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Cold on a Cob
Feb 6, 2006

i've seen so much, i'm going blind
and i'm brain dead virtually

College Slice

WorldsStongestNerd posted:

"IIn short, no RE source or system is viable if it cannot not generate sufficient energy both to produce itself (literally from the ground up) and supply a sufficient surplus for society’s end-use consumption. Currently, no so-called RE technology is in the running"

Look at a windmill or solar panel. Consider the energy needed to mine and refine the metals in it. The energy of the dump trucks of ore and the foundry machines. Then the energy in the factories to make it. The energy to dispose of waste products properly (if we did that). Imagine the energy used by the big rig to haul the blades and turbines. Then finally factor the energy to have Rime go install and service it over 20 yrs.

Is this quote saying that over its useful life a windmill or solar panel does not even produce the energy that went into building and maintaining it? A windmill will not produce enough power to build another windmill?

they point out somewhere that the EROEI of wind is like 3:1 which is more than 1:1 but nowhere near enough to support modern civilization and elsewhere they point out that the heat required to make a windmill is literally impossible to achieve with RE sources

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SniperWoreConverse
Mar 20, 2010



Gun Saliva
wait isn't natural gas farts? Simply build a fart machine.

mcbexx
Jul 4, 2004

British dentistry is
not on trial here!



Cold on a Cob posted:

i've been saying for a few years now that the only solution is depopulation and i've been called a malthusian idiot for it when it just seemed like simple physics to me, so it's nice to get validation.

Maybe, just maybe* - and hear me out on this - the BBC series "Utopia" was on to something.

* most definitely

Ssthalar
Sep 16, 2007

Cold on a Cob posted:

all the work posting while crying laughing

Preen Dog
Nov 8, 2017

Caught up on the thread (thank you all) and watched First Reformed. Suffer my essay or don't.

Ok, so, climate catastrophe and precipitated social collapses are inevitable. The root causes cannot and will not be addressed, or even acknowledged, until -after- a catastrophe that may, or may not, be extinction-level. The only openly discussed solutions are really just distractions and tricks offered by meta-human corporate blobs acting to maintain abstract profit from the status quo, decline and collapse. Ok.

--

Even then, doomerism isn't justified. It is wrong, comfortable as it is. Those depressed, rationalizing or accepting, I urge you to click ahead to denial and anger. Maybe the eternal recurrence is really just the stages of grief.

Life requires hope. It -is- hope. Figuratively, in all forms, isn't life just inanimate matter plus hope? The individual organism knows it is dead in the future, knows it's offspring will fail, knows it's species extincts at some point, and knows all the branched-off species will go away sometime before heat death, but it still gets up and goes about it's day. A shellfish filters water for food as the food becomes plastic and the water, acid. A virus infects, knowing fully well it must ultimately fall to immune reactions or, even if victorious in all quadrillion battles, destroy itself by burning through it's hosts and drowning in the debris (the current human tack). Even -with- complete certainty of failure, they keep on truckin, or they would not have made it even this far. All life is a priori doomed, the only difference is the conscious level the organism is aware of it. Life is the denial of the understanding of one's, and all future you's, doom.

Hope, the denial of certain understood doom, is life. The only alternative to hope is non-life. For a purported life form, death, and by suicide. Those are the two options. (I would consider embracing the problem, trying to enjoy yourself, eat, be merry, roll coal and yolo to be doomerism and suicide with extra steps, not a distinct outlook).

Not suicide as an active choice, because that's scary, takes work, and risks meaning something. Suicide as the shrugging of the responsibility to hope that you bear for the privilege of calling yourself alive. Shrug - and you're gone, still blinking. Still posting and deadlifting and eating hot chip, the spark that made you alive (if you were) goes away when you give up hope. You haven't lost it, no one took it from you. You gave it away, or left it on the table, when you became intelligent enough, could see far enough, that the responsibility appeared too great. A p-zombie, still breathing, winding down, getting colder, dissolving into entropy. An actor in a comedy about life. Procrastinating low-effort murderer. Acolyte in the laziest death cult.

