Moving is a bad term here. — ssu

It's a perfectly good term, and makes the point that if the entire climate isn't destabilized, and there's "elsewhere" to go to, then previous civilizations have not been fragile in this sense, which seems to me pretty major.

It also seems to me pretty trivial that moving one's civilization somewhere else will require conquering that place first. It's only us that calls the Byzantine empire by that name, they called themselves Roman.

Feudalism I would argue was not "moving Roman civilization" to the country side, but the collapse of the Western Roman civilization.

For instance, most of the written classics of the Roman, and the preceding Greek, civilization that we now have, were preserved by Muslims, and then re-introduced to Europe. The monastic tradition I would argue is people trying to preserve what they can from a collapsed civilization. To argue feudalism was Roman civilization "moving" to the countryside is nonsensical. Feudalism was a response of people to the collapse of Roman civilization.

Otherwise, I don't really see what your arguing ... other than running out of grain and so on precipitated the collapse of the Western Roman empire, which I think historians would agree played a part.

What I'm arguing is that to solve these problems take more than 20 years and yes, long term changes in population growth do matter. — ssu

Then maybe read up on the topic. The carbon budgets we have to work with (to avoid civilization ending climate "discontinuities", as they are called) are on decade time scales, in which de-population via falling birth rates has no meaningful consequence.

They simply are so subtle that those focusing just on the present day don't notice their effects. And it's not just technological advancement, but also the market mechanism which also is an important factor here. — ssu

What's subtle about the world going from 1 billion to 8 billion in a single human life time?

I have no idea what you're talking about i terms of technology advance and market mechanism in this context.

So in your view in 20 years there is a catastrophy, a collapse? — ssu

The carbon budgets we have to work with, to stay under 2 degrees Celsius (and not a guarantee, just a reasonable chance) are exhausted in about 20 years at present consumption rate.

Emission budget and necessary emission reduction pathways to meet the two-degree target agreed in Paris Agreement without negative emissions, depending on the emission peak — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emissions_budget

Now, if we started really major actions now, and overran the carbon budget on our way to zero emissions (but we do make it there), then another major effort could be spent growing massive amounts of trees every year and sequester that carbon back underground, as well as other geoengineering schemes to "nudge" systems a bit -- in a race against the lag time of the climate system. (This is by no means a "clever risk" to take; it is far less riskier and far less costly to not emit the carbon in the first place: for, even if we emit less there's the risk the carbon budget was miscalculated and it's still not enough, so we need to do the geoengineering and we'll thank our lucky stars we played it as safe as we did; and 2, it's simply expensive and causes more ecologic damage to sequester compared to reasonable short-term actions to decarbonize, as well as stop deforesting the amazon, stop over fishing, stop so much meat eating, etc..)

So, I would agree there is some flexibility, but only if we were actually on track to zero emissions; currently we are not, not even close to being on track. Just pie in the sky denialist thinking.

Continuing business as usual and just blowing by the carbon budgets (just as we simply blew by the Kyoto targets), will be a state of inevitable collapse.

Collapse won't happen in 20 years "to the day", but would be a process of unrelenting droughts, floods, fires, leading to crop failures, political upheaval, and both civil and inter-nation wars.

It is this next 20 years where we can have the biggest impact on how events unfold and preserve our civilization and most people alive today with a ok probability. Just like the last 20 years would have been even easier ... and 20 years before that when we actually first understood this problem in all the essential aspects.

Our global society seems pretty stable, but only because we currently have enough to eat for everyone ... that matters politically (the people we don't give enough to eat, but could, such as those starving in Yemen, don't matter to our global political system, otherwise they could use that leverage to get more food; but that's far from being everyone in the Yemenize category).

Once food goes from "enough" to "not-enough" on a global scale, and even once many people die, and the warming and droughts and fires don't stop, so it just happens again and again to those left over each time, both coherent global action and maintaining our present infrastructure will be more and more difficult.

There is only so much disruption and challenges our system (as with previous systems) can take. Critical supply chains (such as your Egyptian grain example) start to unravel and our technological infrastructure will start to be defunct.

Armies (running out of food) won't simply sit around and starve to death, so the habitable places that remain will face relentless invasion and piracy with dwindling weapons systems that can no longer be renewed without the present global technological manufacturing platform. What happens to these people is anyone's guess, but I'm very certain they would view our current civilization as "collapsed" and "in ruins".

This is the basic process of collapse.

It is avoidable with radical actions now, not "subtle changes to population growth" over a century or two.

Democracy has it's faults, but it's still the thing I believe in. It has some safety valves built into it, if only the citizens would apply them. The alternatives usually don't have them. Radical technological transformation, yes. Radical political transformation, be careful just what you wish for. — ssu

You obviously didn't read my previous post which I literally say "as I explain in my previous post, I define as effectively arresting control of our institutions from our sociopathic oligarchs" is effective democracy.

And the civilizations you are referring to? Seems to me the civilizations in history were far more fragile to collapse. — ssu

Doing things like changing the global climate makes our civilization far, far more fragile.

Other civilizations always had the chance to at least move somewhere else. For instance, Roman civilization did effectively move to Byzantine and survived for another 1000 years.

We have no where to go.

(Oligarchs are trying to change that, but I don't think on behalf of "we".)

Also, I don't get how this view squares with your view that population is the problem. If we're not fragile, why would population be a problem?

Population growth is the natural reason for economic growth and demand growth. If populations are stable or decreasing, that is a huge issue on this issue. You don't have only decrease in use because of technological advancement, but also due to demand decrease. That is a huge issue. Besides, earlier population growth was seen as the primary reason for doom, starting from Malthus, which isn't something unimportant now.

Japan has a decreasing population. Notice what has happened to it's need of energy: — ssu

I disagree with your disagreement.

As I explained, I am not arguing a large population is not a pre-condition for our currently large resource consumption.

If there was only 1 person on earth, our present environmental problems would not be here.

Neither am I arguing that simply depopulating the world wouldn't solve the environmental crisis. If however many people are needed, volunteered themselves for extermination: problem solved!

The problem is that people don't volunteer (even those advocating depopulation, I never see volunteer for it).

It's easy to accomplish depopulation through environmental collapse, massive droughts and crop failures, but environmental collapse is what we are trying to avoid.

In other-words, depopulation is simply not realistic.

Depopulation through lowing the birth rate is not a solution. We need to solve our environmental problems in the coming decades, but it would be centuries to lower substantially the population through birth rates.

You are arguing in a hypothetical realm divorced from reality. If we actually lived in this hypothetical realm where the consequences were centuries out, then just lowering the birth rate would be an option worth discussing.

On the time scales imposed by the actual reality we live in, depopulation would be required in the next couple of decades; and the only feasible way to do that is through environmental collapse: the problem we are trying to avoid. Otherwise, people try to survive and try to help other people survive, no one volunteers themselves for depopulation.

However, our technological systems and infrastructure and level of affluence can be radically changed in mere decades. It requires high level of effort, but it is feasible.

Depopulation is a mental crutch of the apathetic. It's a way of both simultaneously viewing oneself as a "tough realist" while accomplishing nothing at all and denying reality.

The tough realist position (that includes effective actions) is not depopulation, but radical transformation of our political system (which, as I explain in my previous post, I define as effectively arresting control of our institutions from our sociopathic oligarchs) to implement feasible solutions to our problems, on the span of decades and not whimsical imaginings of centuries that have no relevance to the present.

If the choice was between destroying capitalism or destroying earth, given the time frame we’d have no shot. Capitalism — the form we have — will stay around a while longer, and so there has to be alternatives. — Xtrix

You maybe confusing the sum total of our institutions with "capitalism". For instance, democratic institutions are not really "capitalism". You can have democratically elected politicians that implement a state or otherwise socialists economy. Indeed, you can have a nominal "communist party" that oversees a capitalists economy, as we have in China.

So, although I agree we cannot overhaul the entire political and economic system, a real solution to the climate crisis is now simply impossible through any semblance of the free market "acting by itself". It requires massive government intervention, which pro-capitalists, will cry "socialism" about (unless it benefits them of course, then they say it's just common sense).

Western society is a mix of capitalism and socialist / collectivist institutions.

Although I would agree that our capitalist components dominate our socialist components (socialist institutions, including elected political bodies, de facto serve at the leisure of our oligarchs, and only insofar as it is good for capitalism ... and the "really important things" like central banks and multi-national corporations are kept in direct oligarchal control, far from the dirty, filthy, putrid, weak and pathetic hands of elected representatives).

Though I cannot speak for @ChatteringMonkey, the concept that capitalism must be overthrown to solve the climate crisis, I would agree with, but not mean to say literally all our institutions (including the market) must be rebuilt from scratch, but rather our oligarchs must be deposed by democracy.

This may require a Nuremberg style trial and hanging of our oligarchs, which may seem fantasy now, but as the damage and pains become greater and larger, accountability for ecocide on par with the accountability (no sane person argues against) for the Nazi genocide, is entirely reasonable, and a an important expression of the intrinsic violent nature of politics, in order to move with de facto new institutions of power that can credibly say they are now in some sort of real control, and not the oligarchs (because they've been publicly hanged).

Obviously, this foundational aspect of our political institutions can go to far, such as the Terror of the French revolution, but I think Nuremberg was a reasonable thing; as the bodies pile up, I predict more and more people will agree with this sentiment.

Now, hanging our oligarchs would clearly be seen as a deep transition of power, but does not mean getting rid of all our institutions.

What matters is who controls our institutions.

Capitalism is an ideology which explicitly wants the rich to run the show. For instance, "how to prevent poor people from making laws", is the central question of the founding fathers of the United States. Democracy was needed to take power from the King of England (and pay less taxes and become more rich), since a revolution for a new American King simply would simply make no sense (and, the oligarchs would not have been able to agree on a new King even if they wanted to). Democracy was a very conscious compromise, carefully crafted to ensure poor people and slaves had no effective power. Of course, it was not fated to remain that way, and America has seen periods of effective democracy (certainly more effective than previous times or then today), but that is the ideology of capitalism.

The idea that democratic institutions should effectively "flex" control over the market (force internalization of costs), effectively stop the transformation of control of capital into political power (whether through a long list of laws interfering with money in politics, or just preventing too much capital accumulation in the first place and appropriating the capital of anyone that "succeeds" in that quest regardless), effectively provide critical goods and services to society through "collectivist" institutions where the market clearly fails to do so, as well as simply not allow poverty, are all in clear contradiction to capitalist ideology.

"Capitalists" who take credit for the success of "collectivist institutions" as capitalism "working", while simultaneously claiming "taxes are theft", and the creation of more such institutions is socialism, blah, blah, blah, are just idiotic hypocrites.

The central features (i.e. the dominant features that actually decide how our societies are organized) are that people can accumulate unlimited amounts of capital and this control of capital can be effectively be transformed into political power (the places where this is not the case, are small political islands with essentially no influence over global affairs).

Where this accumulation of, and transformation of capital to political power is "without friction", the system is fully "capitalist", and where there is a lot of friction to this process (such as Scandinavia), then democratic institutions start to dominate the organization of society (using markets insofar as they produce, at least perceived, "good" for most people, using the socialism of free money and services when the market clearly doesn't provide the goods, and constraining the market when it can work fine, but with a bunch of rules to discourage negative forms of competition, such as damaging externalities), are socialist ideas, of one brand or another (and "capitalists" do not hesitate to identify those ideas as socialism; there's no good counter argument to such accusations, because it's true; it's socialists and communists and anarchists that proposed and fought for things like free education, minimum wages, free health care, safe working conditions, and so on, not "capitalists"; for capitalists to take credit for such socialists victories to make the argument it's capitalism and the market that has provided all good things anywhere, is just stupid).

