I see where you're coming from now, and would agree with you about most consumerist bullshit, but in my experience procreation cannot be fully co-opted by the marketing gurus due to the highly personal nature of such behaviour.

Of course there are always those so vacuous as to believe everything they see on the telly, but I'm not convinced that procreation is one of those things. Birth rate amongst indigenous populations of first world countries tends to be below sustaining the population nowadays, so I have to call bullshit on this particular claim.

Davep, a date with Rosie is not breeding, though. Other than Mary, I don't know of any procreation that is "highly personal". It envolves at least two people, even if they aren't physically present.

Breeding, eating, bathing, etc, are all (semi) personal and all pushed to do more of it. The marketing gurus are just a part of it. For example, parents tell their kids they want to be grandparents, or parents are told it's not right to raise a lonely child. As subtle as it is, it's pressure, pressure, pressure.

Although I have several native friends, I can't speak for them, but then, they haven't take the bait on many other activities.

Come on, do you accept that most first-world countries have less than 2 babies for every two adults?

Growth in the human population comes from places where there is low education, an historical imperative to produce as many kids as possible for family security, and sometimes a religious element. None of these are occurring in established populations in western countries. Granted, there can be family pressure, but I'm sure it doesn't involve anywhere 99.9% of our births. That's just hyperbole.

Agreed, but I wasn't talking of growth, simply of births.
4.3 million new borns in the US in 2007. A record since the baby boom years. But then, if you don't consider the US as an established country ... gee, I don't know if I disagree.
I say it is, in my humble opinion, of course.

Italians, for example, have a massive decrease in births. Most European countries have a similar reduction in births. I just don't see how peer pressure is coming to bear. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

Automakers have had a massive decrease in SUVs sales, yet there are still people buying and driving those bad-handling gas guzzlers, even though they have no need for the 8 seats and all the cargo space. I don't equate a baby to an SUV, but it's another example of peer pressure. We do because it's cool.

Please take this with a grain of salt: for as long as the population is above the carrying capacity --long term carrying capacity there is, to please SOS--, each birth from a "clever monkey" defeats the purpose of instinctively guaranteeing the survival of the species. The "clever monkey" knows better, but instead it succombs to the social pressures of breeding.

I'm cool with that.

That depends on how much each life influences the average global lifestyle, as the UN puts it. Generally speaking, people tend to adjust to their environment, and if that environment means that 10 billion people need to consume proportionally less than 6 billion, then they probably will. It seems that all the estimates regarding carrying capacity are based off of static assumptions regarding behavior, which is the opposite of what humans have done during all of recorded, and otherwise AFAIK, history. Like I mentioned before, I don't think the future will be a happy hippie funhouse, but I also don't think it'll be the dark d00mc0pian disaster depicted on these here forums. It'll be more of the same. Humans will change and stress the environment, and back off as it becomes apparent those impacts are detrimental to themselves.

In part. Even if our understanding of the amount of energy in the sun, in gravity, in the oceans, in geothermal, in fossil fuels, in biofuels, in fission, and even fusion, and what have you, is wrong by a factor of 1 million, we know there's only so much energy we can extract from the planet*. Since nothing grows without energy, at a certain point the carrying capacity will be static, even if all 10 trillion inhabitants behave like Sudanese refugees.

IMHO --not to upset Davep--, carrying capacity isn't as malleable as noodles, and it's often confused with energy reserves, which I know you know the difference.

*I'll leave Intergallactic explorations to Gene Roddenberry.

I can't remember the last time humans have backed off of anything.

There are certainly fairly rigid limits to energy availability. For instance the world's complete reserves of FFs, excluding methane clathrates, are an order of magnitude less than the amount of usable energy available from renewable sources every year. Uranium has about six times more energy available than FFs do, and I imagine Thorium has much more than that.
Ha! Good catch, that should be 10 billion w/ a b.
That depends on what you mean by as malleable as noodles. I think the global average lifestyle in terms of energy can certainly be trimmed a bit, w/o impacting living standards (not standard of living mind you, dumbest metric I ever heard of) and that in places like the states, people could do almost all the same things they do now, just in a more efficient way, and use a fifth of the energy they use now.
We backed off of CFC and Co production in the early 1990s. As of 2006 we had the largest Ozone hole ever. Care to guess how big that hole would be if we had gone into the ~3000+ range, instead of the ~1900 we're at now? Is skin cancer something you don't mind? Do you have something personal against rice and plankton? As emissions go, CFCs and Co were pretty nasty and I imagine they would've caused way more trouble for us before Carbon emissions could even get close. In the U.S. oil consumption is the same now as it was in 1976(?), does that mean you don't think reducing per capita oil consumption by ~30+% is backing off? In that case, is a ~25% decline in oil production not a significant decline in your opinion?