Hope is, of course, an illusion but paradoxically real. Free will is an illusion, but the belief in it does actually change a person's behavior. A placebo drug has a genuine health impact. Hope is the placebo that makes a rock alive. It is the ignorant, arrogant lie that your fluids and chemicals and energies are somehow special, different from, and better than the other ones swirling around you, just outside your skin. The trader, believing he sees a pattern in the charts, beats the algorithm. The player, with a charmed glove, catches the ball. The -thing- that believes it is better than other -things-, and is thus acts as if it is, and becomes so. Life is the sum of lies that came true compared to the infinite ones that did not, infinitesimally small but non-zero. Like a point without volume that somehow contains itself.

And it really shouldn't be scary. There is nothing to lose. The worst outcome is to be wrong, the default outcome. Hope might be painful, but it is risk free. You're going to die anyway.

---

Ok, so hope for long term human success in face of the evidence against. Hope and act, otherwise die. Hope for, and do what?

Deer are introduced to a forest, a paradise with no threats. They eat and eat and eat, the leaves, the grass, and multiply. Then they eat the seeds. Then they eat each other.

Given enough time and stimulating challenges, the deer could have evolved, but the leaf eating, then grass eating, then seed eating, then cannibal paradigms were just too darn successful, there was no reason to consider any other options until it was far too late. If only the forest had also offered plagues, droughts and wolves, the deer may have survived, developed, and gone to the stars.

Degrowth and decentralization of power, by the most violent and accelerated methods possible, is the only worthwhile course of action. Paperclip-maximizing organizations, corporations, economies, governments, are the real "humanity" now, in which individuals are merely cells or mitochondria at best. These organizations -are- marvelous, and efficient, and have genuinely served our species long term goals in the past. Now they are obsolete and threaten our existence, but are also the most powerful entities in existence. The longer they live, the more successful they are, the more likely the inevitable catastrophe will be extinction level.

From a personal standpoint, right now, as a completely helpless part of the current paradigm, it is more ethical to destroy than create. Is more ethical to steal than to produce. It is more ethical to waste food than to volunteer at the food bank. It is more ethical to murder, and as much as possible, than procreate. Even an atomic war, right now, would be good so long as some people and a book survived, in that it may avert an even greater collapse later on in which they may not survive. The CO2 graph line won't turn itself around. We have to do it. But first we must be such as wants to do it, rather than cower and clutch our petty luxuries.

I don't suggest that anyone has the courage to act on this understanding, I certainly don't. I just hope we can at least, first of all, actually, truly accept the understanding that violent degrowth is not only right but imperative to enable civilization to evolve into something that can outlast the century. Understand and accept the idea so alien, unprecedented and offensive to every letter in our DNA, programmed social sentiment and individual self preservation instinct. Understand and hopefully learn to want, and plan and struggle by slow degrees to dehumanize ourselves and face to bloodshed violently as possible, before it's too late.

If acceptance, dedication and practice of this truth allows me to do one decent ecoterrorism in my life, of a magnitude that at least erases my lifelong contribution to existential risk, despite my emotional aversion to it, it will have been worthwhile. Enough carbon credit to get into heaven.

Car Hater posted:

Yeah, it's me that thinks launching all the nukes is the best/last/most moral option open to us

Preen Dog has issued a correction as of 18:40 on Sep 5, 2021

Wakko
Jun 9, 2002
Faboo!

