Like I've asked about a dozen times now, how do we mortgage an asset which can't be used in any realistic manner or time frame, and thus has no value? Are you going to lend YOUR money to such a hair brained project? No, you're not. Neither is anybody else. — Jake

I do not accept your objection is valid. It's the difference between commercial debt - which you're talking about, and something more akin to sovereign debt. Sovereign debt is valid as a consequence of a political obligation to service it - such that, surety for the debt follows from a political commitment to secure a sustainable future.

Regulation of knowledge is the problem. Failure to recognize scientific method as the means to valid knowledge of reality from 1630; and persisting in that mistake for 400 years, explains how we arrive at this state of affairs, how we've invoked these challenges to our existence, and why we have the knowledge and technology to address the problem, but lack the ability to apply it.

The argument from cause and effect is that there's a relationship between the validity of the knowledge bases of action and the consequences of such action.

The argument from evolution is that life is 'correct to reality' from the atom up, through its DNA, its physiology, its behavior - all crafted by the function or die algorithm of evolution. The implication is that we have to be intellectually correct to reality or be rendered extinct.

The argument from epistemology is that science tells us what we can know, and how we can know it in a methodologically rigorous way - that now constitutes a highly valid and coherent, if incomplete - understanding of reality. It is science as an understanding of reality, particularly as it has coalesced over the past 50 years - that is a new, and epistemically significant factor we have yet to account for.

This leads to a political argument - most basically, that government should be responsible to scientific truth. The longer version of the argument suggests significant limitations on the legitimacy of the principle, to account for the 'realities' of the world we live in. Most basically, existential necessity provides both prior authority to science, and a legitimate limit upon the priority of science over ideology.

Nonetheless, there's a powerful and valuable rationale that follows from accepting science is true, that enables us to overcome the limitations of ideologies without undermining them. These limitations are manifest in the argument we set out with - that explains why we have the knowledge and technology to secure a sustainable future, but at the same time, lack the ability to apply it.

That's not the case at all. There's nothing stopping us from updating our relationship with knowledge to adapt to the new environment that's been created by science. Well, nothing except grasping that the environment has profoundly changed, thus creating a need to adapt. But, your point is taken that we're not ready yet to do anything. Reason isn't enough, we're going to need some kind of big crisis to awake us from our philosophical slumbers. — Jake

Updating it how?
Who decides?
How much will that cost?
Adapt how? In relation to what? Thoughts and prayers?
What new environment? What's new about it? What does it mean?
"We're not ready to do anything?" I didn't say that.
What do you mean reason isn't enough? Who is depending solely on reason?

How are you going to fund what you've actually proposed?
You give sound bite answers to this, while investing post after post after post in expressing how dented your ego feels etc. — Jake

I've answered this question. Mortgage fossil fuels to the world to monetize without extracting them, and use the money raised to fund fossil fuel infrastructure. What is it about that answer do you not understand?

Yes, that's it. I understand what you're saying better than you do. I get that having this revealed to the world in print is annoying to you, and I do regret the dent your ego is experiencing, but again, this is a philosophy forum, and that's what happens in such places. — Jake

You don't even understand your own argument implies there's nothing anyone can do. If you believe that, why go on about it? Are you just trying to rub humanity's nose in their ineptitude and helplessness - unto inevitable extinction? What a perfectly horrible thing to say - over and over and over again.

I was an English major, so this is way out of my field, but I think you are referencing losses at low voltage. Transmission across long distances is at very high voltage, and losses are low -- less than 10% over a thousand km. The very high voltage of long distance transmission is stepped way down for distribution to consumers, and the stepping-down occurs in substations not very far from users. In much of the world, there would be no need to locate solar plants far from users. Indeed, if the solar panels are on one's roof, or near one's urban area, transmission won't be a problem. — Bitter Crank

Right, but transmission at high voltages requires base load, which is exactly what you have with coal or nuclear, you don't have with solar panels alone. Using solar panels to produce electricity at relatively low voltages, and using that to produce hydrogen - instead of transmitting electrical energy, overcomes that problem - allowing us to utilize solar energy a long way away from where the energy is gathered. The geographical area available for solar panels is thus multiplied tremendously.

In much of the world, there would be no need to locate solar plants far from users. Indeed, if the solar panels are on one's roof, or near one's urban area, transmission won't be a problem. — Bitter Crank

It is a problem; one that this approach solves.

Whenever I attempt to inspect those specific ideas with specific questions, you find the inspection inconvenient and either ignore the questions completely, or blow them off with a quick sentence. I think it just might be you who is refusing to discuss your ideas. — Jake

Not at all. I'm quite happy to discuss what I've actually proposed, but that's not what you're doing. You dismiss my arguments as scientific religion, and then attack that strawman. You think I'm saying more is better, and attack that. When I explain that's not what I'm saying, you flat out contradict me, insist that what you think I'm saying is what I'm saying, and then repeat yourself. Again, attacking the same STRAWMAN.

The premise of this thread which does not belong to you is that this is a technical problem requiring a technical solution. You appear to accept this premise as a matter of faith. You appear to be demanding that we do as well. But not all of us are actually members of the science religion. Some of us may decline to accept the premise "this is a technical problem" as a matter of faith. Some of us may wish to challenge that premise. — Jake

No. The premise of this thread is - the particular approach I argue is necessary to save the world, and I want to talk about it. Something you've refused to do - as evidence by the fact you think I'm saying this is a technical problem. It's a philosophical problem - i.e. a failure to recognize scientific method as the means to establish valid knowledge of reality. From this follows a failure to grant scientific knowledge the authority it rightfully owns. This explains the subsequent misapplication of technology; explains how and why we have created these problems, and why, despite availability of better technologies, we refuse to deploy them.

