alt.energy.renewable

On Mar 11, 5:13=A0pm, bill wrote:
> On Mar 10, 8:48 pm, Fran wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Mar 11, 4:09 am, Dan Bloomquist wrote:
>
> > > Fran wrote:
>
> > > > Everybody is in the 'our' group. It's part of the commons. Some of
> > > > 'us' are clearly spruiking some commercial interest or another. That=
's
> > > > spamming, but it doesn'rt exclude spammers from being amongst 'us' o=
r
> > > > spoiling the commons.
>
> > > So it starts by making a distinction between the 'us'.
>
> > > > Consider a communal house. I've lived in a few. Let's say someone is=

> > > > slack cleaning up their mess in the kitchen. One might say at a hous=
e
> > > > meeting "when will the inconsiderate stop messing up our kitchen aft=
er
> > > > they've eaten?"
>
> > > Now there is governance, a deciding body. The body decides to admonish=

> > > the 'violator'. It is a punishment.
>
> > Not necessarily. Perhaps those who violate will take the hint without
> > sanction.
>
> > > > The 'our' does not exclude, but it does attack those seeking to misu=
se
> > > > the commons to get private advantage.
>
> > > And if the violator refuses to reform?
>
> > It depends on what the violation is, the context, the harms etc ...
>
> > > >> So it clearly implies an intent of
> > > >> 'ownership'. To move the goal post to 'me' is irrelevant as 'me' is=
a
> > > >> part of your 'our'.
>
> > > >>> Even going no further than the syntax, this was silly. I said
> > > >>> nothing at all about 'law enforcement' nor implied it.
> > > >> 'Our' implies ownership.
>
> > > > It implies a common interest, which is not necessarily the same as
> > > > ownership.
>
> > > If there is governance, there is rule and rights to property. You need=

> > > permission to post on 'my' blog.
>
> > Indeed, which means that your blog is not part of the commons. Yet the
> > general access given to unmoderated newsgroups makes them part of the
> > commons. There is a kind of governance of course. In some states of
> > the US laws about cyber bullying and stalking are being developed. One
> > can, in theory be sued for defamation. Criminal use of the medium is
> > also possible in areas like national security, pornography etc.
>
> > > > What about public roads? Are they 'our roads'? Does our imply shared=

> > > > space or owned space?
>
> > > The use of the road is a privilege. The road is owned by the state.
>
> > Yet anyone can use them. Pedestrians, even non-citizens don't trespass
> > by their presence.
>
> > > The
> > > state enforces 'proper' use. The road is not a 'common' in the old
> > > meaning of the term.
>
> > Yet conceptually, the distinctions are moot. I need not have a licence
> > to walk or ride a bicycle on public roads.
>
> > > >> Ownership requires enforcement. And that
> > > >> clearly contradicts, 'common'. Go figure.....
>
> > > > Not necessarily, unless one wants to include in enforcement, social
> > > > pressure, taboo and so forth. The laws against littering are rarely
> > > > enforced, but many people observe them anyway, especially if they
> > > > think others are watching because they don't like the idea of
> > > > embarrassment. There's no law about how close behind somebody one ma=
y
> > > > stand at an ATM, but almost everybody stays at least 6 feet back
> > > > because closer would seem threatening. People shush their kids in
> > > > theatres, hold lift doors for people running and negotiate changes i=
n
> > > > laned traffic according to cultural convention. Neither rules nor
> > > > enforcement are always necessary.
>
> > > It is nice when folks cooperate and are polite. But if someone starts
> > > stepping on toes, there will be enforcement.
>
> > Perhaps, ultimately, but in many cases 'enforcement' is informal.
>
> > > > So too it is with this place. I'd like the spammers to stop. I can't=

> > > > stop them though and don't wink at coercion. I do believe that when
> > > > the financial interests of the global polluters club are dissipated,=