Cold on a Cob posted:

i've been saying for a few years now that the only solution is depopulation and i've been called a malthusian idiot for it when it just seemed like simple physics to me, so it's nice to get validation.

okay but phrased by itself this makes no sense because its only looking at one part of the equation

the more important part of the solution, now that we're into pliocene levels of atmospheric co2, is how do we reduce the population of the first world in the 1980s

Rime
Nov 2, 2011

by Games Forum

Preen Dog posted:

Paperclip-maximizing organizations, corporations, economies, governments, are the real "humanity" now, in which individuals are merely cells or mitochondria at best. These organizations -are- marvelous, and efficient, and have genuinely served our species long term goals in the past. Now they are obsolete and threaten our existence, but are also the most powerful entities in existence. The longer they live, the more successful they are, the more likely the inevitable catastrophe will be extinction level.

Everyone imagines "artificial intelligence" as an omnipotent brain in a box, which if it gets loose will wreak havoc upon the systems we have built to sustain civilization. Tendrils of nanotechnology reaching into your refrigerator and car. That's always been the Sci-Fi trope of the "threat" of "AI". IMO, predatory artificial intelligence is already here: it is the corporation, the multinational, the "economy" - which leverage individuals as neurons in a lovely neural network focused on growth and profit at any cost. The systems we currently endure are an artificial intelligence, and it is hell bent on turning this planet into a barren rock as fast as possible.

WorldsStongestNerd posted:

"IIn short, no RE source or system is viable if it cannot not generate sufficient energy both to produce itself (literally from the ground up) and supply a sufficient surplus for society’s end-use consumption. Currently, no so-called RE technology is in the running"

Look at a windmill or solar panel. Consider the energy needed to mine and refine the metals in it. The energy of the dump trucks of ore and the foundry machines. Then the energy in the factories to make it. The energy to dispose of waste products properly (if we did that). Imagine the energy used by the big rig to haul the blades and turbines. Then finally factor the energy to have Rime go install and service it over 20 yrs.

Is this quote saying that over its useful life a windmill or solar panel does not even produce the energy that went into building and maintaining it? A windmill will not produce enough power to build another windmill?


It's not about raw "producing the power which went into building and maintaining it" but about the form which the power generated takes. Physics is a bitch, electricity =/= "energy" as it applies to all applications. See the other quote about how RE sources cannot generate the manufacturing conditions necessary to build more of themselves, let alone while also powering civilization. It is impossible to maintain the RE supply chain without both excessive emissions of fossil fuels and the continued externalization of the costs associated with toxic waste byproducts into the environment. RE energy is a sisyphean testament to our civilizations unwillingness to dramatically reduce consumption even in the face of our own extinction.

Cold on a Cob
Feb 6, 2006

i've seen so much, i'm going blind
and i'm brain dead virtually

College Slice

Wakko posted:

okay but phrased by itself this makes no sense because its only looking at one part of the equation

the more important part of the solution, now that we're into pliocene levels of atmospheric co2, is how do we reduce the population of the first world in the 1980s

yeah i am simplifying; i view that part is the hardest but most important part. the paper gets into it in more depth but it's basically depopulation and a return to a more agrarian civilization reliant on truly renewable energy sources (biomass, simple wind and water, animal labour, etc) that is no longer living in overshoot, with some stuff about trying to manage the decline in an equitable and just way.

this won't solve everything, like it can't reverse what's already locked in. i don't think we can do much about that vOv

Complications
Jun 19, 2014

Preen Dog posted:

Life requires hope. Figuratively, in all forms, isn't life just inanimate matter plus hope? The individual organism knows it is dead in the future, knows it's offspring will fail, knows it's species extincts at some point, and knows all the branched-off species will go away sometime before heat death, but it still gets up and goes about it's day. A shellfish filters water for food as the food becomes plastic and the water, acid. A virus infects, knowing fully well it must ultimately fall to immune reactions or, even if victorious in all quadrillion battles, destroy itself by burning through it's hosts and drowning in the debris (the current human tack). Even -with- complete certainty of failure, they keep on truckin, or they would not have made it even this far. All life is a priori doomed, the only difference is the conscious level the organism is aware of it. Life is the denial of the understanding of one's, and all future you's, doom.