That's fair, we surely did. Good find. But don't you think human beings tend to irreversibly ruin one playground, then do it again on the next playground?

As energy extraction is limited, so are playgrounds. The more of the same will eventually suck. And changes are, it will be within our lifetime.

How much renewable energy is truly available for human use without stealing too much away from the ecosystem is a matter of some debate. For instance, the gross numbers that get thrown around for solar just look at all of the sun that hits the entire planet. Obviously we can't turn the entire globe into one big solar panel. Not only would that be technically impossible, but casting shade on the entire globe would destroy all plant life and hence us in the process. And the downside of hydro is wellknown. China is dealing with overaggressive hydro right now with Three Gorges, etc... I'm not saying there isn't a lot of renewable potential, but it's nowhere near the hype.



I think over time the resistance of greenies against nukes will be whittled away and that's the direction we'll head. The problems with nukes are political more than anything else. If we can't really solve the proliferation problem it may present an impossible roadblock.



The CFC story gets trotted out quite a bit. What people fail to realize is that CFCs were an easy nut to crack compared to oil. There were safe alternatives to CFCs to switch to such that the transition was 1:1 without really causing any big ripples in the world. Even if we had the nukes already producting enough power to displace all fossil fuel use, the retooling necessary to electrify transport, build a hydrogen economy, or whatever, is staggering. Since the world revolves around short-term profits and losses, only the commodity price of fossil fuels provides a sufficient stick. Carbon taxes are again, politically difficult.

Irreversibly? To some extent, sure, it depends on what you're talking about. Will CFC (and probably Carbon) emissions continue to decline and reach some relatively steady state they were at in the past? Probably. Will we ever see dodos roaming in the wild again? Probably not. Energy extraction certainly is limited, but at present there is more than enough to drive what the world's economy will likely transition to. I don't mean a TEOTWAWKI economy, but a lower energy version of what we see now, which is a lower energy version of what we saw thirty to forty years ago.

No really, at least based on what I've seen. We can't steal energy. All we can do is change it's form and transfer it. For instance if we, say, have solar thermal in a desert, it doesn't matter if the light from the sun is converted to heat by striking the sand or by striking a collector. The vast majority of it still gets converted to heat. The .0001%, or whatever, of it that's transmitted to other locations isn't even enough to be considered trivial in terms of a desert ecosystem, because in a desert the limiting factor for life as we know it is water, not sunlight. The same goes for most (all?) wind installations I know of, since they don't remove an appreciable amount of energy from the environment to be worthwhile.
It's a good thing for us that we don't need to do so. The pdf I linked earlier, by McKay(?) IIRC, outlines replacing conventional energy w/ renewables, and even then it still includes excessive air/land travel, which we could clearly reduce/remove. While the energy uses are large, they aren't large enough to impact anything really. The difference in albedo from solar based renewables is a couple of orders of magnitude less energy than the normal solar flux, which is an order of magnitude less than the energy we're trapping due to GHG emissions IIRC.
It doesn't have to be. A thousandth of the world's renewable potential would supply more renewable energy than we know what to do w/, probably more given how inefficient we are. In terms of hydro, we're mostly tapped out, so there's no need for much expansion there.
Iono. Solar is getting very cheap very fast, and wind is already the largest source of new installed capacity every year IIRC. The way renewable costs are going, and given the relative ease of efficiency improvements, we may not see much more in the way of nukes, outside of it's share of electricity generation.
All the tooling needed to electrify the majority of transport for 90+% of transportation is already present. Four hours over a 15A circuit is all that's needed for America's ~30 mile/day average. People w/ longer commutes can use LEVs and higher current charging from a garage, not that most people average 200+ miles/day. We don't need enough energy to displace FF use on a tit for tat basis because we need way less electrical energy than FF energy to do that same thing in most applications. For instance replacing incandescents w/ CFLs would free up nearly enough energy to electrify all rail in the states IIRC. Ultimately, we will have to transition away from oil's use as a liquid fuel in heavy industry, but that's decades away at least, given how little is needed, and it isn't like biofuels from from many different sources aren't technologically viable, just that they aren't commercially viable, yet.

