As an electrical engineer I have long seen power grid resiliency as an issue getting a lot of attention. All technology and science is a work in progress. So I wouldn't worry too much about that. However, as MystrD says: that clean energy needs to come from somewhere; and I'll add it needs to be stored in something when the sun doesn't shine or wind doesn't blow. These questions and many others will employ bright minds for decades to come.
We don't have a choice. It is adapt or die. Some climate change is going to happen and this is the beginning.
Looking at it from a purely scientific POV, climate change is self limiting. As soon as enough people die off, carbon emissions will drop. There is a natural balance of CO2 and nature will eventually return to equilibrium. It may take decades or centuries.
Some cities will be uninhabitable. Structures will crumble. Foliage will gradually reclaim areas that were logged off/built up/burnt/flooded/eroded away. Kind of like Chernobyl.
There will be more rain overall and it will be redistributed. Even so, while some places will become much wetter, others will become drier. Probably where I live. :(
Climate zones will have moved north. All those cool weather trees in Canada will slowly be replaced with warm weather trees. Violent storms and fires are bad news to us but nature will abide. New growth sprouts up that will be better adapted to the climate. Extinction events are always followed by a burst of speciation, just takes a while. I suspect that "weed" species will do very well while "niche" species will have a hard time of it.
A lot of people don't realize this but we are technically in an ice age. For most of its history the planet was much hotter and rainier - except when everything was buried in glaciers and sea ice. Or the land was entirely arid desert. During the Cretaceous period there were no glaciers anywhere and no ice at either the north or south poles.
Famine might start a nuclear war. Might not be such a bad thing. The radiation will soon subside (Chernobyl again) nature will return and nuclear winter will cool things off a bit.
Another equally beautiful but different world will emerge with a lot fewer people who hopefully will have learned that it is not nice to fool with Mother Nature.
Whether it’s personal or professional in nature, a crisis is a sure sign that one has had their priorities wrong.
We’ve been living a very long time with our priorities totally screwed up.
For example, look at the appalling imbalance that we have in the world. Extreme poverty and conflict at one end of the spectrum and opulent decadence at the other. A family living on under $1 a day vs the super rich paying upwards of $5,000 per night for utterly self indulgent accommodation.
There are so many facets to this problem that the answer to certain questions that might have previously perplexed us become all too obvious far too late.
EG: From the archaeological evidence that we have, how did a highly successful civilisation that went before us suddenly disappear without any other trace?
Similarly, how is it that every last tree on Easter island was destroyed even when the ultimate consequences were completely obvious?
Each and every one of us sees what we want to see and ignores the things we really should be paying attention to.
For example, with electric vehicles, where is all this “clean energy” coming from? Are we merely shifting the problem from one place to another?
What’s going to happen to all the highly expensive batteries when they reach the end of their 7-8 year life span?
Are we trying to solve the right problem?
The last few weeks I started volunteering at a Hospice Store. An op shop/thrift store.
What becomes obvious quickly from the donations is the staggering waste we as a society create.
Our priorities over the last century have been financial growth. Do more faster to create bigger profits to line the pockets of the super rich who pay in excess of $5,000/night at luxurious hotels. Spend $2,000-$3,000 on a single meal with friends.
The sheer volume of waste is incomprehensible. When I notice at a micro level in one place, that means at a macro level it’s many magnitudes worse.
Our way of life is unsustainable. Plague, famine and war are going to be the self inflicted demise that ultimately wipes us out. Why might we ask.
Well let’s take a simple example such as gun crime in the US. People are wailing at the loss of innocent life at the hands of an unbalanced gun man.
The obvious answer to this problem is to reduce the access and availability to high powered firearms.
This isn’t possible because a strong vocal lobby group are saying the actual problem is that there aren’t enough guns. If everyone had a firearm. If we militarise schools and workplaces, then everyone would be safer.
I overheard a couple on a bus yesterday saying the solution to violence towards bus drivers in the city is to arm them with pepper spray.
The reason this isn’t a good idea is that violence begets even more violence.
We don’t ask the right questions and don’t solve the right problems.
How can we as naturists make a difference in the world?
Hit unsubscribe from the chaos and nonsense. Stop drinking the kool-aid and start acting independently.
Do what is right not what our crazed society thinks is proper.
We as individuals need to stop being victims, zombies, suckers and powerless. Reevaluate. Reassess and change at an individual level.
No so simple. A couple of years ago I attended a seminar on roof-top solar, including feeding the surplus to the grid. If not done properly it can cause your local transformer to explode turning the power pole into a roman candle. He had some impressive pictures of such unintended fireworks. It's doable, but may require reworking your connection to the utility grid.
I have recently been toying with the idea of a new blog highlighting the many little things we can all do to help the environment. I have a number of ideas, but I fear not enough to sustain an ongoing blog, and I have also struggled to settle on a format that is encouraging without sounding too preachy. For the moment, I have shelved that plan.
As a naturist, my philosophy is more than just living clothes free as much as I can, but also looking at my impact on the environment and trying to live in a way that reduces that impact.