I mean, sure, I still hope that I have food tomorrow. (To clarify since goons are good hearted, this isn't a money issue this is a hope for the supply chain not shattering completely)

But I suspect that you're still infected with that better consumerist future which is invariably tied to exponential growth nonsense and you gotta accept it's not happening.

Complications has issued a correction as of 18:56 on Sep 5, 2021

Preen Dog
Nov 8, 2017

Complications posted:

I mean, sure, I still hope that I have food tomorrow. (To clarify since goons are good hearted, this isn't a money issue this is a hope for the supply chain not shattering completely)

But I suspect that you're still infected with that better consumerist future which is invariably tied to exponential growth nonsense and you gotta accept it's not happening.

Nah, I'm with ya. A sustainable world doesn't resemble anything that exists now, nor could any of us tolerate living in it. I'm not giving up my cheeseburgers.

Humanity is screwed and probably will go away. I'm just suggesting the possibility of survival requires hope. As a base prerequisite for anyone to be motivated to do anything. I buy a lotto ticket hoping to win millions but not actually expecting it to happen.

Preen Dog has issued a correction as of 19:25 on Sep 5, 2021

Raine
Apr 30, 2013

ACCELERATIONIST SUPERDOOMER




i dont understand what your definition of "doomerism" is

Preen Dog
Nov 8, 2017

Raine posted:

i dont understand what your definition of "doomerism" is

Belief that things can't be better, so no point in trying anything. Apathy, pretending not to care, as a substitute for admitting helplessness.

I propose admitting helplessness but then randomly thrashing to see if it does anything useful.

e. Raine what does accelerationist superdoomerism mean to you? Sounds cool.

Preen Dog has issued a correction as of 20:01 on Sep 5, 2021

Potato Salad
Oct 23, 2014

nobody cares


climate vengeance

apatheticman
May 13, 2003

Wedge Regret

Preen Dog posted:

Caught up on the thread (thank you all) and watched First Reformed. Suffer my essay or don't.


That's not hope, that's greed.

Shifty Nipples
Apr 8, 2007

loving hope is convincing yourself something has some higher chance to happen without any real tangible evidence to support it I don't hope the loving sun will come up tomorrow because there is a mountain of evidence to support the conclusion that it will in short gently caress hope

lol i hope i don't have a permanent physical disability some day lol

Shifty Nipples has issued a correction as of 20:12 on Sep 5, 2021

Raine
Apr 30, 2013

ACCELERATIONIST SUPERDOOMER



Preen Dog posted:

Belief that things can't be better, so no point in trying anything. Apathy, pretending not to care, as a substitute for admitting helplessness.

I propose admitting helplessness but then randomly thrashing to see if it does anything useful.

e. Raine what does accelerationist superdoomerism mean to you? Sounds cool.

all im saying is apathy can be warranted if the only ways to make things better are global revolution or nukes, i mean especially if you don't have nukes or the means to start a global revolution.

and even if that makes things "better" things are still going to be very bad afterwards for anyone still alive and much, much worse than things are now

calls to "hope, not doomerism" is backwards imo

everyone should know how bad it's going to get. scream it from the rooftops, why not. anything else is just appeasement to the liberals that want to spin their own fantasies and prolong the status quo

Irony.or.Death
Apr 1, 2009


Preen Dog posted:

Humanity is screwed and probably will go away. I'm just suggesting the possibility of survival requires hope. As a base prerequisite for anyone to be motivated to do anything. I buy a lotto ticket hoping to win millions but not actually expecting it to happen.

Sure, but it doesn't sound like you've really internalized this any more than any of the people you'd call doomers or you would not have posted about your desire to do an ecoterrorism in a public forum. If you really had hope, you would not want to leave a trail. So what are you really trying to psych yourself up for with the first reformed essay? Do you need a kiss from Amanda Seyfried?

fair enough

HookedOnChthonics
Dec 5, 2015

Profoundly dull



none of this is true outside of a freshman lit synthesis paper. happy for you though.

