"But even a humble loaf of sourdough requires the equivalent of about 5.5 tablespoons of diesel fuel, and a supermarket tomato, which Smil describes as no more than 'an appealingly shaped container of water'... is the product of about six tablespoons of diesel. 'How many vegans enjoying the salad,' he writes, 'are aware of its substantial fossil fuel pedigree?'... One must further account for the more than three billion people in the developing world who will need to double or triple their food production to approach a dignified standard of living. Then add the additional two billion who will soon join us. 'For the foreseeable future,' writes Smil, 'we cannot feed the world without relying on fossil fuels.' He performs similar calculations for the world’s production of energy, cement, ammonia, steel and plastic, always reaching the same result: 'A mass-scale, rapid retreat from the current state is impossible.' Smil’s impartial scientist persona slips with each sneer at the 'proponents of a new green world' or 'those who prefer mantras of green solutions to understanding how we have come to this point.'... He finds a worthy target in the inane rhetorical battle, waged by climate activists (and echoed by climate journalists), between blithe optimism and apocalyptic pessimism.... Smil’s book is at its essence a plea for agnosticism, and, believe it or not, humility...."
From "Everything You Thought You Knew, and Why You’re Wrong" by Nathaniel Rich (NYT), reviewing "How the World Really Works/The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We’re Going" by Vaclav Smil.
The highest rated comment over there quotes something Smil said in an interview last month:
"I used to live in the westernmost part of the evil empire, what’s now the Czech Republic. They forever turned me off any stupid politics because they politicized everything. So it is now, unfortunately, in the West. Everything’s politics. No it is not! You can be on this side or that side, but the real world works on the basis of natural law and thermodynamics and energy conversions, and the fact is if I want to smelt my steel, I need a certain amount of carbon or hydrogen to do it. The Red Book of Mao or Putin’s speeches or Donald Trump is no help in that. We need less politics to solve our problems. We need to look at the realities of life and to see how we can practically affect them. "
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62 comments:
Those following the Green Religion can eat dirt.
The Earth has healing powers of its own- we never give it credit for that.
It’s all self-absorption and self-importance.
Having said that- raping the Earth is wrong…
And it goes round the circle to who defines rape.
On a similar note, I’m tired of people who have no scientific or engineering background telling me we can convert to all-electric cars by 2030. These people (Brandon, Greta, and almost any so-called environmentalist) have no idea of the infrastructure that would be required, and oh by the way, no nuclear plants allowed.
A Modest Proposal
IF people don't want to be using petroleum products..
IF people aren't happy with their bodies.............
IF people aren't happy with their ...................
IF people think that there are TOO MANY PEOPLE.......
Why Don't Those People Just Commit Suicide???????????
Words to live by. Politics suck, and it brings out the stupid in everybody.
From Sarah Hoyt via S Green @ Instapundit ..
... what hurts the most is the HOWLING incoherence of the opposition. For a certain type of odd, who seems to congregate here, to be honest, we prefer to be called bad names than to be screamed random slogans at. Because we don’t so much mind being hated, but we’d like it to MAKE SENSE.
Then think that diesel is now over six dollars a gallon and Europe is going to embargo all transport of Russian oil “ after the mid-terms” in pursuit of NATO’s war aims of expansion towards Moscow and you might conclude that it’s time to plant a garden.
With the fertilizer scarcity that is resulting from this avoidable war, we are going to see a dent in those world population numbers, but it’s worth it so Ukraine 🇺🇦 doesn’t have to be neutral or tolerate the political input of Russian speakers.
To extend the above comment, not making sense seems to be a deliberate tactic given my experience across a wide variety of sites with various levels of trolls.
"Everything You Thought You Knew, and Why You’re Wrong"
This is the REAL slogan of the NYT.
The commenter made sure to include Trump in his list with Putin and Mao so everyone knows that he's not one of those "right-wingers". It seems to me that Trump's opponents are the ones who work him into everything that is "wrong" with anything.
https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/diesel-be-rationed-east-coast-summer-warns-us-oil-billionaire
Wishful that this be required reading in Congress, universities and high schools, as a start.
We’ve known the Green New Deal is a scam for a long time though. It’s great if someone has actually quantified the damage done to our ability to live if we actually went through with it.
"Darury said...
The commenter made sure to include Trump in his list with Putin and Mao so everyone knows that he's not one of those "right-wingers". It seems to me that Trump's opponents are the ones who work him into everything that is "wrong" with anything."
This is true even with so many things you can dislike about Trump, they have to make up stuff so they they can actually criticize THIER OWN SIDE.
Progressives will hate this because their world view is not reality-based.