The 90s saw the environmental movement make the faustian bargain with our oligarchs, based on the idea of "fix the climate within capitalism; because overthrowing the oligarchs seems, so, so hard, and it's so, so much easier to take oligarch money and such oligarch dick; and they seem like such nice people too!". Oligarchs did feign sympathy and did provide money (strings attached of course), but what are they doing now? Trying to go to space and look out for number 1, as they always can be counted on to do.

For, it was believed that even the oligarchs needed a planet and would agree with evidence and rational based reasoning of how to prevent planetary catastrophe, and would accept some loss of capital and power, to themselves or fellow oligarchs. Two decades later the oligarchs have literally popped out of their yachts, bunkers and New Zealand compounds (they were hiding in to avoid Corona), yelled "wrong, bitches!" and blasted off to space (what they called space anyways; certainly, a good first step to becoming swashbuckling, intrepid galactic explorers), to thunderous applause in the media no less.

Getting rid of the oligarchs -- which may require a good perfectly fair and legal Nuremburg style hanging -- is the key issue. Doing so does not mean a radically different society; if you go to countries with little oligarchic control, they do not look so different in terms of the nominal names of the institutions they have, but they are very different.

It’s difficult to provide proofs for things like global tipping points. — Punshhh

I definitely agree in a formal sense of "proof". However, tipping points are a general characteristic of complex systems we can pretty much always safely infer will be present in any such system.

There is mathematical work on this I saw a few years ago, I'll try to find, trying to quantify mathematically what is meant by tipping point and what conditions are necessary for tipping points to exist.

One interesting result of this work is that in systems with internal variables (things as they are) and external variables (things we can observe) tipping points can be triggered without any way to know based on the external variables (there is nothing that can track the actual tipping point, but it will only be inferrable in the future, that it happened at some point, in retrospect).

And this aligns well with our intuition. For instance, if we take people as complex systems, they do unpredictable things all the time (or then expected actions but at unpredictable times) and presumably hit tipping points that lead to such actions, but we can't really tell when exactly tipping points were. For instance, we may know someone unhappy at their work and expect them to quit at some point, and maybe many times something happens that seems "the last straw" but it isn't, but finally there is a last straw, that we didn't even see happening, and the person quits. An even more stark example is someone who is unhappy at their work, but is not expressive about it, and we don't suspect a thing, but someday they quit, and we can, in retrospect, assume some tipping point was reached that lead to the "radical simplification" of the work situation (at least temporarily).

But basically, all complex systems (we tend to encounter) respond to too much stress by simplifying (not getting more complex; a bit of stress may do that, but at some point there is a threshold that leads to simplification).

All this to say, and I'm sure you agree, that it's best not to push towards such thresholds on a global scale to see what happens.

What we can be relatively certain is that "pushing harder" on the climate isn't going to paradoxically make things better in any scenario, but we should stop pushing, hope for the best, and plan for both "radical simplification" as well as "keeping it together somewhat".

That doesn't matter; I just need to have a means of selecting beliefs from a set. Whether that set is finite or infinite doesn't matter, and whether they express quantities or can be false doesn't matter either; all that matters is that the belief is held and can lead to people making choices. — ToothyMaw

It seems to me beliefs can be just words, and it seems pretty accurate that people make choices based on words in reality (that's as good a description as we can actually make; although "brain states" I would certainly agree affect decisions, it's not clear whether, apart from words, they do so by something we call beliefs; i.e. emotions certainly affect both beliefs and decisions, but it doesn't seem a given that they are themselves beliefs -- although, we can certainly have beliefs about our and others emotions).

But, if you just want beliefs to be in some reasonably constructed sets, then letters and words clearly can makeup sets, and it seems a very reasonable premise that people really do make decisions based on words (though, not exclusively; so, if this isn't a requirement, it's certainly a starting point).

That is all very interesting stuff. Never would have thought of postulating a consciousness field (but of course I'm not a physicist; I don't know how such things work). — ToothyMaw

There's nothing mysterious to it. We know we can explore space, and we know "stuff" exists in space (otherwise we wouldn't know space exists of course). So, for every kind of stuff, we can postulate a field that covers space with that value of this stuff at any point.

By "stuff" is meant an observable phenomenon of some sort.

We can encounter elephants and postulate an "elephant field" which would tell us at each point of space if an elephant exists there or not.

Of course, if more general fields (such as that describe gravity, particles, etc.) can completely account for other fields (like our elephant field), then, although we can still have an elephant field to describe our elephant problems if we want, we would not say it is fundamental, even if maybe otherwise still useful (the typical example is temperature, which is reducible to particle motion, but nevertheless useful to work with fields representing temperature at different points in space, say the simulation of a part in a machine).

However, if a field isn't reducible to other fundamental fields, then it must be also fundamental. For instance, the Higgs field is assumed to exist because the other fields simply don't give rise to mass without postulating this other separate field.

A consciousness field seems to me the intellectually honest starting point, only after showing it is reducible to more fundamental fields (such as the elephant field, insofar as we're talking about elephants as collection of particles and not their conscious experience) can we say it is maybe a useful accounting of some aspects of reality (elephant field, temperature field, consciousness field), but not representing anything fundamentally physical.

I don't think saying that beliefs can be represented as groups of words gets us out of the hole. Similar ideas can be expressed with different words, but small differences in wording can change the meaning significantly. — T Clark

That's why I said in the same post:

The problems would arise if you want to say different sets of words actually represent the same belief ("God exists" is the same belief as "Supreme being exists"). But this would be more of a linguistics problem than a set problem, and maybe you can simply work around it to make your greater project. — boethius

However, it depends what one wants to do with these sets of beliefs. If one's argument simply requires beliefs can form sets, then the word approach seems to me fine.

Since we do not have any way, even in principle, to reduce consciousness to particles, the intellectually rigorous way is, presuming there is a phenomenon of consciousness (at least in my own case), is to postulate a consciousness field (that's what physicists do when they encounter new phenomenon that's not a prediction of the fields they already have: they add another one).

Now that we have postulated this consciousness field we can go ahead and say it somehow describes consciousness at different points in space, interacts with the other fields (of course, which way the causation goes is another question), and call it a day until someone invents a device that measures this consciousness field.

The lack of such a device is a problem for further development of the theory, but at least no made-up postulates without justification have been adopted. Of course, maybe such devices do exist after all, and we call them brains.

This is the mind-body problem. It's been discussed for thousands of years.

Presumably (if other people are conscious, which we / I don't know) beliefs are associated with their brains (definitely seems to be the case), but that does not prove the subject experience is somehow "in" those brain states (as a collection of particles).

No equations governing particles in any of our laws of physics, in any arrangement whatever, predicts consciousness.

To say particle interaction "causes consciousness" is to say some particle description we can write down describes to us consciousness; that you can give me some paper with some descriptions of particles and, after review (even very lengthy) I (or any other diligent reviewer) would say "ah yes, these particles / field equations / whathave you, would be conscious in this description if such initial conditions, as clearly described here, were put into motion.

We do not have such a theory of physics. It is not even clear such a theory is even in principle possible.

On the subject of brain states, we cannot simply assume brain states represent belief (as a subjective "thing" of some sort), as, if we're being rigorous which I assume is the purpose here, we have no proof of brains being conscious to begin with. Although, I also agree with criticism of the brain states approach (which would simply reduce to "very different brain states that nevertheless mean what I say they mean; i.e. different brain states represent the same belief, as long as we have -- totally different -- reasons for saying so, such as the words approach below").

For the general question of the OP, I think the more fruitful approach is to represent beliefs as "set's of words" made up of "sets of letters", and those easily form sets. So, insofar as beliefs can be represented with words, then they can be easily put into sets.

The problems would arise if you want to say different sets of words actually represent the same belief ("God exists" is the same belief as "Supreme being exists"). But this would be more of a linguistics problem than a set problem, and maybe you can simply work around it to make your greater project.

These tipping points are already breached. We’ve recently had 30+ centigrade heatwaves in all permafrost regions. They are melting rapidly, there is enough methane there to accelerate climate change beyond what we can mitigate. Even if we had zero carbon production now this methane would more than compensate for the reduction. It’s acceleration and a rollercoaster ride from now on, whatever we do. — Punshhh

This is definitely being close to being the case, and maybe the tipping points are breached and a "runaway" process that is unstoppable is already underway.

However, I'm not completely certain. The scenarios I'm contrasting is zero emissions today.

Without further carbon dioxide, methane and black particles from humans, maybe the North stabilizes, and not all the permafrost melts.

Of course, zero emissions today is not happening, but the basic point I'm making is that from one tipping point to the next maybe further human emissions is required to get things "over the edge", or, then, maybe, and once we tip one (like ocean ice in the arctic) all the others will fall like dominoes.

My overall point is that we'er not certain, but we can be pretty certain that continued emissions will make things worse, ensure tipping over more dominoes and also driving the system even hotter even after all the dominoes are tipped (as there's still more green house gases at the end of the process).

If things are already dire, then we'd be working to make things "a bit less bad" for survivors.

If things aren't so dire right now (many tipping points could be avoided if we stopped emissions now), then there's even more to save in terms of people and ecosystems.

For, it does take time for ice to melt, especially Greenland and antarctic, and the thermal inertia of the oceans that buffers a bit, and there's also (if emissions are brought to zero) geo-engineering that could work in that context.

Though I'm sure you agree, a point I'd like to emphasize as much as possible, that Geoengineering only makes sense after zero emissions.

You seed some ice now, it will have a bit of a cooling effect, but if we continue to warm the planet anyways, it will just melt anyways accomplishing nothing.

Grow a bunch of forests now, it will sequester some carbon and make those ecosystems more resilient (if we're talking actual forest and not mono-crops) ... but, they'll just burn anyways, sooner or later, if we keep warming the planet releasing all that CO2 back.

Adding reflective aerosols to the atmosphere doesn't stop ocean acidification and other problems (even if it "worked no issues", which it won't, continuing business as usual we'd just consume other non-renewable resources and collapse our civilization another way, as mentions) and needs to be continuous and more and more extreme intervention the more we continue to add green house gases (making a chaotic climate changes anyways, leading to crop failures that way). And, as soon as civilization is disrupted enough to stop the program, by wars or what-have-you, then all that warming is going to happen even faster and even more disruptively.

However, if we actually stopped emissions, then growing large amount of forests wouldn't all burn, and so sequester carbon and attract rain to those areas, both things making those ecosystems more resilient.

Likewise, seeding ice or building a ship drone network to keep ice in the arctic can help stabilize or even reverse the libido losses (submersible drones that attach to icebergs and deploy sea anchors, or the attach to real anchors with chains brought relatively close to the surface for this purpose, which could be then attached horizontally to each other, forming a large chain network all the way around the arctic that drones can go around attaching ice too). A lot of ice is lost due to floating south. Of course, if we warm the arctic enough that ice doesn't stay anyways, just melts in situ, there's no point of my immensely cool drone chain network.

Maybe some very short term, localized and strategic uses of reflective aerosols could stop catastrophic melting scenarios (those 30C over Greenland days).

So, there is still uncertainty and also geoengineering options, which are total insanity as a way to compensate emissions, but we may have time to deploy, considering the inertia of the system, and in the context of getting to zero emissions, I think it stands to reason cautious geoengineering could stop those other tipping points.

