4 Matching Annotations
  1. Jul 2024
    1. for - economic growth - physical limits to - reductio ad absurdum - physical absurdity of continuing current energy and waste heat trends into the near future

      paper details - title - Limits to Economic Growth - author - Thomas W. Murphy Jr. - date - 21 July, 2022 - publication - Nature Physics, comment, online - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-022-01652-6

      summary - Physicist Thomas W. Murphy employs reductio ab adsurdium logic to prove the fallacy of the assumptions of his argument - In this case, the argument is that we can indefinitely continue to sustain economic growth at rates that have held steady at about 2-3% per annum since the early 1900s. - Using both idealistic and simplified energy and waste heat calculations of energy and waste heat compounding at 2-3% per annum (or 10x per century), Murphy shows the absurd conclusions of continuing these current trends of energy and waste heat emissions on a global scale. - The implications are that physics and thermodynamics will naturally constrain us to plateau to a steady state economy in which the majority of economic activity needs to not depend on physically intensive

      from - Planet Critical podcast - 6th Mass Extinction - interview with science journalist Peter Brannen - https://hyp.is/66oSJD-AEe-rN08IjlMu5A/docdrop.org/video/cP8FXbPrEiI/

    1. this very elegant uh argument made by this I think he is a uh he's a physicist I 00:46:11 think at UC San Diego Tom Murphy where he's like even even if you take the most conservative relationship between energy use and economic growth and you plot it out a couple hundred years from now then 00:46:26 the economy is producing so much waste heat that the oceans will be boiling off and in in a thousand years you're like the economy is producing so much waste heat that it's more energy than is put 00:46:38 out in the sun in all directions

      for - limits to economic growth - physics calculations - by Tom Murphy show absurdity of continual growth - energy and waste heat perspective

      to - Nature Physics - LImits to Economic Growth - Tom Murphy - https://hyp.is/CM3Grj9_Ee-obTc6jrPBRA/tmurphy.physics.ucsd.edu/papers/limits-econ-final.pdf

  2. Nov 2023
    1. we're in a position as a modern techno-industrial culture this is my view that it's false to say what the oil 00:29:32 companies are saying that we can keep producing oil and gas we'll get the society to pay for carbon capture and storage and and other stuff but it's going to be a technological salvation 00:29:44 and then we can keep on with our life that's one version the the other version is the environmentalist version which the federal government has bought into and that is we'll go green and then we 00:29:57 can keep everything
      • for: false dichotomy of sustaining modernity

      • paraphrase

        • The pace of modernity can neither be sustained in a high carbon nor a low carbon green economy
        • No matter what the political party, they all subscribe to a view of sustaining the same or greater pace of modernity
      • comment

        • libertarians want no constraints
        • but nature herself imposes limits
        • populations collapse if resources are overused
        • human populations who adopt a Libertarian approach eventually encounter a limit anyways
  3. Jul 2022
    1. The debate might seem too trivial to care about, but as authors Simon Lewis and Mark A. Maslin demonstrate, the stakes are very high indeed. They show that scientists since the 18th century have recognized human influence on the face of the earth. What we have learned since then, and especially in the past 50 years, shows our influence has grown only greater; we just don’t want to admit it, because then we’d have to try to clean up the mess we’ve made.

      Ever since Limits to Growth was released, incumbent power has been in a continuous state of denial.