Agreed. Population control will happen, but we (US) won't have much to do with it because it won't happen here. We can't stop it or significantly alter its course.
Sure about that? Be mindful of the "normalcy bias". Just sayin'.
On this site we come together to learn about, and then consider how our monetary systems are flawed and greatly missmanaged. We discuss what the implications of these realities likely are and how they might it effect our lives and our world. And with this new knowledge and deeper understanding we can discuss ways of finding solutions. Or we discuss the various 3 E issues so we might find ways to prepare and protect ourselves from financial loss and many other kinds of hardship.I know that great change unlike anything humanity has faced is now upon us. And I am currently doing my best with what time and resources I have availible to learn and to discover the truth in regards to what has caused these many converging world crises. I also seek to understand why we are failing to successfully respond to them.
It has been argued here at PP that climate change is an insignificant problem, or that this is an insurmountable and therefore an unsolvable problem so why bother discussing it, or that by reducing our personal material and energy consumption as a response to the 3 E crises we can effectively responsed to the climate change crises. My belief is that the same underlying causes of our financial and resource and other crises are also the cause of the climate change crises as well.
My opinion is that becuase we now know that climate change is real and very serious that all the issues and effects of climate change must to be considered in an inclusive and wholistic manner along with the other pertenent 3E issues here. The reason for this is because of the broad implications of the catastrophic environmental, social and economic damage and hardship that will result from climate change. My belief is that climate change must to be a primary concern here if members are genuinely concerned about the state of our world.
Individual efforts to reduce consumption and energy use are part of a possible approach to addressing this crises, but these efforts will make no difference unless we also achieve dramatic cuts to worldwide greenhouse gas emmissions. But the current reality (and likely future reality) is that we are increasing C02 emmissions and we will likely have caused additional very harmful methane gas to be released as a result of arctic sea ice melt and thawing permafrost.
So the point is that we are not going to escape or avoid this issue irregardless as to whether we believe that we can prevent climate change from continually getting worse or not. Or if we make the personal effort and lifestyle change to reduce our energy use.
The climate change thread mostly helps to us to better understand the science of climate change and the discussion there does address related climate change issues as well. But if the intention of PP is to play a meaningful part in the possibility of somehow playing a meaningful part in trying to create a World Worth Inheriting we must openly acknowlege, factor in and deal with the truth of what the present and coming climate change crises could mean in terms of it's underlying causes and it's broad environmental, social, political, economic other impacts.
Geez, I don't like this conversation but I have thought that the heavy population centers around the world are most certainly near their food source and water, we can reasonably be assured of this. Now that means the mass GENOCIDE of large groups must be done close to these resources. So, this makes sense and why? The weapons needed to manage population will be environmentally unfriendly so what is the point of even carrying on about all of this. What we seek in effect will be destroyed for many years to come. Done with this topic now.
Adam!..Arrrrrgggghhhh!!!, but I love you Brother.
Can't shoot the messenger and it is something we will deal with.
In many war time situations, due to logistics, 4 Star dudes have to make these type decision all the time. I think of the Philippines during WW ll as a classic example of tragic consequences. The Death March is a difficult remembrance. Of sheer will and determination many Men seen the light at the end of the tunnel.
It's like we are running to the end of the story without trying our damdest to solve the issues and make a better life and a future right now.
Respectfully
BOB
I'm not sure you can call Red States conservative or Blue States liberal. Republicans are not conservative and the Democrats are not liberal. They both just like to spend and tell others how to live their lives. It used to be Republicans concentrated on small government, limited spending and Liberals used to concentrate on civil liberties. Neither major party stands on principals any longer…
NM does receive a huge amount of the tax dollars per capita because it is a large state with a small population (2 million - population density 17.6/mile), relatively poor (not a lot of tax dollars paid) with a large number of Indian reservations, large area (3 Interstates), large military installations (3 air force bases and a missile/spacecraft testing range) and two national labs (Sandia and Los Alamos).
So I've been trying to figure out why people are Democrats and Republicans since neither party seems to represented the ideals people attribute to them. Why do people vote for those that don't represent them. It seems like it's come down to the same rabid behavior of sports team fans. It doens't matter if the team is good or bad, you associate with them and the other side is the enemy. Or at least that seems to be the message of current politics. Perhaps it's why this last election seems to be everyone voting for the least offensive (lesser of two evils).