And now, the rest of your ridiculously long post is irrelevant.

How do we mortgage an asset which can never be used, and thus has no value? — Jake

Who says it can never be used? There may come a time in the future when it will be necessary to burn fossil fuels to regulate the climate in the opposite way - and if we can keep them in the ground now, that will be an option available to us. And, they are currently assets - which, once mortgaged to the world, do not need to have an ongoing commercial value.

How do we protect large scale solar array installations on the surface of stormy oceans? — Jake

I'd suggest a submersible design.

Which specific human beings will save the world by implementing your vision of "science as truth"? — Jake

Not you! If that's what you were wondering. Beyond that, I don't know what you're asking for. Names and addresses?

Here's an analogy which may help explain my focus in this thread. Let's say a religious person starts a thread where they want to debate Bible verse interpretations. — Jake

Okay. Go on...

You could join them in debating the real meaning of all the verses in the Bible, a process likely to take the rest of your life. Or, you could efficiently end run around all that unnecessary work by asking them to prove the Bible is the word of God. — Jake

It's rude and off topic. Crashing into someone else's thread with a vaguely related idea - contrary to the stated aim of the thread, is exactly what I'd call that - and it's exactly what you're doing here.

In this thread you're like the religious person who wants us to limit our focus to the level you're comfortable with. You want us to accept as a matter of faith as you do that technology is the solution, and then discuss/debate your particular technology idea. — Jake

I just want to discuss the proposal I started this thread to discuss - something you've refused to do.

Again, you seem to be suffering from the consistent illusion that this thread belongs to you personally. It actually belongs to the forum owner and his team of mods, who are the sole authority on what is appropriate in any thread. — Jake

Thanks for the tip!

Karl, you are obsessed with hydrogen! Take the simplest possible approach. Your plan is too complicated, too rococo, too many parts, processes, and potential problems. — Bitter Crank

I am obsessed with hydrogen - that's true, but the rest isn't true. There are good reasons for the particular application of technologies I suggested. Not least of these is the availability of sunlight and sea water. Using these to produce hydrogen (and fresh water) solves both the battery problem, and the transmission loss problem.

There is sun enough and land which is now, and will remain in the future unproductive. These locations are often near or are the same places that a lot of people live. Put the square kms of solar panels there, and supply the needs for energy at hand. For instance, California (39 million people) has desert land near their large population centers. Texas (28 million) has both sunshine and consistently windy highlands. — Bitter Crank

So, let us say you produce energy from solar power in the desert. How do you utilize it? It has to be transmitted for many miles, and transmission loss can be significant - upto 10% of power per kilometer. It cannot be used to produce fresh water, because it's in the desert, and so you've occupied land, that in theory, could be irrigated and inhabitable - if you produced energy where you could also produce fresh water, and hydrogen fuel.

Welcome. I found this observation of yours interesting and wanted to comment.

Of course. It's just the idea of regulating power and information sounds so, well, absurd. For one thing, the regulator would be the super elite, possessing all the power and information. Power tends to corrupt, you may have heard. — praxis

If I may just point out that 'how to save the world' is not a question. It's a proposal. I'd like to try and focus discussion on that proposal.

In regard to your comment, consider how the web of knowledge science describes makes it almost impossible to lie. A false fact is like a jigsaw puzzle piece that doesn't fit with all the surrounding pieces. My argument suggests, technology should be regulated in relation to science as truth. Thus, it would be virtually impossible to produce scientifically sound reasons to justify corrupt ends.

My beef with you is - this is my thread, and thus far you haven't discussed my ideas at all.
— karl stone
— Jake

1) I've discussed the philosophy behind your ideas because, um, this is a philosophy forum. And not an energy forum. — Jake

No Jake. You have either failed or not even tried to get to grips with my ideas. You're just dumping your nonsense on my thread. Start your own thread entitled "Why the world cannot be saved!" Oh, you did - and once everyone heard you say the same thing six times, it died - and now you want to kill my thread too.

My argument is difficult to understand. It suggests a mistake made 400 years ago, in our relationship to science, has had lasting consequences. It requires bearing in mind a distinction between science as truth, and science merely as a basis for technology. Understanding what I'm saying actually requires doing philosophy - that is, holding a set of premises in mind to compare to the current situation to suggest an alternate rationale and course of action. But you haven't understood, or even remembered those premises. Indeed, it's difficult to believe you even read them.

When you understand that argument, you will understand that the current technological basis of civilization is a misapplication of technology. It's technology applied as directed by pre-scientific religious, political and economic ideologies, that, whatever else they are - are not an accurate description of reality as it really is.

Understanding all that is necessary to understanding why technology should be applied as directed by science; a principle we can prove by considering the very nature of life - and how it is built from the atom up by evolution, to be correct to the cause and effect nature of its environment, or was rendered extinct.

To dismiss my argument again and again as some simplistic 'more is better' approach is insulting, and merely sets me up as a strawman for your own arguments. Can I ask you again, please - to discuss my arguments on my thread, or go open your own thread where you can discuss anything you like.