I guess the First Law of Trump (he is the measure of everything) is intended to distract readers from the Second Law of Thermodynamics (we are headed for entropy).
Enjoy the ride.
Tim, it's the Ukrainians who get to decide that. Not you. You sound like an apologist for the Russian invasion.
I again refer to this item from the Chicago Booth Review, which indicates that people are more motivated by discomfort (if this is uncomfortable for you, you are gaining knowledge) than by the desire to learn something (Hm. I didn't know that). Discomfort for Republicans was reading the NYT. Discomfort for Democrats was watching Fox News.
https://www.chicagobooth.edu/review/why-making-yourself-uncomfortable-can-be-motivating?sc_lang=en
Gilbar:
Easy there, Hoss.
How much CO2 is prevented by shutting down the NYT?
I never thought about having Chilean blueberry compote on my rack of New Zealand lamb before, but now . . .
Do people in Chile and New Zealand know how morally indefensible they are?
Not making sense is the prevalent mode. Why? I can think of two reasons: (1) Entropy. Making sense requires work. Howling gibberish requires almost none. (2) If your adversary relies upon logic and syntax, gains advantage from precise and accurate language —deny these to him. Force him to wade through thickets of incomprehensible contradictions and swamps of aggressively stupid jargon, adopting YOUR terms of reference. This impoverished conceptual landscape will obscure and erase access to entire tracts of common sense and good order.
I have enjoyed working with engineers, and I sympathize with their frustration that the modern world has been built by engineers, and requires them, but politically will often turn its back on them. Engineers may not like it, but as bathroom graffiti indicated in my undergraduate days: "engineers will always have work because they know how; but they will be working for people who know why." Politics has a consistent tendency to give off hints that people might be willing to make material sacrifices for a cause; this will probably mean not doing things according to the best engineering standards. Of course insofar as people are sane, they won't actually make much of a sacrifice at all, so there is some kind of rationality to work with.
I just saw the Morgan Stanley auto analyst on CNBC. He’s convinced that our energy transition is essential to continued life on Earth. He also thinks that it is a national security issue that nearly all of our rare earth minerals are from China.
But he gave it all away when he spoke of the coming capex super cycle. That means more money for the Street. That’s what the CAGW scam is all about.
Note the commenter who uses the "less politics" post to shoehorn in yet another iteration of the same political opinion about the way in Ukraine.
"But he gave it all away when he spoke of the coming capex super cycle. That means more money for the Street. That’s what the CAGW scam is all about."
Funny to see it revealed in the same interview.
Smil is correct about the politicization of everything--and very clever to reference Donald Trump along with Putin so the NYT folks will know that he's a correct thinker (although the Mao reference may have been a misstep). Maybe the smug fools will learn something. Although most likely the reaction will be a campaign to ban vegetables....
This is true even with so many things you can dislike about Trump, they have to make up stuff so they they can actually criticize THIER OWN SIDE.
This is why I quit listening to Bari Weiss podcast. I understood she brought in people she knew, who were left leaning to say the least, but before they could criticize their own side, they would make some claim about how Trump needed to go without any basis by them or challenge by Bari. It's a good clue they are not as centrist as they claim to be.
As for the article, I knew all this stuff and apparently I'm not wrong. Then again, I'm an engineer.
coming capex super cycle
Indeed, lots of CAPEX, but no return on investment therefore leading to the inevitable... no investment. Government doesn't have enough money to subsidize to make a return, and if the idiots ever understood what it meant if Government could, they really wouldn't like it.
I support assisting the Ukrainians in their defense against the invasion. But I also support being realistic about the consequences. If we shut down Russian gas and fertilizer that must be replaced. The oil could be replaced if the US resumed fracking and some say fracking could be started up quickly. But instead the Greenies are keeping it shut down and even shutting down more oil leases. The oncoming famine is on them, not the Ukraine war.
I wish those conservatives who oppose assistance to the Ukraine would really ask whether Putin will stop once he gets the Ukraine. Is this a Czechoslovakia moment? a moment a dictator bent on expansion can be stopped without a world war? Putin has said that the fall of the Soviet empire was a geopolitical disaster and he is trying to restore it. The Soviet empire included The Ukraine, Poland, The Czech republic, Slovakia, Estonia, Lithuania, Rumania. So his own testimony is he's not going to stop. It might be hard to help the Ukraine now but what will it be like afterward if we don't help and then Putin goes for another country on his list after acquiring 40 million more people to put in armies as well as control of Ukrainian food and fertilizer? It may be hard now to make adjustments but we won't avoid anything by letting him have the Ukraine.