Here is an interesting visualization of the election results I came across:
Maps of the 2012 US Presidential Election Results
As I see it, we have three interrelated problems.1. Global fiscal crisis - Immediate crisis that is going to cut us all long wide and deep in a short period of time. Whether we tumble into a deflationary deppression or a Wiemar style hyper inflation, economic pain will be the order of the day. Just plain miserable but ultimately survivable as we perhaps re-establish a hard currency based system. Major issue but recoverable to some level of normalcy within a decade or so.
2. Energy/resource scarcity - With the advent of peak oil we've already arrived but the ramifications will play out over several decades. The screws will be tightened every year as the costs of most everything rises as energy gets more expensive and materials get more scarce. Financial collapse may stretch the problems out longer and in the worst cases we can mine our decaying infrastructure for a time. Efficiency, reuse and recycling can all slow the problem but not fix it. Ultimately we have to either accept much lower populations or we have to accept much lower material standards of living (probably both in the end). The pie is only so big. Note, population reduction doesn't have to be through a draconian policy or some nefarios scheme. In all likelihood, the finanical crisis will start us on the road down all by itself. Look to Greece, less health care and other support leads to higher death rates. Once death rates exceed birth rates then the population will trend down.
3. Climate change - this is a wildcard and will play out over centuries to millennia. The die has been cast and we can no longer avert this. This is the death of a thousand cuts, more flooding, droughts, heat waves, mistimed frosts, hail etc. We have little appreciation of just how much we rely on climate staying roughly within a certain range (it's always just been there for us for 10,000 years, so we take it for granted). We will learn though. Put in crassly humanistic terms this will make everything more expensive. We can't fix it or cure it but if we work real hard at proactively dealing with items 1 & 2 above we can mitigate it. Think of it as taking tylenol to keep the fever from getting life threatening for our children and grandchildren. People needn't get so bent out of shape about this, we have to deal with our resource and population issues anyway. This just lends a note of urgency.
We don't get to pick and choose what we want to accept, we have to deal with all of this and it won't come for free. If we can get a government that actually functions then it will require substantial cuts in entitlements, increases in management efficiency AND tax increases that are sufficient to cover the debt payments. Tax and spend is unsustainable without a rapidly growing economy, cut tax and spend is just plain suicidal, cut spending and tax will be unpalatable to all but seems to be the corner we've painted ourselves into.
Mark
Agreed Mark. Lets get to work.
BOB
"We have to get of the planet."
The Mayans are coming in December to take us all to Arcturus on their spaceships.
The Mayans are coming in December to take us all to Arcturus on their spaceshipsNo, Dogs, I have it on authority...we'll be fine. *cue guitar and fiddle music*
“Hi, Tom Bodett trying to make sense of this Mayan calendar. It seems to end Dec. 21st, 2012. That’s, unsettling. Oh well. Still plenty of time this year to stay at Motel Six and get a clean comfortable room for the lowest price of any national chain. And we’re still taking reservations for after Dec. 21. All due respect to the Mayans. Sorry, King K’inich Ahkal Mo’ Nahb. Nothing but love for ya. I’m Tom Bodett for Motel 6 and we’ll leave the light on for ya.”See? You and Arthur have nothing to worry about.
I agree that we should be more concerned about the return OF our money than the return ON our money.Dogs and Dr. Chris are both gonna get a great return on their solar panels. If I had the money, I'd put up as many as would fit on my roof. Oh well, we've at least started with our first batch.
[quote=Dogs_In_A_Pile][quote=Time2Help]
I'd be curious to hear Arthur's take on this one…
[/quote]
"We have to get of the planet."
The Mayans are coming in December to take us all to Arcturus on their spaceships.
[/quote]
ROTF!
I feel ya…I just picked up 3x 250W grape solars with the associated batteries/charge controller, inverter, etc. Ka-ching! Need one more to round out the kW. 5kW is quite a bit of coin (at least from my perspective), and a helluva lot of area. This stuff is not cheap.
What are you Folks paying for your systems? I'm in the process of seeing if I can put them up as I live in an attached condo community. I will live elsewhere when Barb retires so I would like to have a sense of costs.