Above all, in 2020 we saw the lowest population growth in the World since at least 1950 with 1,05%. Just in 2012 the growth rate was 1,2%. It may be that some of us (those younger) will witness peak human population. — ssu

I don't think population matters much.

Of course, it's easiest to imagine just having less people would lower our impact, than to imagine some actually sustainable system.

However, in the equation of Impact = Population x Technology x Affluence; it's the technology and affluence that can be changed significantly in relatively short periods of time (without the catastrophe we are trying to avoid).

1) I blame the media.

The journalists pick up the most damning forecast (from a variety) and run with the worst possible early outcome. — ssu

I wouldn't say this is true. Also, if we're blaming the journalists, journalist in turn blame the collapse of paid journalism due to the internet (and no policies put in place for value-extraction of search engines and aggregators to pay for what they're using to make profits).

In the 90s, before the media collapse, I think communication was pretty good, and there was lot's of discussion and "in depth" reporting, denialists existed but were easily defeated (as they new forms of media entirely dedicated to propaganda, such as Fox News, didn't exist yet), and all this culminated in the Kyoto Protocol, which was supposed to be the "Montreal Protocol" protocol moment for the climate, and was sold as such.

2) Then I blame that some issues have been overcome. DDT has been banned. The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer has been working: Since the ban on halocarbons, the ozone layer has slowly been recovering and the data shows a trend in decreasing area of the ozone hole – subject to annual variations. It has even closed sometime. We have already hit peak conventional oil production and oil production hasn't grown for some time. — ssu

As mentioned above, Kyoto Protocol could have actually worked (been made better to begin with, or then actually followed), but it wasn't. So, although I agree we definitely can make these international agreements that effectively deal with pollution, so far we haven't for green house gases.

Yes, we've peaked in conventional "sweet" crude, but we've gone all in for things like tar sands and fracking and haven't even phased out coal globally. The Amazon turning from a sink to a source of greenhouse gas emissions also means that we need to cut the difference to be at the same "spot" of net-emission when the Amazon was still a sink.

We are starting to saturate other buffers as well (a cold ocean can dissolve CO2 pretty well, but a warmer ocean may start to emit the CO2 it previously absorbed).

3) And finally, I think that the society can cope with even more problems. We can have this economy limping with the pandemic limitations for years. We can not travel as much as before. Tens of millions of jobs have been lost in the tourism sector and flights have basically halved. We can change our behavior and never ever shake each others hands. Who needs so much travel? The fact is that our societies can endure radical changes. Thanks to the pandemic, carbon emissions have fallen at the most rapid rate since WW2. Primary energy consumption fell by 4.5% in 2020, the largest decline since 1945, yet solar Wind, solar and hydroelectricity all grew despite of this plummeting demand. — ssu

Sure, if you're arguing we can do something, no objections from me. The question is are we doing something, and fast enough.

Once systems get overwhelmed, they collapse. Has happened to previous civilizations, can happen to ours.

People tend to be myopic, it's hard motivate them with something that is gradual and in the longterm. If some accident happens they typically do want to jump into action. — ChatteringMonkey

True in a sense, and, in a general sense as well the fundamental cause of the problem of climate change (or any human caused problem) is "human weaknesses" of one sort or another.

At the same time, it's not inevitable. People can be lazy, but can also be disciplined; society's as well. Indeed, in a longer view, many societies seem to be very far sighted, building large defensive structures that might see use in the next centuries.

It's easy to link social problems to social vices, just as for the individual, but this simply begs the question of why such vices developed in the first place.

There's the denialists definitely, but not so much in Europe indeed. I also do think green parties, and the left in general, have been bad strategically in selling their ideas to the public... to much finger pointing blame game, and to little constructive motivating vision put forward. — ChatteringMonkey

I completely agree here. Why the movement doesn't have "more and better people" is one question (that may not have any definitive answer, just more and more historical context further and further back in time). However, what is clear is that the movement that does exist makes terrible decisions and is ineffective, even with the resources they have.

Though I agree with you point here in one sense, I think the fundamental (at least intellectual) problem is the exact opposite and not enough "finger pointing" to avoid (uncomfortable) critical debate around ethical and political theory questions.

It has been dragging for a long time, and for someone invested in the topic as long as you have been I get that this doesn't exactly fill you with optimism, but I think once things start moving, they might move a lot faster than one thinks. I don't think the conversion to renewables is a linear process. — ChatteringMonkey

I also had this theory while starting 20 years ago, and I do still believe the transition can be very rapid. However, it's too late to prevent catastrophe's, which are already happening.

For instance, 20 years ago, mass coral bleaching of, in particular, the great barrier reef but also reefs in general, was one of those unthinkable, terrible "apocalyptic signs" that we want to work hard to avoid.

The apocalypse comes and goes.

So yes, for exactly the reasons you describe, that were true 20 years ago in the 90s, and, as @Benkei points out, obviously true even for a 7 year old in the 80s, and also true in the 70s and 60s to all those dirty hippies, we can avoid "worse outcomes". However, the current outcome is already pretty bad, the climate catastrophe is already triggered, it's simply a question of how bad it will get.

Since effects are baked in 20 years (overcoming the ocean thermal buffer) after actually getting to 0 emissions, the affects are already bad now, we are no where close to zero emissions, therefore, the effects are going to get a lot worse before they get better.

And even the IPPC now concludes climate change is irreversible. So we are going "somewhere" new, and the nature of a system as complex as the whole world is that no one can know exactly where.

That the effects could be extremely bad -- that hitting a tipping point in arctic ocean ice, which may trigger tipping points with permafrost, forest ecocystems, land-based ice, and the system can accelerate and dominate human emissions (i.e. further human emissions become irrelevant) etc. -- is the reason to not run this experiment in the first place.

That maybe things aren't so bad, or then we should do our best for the survivors anyways (preserve as many seeds, and knowledge, and minimize our damage on the way out; i.e. clean up a bit when our party ends, before leaving unceremoniously), are all reasons to do what is morally justified, regardless of one's level of optimism or pessimism on the eventual outcome. That there is a chance of extinction means, by definition, there is also a chance of not-extinction.

This does make a lot of sense, the models are only a rough approximation of an underlying reality afterall. We kindof know the rough ballpark of where, how and when things will go wrong, but there's still a lot of uncertainty about the specifics, and about what the interaction are between the moving parts. Nevertheless better save than sorry, I agree. — ChatteringMonkey

Yes, even before computer models were even possible, it had already been worked out that the earth would warm due to the amounts of pollution involved, and that even 1 degree of warming would be significant risk.

Computer models don't inform much more than this baseline analytic result worked out in the 70s.

They confirm this analytic result in demonstrating all sorts of catastrophic scenarios, but it's more of narrative than decision making value. In the 70s, the scientists that worked out the 1 degree of warming risk threshold, maybe couldn't tell a story about it other than they didn't know what would happen but the risk of experimenting on the entire globe isn't reasonable to take.

Computer models can provide stories ... but there are lot's of models, each model can be run thousands of times with different results, so it's still the same conclusion that the risk of running to the experiment to confirm which computer model got it "best" isn't reasonable to take.

These kind of long term, high impact/uncertain probability risks are difficult to sell politically I suppose, because you do know the impact of the policy measures on your constituency typically. — ChatteringMonkey

This is correct for most politicians, at any given time.

But the real question is why there isn't wide spread awareness and powerful movements, or then why the movements that do exist have so far failed. The denialist industry was and still is well funded, but it's not really a given they would win, and they've only really "won" in the US; here in Europe there's not really much climate denialism, but the policies are weak sauce; the "concerned" politicians of Europe never get together and do anything of significance.

I'm honestly not sure; it's not like the information is in secret books that an institution will systematically burn both the books and anyone possessing them. "Truth" seems to have gotten out far worse obstacles.

Things do seem to be picking up traction now, technologically, economically and politically. — ChatteringMonkey

Although I hope so, and I've been working in the field for 20 years, I am more pessimistic as you may have gotten.

It's been long predicted (by the people that do objective analysis) that once we start to feel the problems, it maybe too late.

First, 20 years of further warming is always inevitable, even if emissions suddenly stopped (which they obviously won't); so, even if we stopped now it would get worse for 20 years before stabilizing.

Second, actually "stopping" actually means stopping: no net emissions from mankind. A lot of journalists put the goal posts at stopping growth in emissions as what we need to do, and so write articles about not growing emissions "as much as expected" as some sort of victory and that with all the solar and wind and stuff we're getting close to zero growth (leading the reader to believe that's the goal, if we're getting close to it in an optimistic sense and the article doesn't mention any other metric).

However, all human caused net emission adds carbon to the atmosphere and increases warming. To actually stop warming we need to get net emissions to zero.

The size of this task is absolutely massive.

Therefore, all honest analysis I have seen by people (whatever their background) who have "gone deep" into the issue and clearly understand the subject matter and make coherent arguments, have all, over decades, come to the conclusion that business as usual until the affects are clearly felt, is basically too late. If we started feeling the affects and we were already down to 5% current levels of emissions, that would be one thing, but if we haven't even reversed growth in emissions, we are so far from the target it's simply not fathomable such a large change could happen in a decade or two.

These large infrastructure changes are 50 to 100 year time scales ... so, had we started in the 70s in a serious way we'd be probably net zero emissions by now, and had we started "more seriously" in the 90s, we'd be feeling some of the affects as we currently are, but less, and we'd be "on our way" to avoiding total catastrophe.

Not only are we now basically "screwed", as the infrastructure changes we need simply can't happen over night, but, an easy corollary of this prediction is that once we start feeling the affects, it disrupts economic systems taking away capital and "social energy" that could otherwise be directed towards the problem. Supply chains, financial systems, political tensions, all become disrupted, leading to a less stable world, less able to deal with the underlying problem.

An easy example is trains. A very large portion of transport (car, truck and plane) can be moved onto trains and trams, running on electricity, which, even powered by fossil fuels, is still far more energy efficient and can be burned far cleaner (it's much easier to control particle and other emissions from a power plant than millions of cars).

In terms of blank-page engineering, it's really easy to design an efficient train-tram-metro transportation based system that can displace a significant amount of emissions, even if still powered by fossil!

But it's a 2 birds with 1 stone situation, because transitioning an electric train based system powered by fossil fuels to being powered by sustainable electricity requires no changes to the transportation system. So, emissions for the transport are already lower, and it's easy to transition the system to low emissions by simply adding low-emissions electricity to the grid.

However, if you take such a blank-page engineering design and then overlay it on the current transport system and work out the costs and time to go from one to the other, the values are very large.

Assuming politics is not an issue, that there's "the will", it still involves a decade of simply planning and then multiple decades of building such a system and then a solid decade to transition to using the new system efficiently, for a country like the US (all while needing to maintain the previous system in the interim). Countries with truly robust rail networks have literally 2 centuries of continuous rail development, not only of the rail but also of organizing society in a way that's efficient for rail (many Europeans don't have a car; because they can easily move to places where they don't need a car, because things have been designed over centuries for people without cars), and it's actually ambitious to try to do likewise in a half century, with few technically possible ways of going much faster.

Hence, the electric car! Which still takes a lot of energy to make, needs new infrastructure ... and doesn't solve the truck or plane problem at all (whereas trains can move containers, and high-speed trains can also move people far faster than cars and so realistically compete with plane journeys in terms of time, especially when airports are outside of the city center and boarding times are long and weight restrictions exist and so on, and there's more space on the train, and it's much cheaper, especially if the plane's needed to internalize the real costs of the pollution).