I agree that carbon emissions aren't as easy as CFC emissions were, because there's a lot of wealth discouraging a shift, but there are also greater financial incentive behind a shift. IIRC, the first 30-40% of carbon cuts are cost neutral , because they save money over the long run, and as time passes and oil prices rise, that percentage will only increase.
It isn't just commodity prices IMO, but also the resistance that the income from FFs, being about 10% of GDP, presents when it's used to discourage alternatives. If anything I'd say this is the biggest road-block to cutting carbon emissions, not ease of implementation. I also have a sneaking suspicion that the FF energy companies of today don't mind what's happening because they are, and probably will moreso, diversifying into alternatives. The more they pump now, the more that we'll have to pay to clean up later, which is a win-win for them if they're on both ends of the paycheck.

You need to read MacKay's book again. According to MacKay the sum of current available renewable technologies if implemented doesn't add up to the super-duper efficient world he envisioned or sees going forward.

He stated that all available renewables besides solar and fission (now renewable obviously), weren't enough for world energy consumption at a Cartoon European level (80kWh/day versus the current 125kWh/day), not that all renewables weren't enough. The two squares on page 236 (html) alone are enough for 3 billion at the Cartoon European (full size EV, air travel once or twice a year IIRC, nice heated/cooled place, and so on), and 6 billion at a more modest 40kwh/day (LEV like the Aptera, air travel once every few years, a sweater in the winter and a tanktop in the summer at home, etc...)

Yes, that's more or less what MacKay hinted to, but good luck with that. Like MacKay says in the bottom of page 233, "Let’s be realistic. Just like Britain, Europe can’t live on its own renewables."

I'm not saying it's impossible, or unfeasible, and for sure throughout mankind's history we have accomplished much more than that, but looking at the countries currently using about 40kwh/d/p in Figure 30.1 --Brazil, Uruguay, Algeria, China, Turkey--, I sincerely doubt many North Americans or Europeans would go for that, starting with you and me. Especially in the little time we have to get off fossil fuels and reverse the ecological damaged of the last 500 years.

That's assuming we don't use solar energy. Do you think it's likely that we won't use solar energy, comprised of solar PV, solar thermal power generation, and solar thermal heating in the future? Even though we're using it now? It seems like a no brainer to me that solar energy will expand, especially w/ dwellings that have decent insulation.
For the Uk, as mos has brought up in the past, and Europe like you mentioned now, sure, providing all their energy needs via their own renewables probably isn't likely given a first world living standard, but at the same time, Europe has about three times the population density of the rest of the world. If we were at ~20 billion people, projected to hit ~30 billion, we clearly could not expect the same living standards as a ~6 billion population, projected to hit ~10 billion, given the same renewable energy infrastructure. Well, technically, the same mix, since FF energy will decline, not fall off the face of the Earth.
We can have the same energy consumption and still have the same luxuries we enjoy today such as frequent personal transportation and larger climate controlled dwellings. The biggest differences would be LEVs instead of SUVs, great insulation, and very low energy (probably automated) heating/cooling. They aren't trivial in terms of cost, but they also aren't unreasonably expensive, especially considering that we're seeing ~$70/bbl in the first worldwide recession in decades, and we already toss ~$1000+/year away in heating/cooling costs and ~$2000+/year in gasoline costs.

MonteQuest is a cheap cunt, the name speaks for itself

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I bought mine because it handles better than my last SUV. And 4 door sedan. And goes faster. And brakes better. And doesn't have much body lean in corners. And carries the kids, the wife and me around in lots of snow. Are you seriously suggesting that you live in such a privileged area that people just buy SUV's because they are "cool", rather than the myriad of practical reasons available?

Yes, I am. And make that "we".

Our grandfathers, their fathers and their grandfathers had families, dogs, tools, etc, somewhat practical, decent and happy lives, and didn't own SUVs. My grandpa could borrow his work's VW Kombi now and then, but otherwise took the bus. And there was nothing sport about that bus.

There's nothing practical about a sport utility vehicle. It's just the cherry on top of the heap of rubbish.