Rectal Death Adept
Jun 20, 2018

by Fluffdaddy
tl:dr lol, lmao

Rectal Death Adept has issued a correction as of 00:14 on Sep 6, 2021

Rah!
Feb 21, 2006


Cup Runneth Over
Aug 8, 2009

She said life's
Too short to worry
Life's too long to wait
It's too short
Not to love everybody
Life's too long to hate


skipmyseashells posted:

lol the kids of today are gonna look down on millennials way worse than we look at boomers

Most millenials will genuinely be worse boomers.

Cup Runneth Over
Aug 8, 2009

She said life's
Too short to worry
Life's too long to wait
It's too short
Not to love everybody
Life's too long to hate


Preen Dog posted:

Belief that things can't be better, so no point in trying anything. Apathy, pretending not to care, as a substitute for admitting helplessness.

I propose admitting helplessness but then randomly thrashing to see if it does anything useful.

e. Raine what does accelerationist superdoomerism mean to you? Sounds cool.

my 5% matched contribution to my 401k is my expression of hope

apatheticman
May 13, 2003

Wedge Regret
Life is a lot like that feeling when you have to poop but nothing comes out.

Minenfeld!
Aug 21, 2012



apatheticman posted:

Life is a lot like that feeling when you have to poop but nothing comes out.

What does eating more fiber symbolize?

apatheticman
May 13, 2003

Wedge Regret

Minenfeld! posted:

What does eating more fiber symbolize?

Temporary relief from suffering however getting that fiber caused more suffering as others had to make and transport it for you to feel the absence of it.

All life is that weird gotta poop but can't suffering, just at different levels.

Mayor Dave
Feb 20, 2009

Bernie the Snow Clown

Cup Runneth Over posted:

my 5% matched contribution to my 401k is my expression of hope

Car Hater
May 7, 2007

wolf. bike.
Wolf. Bike.
Wolf! Bike!
WolfBike!
WolfBike!
ARROOOOOO!
I mean you quoted me and I've been a megadoomer for years. I think I still had hopes the first 5 years of the climate threads or so, and then the polar vortex broke up in '14. Now I see no way out as this nonlinear oscillating system is abruptly going from one metastable state (warm ice-capped world with interglacials) to the next available more energetic metastable state (hothouse), and all the reports and science are unable to cumulatively replicate that simple model because it's not good science to just let yourself go cross-eyed and stare at the forest. Anyone who's taken undergrad physics/chaos theory knows implicitly though, there's no nice smooth gradual change for systems like this when you kick them.

I pretty well despise civilization at this point, but there's nowhere to go and it already lives in my brain so I just trundle along being evil with everyone else. I'll post it from the rooftops for the NSA dudes reading it: all government agents are responsible to convince the president to give the order. Nuke all of the cities, they're a dead end. Nuke some volcanoes too. Pray that in doing so we manage to offset the loss of aerosol dimming, and weaken the transition, more of our mammal relatives might make it through that way. The public sucks. gently caress hope.

mawarannahr
May 21, 2019

Admiral Ray posted:

Nah, glass isn't coated with plastic, that'd be a waste of money. Cans really do need to be coated if you want them to last any reasonable amount of time. Tomatoes would rust through a can in a few days, same with most fruit. Some energy drinks can't even be canned because they eat through the coating anyway.

I’ve never even seen a bottled energy drink, what is this? also did they not have canning in the early 20th century yet no plastic?

mawarannahr
May 21, 2019

Xaris posted:

vegetables are for pussies. real men eat 16 oz well-done steak with ketchup n potato every night

this reminded me of Billy’s dad in midnight express

quote:

Time - Phrase
00:34:40 The food is Iousy. The crap they seII in the restaurants ...