There are many small things we can all do and perhaps should do, to reduce the harm we are doing to the planet. A lot of these steps are hampered by the large companies behind the products we consume, the marketing organisations that advertise these products and the large chain retailers that sell them to us.
There are many things that as a consumer I buy, where I should pay more attention to the environment when selecting my purchase, but often there are no viable alternatives presented to us.
Use a single blade razor rather than throw-away plastic cartridges. Use a shampoo bar rather than buying liquid shampoo in a plastic bottle. Choosing drinks that are sold in glass or aluminium rather than plastic. There are many many other ways we can decide as a consumer not to contribute to the waste we feed the planet every day.
One of the many barriers to making better decisions about the waste we generate in society is the lack of choice that we are given by the large companies selling us our everyday products. Take a walk down your supermarket aisle, where are the non-plastic packaging options? the reusable options? the environmentally-friendly options? Recycled plastic is still plastic, and finds its way into the soil, the waterways and the food chain.
On July 1st 2019, New Zealand banned plastic shopping bags and we are all now happy to take our cotton shopping bags or buy paper ones at the checkout. Our behaviours have changed and we relax patting ourselves on the back that we have done our bit for the environment.
The elephant in the room is that we haven’t even scratched the surface of what we could do, and big retail is not going to make that process easy without additional legislation. Governments are shy about interfering with commercial decisions, and unless there is a vote in it, they are unlikely to stir up too much fuss to change things.
Consumers can do so much, but we also need these large companies to stop creating waste in their packaging in the first place. Perhaps if we all stopped buying drinks in plastic bottles, manufacturers would look for alternative solutions, but as long as they still make money from selling us convenient plastic, nothing will change.
Advertisers are quick to sell us a solution, often to a problem we didn’t know we had, to save time and effort. Sometimes, in order to impact the planet less, we need to put in a little more effort, and that is often the cost of change rather than a financial one. Making your own yoghurt rather than buying a ready-made variety in a plastic tub takes effort. We need to accept that and get on with it.
Sometimes it is less about the big things we do, but the little things that count. Every journey to mass change starts with one person taking one step. If enough people take small steps to change the way we live, then the cumulative effect can be significant. If we all do one thing to stop contributing to the largely plastic waste that we discard into the environment, then the world has to be a better place.
Hopefully, by making some noise, voting with our discretionary spending, and raising the awareness of the damage being done, someone somewhere in a position to do something about it will hear the message and push for change.
As an electrical engineer I have long seen power grid resiliency as an issue getting a lot of attention. All technology and science is a work in progress. So I wouldn't worry too much about that. However, as MystrD says: that clean energy needs to come from somewhere; and I'll add it needs to be stored in something when the sun doesn't shine or wind doesn't blow. These questions and many others will employ bright minds for decades to come.
We don't have a choice. It is adapt or die. Some climate change is going to happen and this is the beginning.
Looking at it from a purely scientific POV, climate change is self limiting. As soon as enough people die off, carbon emissions will drop. There is a natural balance of CO2 and nature will eventually return to equilibrium. It may take decades or centuries.
Some cities will be uninhabitable. Structures will crumble. Foliage will gradually reclaim areas that were logged off/built up/burnt/flooded/eroded away. Kind of like Chernobyl.
There will be more rain overall and it will be redistributed. Even so, while some places will become much wetter, others will become drier. Probably where I live. :(
Climate zones will have moved north. All those cool weather trees in Canada will slowly be replaced with warm weather trees. Violent storms and fires are bad news to us but nature will abide. New growth sprouts up that will be better adapted to the climate. Extinction events are always followed by a burst of speciation, just takes a while. I suspect that "weed" species will do very well while "niche" species will have a hard time of it.
A lot of people don't realize this but we are technically in an ice age. For most of its history the planet was much hotter and rainier - except when everything was buried in glaciers and sea ice. Or the land was entirely arid desert. During the Cretaceous period there were no glaciers anywhere and no ice at either the north or south poles.
Famine might start a nuclear war. Might not be such a bad thing. The radiation will soon subside (Chernobyl again) nature will return and nuclear winter will cool things off a bit.
Another equally beautiful but different world will emerge with a lot fewer people who hopefully will have learned that it is not nice to fool with Mother Nature.
Whether it’s personal or professional in nature, a crisis is a sure sign that one has had their priorities wrong.
We’ve been living a very long time with our priorities totally screwed up.
For example, look at the appalling imbalance that we have in the world. Extreme poverty and conflict at one end of the spectrum and opulent decadence at the other. A family living on under $1 a day vs the super rich paying upwards of $5,000 per night for utterly self indulgent accommodation.
There are so many facets to this problem that the answer to certain questions that might have previously perplexed us become all too obvious far too late.
EG: From the archaeological evidence that we have, how did a highly successful civilisation that went before us suddenly disappear without any other trace?
Similarly, how is it that every last tree on Easter island was destroyed even when the ultimate consequences were completely obvious?
