Conservatism and the Environment

[Bacle]

Environmentalism or not, this is an engineering project, one of cost scale that i'm trying to convey here. It's way beyond the magnitude of any usual environmental initiative, period.

Largest environmentalist organizations operate with budgets of tens of millions $, not hundreds of billions. That's why "getting the ball rolling", getting some publicity and random people to donate a 2-3 digit sum makes a difference in the budget.
But it's a different scale of numbers we are working with here.

The costs of *not* doing that? Plenty of estimates of that too. The unfortunate thing is that the countries likely to take the brunt of that are those neither willing nor able to throw a lot of money at that.

The problem is you are trying to look at is as one giant entity doing this, when simply put that is very unlikely to be the case.

I can say from experience that centralization of ecological engineering is unlikely to occur, and more likely you will see many small and medium sized groups coordinating efforts and sharing data/techniques. And some of these will be non-profits who are willing to eat costs to get stuff done.

What we need is more conservative voices and organizations among those groups, willing to bring a more practical mindset to the whole issue. Right now we barely have any voice in the issue at all.

 

[Marduk]

The problem is you are trying to look at is as one giant entity doing this, when simply put that is very unlikely to be the case.

I can say from experience that centralization of ecological engineering is unlikely to occur, and more likely you will see many small and medium sized groups coordinating efforts and sharing data/techniques. And some of these will be non-profits who are willing to eat costs to get stuff done.

That may be enough for funding some interesting research, but what "small and medium sized groups" have even the slightest hope of coming up with even half a billion bucks every year?

What we need is more conservative voices and organizations among those groups, willing to bring a more practical mindset to the whole issue. Right now we barely have any voice in the issue at all.

And say what with that voice? That whole sphere of people is full of professional virtue signallers, globalist bureaucrats with careers to care about, and ideological weirdos, we know what happens when dissenting voices talk to them from the international meetings on this specific issue; i'm talking of the attitudes given to USA, Poland, Russia, and other countries lacking in "climate ambition" by the media and activists. They certainly aren't very interested in hearing such voices, much less listening to them. They don't *want* a more practical mindset, when i listen to their rhetoric i get the impression that quite the opposite, they want a more idealist, nearly religious one instead.

In the field of related technological R&D, there is probably no shortage of conservatives, but politics don't matter much there.

 

[Edgeplay_cgo]

Compare that with all the green activists demanding their countries go "carbon neutral" by 2030 or 2050, depending on how radical they are feeling.

That is nothing but a pipe dream. It will never happen.

 

[Marduk]

That is nothing but a pipe dream. It will never happen.

Yeah, looking at the Yellow Vests, and what they got started by, this sort of green rule would be likely to end in those greens being ousted from power in some more or less violent manner before they are even halfway there.

But as i said, the greens are absolutely in love with their idealism, the idea of "radical action for climate" and willingness to sacrifice the interests of everyone around them for "the planet", and they want no one to interfere in this affair.

Adding these two observations up, this does have a "watching a train wreck happen" vibe to it, particularly with this movement surprisingly gaining popularity in few places. Maybye one or two of them will end up volunteering to serve as examples, though not in the way they are sincerely hoping to.

 

[Deleted member 1]

To me, environmentalism and conservatism are in fact inextricably linked. It's very hard to be a conservative without blood and soil to be united into. Without traditions, and customs. In moving to another part of the United States, I caused myself to adopt its diet and accent and dialect for this reason. I have also come to believe that the ecoregion we live in fundamentally determines how we live, like that great conservative science fiction writer and believer in "deep ecology", Frank Hebert.

An ecoregion can be best understood as a particular area’s ecological climate, driven by geology and biology. In this sense, it refers to the symbiosis of a socio-cultural-religious grouping with a particular climate. This concept, in the traditionalist conceit, is best illustrated by Frank Herbert and his writings, including the famous saying “harsh lives make harsh ways” which could essentially summarise the nature of Ecoregionalism. The idea is that we live in symbiosis with a greater entity than ourselves, which is our society, and our society lives in symbiosis with a greater entity than itself, which is its ecoregion, which dictates its “memetic evolution”, to use the preferred atheist term.

It should therefore be observed that naturally a culture must adhere to its Ecoregion, even as the invasion of new peoples introduces new concepts, they will be forced onto the architecture of the land in which they live. So for instance the American British Settlers gradually become more Iroquois, until they adopted a Constitution inspired by the Great Law of Peace, revolted, and founded their own nation. Now, the long-term survival of the United States is threatened by the same centrifugal process, even as it is that same ecologically founded traditionalism which lets me be a loyal American patriot. This tendency is one of the optimistic outcomes of the modern world, that the great age of colonialism will end with societies which ultimately racinate into their new locales as they inevitably adapt to the ecoregions thereof.