00:34:45 I had to run to the toiIet. You shouId have seen the toiIet.

00:34:50 I´II eat at the HiIton every night. Steak, French fries and ketchup.

00:35:04 BiIIy ...

00:35:07 - Why did you do it? - Money.

Americans, man

FUCK COREY PERRY
Apr 19, 2008



gonna beat my dick until it falls off

mediaphage
Mar 22, 2007

Excuse me, pardon me, sheer perfection coming through
https://twitter.com/adam_tooze/status/1434486474100002820

JAY ZERO SUM GAME
Oct 18, 2005

Walter.
I know you know how to do this.
Get up.


lmao

Mola Yam
Jun 18, 2004

Kali Ma Shakti de!
"Poorly devised regulation lets firms pollute with abandon"

seems like it was actually devised very well. i mean i'm assuming everyone involved was in the room when it was put together.

Chamale
Jul 11, 2010

I'm helping!



jetz0r
May 10, 2003

Tomorrow, our nation will sit on the throne of the world. This is not a figment of the imagination, but a fact. Tomorrow we will lead the world, Allah willing.



https://www.tiktok.com/embed/7004161097687207173

Cup Runneth Over
Aug 8, 2009

She said life's
Too short to worry
Life's too long to wait
It's too short
Not to love everybody
Life's too long to hate



how do they know?!

skooma512
Feb 8, 2012

You couldn't grok my race car, but you dug the roadside blur.

Cup Runneth Over posted:

Most millenials will genuinely be worse boomers.

The line between them will be those who got houses and those who didn’t. Seems like chud brainworms come with the deed

Radical 90s Wizard
Aug 5, 2008

~SS-18 burning bright,
Bathe me in your cleansing light~

This is all just survival. You don't need hope to survive.

Harik
Sep 9, 2001

From the hard streets of Moscow
First dog to touch the stars


Plaster Town Cop

Rime posted:

If renewables must necessarily be rebuilt, en-masse, every half century, how will that be achieved if we commit to zero fossil fuel emissions and a 100% renewable grid. As an aside, every time I bring up the regular rebuilding of renewables facilities as an issue, and somebody points out that "well nuclear and hydro need regular maintenance!" - I just assume they are an idiot because we clearly don't rebuild major hydroelectric facilities from the ground up every forty years.
Yes, we do. The same parts that are rebuilt on wind are rebuilt that often and for the same reason. Turbines have fixed lifespan and debris-laden water flowing through them at high speed causes corrosion. The dam itself also needs maintenance or you have what's technically known as a "whoopsiedoodle" and scour clean all traces of civilization downstream. Just because you don't have to re-pour a million tons of concrete every few decades doesn't mean hydro is a set-it-and-forget it technology.

At some point we're mining scrapyards for materials, not raw ores, so there's a finite limit to the amount of material needed for energy generation. It's cheaper under capitalism to externalize the costs and use slave labor to produce raw material and throw everything into a hole when it's outlived its usefulness, but that's not inherent to the production itself.

Rime posted:

It's not about raw "producing the power which went into building and maintaining it" but about the form which the power generated takes. Physics is a bitch, electricity =/= "energy" as it applies to all applications. See the other quote about how RE sources cannot generate the manufacturing conditions necessary to build more of themselves, let alone while also powering civilization.

arc furnace smelting exists and RE has enormous and predictable surplus periods where generation has to be idled. The non-aligned usage/production cycles will only get larger as the transition to RE continues and there's only so much you can do with battery tech. Dumping that 'waste' energy into high-energy processes (desalinization, electric smelting) makes sense.

It's one of those "we could absolutely do this thing, but we won't because capitalism"

Harik has issued a correction as of 10:39 on Sep 6, 2021

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Blockade
Oct 22, 2008

https://twitter.com/OnEstLaTech/status/1434575322465382404

Translation: protonmail is sending address info on climate activists to the police, even though they say they dont store any of that information

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