I=PAT

[GliderGuider]

The I=PAT "conceptual equation" illustrates the idea that the impact (I) that humanity has on the planet is the multiplicative product of our population (P) times our affluence (A) times our level of technology (T).

The evidence of this impact is all around us, in the air (CO2 and global warming) in the oceans (acidification and the precipitous decline of fish species) and on land (loss of biodiversity, deforestation, habitat destruction, loss of soil fertility).

Here's an attempt to quantify the level of impact, at least approximately:



As a very rough approximation, there has been at least a thousand-fold increase in each of the categories. This implies that humanity's impact on the planet has gone up by at factor of at least a billion in the last 12,000 years.

As far as I can tell, there has been no noticeable slowdown in our increasing impact in recent decades. Advances in one area like the slowdown of our population growth have been overtaken by increases in CO2 output and the accelerating loss of biodiversity. This trend makes small-scale interventions like adjusting the source of our electrical energy or improving our farming techniques tantamount to a simple rearrangement of the deck chairs.

Is there anything we can do about this?

If one rejects the validity of the I=PAT formula then there is of course plenty of wiggle room. Since I accept it as a conceptual signpost, I'm left, as I always am when I step back to look at the big picture, with the realization that we need to reduce all three of those factors - our population, our affluence and the level of our technology. And reductions like those are not what the human story has been about so far.

How do we change our story so that reductions like those are seen as a positive event rather than a negative one, something to be worked toward rather than resisted?

[BrklynLiberal]

1. 5 million vs 6.8 billion, alone, is enough to see that the human race has

impacted this planet...and I cannot think of one item that has made the planet a better place, except in its ability to sustain more people. Humanity is like an engine whose only purpose is to keep itself running, no matter what the ultimate cost to the parts that enable that process.

[txlibdem]

2. Bigger PAT = always bad, always increases impact

How about if we develop fusion energy? That goes under "T" right?

What happens to impact once we replace ("T") fossil fuel vehicles with electric vehicles.

PRT (Personal Rapid Transit) could replace personally owned vehicles, delivery vehicles, trash and recycling trucks, etc. Wouldn't that reduce impact?

When we harness the potential of nanotechnology to make everything we want and need (including food) from a handful of sand or a glass of seawater, what will you calculate is our impact then. The Affluence and Technology of each human goes through the roof, the number of humans can double or triple. Impact? Looks like zero to me.

[GliderGuider]

3. Nanotech?

Mmmmhmmm.

[txlibdem]

4. Did I mention any timeline?

No, I didn't.

Why did you also not snark on my inclusion of fusion power? Mmmmhmmm?

[GliderGuider]

5. Sorry about the snark, that was uncalled for.

For me timelines look like the crucial issue, and both fusion and nano smack too much of "Deus ex Machina". I know a lot of people are enamored with the ideas, but I can't get them to look real in my own mind.

[txlibdem]

9. Sorry. My snark sensitivity was ramped up from other stuff that day

Thanks for the cool glass of water. It helps to hear a little human understanding once in a while. :grouphug:

I can see your point that they seem like the "magic bullet" to so many of our problems and it was a little bit of a cheat to throw them in their as serious possibilities at this time. My faith that fusion can be figured out and brought to commercial viability isn't based on a whole lot of good progress to date.

Edit to add:
Partial tie-in with this poll:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=228&topic_id=71864&mesg_id=71864

[joshcryer]

6. Energy should be in this equation.

And since we use less energy than algae, I think that it's faulty.

Humans use less energy than algae.
Humans have a very negative impact on the environment.
Therefore algae have a very negative impact on the environment.

The last statement is not true, therefore humans should be able to exist in the environment with an impact equal to that of algae.

[GliderGuider]

7. Algae aren't very affluent, though...

The last time I saw pond scum driving a BMW it was my ex-wife...

[joshcryer]

8. They most certainly are, being the primary energy user on the planet.

A good majority of our oxygen comes from them.

[GliderGuider]

13. As I point out below, it's entirely plausible to use energy as a proxy.

However, I=PAT just applies within a species over time.

If you compared algae impact over time, it would make sense to set their technology level at 1 since it doesn't change, and their affluence at 1 since each algal cell consumes a constant amount of energy. That makes their impact directly proportional to their population. The same applies to any non-human species that doesn't use stored exosomatic energy or manufactured objects (i.e. technology).

[Nederland]

10. Since this is a formula that involves multiplying things...

...I have to ask: what are the units? Population is obvious, the units are individuals. But what exactly are the units for affluence and technology?

[bananas]

11. It's more impact of the particular technologies than technology in general

T isn't how technological something is, it's how much impact that specific technology has.
As wikipedia points out, "Improvements in efficiency can reduce resource intensiveness, reducing the T multiplier."
That's what Buckminster Fuller called ephemeralization.

