Essay by Eric Worrall
According to Brian Kateman, climate alarmists like Musk who think colonising other planets will solve our problems are worse than people who think it’s all hopeless.
Climate doomerism is dangerous. Climate optimism is even worse
Hope is crucial in effecting change. Blind optimism is not.
08-23-23
BY BRIAN KATEMANWhen we talk about climate change, especially as it applies to the U.S. and public policy, the subject matter often seems to divide people into two strict, opposing camps: environmentalists and science deniers. But those of us who acknowledge the very real risks posed by climate change aren’t a monolith.
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Optimists tend to reject “Malthusian” thinking, which is based on the idea that finite resources cannot support an exponentially growing population forever, instead advocating for more people instead of fewer.
It’s nice to think that more humans would mean more innovations and more chances to address the effects of climate change, but it’s just not supported by evidence. The rapid growth of our population over the past half century is correlated with a 69% drop in wildlife populations and the alteration of at least 70%—possibly up to 97%—of the world’s land. If history shows us anything, it’s that a growing human population has always meant more planetary destruction, even as new and better technologies have been developed. There’s little reason to think that this simply won’t be the case going forward.
Unfortunately, some prefer to ignore the grim reality. For example, I find self-identifying “pathological optimists,” like Elon Musk, are the ones most excited to bring humans to other planets before we’ve even figured out how to not wreck our own. This idea is bizarre for many reasons, one of which being that space colonization is supposedly an inevitable piece of our not-so-distant future. It’s not really a problem if the Earth’s resources are limited, the belief goes, because we’ll soon be expanding to other planets anyway.
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Brian Kateman cofounded the Reducetarian Foundation in 2015 after coining the term reducetarian to describe a person who is deliberately reducing their consumption of meat. He is the author of The Reducetarian Solution, The Reducetarian Cookbook, and Meat Me Halfway, and is the lead producer of the documentary version of Meat Me Halfway.
Read more: https://www.fastcompany.com/90943444/climate-doomerism-is-dangerous-climate-optimism-is-even-worse
What I find more bizarre is people like Brian Kateman think there is any alternative to eventually going off planet to obtain the resources we need.
Resources are finite, and will eventually be exhausted.
Greens can spout all the nonsense they want about developing a circular economy, but we live in an age where we can’t even recycle wind turbine blades, let alone challenging items like EV batteries.
Given the inevitable eventual need to obtain off planet resources, though that crisis likely won’t occur for centuries or millennia, what are the options?
The engineering challenge of economically transporting vast masses to and from Earth orbit, and ferrying them around the solar system, has already been solved. Freeman Dyson, who worked with Robert Oppenheimer and other giants of physics in the 1950s, led Project Orion alongside Ted Taylor.
Project Orion found a way to use atomic bombs to propel spaceships. They would have been big spaceships – thousands, even millions of tons, aircraft carrier size or larger, but launching the ships, and returning back to Earth, would cost a fraction of the current cost per pound of a chemical rocket launch.
Obviously nobody is going to build such a ship tomorrow, unless a desperate need arises, such as the early detection of a large comet on a collision course with Earth. Nobody in today’s world is keen to be downwind of a nuclear launch range. And hopefully our descendants will find less polluting ways to transport large masses to and from Earth orbit, than a series of atmospheric nuclear explosions.
But if it comes to a deadly choice between civilisation collapse and mass starvation, and detonating a few atom bombs to alleviate the shortages, I hope my distant descendants have the courage to make the right choice.
I think in the distant future we will eventually return to bronze or copper age, there will be wood to burn but no FF. Hard to imagine it!
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Is that Crumb?
It is indeed.
Eggs Actly
Unhinged
The rapid growth of our population over the past half century is correlated with a 69% drop in wildlife populations and the alteration of at least 70%—possibly up to 97%—of the world’s land.
That doesn’t seem to be the case everywhere.
Resources are limited, but human ingenuity… who would have imagined today’s world 100 years ago?
Never ending growth is not sustainable, but birth rates go down as affluence and education go up. Name one nation that wants population to decline.
Read “The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet” by Ramez Naam. We’re a long way off from running out. As things get scarcer, prices go up, demand drops and people look for alternatives. And they find them. Ramez is a warmista (debated him on a climate panel once), but he points out how time and again we come up with solutions to intractable problems.
