(Part 3) Top products from r/environment

All resources and economic activity tie directly into energy.

Food, fiber, goods, tech, it all has energy inputs and cost is determined largely by the cost of the energy needed to produce and move these things.

I'm working through a really good book on this subject called Environment, Power and Society for the 21st Century on this subject which lays it all out very well.

It's pretty technical about how to model energy flows through systems such as ecosystems, human civilizations, economies, etc.

Something really interesting was that the author claims that around 1973 we saw the US economy move from an era of superacceleration into an era of slow growth (and even stagnation), and that this had largely to do with energetic underpinnings of slower and more difficult extraction of oil, as is seen clearly on this graph (you can see the clear transition from exponential growth to slower linear growth).

That really caught my eye as I had long been interested in why there was a sort of sudden shift economically around the early '70s where wages stopped growing and inequality began growing very quickly. Kind of interesting to see that correlation.

The author is a big proponent of investing energy resources now into the energy resources of the future, and basically shows that it gets more expensive as time goes on, so those who are investing strongly in energy transition now are at an advantage.

There are smart things to do during each phase of what is going in the global energy scenario. During the acceleration and growth phase the US capitalized very well on the situation. But now we're in a stagnation phase and there will come a time soon where we must go through a bit of energy descent, until hopping on a more stable income of renewables.

What the US is trying to do is to grasp at policies that worked in the superacceleration phase, but which are not wise in the current phase we're in.

For example, under Trump we're talking about literally subsidizing the old methods that aren't worth it anymore so they can work again. This is also something that is mentioned in the book as a sort of dysfunctional loop of investing more and more energy into extracting forms of energy that are dying out, which ultimately just wastes energy and thus wastes wealth.

Really a fascinating perspective once you begin getting it more and more.

Yes. Your overall cost of ownership will be less with Toyota, as well as resale value. Fuel savings in general are a societal cost, but you can offset your costs through investment in environmentally friendly channels, (donations, carbon offsets, etc.)

If you absolutely need a truck, you might as well get the best bang for your buck, and not piss away money through depreciation, mechanics bills, and loss of time due to future vehicle purchases or excessive trips to the mechanics.

Toyota trucks keep their value like no other vehicle I can think of.

Plus, here is a fun test. Go to a coffee or brewery with outside seating next to a busy road.

Look at the number of old vehicles that pass you. Then count the Japanese to US manufacturer ratio of old cars...

The book is the Toyota Way, there are others also.

The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World's Greatest Manufacturer https://www.amazon.com/dp/0071392319/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_c_api_i_8AVxDbTFEF5N6

Edit: This truck could potentially be the last vehicle you ever buy, if that interested you.

Okay, how about production and disposal of Lead Acid batteries? None of the large scale battery technologies are environmentally friendly. Environmentally friendly batteries are just like Cold Fusion, perpetually 10 years into the future.

What countries in South America produce that Lithium and what kind of environmental impact does that cause? Where are all of these other batteries produced and where do they go when they hit their life expectancy?

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) does a terrible job of protecting the environment most of the time but they do enough to make things like batteries and PV panels to expensive to produce in the US at the scale other countries with no protection can.

My assertation isn't should we make the shift to "renewable" energy but rather how quickly and in what way should we make the transition. History is always the best determiner of the future and history tells these transitions are never quick or complete. I suggest reading Energy and Civilization, A history or Energy, A Human History.

My undergraduate degree is in mathematics with a mathematical ecology concentration, and I love my current Ph.D. research. (I think it's hard to go wrong with a math major as an undergrad, if you're good at it -- you can use it for anything.) I'm planning to go into academia for a career, but depending on your specific interests there are all kinds of government or consulting jobs for good ecological modelers.

