Fuck EcoFash (quokk.au)
submitted 2 days ago by [A] to c/mop
 
Fuck EcoFash
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[–] 8 points 1 day ago (3 children)

So, this made me read the article https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2452292924000493#b0265 which builds on the methodology of https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-32729-8.pdf which further uses the energy and materials estimates established in https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378020307512.

While it makes some gestures toward "renewable energy instead of fossil fuels", it remains pretty handwavy on the topic of critical non-renewable resources that are going to be the limiting factors. Arable land in cultivable climate, not depleted by overuse of fertilizers (which themselves are non-renewables), non-saline water (desalination is pretty energy intensive), helium, and cheap oil for making plastic, among other things. Reducing consumption was the answer 30 years ago, and even then it just would have slowed the inevitable return to no-fertilizer agriculture (immediate drop in yields), eventually no cheap plastics, no hi-tech chips (helium is essential for today's photolithography process), etc. We could hope to science our way out, and find some other ways to replace these critical resources, but short of that, the blanket approach of calculating energy and undifferentiated material mass requirements under the current technologies doesn't say anything about sustainable QOL.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 day ago

    This is exactly correct.

    Not to mention, some studies suggest that global warming is nowhere near what it should be (and I agree, all the estimates I have calculated suggest the global average temperature delta should be at least another degree higher). The reasons for this are varied, ice caps melting and such, but one key reason is that industrial activity also releases aerosols into the atmosphere which reflect solar radiation back into space. This was described as a "fool's climate" and stopping burning of fossil fuels could result in further global warming as the aerosols are removed. But they also have a much shorter half-life than greenhouse gases so your damned if you do, damned if you don't.

    Even taking into account that study's very optimistic statement of 30%, and another study's very optimistic assessment of climate change being driven by thermal pollution (which is a quite reasonable theory), you are looking at at least 0.5 degrees of warming, which is... fine, but suboptimal. Realistically, we should anticipate at least 2.5 to 4.5 degrees of warming by the turn of the century.

    Moreover, bug and larger animal populations have largely collapsed in recent years, which is key in food production (although I am not as well versed on that literature). While Eco-fascism is bad, we seriously need to start from the position of "we're fucked."

    It's been linked here already (and thanks to a404 for posting it!), but Desert is really a must-read.

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