In the immediate and short term, sure - a huge economic dislocation you seem to want to cause on purpose, to make renewable energy more competitive. I just don't think that a good idea. — karl stone

botheius:

You would take the pain upfront if you would tax fossil fuels to decrease demand, and/or to force technological change. It could be done that way, if the will existed - but to the loss of current fossil fuel interests, the consumer, industry and so forth. If however, it might be possible to mortgage fossil fuel assets to the world, there may be - at some later date a debt to be paid, but it would be paid by a society that had a sustainable energy basis - in addition to all efforts allied to this one vast, and absolutely necessary endeavour. How that might be done - politically and legally, such that sustainable energy infrastructure is funded by the same means fossil fuels are kept in the ground is nothing upon which I might even venture a guess. I merely venture an idea in the hope it might appeal to enough of the relevant interests of which I know nothing. This may seem like an abdication from the authority of my ideas, but far from it. Rather if follows from a recognition that it's not my stuff. We cannot but be who we are, and act in our own considered interests. It's my humble submission that this is in everyone's interests.

How it could be done:

In terms of the physics of reality - solving the energy issue is the first necessary step to securing a sustainable future. Energy is fundamental because reality is entropic. Entropy is a concept from the Second Law of Thermodynamics - the effects of which can be described very simply. It is the tendency of everything in the universe to decline toward its lowest energy state, like water runs downhill, or an old building collapses to the ground over time. To keep the old place from falling down, we must spend energy. Energy is thus fundamental to everything we do. And clean energy is necessary to prevent run-away climate change.

There are two main obstacles to providing the world with bountiful clean energy:

1) an abundance of fossil fuels - still in the ground, and
2) the cost of applying the technology.

The idea that renewable sources of energy are necessarily unreliable or insufficient to the task - is not a genuine obstacle, if applied on a sufficiently large scale. But we'll come to that in due course. First, we must address the question of how to keep fossil fuels in the ground. This may seem like an insurmountable issue - but the solution I devised is very simple, and broadly consistent with the principles of our economic system. Basically, fossil fuels are commodities, and commodities are assets. Assets can be mortgaged - and in this way, fossil fuels can be monetized without being extracted. The money raised by mortgaging fossil fuels would first go to applying sustainable energy technology.

Having overcome these two obstacles, the next question is "what technology?"

Here I would suggest taking on board the next big problem, and solving that at the same time. The next most fundamental need we have is abundant fresh water. 7/10ths of the earth's surface is covered with water, but fresh water is scarce. Only 2.5% of the world's water is fresh water, and it's unevenly distributed around the world. That's the cause of great human suffering and environmental damage. Solving these two problems together, would be a tremendous boon to humankind, and is ultimately necessary to sustainability. So how do we do it?

Bearing in mind such issues as transmission loss over long distances, I would suggest that solar panels floating on the surface of the ocean, could produce electricity - used to power desalination and electrolysis, producing fresh water and hydrogen fuel at sea, collected by ship. The geographical area available at sea is incredibly vast, such that thousands of square kilometers of solar panels could be deployed without occupying valuable real estate close to inhabited areas - or incurring huge transmission loss over long distances away from inhabited areas, or requiring batteries.

"If we cover an area 335 kilometers by 335 kilometers with solar panels, it will provide more than 17.5 TW of power."

Desalination can be achieved via evaporation - heating sea water and collecting the steam. Steam can drive a turbine, to produce electricity - at voltages, adequate to power electrolysis. Electrolysis is the process of breaking the atomic bonds between two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom in water, by passing an electric current through it. Thus, these two process work hand in hand - producing fresh water and hydrogen fuel. Ships powered by hydrogen, would collect and bring water and fuel ashore. Hydrogen - when compressed into a liquid gas, contains 2.5 times the energy of petroleum by weight, but when burnt (oxidized) the hydrogen atoms recombine with an oxygen atom, giving back the energy spent wrenching them apart - and producing no pollutant more volatile than water vapour.

"Currently, the world consumes 15 TW of power from a combination of energy sources."

Burning hydrogen in traditional power stations would provide the base load for the energy grid - rather than, depending directly on renewable power sources, and the fresh water could be used to reclaim wasteland for agriculture and habitation - thus protecting environmental resources from over-exploitation.

What about ships running into the floating solar plants and wrecking them. Ships? What ships? Do you think there will still be shipping once we're reduced to collecting electricity on the surface of the ocean? — Bitter Crank

The flaw in my otherwise perfect plan, Ships might run into them! Oh no! I didn't think of that! It's beyond the wit of man and the reach of technology - to prevent ships running into things!

so the only solution was for us to learn how to migrate across the galaxy. — Jake

How are we going to live in space - if we cannot live sustainably here on earth? This planet is ideally suited to the kind of beings we are - or vice versa, and space is hostile in every possible regard, every breath, every drop of water, extremes of heat and cold, radiation.

How are we going to live there if we can't live here?
I know how we can live here. I know how we can get from here - to a sustainable future, in the least disruptive manner possible - and you don't want to know?
Then why graffiti my thread?

I'm asking readers to face the fact that the "more is better" group consensus which they assume to be correct is actually dangerously out of date. — Jake

Make that sixteen!

So, your alternative is what? That we have less? How is that achieved?
We dismantle capitalism - is that your plan? And exchange it for what - communism?
Well, firstly: no!
But secondly: "NO!"
And thirdly:

the "smart and serious" people who form the cultural elite of our society don't know what they're doing. — Jake

If people in government and science don't know what they're doing, how can you imagine they can centrally plan an economy to produce and distribute goods and services people need? Food, socks, toilet paper...?