The land has been altered. Oh the humanity.
The only surety is that if we go all in for renewables we will disturb 100% of the land and finally cause the fabled “6th extinction”.
It is only the case in the minds of folk who believe the GangGreen lunacy.
“Possibly up to 97% of the world’s land”?
Wow! That would be the totally undocumented view of the 97% of “Scientists” (activists). Right?
100% weapons grade garbage.
Brian Kateman reducitarianed himself with that piece. Brain needs meat protein to function properly. His obviously isn’t.
Society ( us) are not getting through this insanity unscathed. The brainwashing and graft run to deep now. Musk is now one of the ultimate hypocrites now in my book. For a minute there I thought he had a reality check.
But he is in it to deep now( the graft),. And would he really do the right thing and admit that his useless economic misallocations he calls Tesla and his Mar fantasy are a waste of time. I doubt it, to much of his wealth is at stake now not to mention his ego. And that woman he put in charge of part of Twitter, OMG what a horrible woman, queen of censorship- WTF is up with Elon?
Sorry, but there is no habitable planet except for Earth. You can not live on Mars. With huge ressources you may be able to set up a research colony there, that is it. Any planets that might be habitable with other solar systems, are totally out of reach.
Talking about this “option” as if it was real, tells a lot about the author – and the science fiction world he lives in. And I can not help but to see the parallels to “climate science”, where theoretical, speculative reasoning has turned into “settled science”.
I read about obtaining resources off-planet, but I must have missed where he said anything about settling elsewhere – can you point me to it?
Mars colonies can start underground, but eventually they could start using domes.
Ditto the Moon.
Can you imagine living in domes in an airless environment, crammed in like an anthill? Shades of Robert Heineken. Might as well be dead. I’m a rural guy, such a thought gives me the Willie’s. Can’t even imagine living in a city. Just driving thru a city makes me nuts.
Keep dreaming, people are not even emigrating to the Antarctic, which is far more habitable than Mars.
Its likely that we’ll send AI powered robots to retrieve valuable resources, no humans required, or humans might pilot ships to say retrieve an Asteroid, then return to Earth – this is what I had in mind.
But some humans would probably like to leave the planet for prolonged periods, maybe forever. There are days when I turn on the news, when I’d like to leave the planet.
Is it technically possible to live off plant? Sure – heard of the International Space Station?
The big question is can such outposts be scaled into a self sustaining colony. I’m guessing a number of countries are going to give this a shot in the next half century.
ai powered robots? I hope not, they might decide to kill us all due to a minor programme bug. AI is miles off Eric, don’t believe the hype, the things they are playing with only regurgitate internet tosh, following a few simple rules of language. AI is being able to invent something from nothing, say the steam engine. Once someone has invented it, then that can be copied. Original thinking is something which AI can probably not do, at least for a very long time. Try asking one of these bots to tell you the next great invention, the answer will be very, very wrong! When a computer gets a patent for something useful, I will eat my hat! The simplest thing is a new drug, but we already have drugs so that is not inventive. That is simply following a formula. Certainly not AI whatever is claimed.
Eric, I have come to the conclusion that depending on Wind Turbines and Solar Panels to supply electricity to an entire nation, or worse, to the entire WORLD, including powering all of industry and all communications and the Internet, is the application of Tourette syndrome to power distribution, data transfer, and Internet communication.
That’s hilarious – infrasound swearing 🙂
i wouldn’t mind sending all of the CAGW alarmists to Mars.
Surely Venus would be better
What about up to Uranus?
Yeah, it is nice and cool there.
From the article: “What I find more bizarre is people like Brian Kateman think there is any alternative to eventually going off planet to obtain the resources we need.
Resources are finite, and will eventually be exhausted.”
That’s true.
Humans will eventually live away from the Earth.
And there is no need for nuclear-bomb-powered vehicles to make this possible. Solar power is more than adeqate for powering moves around the Solar System.
Solar Power Satellites collect the energy and beam this energy to various space vehicles that use the energy in various ways to propel themselves around the solar system.
The Chicoms claim there are going to put a demonstration solar power satellite in orbit in 2030.