A few books on Amazon that may give you a taste for the field (any given person's specialty will more closely align with just one of them, but I'm trying to convey the broad options):

http://www.amazon.com/Game-Theory-Animal-Behavior-Dugatkin/dp/0195137906/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1260173721&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/Individual-based-Modeling-Princeton-Theoretical-Computational/dp/069109666X/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1260173431&sr=8-3

http://www.amazon.com/Dynamic-Models-Biology-Stephen-Ellner/dp/0691125899/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1260173431&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Evolutionary-Dynamics-Exploring-Equations-Life/dp/0674023382/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b

I'd recommend looking for some of these in your university library, then just browsing through everything next to them at the shelves and seeing if anything jumps out at you.

This misinformation is like a "greatest hits" of climate change denialism. Every single point has been comprehensively debunked to the point that they now sound like clichéd parodies of the nonsense that deniers come out with, and yet to the average Heartland supporter, they are just as comforting as the day they were coined.

While I'm here, I might as well admit that this used to really mystify me until I read these two excellent, though grim, books

Don't Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion

You should read Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness. It's all about non-judicial mechanisms of influencing behavior that don't restrict anyone's rights: opt-out retirement plans, putting the fruit closer than the junk food, etc. They also have a blog.

It seems like some of these decision architectures could be employed to reduce the birthrate without infringing on people's rights.

In the book The Great Influenza I think he suggests it might have started in mid western farming community. Awesome read by the way. Not just about the flu but about the history of medicine.

Whatever the case this post is sort of stating the obvious in that the flu almost certainly resulted from close contact between livestock and humans. Whether it was factory farming, free range organic farming, or whatever doesn't really matter. Many of our human diseases were passed to humans because of close proximity from raising animals.

On this particular topic, here are some books that I have read (sorry, mere comments from them will not do them justice):

• The Weather Makers by Tim Flannery
  
• Storms of My Grandchildren by James Hansen
  
• CO2 Rising by Tyler Volk
  
• Hell and High Water by Joseph Romm
  
• With Speed and Violence by Fred Pearce
  
• Under a Green Sky by Peter D. Ward
  
  All of these authors have legitimate scientific credentials. With a little searching there is a lot more to be found. You might also check out www.climate.gov.
  
  Good luck.
  

Since they believe there is a scientific conspiracy, giving them hard data probably isn't going to be that helpful. Perhaps the most effective way to reach them would be to find a practical middle-ground which you can agree with them on.

With that in mind, I'd recommend Global Warring, by Cleo Paskal. It brushes the blame-game aside, and asks practical questions about specific issues we're going to face as the climate changes. For example, India's whole infrastructure is built around a very specific monsoon season happening, and that cycle is being disrupted. Another example is the recent opening of the northwest passage to ships. Hurricane Katrina is another big one.

The book looks at things like this that show how fragile our infrastructure is, and how finely tuned it is to one specific climate configuration. The argument is that no matter what you think about AGW, we have a whole lot of work ahead of us to adapt to the changing climate, and we have to do it now. The message I took away was that we have to start thinking about the climate as an object in motion, not as a fixed background condition.

Once our climate denier has dealt with that, maybe they'll be more willing to evaluate the evidence for a human hand in the process.

I haven’t looked into specifically starting a business, but I have been reading Eric Toensmeier’s book “The Carbon Farming Solution” link and it has tons of good resources and information. I’d also look at the book “Drawdown” edited by Paul Hawken link

Oops, I must have stumbled into /r/Christian where evidence is tossed out the window in favour of personal attacks. Oh wait, [enviromentalism is a religion](http://www.amazon.com/New-Holy-Wars-Environmental- Contemporary/dp/0271035811) and you are a foot soldier in the Holy War on the economic religion.

I am not American. After perusing your comment page, it
is apparent that you are Australian. If you had bothered to
check mine you might have answered your own question. Regardless, here is the Australian Govt's fossil fuel subsidy data. The Australian Govt would have saved itself alot of time and money had it cut these subsidies instead of plowing additional resources into the carbon tax.

Regarding the "linked FUD". The second link is from a respected Australian scientist Bob Carter, who bothered to take time out of his busy research schedule to address the biased climate rhetoric from govt and mainstream media. His presentation is aimed at a non-technical, laymen level which would suit most of the subscribers on this subreddit. And from his profile page...
>Bob's research has been supported by grants from competitive
public research agencies, especially the Australian Research
Council (ARC). He receives no research funding from special
interest organisations such as environmental groups, energy
companies or government departments. Bob strives to provide
critical and dispassionate analysis based upon scientific
principles, demonstrated facts and a knowledge of the scientific
literature.

