a great blogpost why technological solutions (techno fixes) simply won't work for our problems.

A couple of weeks ago, Energy Bulletin revisited some predictions made in 2000 by Amory Lovins, then as now one of the most vocal proponents of technological solutions to the crisis of industrial society. Under prodding by energy analyst Steve Andrews, Lovins insisted among other things that by the year 2010, hybrid and fuel cell cars would account for between half and two thirds of the cars on the road in the United States.

Snip...breach of Rule 4. Please stop quoting or otherwise posting entire articles from other sites...2 or 3 paragraphs is enough.
Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Locknar


The green wizardry being developed in these posts thus seeks to craft responses to the crisis of our time that don’t ignore the predictable impacts of that crisis. For this reason, we aren’t going to be exploring the sort of imaginative vaporware that fills so many discussions about our energy future these days. Instead, the curriculum I have in mind starts with a sufficiently solid grasp of ecology to understand the context of the wizardry that follows, and then moves to practical techniques that have been proven in the real world and can be put to use without lots of money or complicated technology. That may seem dowdy and uninteresting, but that’s a risk this archdruid is willing to run; if your ship has already hit a rock and is taking on water, to shift to a familiar metaphor, passing out life jackets and launching lifeboats is far less innovative and exciting than sitting around talking about some brilliantly creative new way to rescue people from a sinking boat, but it’s a good deal more likely to save lives.
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More here http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2010/07/closing-circle.html
 
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Another great article on optimism's blind spots, and why things will get a whole lot worse.

Optimism, harsh realism, and blind spots—10 years later

Ten years ago, energy analyst Steve Andrews challenged widely respected energy guru Amory Lovins via email for what Andrews thought was an overly optimistic vision—about coal consumption trends, evolution in the auto industry, future world oil production, etc.—articulated in the Rocky Mountain Institute‘s Spring 2000 newsletter. RMI published the subsequent email exchange at http://www.rmi.org/Content/Files/RMI_SolutionsJournal_FallWin00.pdf in the fall of 2000; most of it is reprinted below, with a few updated facts. Ten years later, read it for the blind spots everyone had.

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Snip...breach of Rule 4


What‘s the take-home here? Is it that Lovins, who really is a genius, was bested by Andrews, who confesses that he‘s a couple slices short of a full loaf? Even if true, that‘s irrelevant. What matters is that nearly all of us have blind spots and natural proclivities that prevent us from anticipating, seeing or acknowledging shifting trends, even shifting megatrends just 10 year out. Lovins and Worldwatch were wrong about coal. Lovins was wrong about the 2010 US car market, will likely be wrong about oil. Andrews badly missed the current shale gas trend. IHS has repeatedly blown their rate and price of new supply forecasts. M. King Hubbert knew he was wrong about natural gas but didn‘t know why. The US EIA has been terrible at long-term oil forecasting. What‘s your blind spot?
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http://www.energybulletin.net/node/53404
 
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No, see, when you write it that way, you imply that it is unlikely to be true because you doubt it. That is an argument.
 
TubbaBlubba said:
No, see, when you write it that way, you imply that it is unlikely to be true because you doubt it. That is an argument.
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Not at all. I simply don't believe that all the "predictions" turned out to be false. Of course it's entirely possible that they all did turn out false, but I see no reason why that's the case. Maybe it's an English error on my part, it's not my first language after all.
 
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There's no reason to doubt it since you have yet to see the evidence in question.

Thus your reasoning boils down to "No! Grand Arch-druid said it's good! Couldn't possibly be wrong!"
 
TubbaBlubba said:
There's no reason to doubt it since you have yet to see the evidence in question.

Thus your reasoning boils down to "No! Grand Arch-druid said it's good! Couldn't possibly be wrong!"
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Haha, what? What did I say was good? Now I don't think you understood the context of what I doubted.
 
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