Beaming solar power will never be efficient or practical. Nuclear power is the way, not bombs, but nuclear generators powering ion rockets.
https://pagesix.com/2023/08/24/grimes-says-she-hopes-to-die-in-space/
Musk says that he hopes to die on Mars, just not on impact.
Greens can spout all the nonsense they want about developing a circular economy, but we live in an age where we can’t even recycle wind turbine blades, let alone challenging items like EV batteries.
skeptics say nonsense think business opportunity
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/dead-ev-batteries-turn-gold-with-us-incentives-2023-07-21/
https://www.energy.gov/eere/wind/articles/carbon-rivers-makes-wind-turbine-blade-recycling-and-upcycling-reality-support
Heres the thing, Skepticism is the laziest way to think.
just say no.
Yeah, skepticism. I’ll keep an eye on that carbon river thing, looks like a subsidy farm so far. But I write for this:
Your Carbon River advertisement uses the term “cyclic economy” multiple times, notably after every description of a process that requires vast amounts of energy input. So you have this “circular economy” that is kept rotating by throwing unlimited energy at every of the various stages of the process?
Oh, the wonders of Doublethink and Doublespeak. Especially the bit where all the pollution never happens?
In steve’s world, declaring that a problem can be solved, is the same as actually solving the problem.
Is he Justin Trudeau?
Words ARE actions after all
LOL..
Subsidies to buy EVs, Subsidies to recycle them. keep sucking on that green teet !!
LOL.. Carbon Rivers
Now where will they get that from?
Yes, you really do have a lazy gullible mind, don’t you mooosh. Almost comatose.
I just love how one scientifically illiterate person declares that all we have to do is figure out how to recycle lithium batteries.
Then the second scientifically illiterate idiot declares that the problem of recycling batteries has been solved.
If you are not a sceptic you are unable to absorb new thoughts and ideas.
It’s a mathematical fact that once you know everything you cannot learn a thing else.
There is nothing else to learn.
Always relevant
“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.” Bertrand Russell
Do you what cannot be recycled Stephen? If not I suggest you stop this kind of comment, it is scientifically inept to say the least. I will give a hint, entropy, now do you understand? Thought not!
Let’s be realistic, the probability of humans inhabiting another solar body within the next 5000 years, is practically zero
Earth will be our home until either the human species becomes extinct by design, natural selection, accident, war, AI, or the swelling, dying Sun boils all life away
Human development and progression has stalled over recent decades – instead of developing, inventing, or finding new things, we are just adding / removing bits, looking back to past technologies to modernise them, or tweaking existing technologies
The globalists are in hyperdrive to capture humanity under their all consuming NWO, confident only they have the know how to ensure humanity, in some form, will continue
However the end comes, the journey there will no doubt be full of the usual human induced deceits and greed
100 years ago, the best rockets could get maybe 100 feet off the ground. By 1980, 40 years ago, people were living in space.
Declaring that it will take 5000 years to develop the technology to get people to another planet has got to be one of the stupidest things I have ever read.
5000 years ago, most people were still using stone tools and copper was still centuries in the future.
As to the swelling of the sun, you are only off by about 4 billion years. Not bad by your standards.
If you think technological development has been stalled, you are being willfully blind.
If you think the basic laws of physics and gravitation can be altered, you’re as big a fool as Kateman. Assuming linearity in future progress is sheer idiocy. Imaging that the future is predictable is precisely the error the global warmist climate modelers are making for the past three decades.
Congratulations, you just joined the ranks of those you claim to oppose.
For accuracy, the Sun will boil the earth in 4.5Bn years, around the same time the Andromeda galaxy will collide with our Milky Way
If you want to read something really stupid, read the IPCC reports
As cgh states human progress is not linear, it is stalled
Have a great day
The globalists could wreck progress, if there is ever a time where no corner of the world is free from the kleptocrats, civilisation will collapse.
But the technology required to colonise other planets has already been developed.
But, humans will not colonise other planets, there is zero will to do that currently
We know our solar system will be destroyed in 4.5Bn years or so as our Sun dies, so if humans are to move long term, it needs to be beyond our solar system and unfortunately, science fiction won’t get them there
The solar system as we know it now will be changed, but the sun and most of the planets will still be around. Humans will just have to move a little farther out in the solar system. That’s possible using artificial habitats.
I give humanity a lot less than 4.5b years..