Therefore, if we reach a point where infrastructure cannot be realistically changed, it won't be changed, but if it is not sustainable, neither will it be sustained.

But purely based on those models we're going from on stable state to another right? That's what crossing those tipping points does, even if we stop emmissions, temperature keeps rising. — ChatteringMonkey

There's lot of variations possible, it's not an inevitable process from one point to another.

For instance, a lot of ice melting is driven by black particles from burning fossil fuels. So, if we stopped burning fossil fuels and made sure what we do burn is done super cleanly, then maybe Greenland doesn't melt, antarctic doesn't melt, there's still snow in the arctic in winter.

In other words, ice-free summer arctic ocean may have a lot of snow covering meta-stable states associated with it. For, once we get an ice-free arctic ocean summer ... there's no more summer arctic ocean ice to melt, so that particular feedback process stops.

The arctic is currently in a climate regime transition to an summer-ocean-ice-free state, but this does not inevitably trigger all the other tipping points possible (this has little to do with the Amazon right now). Meta-stable transition is one subsystem at a time; some subsystems maybe strongly or weakly coupled, and we don't really know, and it could even be going from one climate subsystem transition to the next always requires human help of more emissions.

For example, another big tipping point would be shutting down the thermohaline current, which has been proven to be slowing, but, as far as I know, still seems unlikely in more scenarios ... but not impossible. The process that drives slowing down this current is fresh water melting into the arctic (that is not salty and so doesn't do the haline part of the process). So, the more we slow down ice melt, the less likely we are to hit this tipping point (which maybe difficult to trigger anyways, and really needs a "good go" at it to have a good chance).

Turning the Amazon into a carbon source rather than carbon sink (bad for the climate for obvious reasons), seems more to do with just normal capitalism driven deforestation, and not a climate change effect (such as snow melting at the poles; though, climate change doesn't help the Amazon). Snow-less ecosystems in the tropics could be not so affected by climate change, if we stopped destroying them directly and severely weakening them: as it stands, our direct destruction of these ecosystems in conjunction with a bit of climate change can tip them into transitioning to savanna type ecosystems.

In short, currently, we are going towards a snow-less summer arctic ocean; changes in ocean snow cover is the most rapid systems change (as warm water melts ice quickly). As far as I know, climate change could be more-or-less stabilized around this new meta-stable state (if we did massive, global action now). Other tipping points are not "inevitably" triggered by a ice-free arctic ocean summer.

There's also geo-engineering. Maybe with human intervention, we could "seed back" arctic winter ice that then survives summer. However, all such schemes only make sense if we actually stop the cause of more warming, otherwise it's a massive cost that doesn't actually solve anything (adds a tiny bit of delay, but not really, as more warming will eventually melt that "human caused ice" anyways; it's only useful if more warming actually stops, and "nudging" things back towards more ice therefore long term trend setting, not the fashion of the week).

On-land ice melt is a lot longer process, and preventing Greenland and the Antarctic from significant melting, would be a big difference. We know from the geologic record that glaciers can experience catastrophic melting, but it's not known the exact details; so again, less heating, less likely we are to trigger such events (even if it's already "likely", there's always a chance that action in combination of the luck of natural cycles still achieves a less likely result; however, especially with the antarctic, it's unlikely we could actually melt it all, only some parts that actually sit below the water line are at good chance of melting, and so more heating can make a big difference of what actually melts, and how fast; likewise for Greenland, if we stopped black particles and more heating, maybe it's melt rate stabilizes).

Land-ice, the shear volume of the ocean and time to heat it up, ecosystems that have not yet been completely destroyed for cattle and palm oil, etc. are all buffers in the system that have longer response times than ocean-ice.

The sooner we arrest green-house emissions, the less likely we are to saturate these buffers, the more time we have to try to get carbon out of the atmosphere and promote ice forming and staying over winter (in a slow and stable way, instead of some last-ditch effort fast and reckless way such as pumping reflecting aerosols into the stratosphere), and the more stable our ecosystems are throughout the changes, meaning less likely wars and so on will intervene to make things even more chaotic.

However, this is no longer the 90s. Severely problematic ocean rise is going to happen, severe climate disruptions are already happening and will get worse, crop failures, large scale famines. We do, however, currently have a choice of "how bad". "Survival" could mean 100 000 people in small communities around the poles, or, something more-or-less similar to our current civilization (based on solar energy, distributed, very different, but something we can "imagine" as "pretty good transformation" of current lifestyles around the world) and a world with more-or-less the current ecosystems (rather than basically the apocalypse with a totally unrecognizable world for those 100 000 survivors).

Well, it's never a guarantee, less fast you're going the more likely to survive.

However, in this analogy, the height is not yet guaranteed to be fatal. Right now it's comparable to just likely breaking a bone, nothing too "serious" (if we did everything we could do engineering wise to stop green house emissions, stop burning the Aamazon etc.).

However, although catastrophe is already "baked in", as I've mentioned by any standard of "catastrophe", there's really big variations. There's also natural variations that can work in our favour or not.

However, the biggest thing is that implementing the best sustainable system we can, sooner rather than later, stabilizes global society, making nuclear wars and AI warfare less likely.

For instance, converting all our mono-crop land to forest gardens would increase food yield but also be far more resilient, as trees are not only more resilient to droughts but protect the soil with shade and transpire more water into the atmosphere (making rain more likely) (and of course diverse plants are less risk than a single plant; basic "risk management" economists happily apply to investing ... but somehow a single plant species, and not only a single species but genetic copies, on huge areas is "economic").

However, it takes some decades to grow trees, decades we currently have. So, if we did that, we'd still have a lot of disruptions, but things would probably be "ok" (of course, there's still risk of the tipping points being severe anyways, but it's no a guarantee, so lowering the risk is still the coherent choice).

If forest gardens are so efficient, why don't we currently do so to make money?

Because they are efficient at making food in terms of energy input, but are not profitable in terms of labour input (low skilled labour to pick fruit from mono-crop orchards is high ... so imagine the cost of high skilled labour to manage a little ecosystems). Forest gardens do not "drive profits", through unsustainable extraction of soil wealth (it is more profitable to run machines over mono-crops while degrading the land ... then just move to other land using those profits, than make a sustainable system). However, if one says "hmm, well, maybe if we want a sustainable system we don't actually want unsustainable mono-crop plantations, with unsustainable mineral and fossil inputs (something like 9 calories of fossil energy are required to grow 1 calorie of food in the current system)", then the analysis changes, and highly skilled labour is not "profitable" but is super energy efficient, if those people happen to live there and like living in a forest garden and doing high skilled work over long periods of time because it's their home and source of food. Such people would still need energy of course, but solar technology solves that.

This is the sort of system that is "efficient", but it basically means ending capitalism as is currently practiced, in which the purpose is the running of personal vehicles.

But what are you actually saying about what the models predict? — ChatteringMonkey

Well, numerical models of complex systems don't really make "predictions" in the usual scientific sense (such as predicting the position of a star behind the sun during an eclipse is a "prediction", falsefying the theory if it doesn't happen).

Numerical models of complex systems basically inform us about risk.

For instance, that the earth will warm if we emit green house gases, is a prediction, made over hundred and twenty years ago using pretty basic analytical (in the math sense of on paper solutions) methods, following experiments on gases to understand their basic atmospheric properties.

However, having zero clue how this would impact the earth's ecological system, the discover of the global warming theory concluded this warming would actually be a good thing, helping pants grow and boost agriculture.

Had the globe not actually warmed, then this would have refuted the theory.

Numerical models come in to inform risk, but, even then, they are viewed as inferior to extrapolation from retrospective geological data. As soon as there is retrospective data, for instance data about galaxy types and sizes, the modelers can't be trusted anyways, as they obviously tweak their models to show what we see.

In other words, the models of relevance are simply basic extrapolation of climate history.

Where numerical models come in is informing more detailed risk analysis. For instance, there's no geological data on how past climate change affects city infrastructure, because cities didn't exist back then, so, you can (and people do) build models to try to evaluate infrastructure risks (like the recent damn and levy busting in Germany).

However, we don't actually need these models to know the risks are ridiculously high and we shouldn't change the climate. The basic thing is climate sensitivity, which we already know because of the ice ages: that very subtle changes caused by very slowly changing orbital characteristics (with basically no material being added or taken away from the earths surface bio-physical systems) can bring and take away massive glaciers kilometres thick over a significant area of the globe.

So, if slow and subtle orbital changes can cause such a big change, the risk that a really massive and sudden change (adding billions of tons of material to the earth's surface processes, every year! for over a century!!!) is simply extreme madness.

The non conservative models show stable states and tipping points, the holocene stable state we are leaving, and a new one we're heading to, several degrees higher (the anthropocene stable state let's say)? — ChatteringMonkey

Yes, basically this is correct. The earth has two meta-stable climate regimes, climatologists call the "hot-box" and the "cold-box". The cold box has ice at both polls and wild swings in ice-cover due to orbital changes. The "hot box" doesn't have ice at both polls and is much hotter. This is driven by the physics of snow, that it melts quickly passed a threshold (the aptly names melting point); i.e. the difference between rain and snow can be a few degrees, not some linear proportional change, such as at 20 C we get 90% rain and 10% now, at 0% we get a 50-50 mix, and then at -20 C we get 90% snow and 10% rain.

If there was land at both polls, we'd be essentially locked into a cold box state, very difficult to break out of.

If there were free oceans at both polls, we'd be for sure in a hot box state.

With land at one poll, and a constrained ocean surrounded by land at the other poll (making heat exchange with warmer oceans not so efficient), gives us the recent cold-box, but only insofar as an ice cap covers the North poll. It's "pretty stable", lasting millions of years, but it's no where near as stable compared to a situation where land simply covered the whole North poll connecting Canada to Russia.

- Is the implication then not that only reducing greenhouse gas-levels on a large scale, to maybe get back to holocene stable state, would have a tangible effect on climate, because anything less will just end us in the anthropocene stable state anyway? — ChatteringMonkey

If you're going to jump out of a building, it's still better to jump from a lower floor.

Also, for people who think environmental "alarmists" have been saying the crisis is massive for decades ... but it never happens.

An analogy would be if an engineer on the Titanic pointed out the risk of hitting an iceburg in a couple of days to a few days, and people dismissed this as alarmism.

Then, the next day pointed out the same as a big risk tomorrow, and then people not only dismissed this as alarmism but ridiculed it as the exact same alarmism said yesterday and it didn't happen!!

Then with the iceburg literally approaching a day and a few hours later, people laughing at how the prediction didn't come true, as a couple days already passed!

Finally, after the iceburg is hit and the ship is obviously sinking, people say "idiot! we'll just innovate out of this problem; how'd we build the ship in the first place and make it go super fast if not for innovation".

That's pretty much the climate debate since decades.

Recharge rate is not an issue where there is conduction through rock, from a higher temperature energy source. Rock is a good conductor of heat. Any energy you take out of heated rock will immediately be replaced from the higher temperature region adjacent. It's the second law of thermodynamics. Heat always moves from hotter to cooler regions, and passes easily through stone. — counterpunch

This is simply not true. On the scale of literal insulation being a good insulator and a heat pipe being a good heat conductor, rock is closer the insulation side. Energy flows from hot to cold, but it takes time.

Indeed, the reason you need to drill to the depths you're talking about it because the rock is insulating pretty well. If you drill to those depths and extract heat from a small volume, it will indeed recharge pretty fast, but the larger the volume the slower it will recharge.