The Ukraine is defending itself which was not true of the countries involved in our Eastern and Mid-Eastern wars. And Europe takes the threat so seriously that it is meeting its Nato commitments.
This isn't avoidable and it isn't the same as Afghanistan
And Biden will not benefit.
"Communism is bad and still here, only the name has been changed; brave, very strong male soldiers are needed (Women are built to carry children but carrying a machine gun and a pack?); borders are good." How do you spin these realities into a Dem platform? It's like the new abortion war which the Dems are messaging as a struggle on behalf of men who should be allowed to abort right up to birth - and when you've killed your baby, flaunt it, like tying a deer on your car hood. Pro-abortion is not what 70% of American support but it is what prolifers have been saying all along is the tendency of "choice,"
In other words, the Dems will mess up any narrative gain which might accrue to them because our Army is helping the Ukraine just as they are messing up pro-choice, Disney, etc. Relax, Tucker, we have other secret weapons besides the Javelin. AOC - we Can Count on Her.
Owen (7:17), that’s a damn fine succinct summation of the two main forces shaping public discourse.
So, the bottom line here is that people who read the NYT aren't very bright.
it's the Ukrainians who get to decide that.
Which Ukrainians? If you think the war in Ukraine is a straightforward narrative of good vs evil, think again.
Zelensky ran and was elected in a landslide (73%) on making a peace deal with the Russians. He had a massive mandate to make peace with the Russians.
The heavily armed far right faction (self-described Nazis) made it clear there would be violence if Zelensky pursued Minsk II or other peace talks with Russia. They directly and openly threatened to remove and murder Zelensky and without the US backing and protecting Zelensky, these guys were fully capable of carrying out their threats like they did in 2014.
The US government could have supported and protected Zelensky and the 70+% majority of Ukrainians and pursued peace, but they chose not to. So which Ukrainians are doing the deciding?
If US military support is required for Ukraine to exist and such support is contingent on Ukraine pursuing one path and not another, how is that Ukrainians getting to decide?
New Zealand lamb is delicious. But don't worry, I don't make them ship it to me, I go there to eat it.
Is that better?
When one reads a diatribe from Vermont, it's important to remember that Timmy was only recently advising Zelensky to give up and end the war because Ukraine had no chance and continued fighting would only cause more pain and suffering. Question: if little Timmy were a Putin bot, what would he be saying differently than what he spouts everyday here?
Made me think about this quote from sci-fi great, Robert Heinlein:
“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as "bad luck.”
Venezuela had a lot of bad luck. Sri Lanka as well. I guess it's the USA's turn in the barrel.
We are in a near-worldwide period of madness about climate, race, gender. Ignorance and witchcraft have taken over at the highest levels of government and culture. The western world exemplifies the psychosis, but even a small nation like Sri Lanka has succumbed to the climate/green/organic folly. The wreckage of their little society should be a lesson, but is not. The future will belong to the societies that don't succumb to the deranged rejection of reason and true science.
"'For the foreseeable future,' writes Smil, 'we cannot feed the world without relying on fossil fuels.'"
Since fossil fuels are the ultimate evil, the solution is obvious: stop feeding the world. Let's call it the Malthus option.
You think I'm joking. If so, you underestimate prog logic.
"'For the foreseeable future,' writes Smil, 'we cannot feed the world without relying on fossil fuels.'"
That is true, and also true that there will be a shortage of fossil fuels, leading to a shortage of food. Wealthy societies will be able to afford food, not so much poor societies. The current regime will buy up food and distribute it to poor societies because social justice. See: baby formula shortage as foreshadowing.
The current regime is heading off a cliff.
Brian posted the famous Heinlein quote about bad luck, so I'll delve a little into Heinlein too. To me, these are Heinlein's Crazy Years from his future (now present) history. The only difference is his wild religious fervor roiling the country was of the traditional variety whereas ours is this crazy Green Nude Eel variety. On the plus side, we are experiencing the birth of commercial space travel.
"Everything You Thought You Knew, and Why You’re Wrong"
This is the REAL slogan of the NYT.
============
or is it == This is the REAL slogan for the NYT.
Blogger Brian said...
Made me think about this quote from sci-fi great, Robert Heinlein:
“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as "bad luck.”
===========
Q: I am curious about which came first : Heinlein quote [date?] or
Howard Roark courtroom speech/summation/testimony in The Fountainhead [1943] about Firsthanders - who seek to grasp and control Nature
and Secondhanders - who seek to control the Firsthanders
I'm reading the Smil book--the subject of the review. It's a good one.