Yes, that sure is alot of FUD.

The book My Year of Meats is also enlightening, interesting and shocking.

>Animals, without a mind or conciousness, cannot rape as they do not know what that means.

This is faulty reasoning. Regardless of whether they have a moral system that considers it wrong, they do have both consensual and non-consensual sex.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_sexual_behavior#Coercive_sex

Dolphins, elephants, ducks and geese have been documented doing this.

http://www.amazon.com/Natural-History-Rape-Biological-Coercion/dp/0262201259

Rape carries a reproductive advantage, allowing the rapist to pass on their genes, while not investing any effort in caring for the offspring, and bypassing the female's selection process which would normally let her pick the most suitable male.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiological_theories_of_rape

Stating that meat eating is natural is not an ethical justification. It's a behavior which has significant negative consequences, and is not necessary to living a healthy and rewarding life. It's a luxury done to satisfy a preferred taste.

Textbook of Dendrology.

Here's a link https://www.amazon.com/One-Too-Small-Make-Difference/dp/0141991747/

This is part of his book Collapse: How Societies choose to Fail or Succeed. Interesting, but oh so depressing.

Eh, I think a lack of scarcity and overwhelming benefits from egalitarianism would have tipped our ancestors towards kindness rather than cruelty. But you don't have to take my word for it.

>Here are a few articles about examples of GM crops promoting superbugs and superweeds:

There is no such thing as 'super' pests or weeds. That is a misnomer. There are weeds resistant to herbicides, yes, and pests resistant to the plant's GE defenses, yes, but they are neither super not new. The first herbicide resistant weeds were documented two decades before GE crops were on the market, and resistance breakdown (when a pest overcomes a plant's resistance) happens as a result of simple evolutionary biology and has no bearing on the origin of the resistance. It happens in non-GE crops as well, so if your argument against Ge crops is that the same laws of population genetics apply to them as apply to every other crop, you're against a lot more than just GE and should take up a stance against conventional breeding as well.

>Well-managed organic practices can reduce pest damage naturally without sacrificing yields.

Well, first off, citing the Rodale Institute on organic is like citing Monsanto on GE. Second, false dichotomy. Organic is a method of growing things. Genetic engineering is a way of improving a plant. The only wedge between them is ideological, not reality based (some say both should be used). That, really, is the biggest problem with organic. It's ideology, not science. There's nothing wrong with biological techniques, in fact, the world would be a lot better off it the could replace chemical based ones, however, that does not mean that the dogmatic organic approach is the right way to go, nor is an appeal to nature is valid, and furthermore, genetic engineering is a biological technique. Third, what happens when things are run not well but average? Here's the (study) referenced in your second link by the way.

edit: I should probably add that I'm not trying to dismiss the dangers of resistant weeds and pests, just that they are a poor argument against genetic engineering itself (also, they're dangerous because they threaten to take away the benefits GE has already provided, so to use them as an argument against GE is to start out admitting they have been very useful).

I reply, asking you have you read, “The origin of totalitarianism” by Hannah Arendt?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0156701537/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_gxByDb433BW5H

Hannah Arendt's definitive work on totalitarianism and an essential component of any study of twentieth-century political history

The Origins of Totalitarianism begins with the rise of anti-Semitism in central and western Europe in the 1800s and continues with an examination of European colonial imperialism from 1884 to the outbreak of World War I. Arendt explores the institutions and operations of totalitarian movements, focusing on the two genuine forms of totalitarian government in our time—Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia—which she adroitly recognizes were two sides of the same coin, rather than opposing philosophies of Right and Left. From this vantage point, she discusses the evolution of classes into masses, the role of propaganda in dealing with the nontotalitarian world, the use of terror, and the nature of isolation and loneliness as preconditions for total domination.