The volume of rock you need to power something significant (like a continent) is completely massive. To justify the capital equipment of the power station, not to mention the hydrogen production and storage and transport terminals you've been talking about, the amount of power needs to be "worth it".

Which is why, as has posted, many wells fail even in super sweet spot regions such as Geysers that is "the most developed", 15 wells produce 725 MW. An average of 49 MW per well.

That's just not a lot of energy. If heat just "instantly" recharged the rock at 700 C, you wouldn't limit your generation capacity to 49MW per well, you'd just "let her rip" and have nuclear gigawatt power station sized pipes. The reason, once you have a well, you can't just circulate as much water as you want to get as much energy as you want with the rock heat recovering "instantly", is because it's not instant. You're energy extraction must be equal to the recharge rate of the rock volume you're extracting energy from, otherwise the heat source cools to a point you can no longer generate power. Indeed, many geothermal stations end up running at a fraction of their original design capacity, because the recharge calculations were wrong.

The volume of rock will cool as energy is extracted from it, but will only heat up proportional to the surface area below (and to the sides somewhat, but doesn't change the proportionality here).

When you have these sorts of volume to surface area proportionality constraints, the solution is to have a small volume to keep that proportion low; hence stations are in the single or double digit MW range and not the GW range.

Another way to look at it is the heat gradient from the core to the surface. The earth is efficient at trapping all that heat: i.e. the opposite of being efficient at bringing it to the surface; we can make it more efficient by drilling down there and circulating water, but once we do that for a large volume we are constrained again by general heat gradient context of the surrounding rock.

Solar energy does not have this problem, but the energy extraction is a surface area (PV or hot water panels, mirror for solar concentrates, or just windows to heat buildings) and the "recharge" rate is proportional to the surface.

That the energy is spread out over the globe just means it's its own distribution network and we don't need that capital cost.

However, I am not arguing that solar energy will prevent the the climate change catastrophe. I am arguing that it could have, if fossil costs were internalized in the 70s - 80s - 90s, but now it is too late to avoid major tipping points.

The Amazon being a carbon source now, instead of a carbon sink, is a major such tipping points (I remember being discussed literally decades ago as a "oh shit moment" we should try to avoid). Likewise, that temperature records have been recently broken by several degrees, is also evidence of the climate breaking out of the meta-stable Holocene epoch, but the entire Quaternary geologic period, and is currently in an unstable region that will move rapidly towards a new metastable point several degrees hotter than present.

The IPPC models are wrong, on the conservative side, but it was known that they were wrong on the conservative side. The "surprise" is only that the wishful thinking that making conservative models provides a sense of security, turns out to be completely stupid.

However, decades ago to the present some climate modelers worked on realistic models (sometimes the same modelers that work on IPPC models too, and pointed out the things missing that make them conservative), which have always been terrifying in terms of the risk indication (numerical models of complex systems and things that haven't happened yet, only inform risk, never actually predict what will happen).

So, I'm not arguing solar energy can now arrest or reverse the climate crisis, only that it could have easily do so in an economically feasible way if the costs of fossil were internalized (whereas your magma technology could not have done likewise), and, even today, a massive proliferation of solar technology (and adapting society to use solar energy efficiently) would mitigate the crisis, but that is a political problem that is less and less feasible as the world is disrupted more and more by climate change and derivative affects.

So yes, billions of people are likely to perish, and it is definitely murder by the West in both a collective sense of apathy and specific sense on the part of the denialist industry, but that is not a "solution" proposed by us environmentalists pointing it out, it's just largely inevitable at this point.

Certainly, if you could prove magma energy to work, or even be "worth a shot", some billions should be spent finding that out and then a few 10s of trillion building your system if you turn out to be right.

Likewise, some billions should be spent on solar energy to discover the same, and some 10s of trillions spent converting the world to solar (in both installation of solar energy, and converting infrastructure to efficiently use it, with more local production using local energy, removing the large energy costs of both transport and large transport infrastructure).

Neither of these scenarios are happening, and spending trillions on bailing out the banks (i.e. corruption) from the consequences of their own corruption, in combination with the costs of more bailouts of the system in general due to the pandemic, and costs bailing out the system due to the affects of climate change, will likely lead to the kinds of economic dislocations that make large scale global investments no longer possible.

But the reason no alternative to fossil is being developed in a serious way (a way that would actually reverse carbon emissions) is political, not technological nor economic (we have the technology, and, as the world is discovering, eating the costs of climate change head on is not "economic bravery and realism" but complete idiocy).

As a note, water is an excellent mover of heat via convection, and if heat conduction to rock was instant as you say, then it would efficiently re-heat any hot water that's down there.

You can also look at the physics and economics of heat storage for power. They exist (such as for solar thermal energy), but for relatively short periods of time, because the material volumes required are simply massive. You'll also note that things like molten salt are used that efficiently transfer heat by convection, and if you work out just having a big cube of rock heated from below, it's not an efficient system (which would be analogous to having a a large cube of rock below the surface heated from further below that).

As an aside, the solution to the intermittence of solar energy is to simply match energy consumption to the energy availability as much as possible, which brings the problem down to a manageable level.

There really isn't though, and herein lies the point. We'd have to cover an area of 225,000 square miles with solar panels to meet current global energy demand. Sunlight is spread over a large area, and we cannot physically gather energy from the entire surface of the earth. But we could extract enough magma energy to meet and exceed current global energy demand because magma is a concentrated, high grade source of clean energy, and there's a lot of it. — counterpunch

You keep repeating this number as if it's some sort of problem for solar energy.

Your 225 000 square miles is about 580 000 square kilometres.

Surface area of earth is 510 000 000 square kilometres.

Assuming your value is correct, it is not really a problem; it is a thousand times less than the surface of the earth. We occupy (and degrade) far more land with mono-crop agriculture than we would need with solar energy.

Solar energy devices can be placed on roofs, over roads (or replace roads that we no longer need), placed over plants that require shade, and other duel use purposes, and so the "land cost" can be close to zero in this regard.

Furthermore, by reducing and reversing large scale infrastructure (that not only occupies a lot of land in itself, such as those 20 lane highways, but also divides the ecosystem making it less efficient), would actually be a net-positive in terms of land bio efficiency (the ecosystems being the primary value of land).

Whether you are right, (you are not right) or wrong - we are close to an impasse of direct and repeated contradiction. I can't explain why again, because I tried twice. Then again, they say third time's a charm. — counterpunch

Do some calculations then, of the volume of rock/magma you need at 700 C to power the world.

I can assure you it's a huge volume of rock, and, once it's cooled (the energy extracted from it) it will recharge very slowly, either through the heat diffusion from below or the slow recharge of magma chambers. The volcanoes we have aren't taps that can be opened to release indefinite magma flows.

This the basic problem of all sources of geothermal energy.

There are "sweet spots" where the recharge rate is pretty good, like iceland, but it is no where good enough to power all of the UK, not to mention Europe.

Drilling 10,000 m deep geothermal wells
15 September 2010 — counterpunch

I have been reading these sorts of press releases for over 20 years.

"Moon landing" and "we just need to technology to harvest it".

People have even literally made press releases of harvesting the moon's orbital energy, and of course mining it for stuff ... if we only had the technology.

There's actually plenty of energy sources "we really have enough of": Quasars, stars in general, zero point energy.

The point of these press releases is to get some grants. Scientists are always like "peer review, evidence, skepticism" ... except when it comes to grant applications and the press releases that provide plausible reasoning (on part with any creationist) for spending public money on their project.

Meanwhile, solar energy, the energy source humanity has mostly used for it's entire history (to grow crops, trees, grow plankton for fish, and also heat most buildings most of the year), and has been pointed to as the obvious better source of energy than fossil with easily demonstrated calculations that don't change, has proven itself cost-effective (even against fossil fuels with subsidies and basically no "polluter pays" principles), and it wouldn't be all that complicated to replace fossil with solar energy on a global scale (indeed, the savings would be enormous, as all the various costs of the pollution are very real and paid somewhere, sometime, by somebody; indeed, all of us), not "if only we had the technology to harvest it"; we have the technology now.

The problem is not now, nor has ever been, a technological one. Had the "polluter pays" principle as has been referring to, been implemented; our climate change problem would not exist, and, by definition, it would not have cost us any money (as what the polluter is paying are real costs to the economy; so, making the polluter pay, by definition, doesn't harm the economy: just moves it in a more efficient direction of technologies with low real-costs, rather than simply low production production costs).

What processes? In what way optimal? I also said previously, geothermal refers to a great many technologies. You've taken a problem with one form of geothermal and applied it incorrectly to the technology I propose, so that's just wrong. — counterpunch

The problems I describe are inherent to the geothermal energy source, they apply to all implementations of geothermal energy.

For instance, all solar energy technologies won't work in a dark cave, for reasons to do with the characteristics of solar energy source, not the technology.

Petroleum is a refined product. — counterpunch

Really?

Petroleum, also called crude oil, is a fossil fuel. Like coal and natural gas, petroleum was formed from the remains of ancient marine organisms, such as plants, algae, and bacteria. — literally the first search engine result for the word 'petroleum'

All these processes imply energy costs. These are physical facts, but are not valid criticisms against hydrogen; if fossil fuels are even less efficient by the same measure. — counterpunch

Yes, my point is that petroleum pays that energy cost. So, if it is "on hand" (such as high quality, close to the surface, oil fields), then it easily pays the energy cost of it's transport.

Hydrogen is never "on hand" in a similar way, and so the situation is no analogous.

Not feasible, why? You're not suggesting are you, that the energy is not there? There is an unimaginably massive amount of energy in the earth's interior. That so, it's a matter of the right technological approach to extracting that energy; and I agree that existing technological approaches are sub-optimal. — counterpunch

It's not about "sub optimal", it's about needing to drill a lot of pipe, and then cooling that volume of rock, which doesn't recharge at the same rate of depletion, requiring more drilling.

These processes are pretty close to optimal. There are basic physical limits to the efficiency of cleaving and lifting rock out of the ground, of heat engines. There's not some "drilling breakthrough" anyone is proposing to happen ... except for Elon Musk but that was walked back to "it's cheaper to drill smaller diameters! so we'll do that".

You mean, like the transport infrastructure for coal, oil and gas? We manage to get that from A to B somehow, and I explained how I intend to distribute magma energy in the previous post. I said: — counterpunch

We manage to get that from A to B by burning a lot of coal, oil and gas in both building up massive infrastructures and also to run them.

Why make the same point again? — counterpunch

Your point of shipping around petroleum (using petroleum) is not analogous to shipping around hydrogen.

First, technically, hydrogen is a lot more challenging (need to compress and freeze it, and much more difficult to store even compared other gases).

More importantly, hydrogen is not a cheap source of energy like petroleum (insofar as it's still in easy accessible locations in forms easy to process). Petroleum pays the energy cost itself to transport it as well as build the infrastructure. If you have a bunch of petroleum, you can always "get it somewhere" on the globe to sell it (the only wrinkle is if plenty other people have plenty petroleum too, so the margins are thin; solution: promote an insanely inefficient economy that wastes energy wantonly and also make both implicit and explicit cartels to control the price; both to extract profit sometimes with high prices as well as disrupt competing industries with super low prices sometimes).