The western world exemplifies the psychosis, but even a small nation like Sri Lanka has succumbed to the climate/green/organic folly. The wreckage of their little society should be a lesson, but is not. The future will belong to the societies that don't succumb to the deranged rejection of reason and true science.
If we elect Democrats in their present state of sanity, we will not be part of the future. I can look on this with some equanimity because I'm old but I have children and grandchildren. I wonder how much the crazy, childless left is influenced by their fatalism? Maybe they just don't care. Of course, most of them know no math, which complicates things.
dont have to leave Chile for lamb
get your blueberry in NZ itself
the author is either flaunting geography or flouting it
dont have to leave Chile for lamb
get your blueberry in NZ itself
the author is either flaunting geography or flouting it distantly
For the Putin apologists who think all corruption resides in Kiev, here a extremely easy to follow explanation of Russian/Slavic Strategic Culture from a former Finnish intel colonel who spent his career, including significant time in Russia, analyzing the Russo/Slavic beliefs regarding leadership, autocracy, hierarchy of graft (supreme leader, his princes and the Boyars in that order,) and the fundamental infallibility of a supreme leader. It takes about 50 minutes to watch, but it's worth the time, and particularly so if one wants to understand Putin's mindset rather than parroting Moscow propaganda. You're welcome.
https://www.fromrome.info/2022/04/28/finnish-intel-officer-explains-how-russia-works/
Those who cry loudest about the coming Climate Change Catastrophe Problem are also those who are most useless in the face of an existential crisis. The world is to end in what, 12, 20 years? Four of those now used up, but none of these alarmists are in Calculus, Physics, Chemistry or engineering classes. Nothing else in the education system matters in the face of this crisis. We certainly can do without more English, social science, theater arts, art or Liberal Arts graduates for the period of saving the world. Protect the prior literature, but it's All Hands On Deck for science and engineering....if humanity is to survive.
They speak like they live in John Adams' times, but study like they are his grandchildren. And repeat the hysterical hatred of capitalism imbued by their professors, even as they pursue "work" that is only profitable because of capitalism and all it has wrought.
"In the precapitalistic ages writing was an unremunerative art. Blacksmiths and shoemakers could make a living, but authors could not. Writing was a liberal art, a hobby, but not a profession. It was a noble pursuit of wealthy people, of kings, grandees and statesmen, of patricians and other gentlemen of independent means. It was practiced in spare time by bishops and monks, university teachers and soldiers. The penniless man whom an irresistible impulse prompted to write had first to secure some source of revenue other than authorship."
--Mises, Ludwig von (1956). The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality
The liberty to keep and use what you earn from your work and use this "profit" to invest in markets and enterprises to generate wealth for yourself is much maligned and of all the rights, the most infringed upon by government and factions.
How many vegans enjoying the salad,' he writes, 'are aware of its substantial fossil fuel pedigree?'
This guy must be fucking hilarious at parties...
All of the lefties and many of the RINOs in congress are wholeheartedly supporting and funding one of the largest carbon-producing events of the past 50 years.
Tell me again how climate change is a priority...
Below, for about a minute, this young woman starting in the family business of farming, gives insight into the capital equipment, fuel, etc, along with cashflow, necessary to feed the world as we might say of a Nebraska farmer.
But, for sure, let's shut all this down, force people from the cities into the countryside to farm, using draft animals and "organic" fertilizers. Oh, and clear off the regrown forests to provide pasture for the horses and hovels for the farm laborers. Wait, we've seen that done in the mid-20th century...
https://youtu.be/1oZFhvR-nG8?t=454
Below, for about a minute, this young woman starting in the family business of farming, gives insight into the capital equipment, fuel, etc, along with cashflow, necessary to feed the world as we might say of a Nebraska farmer.
But, for sure, let's shut all this down, force people from the cities into the countryside to farm, using draft animals and "organic" fertilizers. Oh, and clear off the regrown forests to provide pasture for the horses and hovels for the farm laborers. Wait, we've seen that done in the mid-20th century...
https://youtu.be/1oZFhvR-nG8?t=454
Zelensky on NATO:
“I requested them personally to say that we are going to accept you into NATO…just say it directly and clearly, or just say no. The response was very clear, you're not going to be a NATO member, but publicly, the doors will remain open.”
Wouldn't you think it should be the other way around? If the goal was to prevent war in Ukraine?
Nato could have prevented war by making Ukraine a NATO member or they could have prevented war by publicly stating Ukraine would not become a NATO member. They did neither. Instead they did the most provocative thing. Why?