 

[Marduk]

To me, environmentalism and conservatism are in fact inextricably linked. It's very hard to be a conservative without blood and soil to be united into. Without traditions, and customs. In moving to another part of the United States, I caused myself to adopt its diet and accent and dialect for this reason. I have also come to believe that the ecoregion we live in fundamentally determines how we live, like that great conservative science fiction writer and believer in "deep ecology", Frank Hebert.

I think it's in principle an accurate idea, but not nearly as much now as it was in history. For practical purposes of determining a "way of life" and all that goes with it, civilization creates its own environments to one degree or another, and currently it is capable of that much more so than ever before. The end effect is still not completely disconnected from the conditions of the ecoregion (but as quite a lot of sci-fi shows, we can already imagine it happening), a bit more disconnected in cities and a bit less in rural areas, but in either case it's a far cry from how decisively influential it was in the pre-industrial societies.

 

[Deleted member 1]

I think it's in principle an accurate idea, but not nearly as much now as it was in history. For practical purposes of determining a "way of life" and all that goes with it, civilization creates its own environments to one degree or another, and currently it is capable of that much more so than ever before. The end effect is still not completely disconnected from the conditions of the ecoregion (but as quite a lot of sci-fi shows, we can already imagine it happening), a bit more disconnected in cities and a bit less in rural areas, but in either case it's a far cry from how decisively influential it was in the pre-industrial societies.

Well, we're arrogant enough to think so (and by we I mean all of human civilisation, no offence intended), but we're also burning bone with large-scale releases of greenhouse gasses and a steamrolling effect of climate change. We may find the ability of our civilisation to live outside of the means of its ecoregion(s) as profoundly taxed in the very near future, and for these changes to naturally retrench and make less likely any technological way out of the problem.

 

[Marduk]

Well, we're arrogant enough to think so (and by we I mean all of human civilisation, no offence intended), but we're also burning bone with large-scale releases of greenhouse gasses and a steamrolling effect of climate change. We may find the ability of our civilisation to live outside of the means of its ecoregion(s) as profoundly taxed in the very near future, and for these changes to naturally retrench and make less likely any technological way out of the problem.

Whether it is nearly as catastrophic as the alarmists make it seem, or less so, it's going to hit societies more reliant on their adaptation to local ecosystem for survival much harder than it's going to hit ones that are well equipped with means to shape their own "local environments" and are willing to use them.
One of example of that is developement of affordable, massive scale water desalination, implemented in some warmer countries already.

 

[Deleted member 1]

Whether it is nearly as catastrophic as the alarmists make it seem, or less so, it's going to hit societies more reliant on their adaptation to local ecosystem for survival much harder than it's going to hit ones that are well equipped with means to shape their own "local environments" and are willing to use them.
One of example of that is developement of affordable, massive scale water desalination, implemented in some warmer countries already.

Which requires more heat transfer from the energy reserves deep in the Earth to the atmosphere, which exacerbates the problem. Looking at global warming from the thermodynamic and heat transfer grounds of an engineer deflates some liberal conceits but makes other aspects far more ominous. We need to dump our heat load somewhere and we’re burning through millions of years of stored energy in an atmosphere that was already in a habitable balance before we started.

 

[Marduk]

Which requires more heat transfer from the energy reserves deep in the Earth to the atmosphere, which exacerbates the problem. Looking at global warming from the thermodynamic and heat transfer grounds of an engineer deflates some liberal conceits but makes other aspects far more ominous. We need to dump our heat load somewhere and we’re burning through millions of years of stored energy in an atmosphere that was already in a habitable balance before we started.

Compared to the scale that Earth's general energy balance operates on, particularly with the sum of insolation vs all human energy generation, it's not that ominous; measely ~20 terawatts to the global insolation value of 170,000, some part of that 20 being provided by the insolation in direct and indirect forms.
What to do with the excess? Part of it is getting chemically stored in form of processed materials, a lot is going to be dumped into space in form of EM radiation of all sorts, though i would not assume that some part may stick around to increase the equilibrium a bit until the higher temperature increases the radiative cooling enough, setting a new equilibrium.

 

[Comrade Clod]

I feel that the leftist lean of many modern enviromental groups is precisely because conservatism has, to put it bluntly, veered between outright denial and ignoring utterly the various environmental problems.

Climate change, renewable energy, pollution. All issues that, in the US at least, the liberal and left factions of the democratic party have embraced because its a golden opportunity the conservative parts are ignoring.

 

[Battlegrinder]

I feel that the leftist lean of many modern enviromental groups is precisely because conservatism has, to put it bluntly, veered between outright denial and ignoring utterly the various environmental problems.

Climate change, renewable energy, pollution. All issues that, in the US at least, the liberal and left factions of the democratic party have embraced because its a golden opportunity the conservative parts are ignoring.

The modern environmental movement grew out of (or is just the same group as) the older 70s and 60s era green movement, and they pretty well started out on the left. That's probably part of why the right didn't embrace them, because they tend to (IMO quite correctly) view the eariler movement as fundementally flawed and wrong, and don't trust the new one. That's not to say that denial and the like don't exist, they do, but those beliefs didn't appear out of nowhere.