Hydrogen needs to be made, which costs energy, as it's not a source, and that energy cost and the cost of infrastructure can easily exceed the costs of other sources of energy that are available at the location you want to sell in (like the sun shining there, or the wind blowing there, and just way cheaper than buying magma-to-hydrogen energy ). Hydrogen doesn't "pay" the energy cost to make and move it. Why your system doesn't exist, but solar and wind systems do; but they are most efficient locally, as, if you don't need to move energy, there's only an energy cost to doing so with no benefit (distributed system also has less, or no, systemic failure points, could be robust against Carington events, etc. etc.).

I'm looking to drill through rock at temperatures of 700'C - close to magma chambers and subduction zones, line the bore holes with pipes and pump water through - producing contained superheated steam. The volume and temperature of the rock suggests there would be no recharge rate issue. — counterpunch

700 C rock isn't all that much energy; it sounds more impressive than it is. Heat capacity of rock isn't so high, and if we're talking super heated steam at 400 C, then there's only 300 C difference to work with.

To power a whole major country we're talking massive amount of rock, that costs money to put pipes through. If the heat extracted is equal to the recharge rate, no problem. However, even in incredibly convenient places for this technology, like iceland, the idea of powering a substantial part of Europe is just not remotely feasible.

Drilling pipe and circulating water is simply not all that hard, if this massive energy source was there, we'd be tapping it on a significant, and not niche, scale.

It's basic thermodynamics, very well understood, extremely low room for improvement of our heat engines (as you mention, steam is still a pretty solid choice of working fluid ... which is what was used at the very beginning of the aptly called steam age). This isn't something like nuclear fusion where we can always spectacular a breakthrough is possible.

Compared to our advancements in computing, heat engines have basically not advanced in a hundred years.

I plan to convert electrical energy into liquified hydrogen fuel for transport. Liquified hydrogen gas contains 2.5 times the energy of petroleum per kilo - and we ship petroleum around the world. — counterpunch

The problem this plan is:
- hydrogen is so small it seeps through materials, causing micro cracks; this isn't a problem if you need hydrogen and just a) tolerate leakage since the amount isn't a danger nor relevant economic loss b) replace the equipment when you need to, but is a problem if you want to build out a massive complex infrastructure of tanks, pipes, valves, gauges, etc. with high efficiency and low maintenance and few explosions.
- Even with the technical challenges resolved, the infrastructure involved is so massive that it would take decades to actually build.
- The only point of hydrogen infrastructure is to power personal vehicles and trucks ... but trains exist and can be built and powered by electricity far cheaper. I.e. even if it was doable, the basic justification doesn't exist, outside some niche applications that have no relevant to climate change.

It's difficult to generalise about geothermal energy because every geothermal energy source has different characteristics. Current extraction techniques are sub-optimal. The particular design, I've described here many times - was created with these problems in mind. There are over 500 volcanoes in the Pacific Ring of Fire alone, and 1500 globally, plus subduction zones - where large volumes of rock heated to very high temperatures, are within reach of modern drilling technologies. — counterpunch

Volcanoes are impressive as they release stored energy in a short amount of time. To power anything significant, we're talking about a massive continuous volcanic eruption; the earth doesn't recharge the magma chambers fast enough. Magma moves pretty slowly, significant pressure can be stored up over time, but release that pressure and it doesn't just flow out like a tap. The exceptions of super active volcanoes, are not impressive but really small, not regular Mount Saint Helen eruptions (which is impressive in terms of energy).

Solar energy is weak and diffuse; it must be gathered from a large area and concentrated. An area of 225,000 square miles would need to be covered to meet current global energy demand from solar. Then, the same transport problem arises. How do you get that energy to where it is needed? Solar energy must be stored, for when the sun doesn't shine, which is around half the time. All sorts of toxic metals are used in production, to make solar panels, and after 25 years, solar needs replacing at similar cost, plus the cost of recycling. — counterpunch

Incorrect. Geothermal has a transport problem because the "sweet spots" where it's economic are concentrated in very few locations (such as the 500 active volcanoes you mention), so, the energy is far from where people live and you'd need a massive and costly transport infrastructure even if the energy was there (which it isn't).

Solar, on the other hand, is diffuse but not in a bad way, it lands where people live.

Imagine you had the following:
- garden (powered by sunlight)
- energy (powered by sunlight)
- wood or bamboo construction material (powered by sunlight)
- ceramics (powered by sunlight)
- basic tool and machine shop, both in hour home and short distance in the community (powered by sunlight)
- the ability to recycle metals (powered by sunlight)

Then, ask yourself how much personal transport you would need.

Then ask yourself how much high volume transport infrastructure you would need. Certainly some inputs and trade are still needed for this local economic system to work ... but 10, 20, even 1 lane highways? Would they be needed?

If you actually calculate out how much energy is required to run this techno-peasant system, it's a small fraction of what is anyways required to grow food and materials. We grow food and materials (we mostly waste) in this way now, and with a lot of transport, mono-crop and rotting inefficiencies (with lot's of good land occupied by suburban sprawl accomplishing noting food wise), so, basically by definition, if you matched people to where food is currently grown, then matched solar technology (mainly solar thermal technology is needed in this system) to the enclosure of inefficiencies in the current system (roads, mono-crops, suburbia), etc. problem solved.

People can easily live in this semi-autonomous way right now, growing most of their food and making most of their capital equipment themselves, imagine if a large system to make it easy and efficient was in place? (a network of drones delivering materials and small things that do need a factory (like computer chips), local blacksmiths, and elevated bike and small vehicle paths connecting everywhere, and the Uber of helicopters if you need to go somewhere quickly, like to a hospital). Infrastructure that still enables high mobility and trade of dense quality (metals that can be recycled, "clean-room" electronics, medicines, machine tooling, and, of course, spice) could be insanely light compared to today's infrastructure, if bulky things (like food, wood, other plant fibers, and clay) are derived locally, and energy input (the sun) also derived locally.

If you've ever encountered this homesteading life, it's actually pretty lazy compared to most jobs in the capitalist system (especially low-paying jobs), and far more fulfilling. The homesteaders that work hard is because they make a point to do even more for themselves than is economically efficient in their system (to make a political point that it is possible to do it locally, leading by example, even if, right now, it would take less effort to trade for it), but even these hard working hippies would work a lot less hard if they had a network of craft-people and a light infrastructure of the kind I describe (to enable ethical and sustainable trade).

Why doesn't this happen if it's so lazy? Lot's of poor people try, but they can't buy the land necessary.

Why is land expensive? Because the private control of land is the foundation of capitalism. Had land remained a communal resource, where, of course, you just put a poor person in a "cottage" and at least they'll make enough food for themselves, maybe produce a soldier or two.

We could easily produce sufficient energy from solar power and solar generation plants are being built, but probably not fast enough. Although it’s probably to late anyway, as the tipping points are already being triggered. Even if we do manage to reduce emissions significantly, the damage is already sufficient for civilisation collapse, as we have discussed before. — Punshhh

We definitely agree on this.

Of course, from a purely engineering point of view, things could be radically changed and the result (still a pretty big catastrophe by any standard) still a lot better than otherwise.

However, the environmental movement of the "large scale" essentially doesn't exist anymore. The denialist industry won with the moral delialism in the exterior, as I explain at some length in my post above, but this geothermal debate is the denialism industry winning from within the climate movement

Promoting "niche" energy sources that have no global relevance consumes research, development and installation capital, while solving nothing. Environmentalists that don't bother with basic engineering principles, then spend time arguing about which of the irrelevant nice ideas (always in the future) are best, and declaring "small victories" along the way that are actually counter productive (and generate subsidies for the oil industry who own and promote these "clean" niches; subsidies that finance more denialism), while everyone else sees that "renewable energy" doesn't really work (doesn't actually displace fossil on a large scale).

It is also not just a question of energy source, but of organizing society to use those energy sources efficiently. Trying to keep a system (such as highways and personal vehicles) going that doesn't even use fossil fuels efficiently (but was invented precisely because fossil fuels starts in a super abundance and needs to be wasted on a large scale to profit), is just pure intellectual insanity.

Yet, decades after the "biofuels" revolution proved to be a total lure (which was obvious at the time to even the most cursory scrutiny), what's all the rage? Electric cars!!

On the question of "threat level".

Although I would agree climate change, in itself, isn't an existential threat to humans, it is through interaction with nuclear war systems and, now, also killer AI systems (assuming they get good enough that, if set to "kill all enemies" (if friend and enemy is even a stable definition to these machines through time), and then those people who pressed that button die, they would simply track down and kill everyone using the most creative, ingenious, and patient means possible, essentially guaranteed to succeed against dispersed populations regressing in technological capacity).

Magma energy is one potential, and I think promising source of high grade clean energy, in theory, more than adequate to replace fossil fuels. — counterpunch

Unlike , I do have truck with your Magma energy proposal.

There's a basic physical problem called the "recharge" rate, which reduces to simple geometry. To extract energy efficiently from rock, we don't dig down and then install a big metal plate as a single surface heat exchanger. Rather, we dig a bunch of tubes over a volume or then use natural occurring tubes of water in fissures and cracks that's is already down there.

Point is, this volume of rock will only heat back up as if it had a big surface plate heat exchanger below it. In terms of "renewable" it's this recharge rate below the volume of rock that matters, which is very low per square meter. The earth is efficient at trapping heat, that's why it's hot down there, but it doesn't produce much heat. This is the general problem of geothermal energy.

Now, exceptions like volcanoes, where energy gets out more efficiently and look more impressive, still have the basic problem of being recharged in energy and pressure overtime. In addition, volcanoes are in inconvenient locations, so even if the recharge rate was better than elsewhere, there's a large added cost of transporting the energy.

For instance, Iceland is a place where you can get a lot of geothermal energy, and they do make a lot pretty cheaply; so much that they have a big aluminum industry as processing aluminium takes a lot of electricity. However, they don't have so much that they could power all of Europe.

In general, Geothermal is, along with tidal, bio-energy, hydro, an energy source that is not globally applicable, there's just some impressive "sweet spots" (some bays, big forests, large rivers, Iceland). Those sweet spots aren't so great that you could transport energy all over the globe.

The globally applicable renewable energy source is the sun, with it's first derivative wind power (2% of sun energy is converted to wind energy ... but even then it's still localized in a "sweet spot" of higher latitudes, due to the Coriolis affect, and so, we only think of it as "on par" with solar energy because there's a lot of rich countries North, where there's lot's of clouds and good wind; and rich countries determine research and investment dollars). Point is, "recharge" rate of the sun is way higher than geothermal and there's no surface area to volume problem.

Not strange at all. The "I told you so" aspect of it refutes the open conspiracy of ignorance and forgiveness. I think it's important for future generation to know we were lying sacks of shit when we pretended that we didn't know better. And when we pretended we were doing it "all for the children" (when we were really doing it for our own selfish selves, that next man-toy, vacation, McMansion, etc.). — James Riley

20 years ago, leading up to the "Kyoto Protocol" I would say there was actually more concern and less denialism then there is now.

I would say "more concern" because there was simply less "big issues" back in the 90s to compete, such as the "big existential" of terrorism, new cold war, financial collapse, China, Trump, of course coronavirus today, and, ironically, weather catastrophes I would argue also take up this discursive concern space (the awareness climate change is a problem may increase, but the actual time and energy spent on climate change is still displaced by discussing the catastrophe in question, be it hurricane or wildfires or drought, and of course money on the symptom and not the cause).