Thanks
BOB
[quote=safewrite]
No, Dogs, I have it on authority...we'll be fine. *cue guitar and fiddle music*
The Mayans are coming in December to take us all to Arcturus on their spaceships
“Hi, Tom Bodett trying to make sense of this Mayan calendar. It seems to end Dec. 21st, 2012. That’s, unsettling. Oh well. Still plenty of time this year to stay at Motel Six and get a clean comfortable room for the lowest price of any national chain. And we’re still taking reservations for after Dec. 21. All due respect to the Mayans. Sorry, King K’inich Ahkal Mo’ Nahb. Nothing but love for ya. I’m Tom Bodett for Motel 6 and we’ll leave the light on for ya.”See? You and Arthur have nothing to worry about. [/quote] safe - Next time please put NSFVWDF* in the subject line. * Not Safe For Viewing While Drinking Fluids
Bob,
I have finally given in to putting an active solar system on my passive house. I liked the purity of the house being the system. No moving parts, nothing to break or repair. Integration and simplicity. Following nature where everything serves multiple purposes. Oh well…practicallity won out.
I oversized the active hot water system to do some space heating with as well. Hot water systems have the fastest payback periods, 7 to 8 years, PV's are still out in the 15 to 20 year range. Hot water systems for a family of 4 are around 8.5k, but with typical state and federal incentives you can get it down to 4.5k. If you have good exposure you can produce 60 to 70% of your hot water needs. Hot water can be around 40% of your energy needs.
There are PV leasing programs available where you agree to buy the electicity for the panel installer, so no cash up front and electrilc bill is locked in, you can opt to buy the panels at the end of the lease period. Installer takes all the incentive credits. These programs usually only work where there are stong local incentives.
Germany last month alone has installed as many panels as there are in the USA in total. If you get depressed about what 's going in the USA, look around, there are whole other countries that "get it".
"Let the Sun Shine In, the Sun Shine in…"
A bit of an exaggeration. US has about 3.5GW of installed PV and Germany installed 1GW in September.
But yes, Germany has about 212 W/person of capacity installed and the US has about 8 W/person. I'm doing my part to raise the US average with our 6,500 W/person system (13kW).
Germany's rate of solar installation doesn't show they "get it", rather it shows what happens when you massively subsidize something. That growth rate will likely drop significantly since they cut the subsidies substantially this year. Also, all those subsidies have led to an unsustainable corporate environment and many of the solar manufacturers are struggling because they never had to actually compete. As we have seen many times in the past, governments can blow bubbles…
Bob, you might want to check out Affordable Solar, they offer kits so you can see what pricing runs for the parts in case you want to do it yourself or just to use for negotiation from others. Then you will need to check out the incentives for your location at DSIRE, for sure you get 30% Federal tax credit, but you may be able to get more by state/utility.
rhare, I have spent some time on this, and are really paying attention here to what people are using and their savings. My intentions are to build on property I have in the North Country of Michigan. I want to get started now building a log cabin on a Lake but as my Lady is working (Hospital) and the medical coverage as part of her benefits being the sole motivation as we don't want catastrophic health cost should something crazy happen taking a good chunk of our cash reserves. I just had (last 3 years) neck, eye and a couple minor surgeries that totaled well over $200 thousand that if I had no insurance would have been a nice bite out of my rump. Don't want that. Additionally she loves her work so I wouldn't want to start something my Lady may not be ready for just yet.
rhare, my intentions are to build everything myself, and I am getting wind charts from the area I plan to build in the future and do the math to see what I could expect by using wind power.
I appreciate anyone's personal costs figures as I will want to balance that against other things.
Regards
BOB
Interesting,
simply put from what I have "learned" on this site is:
A.) All fiat money returns to its intrinsic value ~ 0
B.) The organism has way too many parisites on it making it sick (the planet) and it is running a fever (global warming) to rid itself of the parisitic illness. One of two outcomes will happen. One, the fever does not break the infection, and the planet dies(as we know it) or two, the fever causes a reaction that reduces the parisitic load to return the organism to homeostasis.
Item B is self correcting wether we like it or not. Item A was caused by us so we can correct it.
Preservation of capital is simple, understand that fiat money has no intrinsic value so trade it for that which does have intrinsic value. And, stop being a parisite. You stand a better chance of not becoming extinct.