Here's another question: Why are you so eager to cheer as the same people, who scammed our ballot system to elect a guy who was caught taking bribes from Ukraine, drag us into a war in Ukraine? No skepticism? Where is your bullshit detector on this? Shouldn't that little red light be blinking?
I believe we are approaching the time when high costs and shortages are finally going to drive the average person to actively rebel against the climate change religionists. For how many thousands of years have humans strived - with varying success - to improve their lot? Now we traveling down the path back to the cave. It ain't going to happen. I am a firm believer in the pendulum of history that swings from side to side, but most of the time is approaching equilibrium. I anticipate that those creatures of the state that we now seem to worship will soon, like the Salem witches, be hanged.
Despite politics and pollution, the population continues to grow and lifespan continues to lengthen, so collectively, we stumble along pretty well.
I grew up in the heavily polluted East San Gabriel Valley, only two miles from the rugged San Gabriel mountains which were nearly invisible on a smoggy day. That smog is long gone despite many more people and motor vehicles. Politically and technologically we did something right.
The cost of civilization includes contaminants alien to the "natural" world. Incrementally, we get better at resolving contaminants even as new ones are "discovered" (I just learned today about "nurdles").
Of course, in the "civilized" world as in the "natural" one, individuals may suffer greatly.
The difficult question is, are we better off with far fewer people and the attendant "natural" risks (predation, poorer shelter, heavier early child mortality, etc) or with civilization, technology and all its discontents? For now, I'll take civilization, blemishes and all.
People always fail to do the simple things like mass balance. The way the organic farming rules and regulations are written have all but guaranteed that it will be impossible to scale and compete with conventional agriculture. In the US it's been stuck at 1% for a long time.
It's a real shame because their goal of returning humus to our dead soils is a great idea and it is the perfect carbon capture and storage system. However in practicality organic agriculture is about doing a highly choreographed interpretive dance.
Reductive reasoning to absurdity. Throw another baby... berry on the barbie for social, redistributive, clinical, and fair weather causes.
GRW3 said...
On the plus side, we are experiencing the birth of commercial space travel.
elon musk as DD Hariman?? That is Disturbing, on So Many levels
Farmgirl said: "Those following the Green Religion can eat dirt.
The Earth has healing powers of its own- we never give it credit for that."
Exactly. "There lives the dearest freshness, deep down things."
From a favorite poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins:
...Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things...
“ However in practicality organic agriculture is about doing a highly choreographed interpretive dance.”
Yup- w/ever greater restrictions and rules pulled out of the a$$e$ of the egg-headed ruling classes and their book smart, know nothing lackeys.
Sustainability is becoming mighty unsustainable!
I'm astonished when I read, for example, letters to the editor of a financial magazine, proclaiming that climate change is such an urgent and life-threatening issue that we must, absolutely must, give up internal combustion engines in the next four years or earth will die. This bizarre set of beliefs has become mainstream, to the point that non-believers truly are treated as life-threatening heretics. If you're not with the program, you're an earth-killer. It is all madness, all the time, and it truly is a religion - one that does not suffer apostates or heretics.
Rusty said..."So, the bottom line here is that people who read the NYT aren't very bright."
A perfect example of that would be this recent post from Manhattan Contrarian (Francis Menton) regarding his testimony at a recent public hearing on NYC plans for "climate change." People have been totally brainwashed and are delusional about the present and future of energy and climate.
I am currently reading the Smil book and it is pretty much spot on, at least what I have read so far. I have an engineering education, was a licensed engineer for 25 years, and retired 6 years ago after a 41-year career with a Fortune 500 multi-national petrochemical company. I recently - to my chagrin - decided to spend some time on Twitter to get an idea of how bad it is, and believe me, it is a cesspool. I have joined a few threads over the past few months to share my knowledge and experience of many of the same things that Smil's book covers and it was a very disheartening experience. No one ever acknowledged or thanked me for sharing important, first-hand experience and knowledge but, being a "boomer," I was savaged for it. As far as many of the other users were concerned - and I got the impression they were all fairly young and thoroughly brainwashed - whatever I knew was not important as I was an old, white, racist, misogynistic slaver (or insert here whatever ad hominem you can come up with) whose "1810-era engineering knowledge" was useless as "there have been many advances in manufacturing in recent decades" (my response: "What do you think I was doing for 41 years?"). Eventually I just gave up. The future with these people in control is scary.
Yet these are the people with "I Believe In Science" signs in their front yards.
There are American farmers who have no children that want to farm (that is devastating to a farm family). There are Dutch and Danish families who not only want to farm in the U.S., they have the capital to buy a modern farm.
These folks, who are about the perfect example of what we want in immigrants, cannot get a visa.
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