Each and every one of us sees what we want to see and ignores the things we really should be paying attention to.
For example, with electric vehicles, where is all this “clean energy” coming from? Are we merely shifting the problem from one place to another?
What’s going to happen to all the highly expensive batteries when they reach the end of their 7-8 year life span?
Are we trying to solve the right problem?
The last few weeks I started volunteering at a Hospice Store. An op shop/thrift store.
What becomes obvious quickly from the donations is the staggering waste we as a society create.
Our priorities over the last century have been financial growth. Do more faster to create bigger profits to line the pockets of the super rich who pay in excess of $5,000/night at luxurious hotels. Spend $2,000-$3,000 on a single meal with friends.
The sheer volume of waste is incomprehensible. When I notice at a micro level in one place, that means at a macro level it’s many magnitudes worse.
Our way of life is unsustainable. Plague, famine and war are going to be the self inflicted demise that ultimately wipes us out. Why might we ask.
Well let’s take a simple example such as gun crime in the US. People are wailing at the loss of innocent life at the hands of an unbalanced gun man.
The obvious answer to this problem is to reduce the access and availability to high powered firearms.
This isn’t possible because a strong vocal lobby group are saying the actual problem is that there aren’t enough guns. If everyone had a firearm. If we militarise schools and workplaces, then everyone would be safer.
I overheard a couple on a bus yesterday saying the solution to violence towards bus drivers in the city is to arm them with pepper spray.
The reason this isn’t a good idea is that violence begets even more violence.
We don’t ask the right questions and don’t solve the right problems.
How can we as naturists make a difference in the world?
Hit unsubscribe from the chaos and nonsense. Stop drinking the kool-aid and start acting independently.
Do what is right not what our crazed society thinks is proper.
We as individuals need to stop being victims, zombies, suckers and powerless. Reevaluate. Reassess and change at an individual level.
There are options to the electric grid. None are cheap. Personal solar or wind energy
No so simple. A couple of years ago I attended a seminar on roof-top solar, including feeding the surplus to the grid. If not done properly it can cause your local transformer to explode turning the power pole into a roman candle. He had some impressive pictures of such unintended fireworks. It's doable, but may require reworking your connection to the utility grid.
Jillian,
I have recently been toying with the idea of a new blog highlighting the many little things we can all do to help the environment. I have a number of ideas, but I fear not enough to sustain an ongoing blog, and I have also struggled to settle on a format that is encouraging without sounding too preachy. For the moment, I have shelved that plan.
As a naturist, my philosophy is more than just living clothes free as much as I can, but also looking at my impact on the environment and trying to live in a way that reduces that impact.
There are many small things we can all do and perhaps should do, to reduce the harm we are doing to the planet. A lot of these steps are hampered by the large companies behind the products we consume, the marketing organisations that advertise these products and the large chain retailers that sell them to us.
There are many things that as a consumer I buy, where I should pay more attention to the environment when selecting my purchase, but often there are no viable alternatives presented to us.
Use a single blade razor rather than throw-away plastic cartridges. Use a shampoo bar rather than buying liquid shampoo in a plastic bottle. Choosing drinks that are sold in glass or aluminium rather than plastic. There are many many other ways we can decide as a consumer not to contribute to the waste we feed the planet every day.
One of the many barriers to making better decisions about the waste we generate in society is the lack of choice that we are given by the large companies selling us our everyday products. Take a walk down your supermarket aisle, where are the non-plastic packaging options? the reusable options? the environmentally-friendly options? Recycled plastic is still plastic, and finds its way into the soil, the waterways and the food chain.
On July 1st 2019, New Zealand banned plastic shopping bags and we are all now happy to take our cotton shopping bags or buy paper ones at the checkout. Our behaviours have changed and we relax patting ourselves on the back that we have done our bit for the environment.
The elephant in the room is that we haven’t even scratched the surface of what we could do, and big retail is not going to make that process easy without additional legislation. Governments are shy about interfering with commercial decisions, and unless there is a vote in it, they are unlikely to stir up too much fuss to change things.
Consumers can do so much, but we also need these large companies to stop creating waste in their packaging in the first place. Perhaps if we all stopped buying drinks in plastic bottles, manufacturers would look for alternative solutions, but as long as they still make money from selling us convenient plastic, nothing will change.
Advertisers are quick to sell us a solution, often to a problem we didn’t know we had, to save time and effort. Sometimes, in order to impact the planet less, we need to put in a little more effort, and that is often the cost of change rather than a financial one. Making your own yoghurt rather than buying a ready-made variety in a plastic tub takes effort. We need to accept that and get on with it.
Sometimes it is less about the big things we do, but the little things that count. Every journey to mass change starts with one person taking one step. If enough people take small steps to change the way we live, then the cumulative effect can be significant. If we all do one thing to stop contributing to the largely plastic waste that we discard into the environment, then the world has to be a better place.
Hopefully, by making some noise, voting with our discretionary spending, and raising the awareness of the damage being done, someone somewhere in a position to do something about it will hear the message and push for change.