Original Sin and the Clovis People

Originally posted by googlefudge
This is where Rwingett likes to miss-characterise mine, and others, positions because our actual
positions aren't easily assailable and so he likes to create strawmen to back up his own deeply
flawed world view.

I rail against the idiotic idea of permanent growth, and don't advocate for consumerist culture.

And I would appreciate it if you woul ...[text shortened]... ve and not what your fetid imagination thinks I believe.

I have told you this enough times.

I don't have a problem with the idea of permenant growth, infact its a good thing, if its a sin we need to keep at it! If you have population growth you should have economic growth, also as lives improve in poorer countries you get growth. With new technology you have growth. The idea that its a bad or a short term thing is a fallacy.

Whats bad are things like CFCs, being wreckless with the environment, to much deforestation, and as you said GF we need to shift to nuclear the greens must stop opposing it. The issue with CO2 is like a slow burning cigarette i don't think we are in immediate danger, but you can't have this long term growth and use carbon to fuel it, that willl cause trouble, we will reach a no going back point, not now but 20 -30 years time if we do that.

to go back to the original sin point, i think 'carrying capacity' in biology and original sin in the bible are a similar idea, and i'm not trying to be creationist in this thread, saying we woke up and were human by magic. I'm sure we were evolving, and developing technology at the same time, but the bible rightly points to a shift, technology moves 1000s of times faster then evolution.

Originally posted by e4chris
I don't have a problem with the idea of permenant growth, infact its a good thing, if its a sin we need to keep at it! If you have population growth you should have economic growth, also as lives improve in poorer countries you get growth. With new technology you have growth. The idea that its a bad or a short term thing is a fallacy.

Whats bad are things ...[text shortened]... se trouble, we will reach a no going back point, not now but 20 -30 years time if we do that.

The only people who don't have a problem with permanent growth are people who are completely
ignorant of the laws of physics.

There are finite resources available to us.

Our economy (and survival) is based on resource use.

To grow the economy requires using more resources.

Exponential growth uses up resources faster and faster till they run out.

Then the economy collapses and/or we die.

Period.


Growing the economy at x% per year forever is not physically possible.
And the point where you run out of resources is not fun.

We thus need to move to a stable economy that is not based on annual growth.

Originally posted by googlefudge
The only people who don't have a problem with permanent growth are people who are completely
ignorant of the laws of physics.

There are finite resources available to us.

Our economy (and survival) is based on resource use.

To grow the economy requires using more resources.

Exponential growth uses up resources faster and faster till they run ...[text shortened]... ces is not fun.

We thus need to move to a stable economy that is not based on annual growth.

but as i said you have 3 big drivers for growth, population, developing countries and tech, how do you plan to stop it?... its like a train

I agree with what you saying though if a banker thinks that his mortgages and pensions will be fine in 50 years and time and we just keep pumping oil between now and then and it will be fine, they are wrong...

Originally posted by e4chris
but as i said you have 3 big drivers for growth, population, developing countries and tech, how do you plan to stop it?... its like a train

I agree with what you saying though if a banker thinks that his mortgages and pensions will be fine in 50 years and time and we just keep pumping oil between now and then and it will be fine, they are wrong...

How to create an economy not built upon the idea of constant growth is a complicated question
that has many possible answers.


This however is irrelevant to the point that exponential growth forever is PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE.

I don't have "the answer" to fixing the problem, but that doesn't alter the fact that annual growth
of our economies continuing forever is not possible. And the limits of possible growth before physics
hits hard are starting to get close.

Originally posted by googlefudge
How to create an economy not built upon the idea of constant growth is a complicated question
that has many possible answers.


This however is irrelevant to the point that exponential growth forever is PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE.

I don't have "the answer" to fixing the problem, but that doesn't alter the fact that annual growth
of our economies con ...[text shortened]... ble. And the limits of possible growth before physics
hits hard are starting to get close.

tech means you can have growth with less resources... mobile phones make lots of money and we will never run out of resources to make them...

Originally posted by e4chris
tech means you can have growth with less resources... mobile phones make lots of money and we will never run out of resources to make them...

Oh good grief that old chestnut...

No it doesn't.

There is an absolute limit on resource efficiency at somewhere under 100%

All better efficiency does is postpone the point at which you run out of resources.

Originally posted by googlefudge
Oh good grief that old chestnut...

No it doesn't.

There is an absolute limit on resource efficiency at somewhere under 100%

All better efficiency does is postpone the point at which you run out of resources.

a little bit from the chemist do you know uranium is 50 times more common then silver?

we won't run out any time soon , by the time we do you will have the starship enterprise...

Originally posted by e4chris
a little bit from the chemist do you know uranium is 50 times more common then silver?

we won't run out any time soon , by the time we do you will have the starship enterprise...

It's like talking to an economist...


Do you understand the concepts of exponential growth and finite resources?

Because one makes sustaining the other impossible.

It doesn't matter how big the finite resource is, as long as it's finite then you
eventually run out of it... the eventually being quite close in many respects.

Originally posted by googlefudge
It's like talking to an economist...


Do you understand the concepts of exponential growth and finite resources?

Because one makes sustaining the other impossible.

It doesn't matter how big the finite resource is, as long as it's finite then you
eventually run out of it... the eventually being quite close in many respects.

maybe this is crude but we have as many people as we can feed, because of fertiliser that is a lot of people, growth isn't 'exponential' its not a graph going to infinity. I buy the argument that if we release too much CO2, if developing countries do that to western level we will be in trouble in terms of pollution and resources, but on the whole i don't think we will run out of resources any time soon , i think thats a fallacy, and its almost like the people who think it believe we 'sinned' against nature or something, it almost strikes me as a religious argument.

Originally posted by e4chris
a little bit from the chemist do you know uranium is 50 times more common then silver?

we won't run out any time soon , by the time we do you will have the starship enterprise...

that's a good point, but...

having a lot of uranium is great for building power plants, but then please realize that silver is a necessary component of every electronic tech tool we use every day, from the circuit board in your smartphone to TVs to the control panels for all those power plants and suddenly we have a problem. World supplies of silver are starting to get close and closer every day to the "vanishing" point.

Originally posted by Suzianne
that's a good point, but...

having a lot of uranium is great for building power plants, but then please realize that silver is a necessary component of every electronic tech tool we use every day, from the circuit board in your smartphone to TVs to the control panels for all those power plants and suddenly we have a problem. World supplies of silver are starting to get close and closer every day to the "vanishing" point.

I saw something about the chinese government buying a whole mountain of copper somewhere in s america, they are getting in quick.

Originally posted by Suzianne
that's a good point, but...

having a lot of uranium is great for building power plants, but then please realize that silver is a necessary component of every electronic tech tool we use every day, from the circuit board in your smartphone to TVs to the control panels for all those power plants and suddenly we have a problem. World supplies of silver are starting to get close and closer every day to the "vanishing" point.

I think gold works even better. 😏

come on, guys.

I know you're not chemists, but surely you can see that silver is not the same as copper or gold.

And the supplies of silver ARE dwindling. Experts claim that the prices for silver will skyrocket in the future due to an increasing difference between demand and supply.

Originally posted by Suzianne
come on, guys.

I know you're not chemists, but surely you can see that silver is not the same as copper or gold.

And the supplies of silver ARE dwindling. Experts claim that the prices for silver will skyrocket in the future due to an increasing difference between demand and supply.

Apparently I know more than you do about the construction of electronic circuits. 😏