In order to produce goods and services to a central plan, government must have absolute control of the people, and own all the land, and all the capital. So, you would have us give up freedom, and everything we own - create a massively powerful centralized government, for what? So people who, according to you are fundamentally inept, can tell us what to do? What to produce, how much to produce, where to send it, what those people should do, etc?

Do you have any idea of the processes by which raw materials are turned into something simple like socks? Lets begin by plowing a field - that guy needs food, clothing, housing, medicine, etc - his wife needs food and clothing, housing, his children need clothes and shoes and toys. Oh, no toys - we're trying to save the planet! You don't need toys! We need a tractor...

And here's the thing - all you've achieved, for all the misery you've sown, at best - is buy another trip or two around the sun, with the exact same outcome in the end. Less is not an answer.

True. Some technological hurdles have to be done, but I'm optimistic. Especially solar power has become dramatically cheaper. Renewable energy goes down in manufacturing price as it gets more popular, whereas fossil fuel becomes more expensive as it gets more rare. I assume that the biggest challenge is aircraft and ships as these need to have long endurance and powerfull motors. — ssu

It's not suitable technology, or knowledge of the problem that we lack. We can do this, but not without some innovative political and economic ideas. Trust in market mechanisms in this case, would in my view be misplaced. The cost of applying renewable energy technology is dependent on the price of fossil fuels, so renewables are effectively running on a treadmill powered by fossil fuels.

There's no magic symmetry that somehow changes the value of money to offset internalizing the true cost of fossil fuel burning. [/quote]

Not exactly, no - but increased oil costs effect everything else produced or supplied using oil. The ubiquity of oil raises prices on almost everything - a cost of living increase that eventually, wages increase to account for. Now, the original price hike has effectively disappeared. You don't get as many apples for a dollar - but you get more dollars an hour, and work the same hours for the same apples. Effectively therefore, the value of money has changed to accommodate the price hike.

The oil shocks of the past weren't somehow made redundant by money changing value, but rather created massive economic dislocations: incumbent industries shrinking because they don't make economic sense without cheap fossil fuel energy and new investment in renewable energy as they are more competitive if fossil energy is more expensive (i.e. the social upheaval that I alluded to in my post). — boethius

In the immediate and short term, sure - a huge economic dislocation you seem to want to cause on purpose, to make renewable energy more competitive. I just don't think that a good idea.

By "funding renewable infrastructure" I assume you mean by subsidy. If we view just the comparative cost of energies, it seems that forcing fossil to internalize true costs is the same as subsidizing renewables. However, it's not the same. By simply subsidizing renewables to be cost-comparable to fossil energy is not the same as internalizing the real cost of fossil energy. — boethius

No. I said renewable energy doesn't need subsidies - it needs infrastructure funding, like the rail network, the canals, or the Romans and their roads. I also propose a means we can raise the money to apply renewable energy on a massive scale, and keep fossil fuels in the ground at the same time.

I agree with the way you reason out the scenario you describe, but it's not what I'm proposing at all. If you'd read the OP - I'd love to get your opinion.

If you were the only person stuck in this outdated "more is better" paradigm I wouldn't harp on it, for I have no beef with you personally. I'm harping on it because the "more is better" position your position is rooted in dominates the entire society. And ANY position accepted without questioning by ANY group consensus requires inspection by philosophy. — Jake

My beef with you is - this is my thread, and thus far you haven't discussed my ideas at all. You keep putting the same idea forward again and again - and ignoring the massive flaws with it, which I've pointed out. Not least, that more is inevitable. Close second, it doesn't get us anywhere. Third, right now is that my energy proposals don't call for batteries. And your post is way too long to say the same thing again for the fifteenth time.

Thus proving that humans are of limited ability, limited rationality, limited sanity. It's upon that real world evidence that I'm arguing that the powers available to us must also be limited. You keep selling "science as an understanding of reality" while ignoring the reality of the human condition which is well documented in thousands of years of history in all parts of the world. — Jake

No-one has disputed that human beings are limited; nor has anyone argued for unlimited use of technology. The pertinent point is that human beings are threatened with extinction as a consequence of the disparity between technological ability and ideological motivation. You are like the detective at a murder scene - who having established the victim was stabbed concludes "children shouldn't carry knives" - which may be true, but says nothing at all about the motive for the crime.

Similarly, we don't need superhuman powers of prescience to manage technology. All we need, is to know what's true, and do what's right in relation to what's true.
— karl stone

In other words, you're arguing for a radical transformation of the human condition, without offering any explanation of how such a thing might come to be. — Jake

Not really. In fact, if you are arguing against the "more is better" assumption underlying human behavior, it's you proposing the "radical transformation of the human condition, without offering any explanation..."
I'm still trying to put across the principle of acting responsibly in relation to a scientific understanding of reality - as opposed to applying technology as directed by religious, political and economic ideological misconceptions of reality. The motives drawn from one understanding of reality are different from the motives drawn from the other.

If we analyze the maturity of a teenager, and decide they are not yet ready to drive the family car, doesn't such an analysis get us somewhere? — Jake

No. Exactly the opposite. We are left stood in the driveway with a stroppy teenager. But I do get the point, and arguably, I welcome the note of caution. We should be careful about the technology we apply, and luckily for us - there's an objective, increasingly valid and coherent understanding of reality to act as a far more reliable guide as to what technologies to apply than the maximization of profit.

My apologies for my impatience, which is my problem alone. I've had this conversation too many times to count, my own form of irrationality. But (here come the excuses) this is so incredibly SIMPLE!!! that it frustrates me how intelligent well educated people struggle to get it, and rarely succeed. Look how SIMPLE this is... — Jake

It is simple. I get it.
People are mental and can't be trusted, so padded cells for everyone!
But now what?