I'd also point out that pollution isn't something the right ignores. They tend to view it differently than the left and have a different opinion on how to address it, but they do accept that it's an issue and needs to be managed. It's just one where pollution control needs to be balanced against the need to grow the economy, and the republicans have a different opinion on where that balance should be.

 

[Deleted member 18]

The modern environmental movement grew out of (or is just the same group as) the older 70s and 60s era green movement, and they pretty well started out on the left. That's probably part of why the right didn't embrace them, because they tend to (IMO quite correctly) view the eariler movement as fundementally flawed and wrong, and don't trust the new one. That's not to say that denial and the like don't exist, they do, but those beliefs didn't appear out of nowhere.

I'd also point out that pollution isn't something the right ignores. They tend to view it differently than the left and have a different opinion on how to address it, but they do accept that it's an issue and needs to be managed. It's just one where pollution control needs to be balanced against the need to grow the economy, and the republicans have a different opinion on where that balance should be.

I mean you say that, but it always seems as if when Republican politicians have to choose between controlling pollution or the economy (and more realistically the profits of particular businesses since it's not like "the economy" tanks pollution without costs; it's just that say a 10% increase in local cancer rates isn't being paid by anyone as a line item in their books) they choose the economy. It's not balancing between two factors if one always under all circumstances has priority.

It was different in the 1970s perhaps, but I am hard-pressed to think of any serious environmental legislation Republicans have championed in the past three decades.

 

[Marduk]

It was different in the 1970s perhaps, but I am hard-pressed to think of any serious environmental legislation Republicans have championed in the past three decades.

Obviously...
If, let's say, Democrats eagerly champion any environmental cause that's reasonable, semi reasonable, and if they get bored also some completely unreasonable ones, what kind of environmental causes are there left for Republicans to champion?
If the reality resembles this situation to some degree, then you have your answer.

 

[Comrade Clod]

I mean you say that, but it always seems as if when Republican politicians have to choose between controlling pollution or the economy (and more realistically the profits of particular businesses since it's not like "the economy" tanks pollution without costs; it's just that say a 10% increase in local cancer rates isn't being paid by anyone as a line item in their books) they choose the economy. It's not balancing between two factors if one always under all circumstances has priority.

It was different in the 1970s perhaps, but I am hard-pressed to think of any serious environmental legislation Republicans have championed in the past three decades.

Well they could try being bipartisan and support reasonable reform

 

[Battlegrinder]

I mean you say that, but it always seems as if when Republican politicians have to choose between controlling pollution or the economy (and more realistically the profits of particular businesses since it's not like "the economy" tanks pollution without costs; it's just that say a 10% increase in local cancer rates isn't being paid by anyone as a line item in their books) they choose the economy. It's not balancing between two factors if one always under all circumstances has priority.

I can't recall any specific instances like that, can you point to any actual example of them doing that?

That said, a generally pro-business, anti-regulation policy would be roughly what you'd expect from the average republican.

 

[Deleted member 1]

Compared to the scale that Earth's general energy balance operates on, particularly with the sum of insolation vs all human energy generation, it's not that ominous; measely ~20 terawatts to the global insolation value of 170,000, some part of that 20 being provided by the insolation in direct and indirect forms.
What to do with the excess? Part of it is getting chemically stored in form of processed materials, a lot is going to be dumped into space in form of EM radiation of all sorts, though i would not assume that some part may stick around to increase the equilibrium a bit until the higher temperature increases the radiative cooling enough, setting a new equilibrium.

Okay, that was actually very well thought out. Let's start, then -- can we agree that estimates of ice-melt off the Greenland and Antarctic glaciers are generally reliable? The energy required to melt a ton of ice, for example, is quite well defined.

EDIT: As a note, your figure of 20 TW does tend to ignore poor conversion efficiency as a metric, though I acknowledge that isn't any kind of substantial change.

 

[Marduk]

Okay, that was actually very well thought out. Let's start, then -- can we agree that estimates of ice-melt off the Greenland and Antarctic glaciers are generally reliable? The energy required to melt a ton of ice, for example, is quite well defined.

I don't know. Where any excess energy gets deposited in climate is a very complicated question. Let's say we do, continue.

 

[Comrade Clod]

I don't know. Where any excess energy gets deposited in climate is a very complicated question. Let's say we do, continue.

Pack ice contains alot of gas and carbon, the loss of so much permanent ice from glacial decline is acting in part as a snowball effect, our efforts melt a little that doesn't come back and allows more to melt.

 

[Deleted member 1]

Pack ice contains alot of gas and carbon, the loss of so much permanent ice from glacial decline is acting in part as a snowball effect, our efforts melt a little that doesn't come back and allows more to melt.

This isn't true, and even the so-called "methane bomb" in permafrost which you are probably referring to is badly overstated based on systematic research in actual permafrost sampling locations.