“Let’s be realistic, the probability of humans inhabiting another solar body within the next 5000 years, is practically zero
Earth will be our home until either the human species becomes extinct by design, natural selection, accident, war, AI, or the swelling, dying Sun boils all life away”
What humans will do is build artificial habitats in space to live in. Humans don’t need other planets.
And a lot of things can happen in 5,000 years. My expectation is that some humans will be living permanently in space within the next 50 years.
This guy has it all backwards … there are climate change skeptics who actually practice real scientific inquiry, and then there are science deniers (the warmunistas)..
REAL climate optimism: Knowing that our climate is actually fine, and in fact about as perfect as we can expect. We are in fact lucky to be living during this particular climate period, which is relatively stable, and warm, which is good. All of the blather and fuss and hysteria about climate is much ado about nothing.
Only mentally ill people suck up the stupid non existing climate crisis propaganda with minimal thought as they are programmed deeply to be a follower of a cult warmist/alarmist religion which is also WHY they are also eye swirling leftists.
They are science illiterates and mental midgets due to their lack of independent thinking as they have deeply drunk the propaganda koolaid uncritically.
I post this reality medicine many times and in several forums which they reject strongly even sometimes violently and NEVER in over 1,000 replies address any of the Contents as they treat it like holy water a violent response always shows up in their words against it and the author.
Where is the Climate Emergency?
LINK
They are TERRIFIED of it!
He’s got the two camps on climate hilariously wrong. In one camp, we have the climate loons, who believe we are “destroying the planet” due to our fossil fuels, and wail and moan about it continuously, ad nauseum, and in the other camp we have the Climate Realists, who know that our climate is fine, and that our CO2 is entirely beneficial, perhaps adding some small amount of beneficial warming.
The only “evidence” the author provides is a link to a long article, that itself fails to provide any evidence to support the claim.
Beyond that, all anyone has to do is look around and see the rate of technological progress.
It has accelerated by huge amounts.
The first computers were built during WWII. They were huge beasts, consumed as much energy as a small village and could only do a few calculations per second. Only 80 years later, computers can fit in your hand, be powered by a battery weighing only a few ounces, and their speed is measured in the trillions of operations per second.
And you assume it will continue unchecked into the future. This is the worst kind of crystal ball-gazing ever. You have no basis to substantiate this claim.
You mean those computers that fail to predict weather or that the alarmists rely on to model climate in 50 years time? Human progress, in general, has stalled compared to its leaps 200 years ago
I see ground-breaking science being done every day, except in climate science.
The Malthusian argument is that growth in population leads to a excess of demand over resource and thus the collapse of population.
Population grows exponentially; resources grow linearly = disaster.
This article accepts (finally) that Malthus was wrong. They accept that the logic of over-consumption killing the over-consumers is false.
So instead they claim the the Malthusian disaster is occurring in externalities. It’s in the other animal (not us) who a re suffering.
This is reasonable. Crops in fields are less biologically diverse then a wilderness.
But, just as Malthus was wrong in the first place because he forgot that people can adapt (unlike rabbits) so do the neo-Malthusians.
If the externalities become a problem, we will adapt.
We did not wipe out the whales. That was a win for the Greens and cetaceans. It’s a good thing. But it is also a win that shows this theory is incorrect, in practice.
No, not wiping out the the whales is thanks to John D. Rockefeller.
Natural resources are finite – imagine if oil ran out in 10 years time – yes some humans will adapt, but not many
Quantum computers and AI will help determine the future…I don’t claim to know the future or the timetable. In the meantime…Thorium Liquid Salts Cooled Reactors need to be developed full speed ahead.
Useable Quantum computers are on about the timeline for nuclear fusion. Always 20 years away.
A quantum computer has already solved an algorithm that a digital computer would have require years to solve.
Yep: an incredibly specific problem set to sort the non-generalisable nature of any current approach to quantum computers. They will, probably, eventually be a useable proposition, but I doubt that will be the case in my lifetime.
Wait, I thought Thorium Liquid Salt reactors had already been developed and were just waiting to be deployed?
Thorium Liquid Sa;lts Cooled Reactors were invented over 60 years ago at Oak Ridge….the project was dropped in favor of “breeder” reactors so development has not been what it could have been.
scientifically illiterate leftist propagandists are worst of all.