1) We take it to be obvious that the powers available to children should be limited due to a realistic understanding of the limits of their ability and maturity. 99.9% of all sane adults agree with this. — Jake

But we are not talking about children. We're talking about scientists, governments and industries primarily. Some extremely smart and serious people. And all the factors are in play - science, the genie is out of the bottle, we have a technologically based civilization - and we are faced with existential challenges.

2) On the day the child turns 18 we throw this rational common sense away and the group consensus changes to, "we should have as much power as science can give us, as fast as possible". — Jake

So how are you going to take those factors - already in play, out of the game? You can't. You've left us stranded in the driveway with a stroppy teenager. And if we don't get across town in the next 20 minuets or so - the world will end, badly!

This transformation of the group consensus is not even vaguely rational. It blatantly ignores the well documented evidence provided by thousands of years of human history. And here's why this irrationality takes place. We've transferred the blind faith we used to have in religion in to a blind faith in science. A "more is better" relationship with knowledge and power is simplistic, outdated and dangerous. It's a childlike philosophy whose time should have already come and gone. — Jake

Well it isn't going anywhere Jake - more is inevitable. People need water, food, clothing, housing, heat, light, employment, entertainment - and all you're offering them is less. They'll not have it. King Knut couldn't stop the tide coming in, and you can't either. If you would emphasize limitations upon human abilities, admit that one first. There's no going back. There's no standing still.

Please list for us the scientists and other cultural elites who argue we should be doing less science. The cultural consensus is that we should learn everything we can learn, as fast as we can learn it. Your opening post is part of that consensus. — Jake

I apologize for the brevity of my previous reply. I was just making a note - preparing to answer when it all kicked off. Poirot - double header, the episode(s) where he meets Sherlock! So...

You do not seem to have got to grips with the core concept - that is, science as a tool was pursued as a means to progress, whereas, science as an understanding of reality was suppressed relative to religious dogma, and thereby political and economic ideology.

This consensus is not rational, because it ignores the real world fact that human beings have limited ability, and thus should not be given any and all powers that we can create. As example, we are smart enough to create nuclear weapons, but not smart enough to get rid of them once created. What this demonstrates is the reality that just because we can invent something it doesn't automatically follow that we can also successfully manage what we've created. — Jake

But if, as I would argue, science is both a tool box, and an instruction manual - and our problem is we used the tools without reading the instructions, your criticism is not valid. The bird building a nest before it lays eggs doesn't need to know the future. It is correct to reality; albeit by dint of a veritable mountain of alternate designs discarded by evolution. Similarly, we don't need superhuman powers of prescience to manage technology. All we need, is to know what's true, and do what's right in relation to what's true.

My argument addresses itself to the reality of the philosophy of modern civilization as it currently exists today, a "more is better" relationship with knowledge, and thus power. — Jake

Sure, but it doesn't really get us anywhere, does it? It's of absolutely no help whatsoever to man nor beast. Your thesis implies that there is no prospect of successfully managing technology, and so we we cannot survive. Hence, it's nihilism in a wig and a false mustache! What I'm saying is, there was another way - a path we didn't take, but can still learn from.

As I've said above, I'm not really arguing against your specific proposals so much as I am arguing against the "more is better" technology is the solution to everything mindset which they arise from. And I'm not arguing with you personally so much as I am the cultural group consensus which your post illustrates. — Jake

More is inevitable! Whether it's better or not is another question entirely! I believe it can be better, but it requires accepting that science is a true description of reality, superior to the pre-scientific, culturally specific, religious, political and economic ideas that govern societies - as a basis to apply technology. i.e. not primarily for power and profit, but to balance human welfare and environmental sustainability.

More is inevitable! Whether it's better or not is another question entirely!

A billion is a very big number. It's so large that it distorts any comparison to the life of an ordinary person. I think these statistics suffer from that problem - that large global corporations with market values in the tens of billions weigh so heavily on one side, the equation is practically meaningless.

Your view that the Church (already ruptured by Luther, Henry VIII, Calvin, et al,) held so much intellectual sway over Europe in the 17th century that science was a subsection of theology is not sound, imho. The universities had been in business since the 12th century and had been chipping away at the intellectual citadel of the church. True enough, the French Revolution was still 160 years off; Russia, Spain, and various other princedoms didn't get enlightened for a long time. But a secular-scientific view of the world was none-the-less forming among intellectual elites. — Bitter Crank

That's a reasonable argument. I do seem to be laying blame exclusively with the Church, but rather I'm describing what actually happened to the man who wrote the first formal description of scientific method. If you can do a better job explaining why that happened - I'll find my spectacles, turn off Poirot - Aunt Emily was the victim, going to bed early to be conveniently murdered, and therefore the only person who didn't need an alibi - and sit down and read your book.

In theory, the Church acted as a central coordinating mechanism on a great many levels; political, economic, social i.e. births, deaths, marriages, and professional - through involvement with the universities. Did you know for example that Newton was required to hide his unconventional Unitarian religious beliefs to gain elevation to the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at Cambridge - and that was almost a hundred years later?

If ultimately what you're saying is that it's more complex than any few hundred words thrown together can convey, then I'm in complete agreement. Afterall, there are no straight lines in nature!