The denialism industry back then was less robust than it is now. Back in the 90s, denialists still at least pretended to be "doing science", and they then they lost the scientific debate. "Pretending to do science" at least focuses on what the scientific issues are and people can decide what case is more credible. Likewise, "science based denialism" of the 90s still implicitly accepted the basic framework that if there was a problem, we'd have a moral onus to do something about it ... just, there isn't a problem. Since then, denialism has shifted to what I would call "moral denialism" which is far more effective. Moral denialism simply refutes, one way or another, the basic premise that "we should do something", even if there is a problem, which there isn't (and no moral onus to back that up, one has a right to believe anything) ... but even if there was a problem, we shouldn't do anything about it. True believers are beyond the reach of critical and factual debate, and, more importantly, these doctrines tip people in the middle towards apathy. I.e. it both fuels an insane cult while creating a powerful apologetics for the lazy moderates (who would otherwise want something to be done, maybe over a long period of time with little personal cost, but at least something that would actually work; such as had the movement in the 90s achieved something significant, instead of the weakly worded "suggestion" of the Kyoto protocol).

For instance, when I started to get environmentally aware and talk about issues, my father's extended family and acquaintances etc., all left or far left on social issues, would always joke "I'll be dead by then!" and then laugh about it, whenever the subject of climate change was brought up, by me or anyone. The moral denialism of moderates, fueled by a total misunderstanding of what exponential rise in fossil consumption means and the risks of that, was already germinating.

Denialists in the 90s at least pretended to be working in a sane intellectual framework, just claiming "the facts" aren't in yet (taking advantage of the general public's lack of risk analysis skills, in an otherwise coherent debate where arguing on the facts did move people's opinions).

The 90s itself, was an echo of the 70s, where the same environmentalism debate also occurred, due to the oil shocks and discovering how poisonous pesticides and the like are.

Anyways, just my perspective supporting your basic point that we did know, did nothing, and future generations will view the Westerners that caused this as worse than the Nazi's (who only tried to illegitimate a few group in one species, in a mad lust for power and greed, and not destroy most species, in a mad lust for power and greed).

Weather catastrophes are leading people, who live through them, to regret the inaction of the last 40 years, but I think we are definitely in the "too little too late" phase and the large scale catastrophe is now "baked in". Though this was obvious to me 15 years ago (after the "environmental movement" declared biofuels a success), and, looking at the computer models that were still pretty good back then for decision making purposes, looked at where on the globe would become uncomfortably hot and where would stay ok (both in terms of environment and political stability) for a long time. I couldn't afford to move to New Zealand, so I moved to Northern Europe. If you're going to be a climate refugee, I highly recommend doing so at least a decade in advance. What does my old network say now: "it's really hot".

Although I agree with @Protagoras about the many trolls and nasty people out there, especially as you invite other private avenues of communication, and, online, that can be difficult to deal with, for the part of this forum, I have not generally observed much problem with emotion or vulnerability. It seems pretty well accepted round these parts.

It is only if you stake a philosophical claim of some sort here, that you should expect criticism and scrutiny. Purely friendly messages that don't really argue a philosophical point, are generally friendly received with friendly advise from different points of view, as already apparent in this thread.

My own friendly advice, having experienced when I was younger an analogous sense of disconnection from the people immediately around me (due to my longing for coherent principles, actions and real justice), is that connection with other people can, by definition, only really happen as part of a collective project (humans are a political animal, as Aristotle almost gets right).

Without some genuinely justified goal, "connections" in the modern world are the mere acting out of what people think are genuine connection (informed by mostly by movies). For instance, "bros" may act out what they perceive to be the bonds of brotherhood in a world war 2 platoon, fighting the evil Nazis (subconsciously, but more often than not with overt analogous symbolism and language of justice and missions and so on: see startup culture for this phenomenon on hyper-drive; or, more ironic still, acting out the bonds of brotherhood "gansta's" in sidelined communities create to deal with, or then a response to, systemic oppression propped up by the "bro" culture that mirrors them through the commodification and glorification of the ersatz sense of purpose of at least obeying no rules of an unjustified society: the dignity, ephemeral perhaps but arguably better than nothing, of being an autonomous moral agent in unjust circumstance).

The difference of course (and I think accurately described by the post-modernists, even if their proposed "cures" are worse in my view), is that a WWII platoon had genuine connection, a genuine mission, a genuine sense of mission (as much on the Nazi side as the allies!), and clear moral principle held in common, and an objective basis for that collective project. World War II veterans (on the winning side) had a life long feeling of accomplishment and bonds, despite trauma and loss that went with it, due to the, if not valid, commonly believed and justified goal. Take the veterans of not merely a losing side (where losing is shame enough; such as the Japanese), or then a side that lost (and could normally deal with that, such as World War I) but turns out the supposed objective basis of the cause evaporates (concentration camps, mass murders, etc. which most German soldiers on most front lines didn't know about, or then were in denial about, very solidly insofar as a sophisticated propaganda apparatus supported both the denial and the justifications of the atrocities if they were happening ... which they weren't, but if they were, well, only Jews, retards, and other undesirables). Likewise, the war in Vietnam, contemporary Iraq and Afghanistan; the experience of veterans is extremely sensitive to the perception of real justice of the cause.

What we can conclude of such contemplation -- and, even if they seem extreme, war is the most banal of all human pursuits and the most universal -- is that the mere experience of "close collaboration", "connection" in itself, cannot be divorced from the justification of the common goal. If we doubt later the purpose, the perception of the "bond" with collaborators is clearly impacted.

All this to say, clearly the purpose of collaboration must logically precede the search and construction of bonds of collaboration.

Joining a just war may indeed bring a lifetime sentiment of deep connection, purpose and accomplishment (even if one loses the war but the sense of justification is preserved!), however, the mere existence of such a psychological phenomena we may see play out in others cannot justify joining any war for any arbitrary cause. In this second case, it is clearly simply the theater representation of the first justified case; similar language and gestures may be used, and similar experiences encountered, but clearly it is not the same to kill for a just cause compared to some randomly selected cause; neither in the experience as a whole, nor the future reflections upon that experience. In other words, going to war for "the experience", regardless of the justification for the war, is a bad idea. Likewise, joining a startup for "the experience", regardless of the justification for the startup, is a bad idea. And so on and so forth until we have concluded joining any group at all, regardless of the justification for the group, is a bad idea.

What we are left with is the simple obvious questions in their simple and obvious order: What ends are justified? What ways of achieving these ends are justified? Who is worthwhile to cooperate with to achieve these ends? Where are these people? How do I find them? How do I know that they are who I think they are?

Any mistake in this chain of clear, simple and obvious questions: spells disaster, hardship, suffering, if not for oneself, then others.

lol But he didn't, did he? Is that your "evidence"? — Apollodorus

I said he's capable.

The evidence is his erratic, irrational, obvious poor grasp of new concepts, and morally void behavior.

I don't understand your scepticism. I cited an article that summarises the analysis of "a joint exercise between the WHO and the Chinese health commission. In all, there were 17 Chinese and ten international experts, plus seven other experts and support staff from various agencies."

Doubtless they have "actually studied maths", too. — Banno

Unfortunately, this isn't how science works, it's how politics works.

Can we do any reproducible experiments to verify these claims for ourselves?

Can we examine their statistical model (that includes the cutting edge of bioweapons research and capabilities/intentions of various state and non-state actors with varying degrees of proficiency relative the cutting edge)?

China investigating itself and finding no wrong doing isn't very convincing. The WHO is a small organization with limited resources and politically constrained and isn't going to conclude anything politically disruptive (i.e. is not going to carry out any honest intellectual exercise of analysis and call a media armegedon onto itself / start international tensions (that's not it's job, countries respective intelligence agencies have that job; WHO's job is to reassure the public in this situation, which it has been doing). Civilian experts are, in anycase, simply not useful in this case.)

The best analysis that currently exists has been done by bio-weapons experts (who's job it is to do things like model pandemics, see what statistical signatures a bioweapon may leave compared to what's expected naturally etc.) and such analysis is not available to us. Actual analysis of actual experts on what is the cutting edge (assuming their opponent doesn't outclass them) are state secrets currently.

There was no Trump attack on China though, was there? — Apollodorus

How do we know?

I'm pretty confident Trump is capable of signing a paper authorizing a strategic bioweapons attack and not even remember doing so, if he even understood vaguely the general subject matter at the time.

...which is exactly what the article said. So what is your point? — Banno

My points have been in response to your claim:

There's an oddly one-sided scepticism at work here, were "might have escaped from a lab" becomes an extended narrative about genetic engineering and intentional infection, while the much more likely notion that it crossed from an animal is ignored. — Banno

You say it's "much more likely notion".

I have actually studied maths, and if you bring up the idea of "likely" you need some way to calculate that. If I say I'm more likely to get a pair of kings than a straight flush, that's only true based on some model of how the cards and game work which will allow me to make that calculation.

Months ago I've already explained anyone talking of "likely" in the cause of the pandemic will need to do a lot of work to actually make probabilistic claims.

And, on both sides of the narrative battle: for instance, is it even an "unlikely" event the pandemic would first emerge near a lab? To say so one would actually need to map out where such labs are, where a natural pandemic would likely emerge, consider the fact a disease is more likely to be detected near a place capable of detecting disease etc.

You're the one claiming you know what's a more likely notion, please explain how you know.

The question that needs to be asked is cui bono?

Obviously, in a dictatorship like Communist China, the state has the means to keep an epidemic under control. In liberal democracy, it's a different story.

So it's a calculated risk worth taking. — Apollodorus

It's a possible scenario (and my fellow leftists saying a regime doing concentration camps in the broad daylight of the international press, is too pure and innocent to contemplate such a move, I don't get; I don't think there are moral limitations on China's current policy), but the problem with cui bono on large scale events is that there are many parties that are going to benefit. Amazon has also benefited, as the other tech giants. Various other countries also can be argued to have benefited.

One must also take into consideration that complex global events are not predictable and often people are extremely stupid. Someone may have attacked China not realizing they would be able to contain it and the West would do everything possible not-to-contain it. I don't think this was a foregone conclusion at the time.

Likewise, precisely because Trump is an incompetent buffoon he may have authorized some crazy general, colonel, what-have-you to carry out an attack on China.

The argument seems to be that the possibility can't be excluded, therefore it happened. — Banno

What are you talking about?

I said pretty in my list of possibilities "Or perhaps it's just one of those random things nature does from time to time".

I didn't provide much analysis of why this possibility is possible because we agree it is, and if it's just some random natural variation, then there's not really any scenario to develop.

There's an oddly one-sided scepticism at work here, were "might have escaped from a lab" becomes an extended narrative about genetic engineering and intentional infection, while the much more likely notion that it crossed from an animal is ignored. — Banno

It's right in my list of possibilities that it could be:

Or perhaps it's just one of those random things nature does from time to time. — boethius

The point of my narration of other possibilities is that they are possible.

"What's more likely?" assumes some model in which we can calculate likelihood. I have already written many months ago why making a model of the globe and relevant phenomena (including what intelligence agencies may or may not be capable of, might be willing or not to do) is basically impossible.

Without solid direct, verifiable evidence, "it's more likely it was natural" is just hand-wavy bullshit.

The narration in the media was never attached to some sort of factual basis, but political expediency.

It was politically expedient to downplay (without any factual or theoretical basis) a lab origin (accident or intentional) as that would help Trump with whom the establishment media was at war with.

Now, Trump is an incompetent buffoon, incapable of managing the crisis and so a scapegoat would have deflected attention from obvious mismanagement (that had nothing to do with where the virus came from anyway) and that could only help Trump in many ways.

However, precisely because Trump is an incompetent buffoon, the (potential) last year of his presidency is the optimum moment to carry out a strategic bioweapons attack.