Is there any other kind?
The 69% drop in wildlife along with the 70% change in land use mostly happened prior to 1970 (not 100% sure). In the 1970’s, environmentalism (the good type) was born and with that, come cleaner water, cleaner air, more consciousness about pollution, wildlife, etc. We’ve made some great progress. I guess the silver lining that comes with the human-caused climate change agenda is that people have become more self-conscious towards protecting the environment.
History bears you out. The industrial pollution of the Middle Ages was enormous with both biological and industrial chemical contaimination. The first laws forbidding river dumping of contaminants were attempted in the 13th century. The first air pollution laws were attempted in England in the late 12th century.
Europe was largely deforested by the 17th century because of the demand for charcoal for the iron and steel industry.
All this began to change in the late 19th century. Increasing wealth allowed greater concern for protecting the environment. This particularly included technology. Coal mining saved Europe’s forests from extinction. Petroleum saved the world’s whales from extinction for providing new fuel sources for lighting and lubricants.
The fundamental problem that humanity has always had to deal with, is human behaviour. If we behave sensibly and rationally, we can solve most problems.
Recycling, for example, is a perfectly natural process in nature. Animals eat plants and return the transformed biomass to the soil in the form of faeces, urine, CO2, methane, and so on.
The following article addresses the issue of recycling human waste.
https://sustainablefoodtrust.org/news-views/human-manure-closing-the-nutrient-loop/
As I’ve mentioned before, our prosperity and security depends not only on a reliable supply of affordable energy, but also the ways we use that energy. Unfortunately, most of the energy we use is for the purposes of boosting our ego and satisfying our greed. Consider how much energy is used to buy ridiculously expensive clothes, jewelry and watches to feed our vanity, and how much energy is used to buy ridiculously expensive and fancy cars, just to boost our ego.
Consider how much money is spent, world-wide, on football, cricket, golf and enetertainment in general. Consider the amount of money (energy) spent on armies and wars, and the cost of rebuilding the infrastructure in countries such as Ukraine, after the war has ended.
The reality is, we have the technology and resources to provide a secure and prosperous living standard for every person on the planet, but we choose not to, because we are addicted to power, greed, selfishness, and vanity.
Attacking optimists being the lowest hanging fruit that is legal to piss on… I find articles on how water is wet to be more enlightening and engrossing.
I thought I was reading the funny papers!
I’m betting on fusion/transmutation being the ticket.
And if that fails, alchemy.
Climate optimists lead a happier life, as a Dutch philosopher phrased it:
“ Man suffers the most / for the suffering he fears / but which does not show up / so he gets more to bear / than God gives to bear”
I thought I was on a different website when reading this article, especially the conclusion regarding the potential necessity of releasing atom bombs to thwart starvation.
I’m at the lowest tier of understanding science, but this sounds alarmist.
Not all resources are finite. Plants, animals, water, and many more are renewable or constant. The earth is abundant. Yes, it’s good to conserve and be mindful, but we can’t worry about tomorrow’s problems toady because we don’t know what tomorrow’s problems will be.
On a personal level I see this all the time. Beyond ordinary prudential behavior, nothing I do to prepare for a future problem has ever paid dividends. And I’m certainly not going to live defensively or even think defensively about the world situation if I can help it, and by this I mean anything beyond sensible good stewardship, including the stewardship of my mental health,
We need to focus on the real problems of today in the best way possible and stop fussing about 200-300 years from now, which is when they say the reserves of fossil fuels will be used up.
We can’t let the climate alarmists’ alarm get a grip on us.
Decaf, mineral resources are limited, but there is an abundance in the asteroid belt. The idea of the bombs is to use them for propulsion – detonate one behind a ship (obviously designed for this) and the blast gives it a shove. Look up “Project Orion”.
Whether it’s really feasable is another question.
OK, Doomer. 😉
Well I believe climate doomsters should colonize other planets because they’re hopeless.
Everything that needs electricity is made with oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil.
When we rid the world of crude oil, there will be no need for wind and solar electricity as there will be nothing around that needs electricity!
In fact, all the parts and components for wind, solar, and nuclear are made with the oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil!
Thus, ridding the world of oil will eliminate wind, solar, and nuclear!