Take Giro Fracastoro (1476-1553) a physician in Padua. In 1546 he proposed his theory that disease, ("infections") were spread by "spores" or some such agent. He was right, but the necessary wherewithal to pursue this theory didn't exist in his lifetime, or until numerous lifetimes later. "Finding scientific reality" was hindered more by the difficulty of the search than interference by religious thinking. — Bitter Crank

If however, you're saying that religious thinking was no obstacle to scientific thinking, then I disagree entirely - and I maintain the essential charge against the Church that is, failing to recognize the truly divine when presented with the formula for its discovery. I think you underestimate the effect of the Church taking such a publicly antithetical stance, that effectively science was branded heretical. Thus, a pall of suspicion was cast upon science one can trace through popular fiction, the obvious example being Frankenstein by Shelley (1823).

Recall, that Darwin was yet to suffer the tortures of the damned at the hands of his own conscience, in contemplation of evolution. He didn't set out on HMS Beagle until 10 years later - and yet this vivid work of popular fiction is wrestling with these themes; science conjuring demons unnatural to God. These are the twisted grains of nature you contrast with my join the dots philosophy, but they say the same.

Still, the study of nature was producing results that could be turned into technology. Watt's steam engine worked, but it leaded steam badly, reducing its efficiency. It was another Englishman*** who had developed methods of drilling precise cylinders in cast iron that made Watt's engines work much better, leading to bigger and better... — Bitter Crank

Wasn't that the corrugated boiler guy? I think I saw a documentary about him. Industrial history is a fascinating subject - it relates to so many of areas of inquiry. But I would point out here that the trick has already been played. We are discussing science as a tool - as opposed to science as truth.

Batteries, photography and telegraphy are further examples of science and technology in the early 19th century. The telegraph was introduced in 1840; by 1862 it had become critical to Lincoln's management of the American Civil War. — Bitter Crank

Oops, we've crossed the pond and entered into a different context of religious and political thought. A much freer one than Europe. I'm thinking in terms of Weber's Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, cross referenced with accounts in Paul Johnson's 'A History of the American People' of the religiosity of the first phases of settlement - and it rather suggests that the philosophical error was undeclared cargo on the Mayflower.

By the mid 19th century, our understanding of the natural world was reaching a critical state where knowledge would take off. In summary: It was the great difficulty of understanding the world without any prior scientific insight that made the task slow and difficult. — Bitter Crank

Back up just a little, because Darwin published Origin of Species in 1859 - a volume not received at all kindly by the religious. An interesting side note is that the one thing missing from Darwin's theory had been discovered a hundred years before by a monk named Mendel, and cast on a dusty shelf in a monastery somewhere; that is, the genetic mechanism by which traits are transmitted one generation to the next. Mendel had it all mapped out statistically - an idea that would have been of immense benefit, and not just to Darwin. Had there been a central coordinating mechanism (following from the Church's welcome of Galileo as revealing God's word set in Creation for us to discover) so to speak, Mendel's ideas would a) have been known - and b) insulted us against the mistaken racial implications of Darwinism as misconceived of by Nazism. That's the path we're not on!

Is capitalism dependent upon stupidity? In America today very few people hold the majority of wealth. And the rest of us just go along with that, distracted as we are by our TVs and social media accounts etc. — Jake

If you begin with the genetic lottery that distributes gifts like intelligence unevenly; you are led to the realization that 50% of people are below average intelligence by definition. There's probably something like 10% of people who cannot be trained for any useful work at all. It is inevitable that they should be poor, relative to those granted the gift of intelligence. Insofar as the gifted make use of those talents - and benefit from doing so, it is good for society (and the poor) that they should.

The top 20 percent of households actually own a whopping 90 percent of the stuff in America.
— Washington Post

What if the top 20 percent owned only 30-40%? They'd still be doing great, and vast sums would be liberated to invest in infrastructure, education, affordable health care etc. But, we the 80% are too dumb to effectively challenge the rigged system, and so we swim in an ocean of preventable problems. — Jake

This isn't an issue I address at all. I don't believe it matters how rich the rich are relative to the least well off. I do think it matters how poor the poor are, because we should seek to promote greater equality of opportunity. It should be open to people to identify their talents and make themselves useful - and benefit from those talents and efforts. In this way they benefit society as a whole. But if you have no talents, and can't be useful, then you are necessarily dependent on the talents and efforts of others - and cannot in all fairness expect equality of outcome. That would be perverse.

First, there is some prospect of managing science and technology, we're already doing that. The question I'm raising is, can we successfully manage unlimited science and technology? If not, then it seems reasonable to at least question whether a development such as, say, unlimited free clean energy would on balance be helpful to human flourishing. — Jake

I don't think we are successfully managing technology. We are headed for extinction as a consequence of the particular technologies we've chosen to employ; not least, fossil fuel energy technology. That's a particular quantifiable problem, ostensibly subject to definition and redress. The idea of "unlimited science and technology" is purely hypothetical and somewhat unlikely. Your argument appeals to the unknown absolute to conjure fear. As if the bear trap that is fossil fuels were not scary enough. But I haven't proposed unlimited science and technology - as your absurd example of selling a ten year old boy a heat seeking missile demonstrates - your arguments are those of a straw-man tilting at windmills. Sort of a cross between Don Quixote and Worsel Gummage!

Next, you keep saying "the reality science describes" without referencing the imperfect reality of the human condition. I wouldn't harp on this except that it seems to me to be not a failure of your personal perspective so much as a logic flaw which almost defines modern civilization. Yes, if human beings were all rational as you define it then we could handle far more power, that's true. The problem is, we're not that rational, never have been, and there's no realistic prospect of us all joining the science religion and becoming Mr. Spock logic machines. — Jake

Again, this is not something I suggest, would want, or imagine would be beneficial. Had science been adopted by the Church from 1630 - and pursued, and integrated into philosophy, politics, economics and society on an ongoing basis, individuals would be much more rational. But that's not what happened. It's not who we are, and I don't imagine we can become rational overnight. It's illogical!!