There's lot's of intelligence agencies on the planet with all sorts of agendas and employing all sorts of crazy people without any moral limitations (nor real intelligence, let's be honest here).

Causing a pandemic is so attractive precisely because it can be made to look natural, look like an accident, and so easily started anywhere on the planet (to support whatever narrative you'd want to establish; if you want to eventually blame China, just start the pandemic near a lab that has worked with the same kinds of viruses, which you expect a potential link China will try to cover up as a matter of course and look guilty anyways; if you're China and want to start the pandemic (to institute next level mass surveillance, crush Hong Kong protests, deflect from the casual genocide concentration camps things etc.) but have a plan B of saying it's "an oopsie" just start it close to your lab anyways as an eventual fallback explanation).

If you look at the history of clandestine operations (that we know about), completely insane things are done all the time in the past. The narration that crazy shit doesn't happen today, all the intelligence agencies (including fairly powerful extra-national private contractors nowadays also) are now all just wise old men who wouldn't harm a fly or disrupt public order in anyway, is just fantasy.

The possibility can't be excluded based on the opinion of a few civilian experts. We don't even know what the state of the art in bio-engineering even it.

Yes, there is the letter published in 17 March 2020 in the journal Nature Medicine led by Kristian G. Andersen, that said it's natural. Basically the argument was that because there aren't tell tale signs of cutting and pasting, it had to be natural. Unfortunately newer technologies don't leave those traces. So the article is wrong in ruling out the hypothesis. — ssu

In addition to this, simply evolving a pathogen in different hosts is also engineering, and can't really be distinguished between just natural evolution.

Weapons tech we can also presume is far ahead of what is known about by civilians, so civilian scientists commenting on what weapons labs can and can't do (unless it is breaking the laws of thermodynamics or something) is simply foolish.

The simple truth is, @Benkei, the establishment downplayed potential lab origins (weapon or accident) because saying otherwise would benefit Trump and the right wing insane conspiracy machine that fueled things up to and including storming the US capital looking to capture and hang US senators.

Now that an establishment politician is in the white house, the great game must continue and it is in the establishment's interest to up-play the lab origin to create tensions with China.

However, what is true is independent of what is good/bad for Trump or what is good/bad for the US establishment.

It's potentially true the virus did come from a lab, by accident or then even on purpose: by China in a classic "start the pandemic in China" fake out (the ol' burn my own house down to start a neighborhood fire because I'm a maniac, to both seem innocent as well as immediately deploy the next phase of the 1984 totalitarian state technologies to "fight" the virus; deflect from their genocide, deflect from Hong-Kong, which both mattered before the pandemic, but no one gives a shit about nowadays), or some adversary trying to harm China thinking they'd be particularly harmed with high population densities (if you told me an insane general or intelligence officer got 5 minutes with Trump in a Helicopter or wherever and asked him to quickly sign a paper authorizing releasing a bio weapon on China, not realizing the potential blow-back because their an insane idiot, that is definitely something I'd be surprised Trump not signing; and if you agree, then the system in place to prevent this sort of crazy shit happening was prevented for 4 years by aides who couldn't even stop Trump tweeting even with measures like hiding his phone from him) which didn't work as expected, or then to frame China for the pandemic and make it (eventually) appear like a classic fake out, or perhaps it was made (/ found and released) by some billionaire, or mere multi-millionaire, and was started in multiple places and simply went exponential first in China, etc (perhaps such a plan isn't expected to work, but plenty of crazy rich people have tried over the years and this one happened to work). Or perhaps it's just one of those random things nature does from time to time.

However, if it was one out of any number of defense departments or intelligence agencies that did it by accident or on purpose, the only thing we can be sure of is that it's some crazy tale involving macho off-the-cuff global strategic improvisation and many goose-bumpy moments that their having a good laugh about now (now that the evidence is buried pretty deep and we're unlikely to ever know the truth anyways).

That's why the word "basically" is there. It's definitely a statistical majority. Which is as good as you're going to get. — khaled

Is it a majority? Where's your data?

But, even so, who cares?

If a majority of physicists in the time of Newton believed physics was fully determined (or then to arbitrary precision of all variables such as position and momentum), did that conclusively prove anything at the time?

All communities are affected by "group think", and the point of science is that real experiments can settle differences, not votes. If a bunch of physicists "voted" about something, really, who cares about that? Do the physicists themselves even care about it more than just an opinion poll of the moment that obviously doesn't "prove" anything?

If a majority of physicists were defending your point of view, where's their experiment to prove it? Are you really defending the idea that these physicists would say "ah, ah, ah, not so fast, we're a majority and therefore correct"?

Yes we can because if it did the interference pattern wouldn't emerge. — khaled

What does this point make? We agree the electron cannot be said to be "at one place" when we aren't observing it (even though there are fully deterministic theories where the particle is "at one place" at all times, but we seem to agree on at least this point; still, worth making a note of), and we agree that the "substance" of the electron, in some sense, is represented by the probability distribution, which has wave characteristics and can interfere with itself to make interference patterns etc.

What we're debating is what happens to this "probability related substance" when a measurement is made.

My point is that to "know" a measurement is made is to become conscious of the measurement result. The "probability waves going away" happen at that moment or before. If you argue "before", how do you prove it? In science you need to go and check, but this just kicks the can up the road, as @Wayfarer has really described super well, so read his comments. I'm just adding some quantum math lingo to what Wayfarer has already adequately described (and my math lingo I'm adding just to explain to you, or other readers here interested, that the math lingo doesn't really change the philosophical arguments of principle that pre-existed Quantum Mechanics, of determinism, skepticism, solipsism, panpsychism, everything possible actually happens in eternal infinite chaotic universe, etc.; although if a poster here knows of an interpretation of QM that does not map "pretty well" to pre-existing philosophical arguments, it would be interesting to add it to the mix).

As above. — khaled

You backup your claim by just asserting "physicists agree with you", without providing any "well controlled experiment" of how this is even supported?

No but if throwing a bunch of people through two slits produces the result that the people act as "waves" until measured that precisely means that they don't act as particles all the time. In other words, that the people are "truly everywhere" in the probability distribution.

Now replace people with electrons.

Or in other words, if the electron really did exist as a particle in a spot, with a certain momentum, how do you explain why an interference pattern emerges when we don't measure the electron's location? — khaled

I don't know what we're debating here. I've said our knowledge about the person lost at sea is a probability distribution (labeling it a "wave" or not doesn't matter), my point is that if you claim the person is "really somewhere" and not somehow "co-existing" in all the places they can be according to what we know, how do we prove they are "really somewhere"? We go and check.

As for making interference patterns with people; so far there is no known bound for making interference patters with atoms, so in principle, as far as we know, it's possible with people too. Of course, you'd need to cool them incredible close to absolute zero and you may need literally hundreds of trillions of throws to see any pattern in a whole bunch of noise, as well as do the experiment in deep inter-galactic space; but, until we find an upper bound of number of particles for making interference patterns, we can't say we can't do it with "people too" (well, at least the particles making up their bodies).

Except in this case... For some reason in this one case, when collapse happens at time t5, it also happens backwards for times t1,t2,t3,t4. It's either that, or everything we know about Cosmology is just wrong, and we can't really know it. — khaled

Collapse does not happen backwards. All the possibilities related to t1, t2, t3, and t4 can be still "in play" and those possibilities are still co-existing at t5 as well, but when we make a measurement at t5, all the other possibilities "that could have happened" go away.

Cosmology only tells us that now, when we look up at the stars, we see starts in definite locations corresponding to a definite history we can piece together. There is zero problem saying plenty of other possibilities "co-existed" until the first consciousness emerged to make such observations to collapse the wave function. Definiteness occurs at observation, how would we check it occurred before? We'd have to go and observe what occurred before, defeating the purpose of the checking.

You claim this. But it's clearly false. We know definite situations followed one to the other even though no one was around to see them. That's what Cosmology establishes. By your theory we shouldn't be able to do cosmology. Since waves don't collapse unless seen by a conscious agent, and since we can't see the past, we should not be able to know anything about it. It should just seem like quantum soup. — khaled

I really don't see where you get this. All possible cosmologies propagate from the big bang, and then the cosmic wave collapse happens and one definite cosmological history is "retained" once a "sufficient" consciousness emerges (in at least one of the possible cosmologies) and the wave function collapses.

This theory explains fine-tuning, and also solves the problem of the universes splitting and questions about energy conservation and quantum information copying (which if universe splitting doesn't just ignore, I haven't seen any experimental evidence proving this isn't a problem); however, we know probability waves can and do exist without violating information or energy conservation, so the entire cosmos in such a state creates zero problems in this regard. Maybe inflation was a super low probability event, likewise matter and antimatter asymmetry, weakness of gravity, and so on, but the first consciousness emerged in this super probability edge case, so that's what we see. Why is humanity so stupid? > edge case, "sufficient consciousness" is a pretty low bar.

I mean.... that is pretty much what happened when it comes to whether or not consciousness is necessary. They basically all drew the conclusion that it isn’t. That’s one of my first arguments. — khaled

They don't all agree on an interpretation. I don't see where you get this, maybe read some of @Wayfarer''s posts.

But we can KNOW that the electron, unlike the drowning person, doesn’t “really exist somewhere” that we are finding out correct? Or else interference effects wouldn’t happen. — khaled

No, we can't know. We can't know if the person is in a superposition of possibilities, unless we go and check and make an observation.

You are claiming to know? How would you backup your claim? By going and finding the person and pointing to a definite location the person is in, or then making other observations that at least constrain the possibilities. Does that establish you "know" the person is in a definite position before you go and check? No, it doesn't establish that.

And DESPITE, no one being conscious before to say otherwise, we know certain things happened at certain times. — khaled

We do not know.

The whole cosmic wave function could have been happily existing in its quantum splendor representing all possibilities a conscious being might see, and only collapse due to a conscious being existing in one possibility and therefore the cosmic wave function collapses to a coherent single, or at least greatly constrained, possibility.

What you’re suggesting here is that in the xyz-time “block”, you start from time = 0 and as you move along particles take every which path available to them. But the second one of these paths hits consciousness, suddenly, the awesome power of consciousness causes collapse “back in time” correcting history so that only one path happened all along. This contradicts what you say here: — khaled

It does not "correct history".

The other possibilities "go away" upon observation, just like any other experiment.

How do we, or "the universe", know there's an observation that has happened? Because someone or something becomes conscious of the observed results.

There is no correcting history, obviously our "definite universe" is a coherent possibility, just as any other; it's just the other possibilities "went away" somehow for some reason. Before anyone was conscious of what possibility the universe is actually in, there's no way to go back and check whether the possibilities co-existed in a quantum probability wave sense (or any sense) or then definite situations followed one to the other even if there was no one around to see it.

"The evolution of conscious life on this planet is due to appropriate mutations having taken place at various times. These, presumably, are quantum events, so they would exist only in linearly superposed form until they finally led to the evolution of a conscious being—whose very existence depends on all the right mutations having 'actually' taken place!" — khaled

I've already mentioned, it can just be supposed that all the possibilities propagate, including ones in which evolution happens, and the first possible consciousness collapses the cosmic wave function. No problem, no one's conscious before that to say otherwise, perfectly explains why we live in an extreme probability edge case, based on what we know of quantum mechanics so far, that there's more matter than antimatter for instance.

Of course, if, why and how this happens is pure speculation. The difference is that I'm labeling my speculations as speculations.