> > > > that almost all of this anti-biofuel anti-AGW spamming will stop.
>
> > > I wish AGW were really our biggest concern.
>
> > The health of the biosphere is a top order concern, and within that
> > AGW, as a trigger factor is huge. In 2003, for example, the Pentagon
> > in an exercise in 'thinking the unthinkable' (their words) tried to
> > model what might happen if and when the Gulf Stream was stopped by
> > admixture of glacial melt water to the North Atlantic. The Gulf Stream
> > may not stop in our life times, or even those of our grandchildren,
> > but it's a remote possibility, and a terrifying one, given that pretty
> > much the entire habitable surface of the planet is intensively
> > occupied.
>
> > There are other scenarios in which rising CO2 negatively affects the
> > transpiration of plants in the Amazon, contributing about 20% of the
> > decline in rainfall being experienced as a consequence of extended El
> > Nino and other events. As the plants dry and heat rises, savanna
> > spreads in place of trees, and decomposition of biomass accelerates,
> > the Amazon is transformed from a CO2 sink to a CO2 emitter and a flux,
> > the order of magnitude of which is larger than anything we've known
> > before follows, and then we really do have a run away escalation. Some
> > say that this might happen as early as 2040.
>
> > This would not not merely be an 'environmental' catastrophe, but a
> > human one. That biosphere is our life support system. There are no
> > other biospheres to live in. We protect it or we live in misery or
> > perhaps not at all. Given the way the world is organised, it's not
> > hard to see who'd be hurt worst and how the privileged would go about
> > seeing to it that they were as little inconvenienced as possible. The
> > overheads of protecting all those threatened lifestyles and property
> > would not be cheap, and come necessarily at the expense of the mass of
> > the populace.
>
> > > As far as biofuels from
> > > crops, I think it is a sham. And I think that because of what the
> > > numbers say.
>
> > Well I don't believe biofuels are the whole answer by any means.
> > Plainly, we humans have to start finding ways to consume less each.
> > Biofuels could be a transitional technology, bridging the growing gap
> > between crude oil availability and demand for it. With serious effort,
> > it's not unreasonable to think that fossil oil demand could be made to
> > plateau by about 2015, and actually decline over the next few decades,
> > blunting the price shock effect of declining reserves and spiralling
> > prices and allowing time for new more sustainable technologies to take
> > up the burden. Biofuels can buy us time. They are, along with a number
> > of other measures, a 'keeping wolf from the door' technology.
>
> > > Fran,
> > > I'd like to see a sane world. Years ago I pointed out that we would so=
on
> > > use up the spare capacity of Saudi Arabia and there would be no more.
>
> > Right now the morlochs are thinking of burrowing into the sea floor in
> > the Arctic for more. It's claimed that there are more "Saudi Arabia's"
> > there and with extended ice melt ...
>
> > > The idea was generally treated as a canard. "Limits to Growth" was hel=
d
> > > up as evidence to my fallacy.
>
> > >http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/3551
>
> > > I've talked about how our financial system was becoming very fragile a=
nd
> > > would be incapable adjusting to the 'limit'. Here we are. The fed need=
s
> > > to support the bubbles on one hand but is face with resource inflation=
.
> > > An impossible conundrum.
>
> > > We can talk about crop fuels and nuclear and solar. But they will be
> > > part of a world much different than this for those who survive.
>
> > The world must change. It's not sustainable. We are doing the macro
> > equivalent of living off money stored in the mattress by our parents
> > and tossing our crap out into the streets to save being charged for
> > garbage collection. It's going to be hard to compete with the cost and
> > convenience of doing that, especially since those feeding off it have
> > grown massively in number. It's going to cost us more to live in a way
> > that averts transferring our costs to successive generations. Yet if
> > we start changing now, then it might not cost us all that much more,
> > and we should definitely go that way.
>
> Fran, you DON'T GET IT! =A0The warming that is committed by the carbon
> we've already burned is..... =A0committed, too late to do anything about
> that now, we already burned it. =A0As for the future, we simply don't
> have the carbon to do this again! =A0That means that A) you're right,
> change is inevitable. =A0B) Dan's right, AGW is the absolute least of
> our worries.


Err ... that's a non sequitur. AGW continues to be a worry whether we
can do anything effective about it or not. And you'd be wrong to think
that just because we've burned a about a billion truckloads of the
stuff that more won't be found -- there's heaps of coal -- or that
existing carbon sinks won't start giving up their carbon.

=A0and C) It is probably already too late to make the
> changes that would allow life to continue in an orderly fashion.
>

Well, that I can't say, but if probably is the best offer of life on
the table, I'll take it thanks all the same.

> In an ideal world, we would transition to a more public
> transportattion intensive densified population regime powered by
> nuclear power. =A0That'd be great.... =A0if we'd started 20 years ago. =A0=
We
> DIDN'T!
>

But we can start now, because there's nothing better.

> That means that the very best that we can hope for (and I mean HOPE)
> is to drill everywhere possible for every shred of oil that we can
> find,

I disagree. The investment has to be in new sources of renewable
energy and in improving the efficiency of the places energy is
consumed.

> while simultaneously building nuclear power plants and wind-
> farms as fast as we can make them come off the line. =A0At the SAME time
> building coal to liquid plants, wood pellet mills, and every other
> economical or even marginal source of btus and killowatt hours we can
> reasonably lay hand to. =A0


Nope ... we should use every clean renewable source plus nuclear ...

> At the SAME time, we need to heavily
> prioritize development of the PHEV and a vast expansion of the
> electric generation and distribution systems. =A0All of this needs to be
> done with an absolute minimum of legislative, litigious, and process
> resistance. =A0Anything less than ALL of that will result in the end of
> technological civilization in all probability.
>

We can do that far more efficiently with a combination of good public
investment policy, good price signals at the consumer end and robust
compliance and regulation mechanisms.


> We do not have the luxury of "wanting" to do things in a "friendly"
> manner, we're gonna die if we don't fix this, starting right now and
> on a truly massive scale


We can be friendly, but firm. They aren't contradictions. Hardly
anyone opposes this stuff, the noise from the global polluters club to
the contrary.

Fran