I'm not technophobic, I'm allergic to our simplistic, outdated and dangerous "more is better" relationship with technology. As example, do you want all citizens to be able to buy nuclear weapons at the Army Navy store? Assuming not, that doesn't make you an enemy of technology, that makes you an enemy of stupidity. — Jake

Where did you get the idea that I'm suggesting giving any technology to anyone anytime? Or that adopting responsibility to science as a coherent understanding of reality implies wholesale deregulation and a lassiez faire attitude? I'm not suggesting that at all. I'm suggesting responsibility of the part of government and industry, such that society can continue - full of muddle headed consumers, eating cheeseburgers, worshiping Gods of their own choosing, and throwing their trash over their shoulder.

Really? Marx was describing the historical processes he saw at work. He didn't save capitalism -- it didn't need saving. Marx predicted, he didn't prescribe. He may have been on the side of the workers. but the workers have tasks that they have to fulfill, from Marx's perspective, and if they didn't fulfill those tasks, then... — Bitter Crank

It's an opinion of course, that Marx saved capitalism. It wasn't his intent, but let us assume his critique was correct - then capitalism should have succumbed to its internal contradictions. But it hasn't - at least, not in the west, not yet. Rather what seemed to follow from Marx influence, was mandatory education for minors, acts prohibiting payment in tokens, pension reform from 1900, and a raft of other social reforms leading ultimately to the welfare state and consumer society. In short, capitalism adjusted to Marx critique, and prevailed over collectivism. Hurrah!

He didn't tell anyone to begin the revolution in 1917. Marx--as far as I can tell--predicted the revolution would happen when the working class was fully developed and capable of taking over capitalism. Have we reached that point yet? Maybe -- workers at all levels of the corporate structure have the skills to operate the corporation. In fact, for the most part workers (low level to high level workers) do operate the corporation. — Bitter Crank

Russia prior to the revolution wasn't capitalist as such. It was a feudal society, in which the vast majority of people were serfs. Expertise and government revolved around the Court of the Tsar, then there was a landowner class, and everyone else were serfs. So, it wasn't capitalism against which the serfs were rebelling in 1917 - it was the politics of the middle ages.

What workers lack is "class-self-consciousness": the kind of consciousness that illuminates their class interests and informs their actions. Most workers in the US, at least, think of themselves as temporarily embarrassed tycoons of some sort. Silly them! Their problem is that they lack class-consciousness, and heaven and earth have been moved to make sure they don't develop class consciousness. — Bitter Crank

There's no-where in the world with a more acute consciousness of social class than Great Britain; and no-where freedom of speech and freedom of political organization is taken more seriously. Indeed, heaven and earth was moved by Marx ideas, but that manifested as reform - stemming largely from the chattering classes. If you're interested in this, look up William Morris - a famous wallpaper designer and social reformer of the era. Joseph Rowntree - the chocolate company founder is another.

That's not Marx's fault. In the long run, if the working class doesn't fulfill it's destiny (as Marx sees it), then one of the contending classes -- workers or capitalists -- will be destroyed. That is not a desirable conclusion to class conflict. — Bitter Crank

Ultimately, I find Marx thesis contradictory - if the history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggle, how could class consciousness be absent from the working class? It doesn't make sense. And it didn't work out too well for Russia.

If there is any prospect at all of successfully managing the potential dangers of science and technology, I'd suggest it follows from adopting responsibility to the meaningful implications of the reality science describes. For, make no mistake - my technophobic friend, there is no retreat to the rural idyll for the majority. I genuinely believe there is a way forward - that follows from the piece on evolution on the previous page, that being (intellectually) correct to reality, as all surviving life has done through attrition until human intellect, is a path that leads somewhere we must go.

But I don't think that connects with your mission of absolving science of heresy. If capitalism makes a whore of science, that's not the fault of science; capitalism prostitutes everything. — Bitter Crank

It's difficult to get all the pieces to relate correctly one to another. Thanks for making the effort. But consider the opportunity foregone by the Church, in the stance they adopted on behalf of European thought - bearing in mind they were burning people alive as witches right through to 1792. Had the Church recognized the significance of science from 1630, and pursued it as effectively the word of God the Creator - science would own authority, and be pursued much more rapidly and systematically than it was.

Granting science the highest authority is debatable because science doesn't produce truth about everything. It has the capacity to give us a truthful report on the physical, natural world. That's no small thing. It is gradually revealing how our brains work--that is most excellent. I trust science. — Bitter Crank

I do not suggest seeking to recreate the consequences of that foregone opportunity overnight - we are who we are, and have to get there from here. Rather, I think we can recognize that a mistake was made, and make use of that realization, insofar as it's useful to us.

What science is not equipped to do is tell us what we should do. Science could help launch the industrial revolution by revealing how things work. It could not inform the first industrialists whether they should build steam engines, power looms, and railroads. Science revealed the nature of electricity; it could not reveal whether the telegraph, telephone, and light bulb were good ideas. — Bitter Crank

I do not accept human beings need telling what they should do. They need telling what's true. But the right and wrong thing is very deeply ingrained. It's a sense, like a sense of humour, or the appreciation of art. The aesthetic sense. I haven't trotted out the ought from is adjustment for a while now. Would you like to go through it?

I don't think science is much encumbered by charges of heresy. What encumbers us all is the grip of capitalist economics and ideology on most of the world. The operation of capitalism is observable and predictable; that's what Karl Marx did. Capitalism is apparently blind to the consequences of its own operation (or at least has major vision problems). Capitalists who are willing to prostitute science probably aren't willing to consult science for advice. Therein lies a major part of our present problem. — Bitter Crank

Marx saved capitalism. And thank goodness because it's close to a miracle. When you think about the billions of people pursuing their rational self interest, and how that all magically conspires to produce and distribute the goods and services people want and need; when you think about the political freedom it affords, and the tolerable injustice of it - to say nothing of the actually quite extraordinary promotion of human welfare worldwide, achieved by capitalism, clearly it must be a major part of any solution.

The reason capitalism is so often cast of the villain of the piece is that it provides one of our main motivations. But what we do is actually decided by a political and legal ideological architecture - in which the authority science rightfully owns goes unrecognized.

Braking is a terrible idea. Slow down, have less? I think NOT!
— karl stone

Then it is difficult to see how you can achieve the apparent aims of this thread.... — Pattern-chaser

Stated aims, I think you'd find if you read it. As are the means, and justifying logics stated. Where have I not been 100% apparent?

Actually, I'm trying to watch Poirot! I can leave that there as the bookmark of an idea I might elaborate on when I'm less at leisure and more focused. Aunt Emily seems to be going out of her way to establish an alibi.

Disagree. Braking is a terrible idea. Slow down? Have less? I think NOT!

Homework? At my age? I've hardly the eyes for it anymore, and keep forgetting where I left my damn spectacles! I keep adding things to my reading list knowing both that I'd enjoy and benefit from reading them, and knowing I never will. I've read widely and quantitatively enough to make arguments I'm certain could be improved by further reading, but it strikes me that however much I do read there will be libraries full of books I haven't read if I live to a hundred years old and do nothing else besides. If you've read these books, please - it would be a very great help to me if you wrote a short, concise precis of the central arguments. Much more of a help than demanding if I've read X, Y, Z - and chortling into your brandy when I must admit I haven't.

It would be helpful if you made yourself aware of the argument set out in the thread. It's arguably quite an important argument, and you're doodling on it.

Thanks for starting this interesting thread with your original post. You do make some good points on what is both an important yet often overlooked topic.

But imho, dismissing a book by its cover like you practically did with Kunstler’s book is sawing off the branch you’re sitting on because you happen to be in a tidying mood. In general, thoughts that are overly dismissive can and probably will be dismissed. But whatever! Carry onward. — 0 thru 9

My manners are appalling, and I'd apologize, but I have something to say that's difficult for people to hear. I can't apologize for the tactics employed to put that idea across, but at the same time it's absolutely not my intent or desire to hurt anybody. I'm sure it's a wonderful book! With a dreadful conclusion!!

What happens the next day? All these industries contract, the capitalist system is thrown into chaos, people's identifies as car riding, suburban house owning, rapacious meat eaters with a job in one of these industries that fly across the globe for a few selfies ... gone. This is the core of the ecological problem and why no politician has done anything about it. Huge push back from existing entrenched industries on one side and on the other identity crisis for a large part of their constituents. — boethius

I disagree. I wouldn't suggest internalizing the true cost. But if you did, the very value of money itself would adjust - just as it adapted to oil price shocks in the past. Rather I'd suggest, seeking to limit the implications to a narrowly focused, feasible and necessary endeavor - like funding renewable energy infrastructure.

Begin with a newly formed, sterile earth - still hot and steaming. Merely physical forces acting on chemical elements... forming compounds, we now know, as a consequence of the valencies of the chemicals, and the structure of the compound, can replicate. DNA is a twisted ladder like structure, that unzips down the middle - and each half, as a consequence of valency - that is, the tendency of particular chemicals to bond with other, particular chemicals - then attracts those chemicals from the environment and replicates the unzipped, missing half of the structure.

Life! Of sorts. But life in the sense that, from this point an important principle kicks in - and that is, the organism (or structure of molecules) has to be correct to reality to survive.

We will now jump forward in time, skipping over the cause and effect of the processes by which proteins are formed, and cells are formed, and the incorporation of mitochondria - and so on and on, it's horrendously complex, to how this principle plays out in life as animals. Note however, that development from a mere structure of molecules to animals, took about 3 billion years, was achieved by incremental, generation after generation, causal steps, that entirely transformed the chemical composition of the atmosphere of the planet more than once. The process didn't skip ahead.

By these means we get to animals. Now consider, for instance, how a bird build's a nest before it lays eggs. Is that because it knows and plans ahead? That seems unlikely. Rather, it's because birds not imbued with an instinctual behavioural imperative to build a nest were rendered extinct. Behaviourally, the bird is correct to the chronological direction of events playing out in an entropic reality - and this in turn, is manifest in the correctness of its physiology to reality - built from the atom up in relation to the same principle. Be correct to reality or be rendered extinct.

Now let's skip ahead again to consider homo sapiens - the only intellectually aware animal we're aware of. Do you see where I'm going with this?

I believe I can prove you wrong, but it's a lengthy argument. I can show you the causal relationship between the evolving organism and reality, that proves the necessity and rightfulness of science as truth. If you're prepared to attend to the argument, I'm prepared to sit down and write it - but have found generally, that lengthy disquisitions are often ignored.