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

The T variable in the I=PAT equation represents how resource intensive the production of affluence is; how much environmental impact is involved in creating, transporting and disposing of the goods, services and amenities used. Improvements in efficiency can reduce resource intensiveness, reducing the T multiplier. Since technology can affect environmental impact in many different ways, the unit for T is often tailored for the situation I=PAT is being applied to. For example, for a situation where the human impact on climate change is being measured, an appropriate unit for T might be greenhouse gas emissions per unit of GDP.

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

Ephemeralization, a term coined by R. Buckminster Fuller, is the ability of technological advancement to do "more and more with less and less until eventually you can do everything with nothing". Fuller's vision was that ephemeralization will result in ever-increasing standards of living for an ever-growing population despite finite resources. The concept has been embraced by those who argue against Malthusian philosophy.

[GliderGuider]

12. Units and efficiency

There are a number of proxies that can be used for the A and T terms that would make them countable.

My preference for the affluence proxy is per capita primary energy consumption that is turned into work. The more energy you have at your disposal, the wealthier you are. As a hunter-gatherer I might have burned 2 tonnes of wood per year for heat, light and material production, of which only 1% of the energy was used. That would equate to 0.5 GJ per person per year. Today the average primary energy consumption is around 50 GJ per person, or 100 times as much.

A proxy for technology could be the number of distinctly different manufactured items that we use in our lives. In H-G times, this would probably not have exceeded 10,000 objects. Today it numbers in the billions. Let's say it's a billion. So we use a hundred thousand times as much technology today as we did then.

So using these proxies today we have 1000 times as many people, each of whom is 100 times as wealthy, using 100,000 times as much technology, for a combined combined species impact that's 1,000x100x100,000 = 1,000,000,000 times greater today than in H-G times. This in necessarily imprecise, but it serves to give some idea of the scale of our impact.

Regarding efficiency, increasing efficiency doesn't necessarily decrease the impact, as it allows us to "afford" more of the impacting activity. Consider the case of house construction. House construction is vastly more efficient today than it was three hundred years ago. Has this reduced the impact of house construction on the natural world? Or has it enabled more houses to be built, using more complex technologies and materials? The same goes for transportation and food production.

Ephemeralization is an interesting idea, but it merely points out that the two classes of people most out of touch with reality are philosophers and economists.

[Nederland]

14. Thanks

I would have to disagree with you about Ephemeralization though. I'm sure when Buckminster Fuller said "eventually you can do everything with nothing" he was being a bit tongue in cheek. Obviously you will need "something", but in the future that "something" could very well be a few hundred watts of electricity. It is perfectly possible that we will see per capita resource usage plummet as virtual reality becomes more and more advanced. Once the technology reaches the point where a large house in VR is just as enjoyable as a real one, and a virtual trip to Europe just as satisfying as a real one, why would anyone bother to consume the resources to build a real house or take a real trip? Given progress in the field over the last 20 years, I see no technical reason why such a condition is not inevitable.

[muriel_volestrangler]

16. Your measurement of 'technology' is completely screwed up

It's not just that you've pulled some estimates out of thin air; your units are also wrong.

If you are going to multiply the 'number of objects used' by the number of people, then each object must belong only to one person. This isn't a question of measuring interdependency, or the number of connections between people and objects; you're trying to find the impact of the total number of objects in the world. Now, one billion objects per person per lifetime is about 34,000 new objects per day. No-one has 34,000 new objects every day of their life. So your 'billion objects' number is meaningless.

Similarly, if you are counting the number of objects per person, and multiplying by the number of people, you cannot then multiply again by the energy usage per person - our energy usage is high because we use more objects than a hunter-gatherer. You would need an 'energy per object' number. And so, overall, you just end up with a number for the amount of energy the world uses.

Really, you are totally misusing the I=PAT equation. And that's how you end up with ridiculous figures like "each one of us has the same impact as 5 million or more of our ancestors".

To try to get anything approaching sense out of the equation, with a comparison with pre-agricultural humanity:

P for the number of people: fine. This is a real number, that a sensible estimate can be made for

A for affluence: This is really meant for comparing modern societies with each other, where there is a measure of affluence available - GDP per capita. Even this has a problem comparing with hunter-gatherer cultures, where there's no trade to compare the 'product' of a person with a society using money. You might be able to say a hunter-gatherer has the same 'affluence' as someone at a recognised level of poverty, eg one dollar a day.

T for technology: This is meant to measure the environmental impact of the technology used. That means that advanced technology may have less impact than simple technology - an area of solar panels may have less impact than chopping down forest to obtain the same energy. This is by far the hardest quantity to measure - the idea of it, in the equation, is to note that, for instance, a modern, carefully run chemical factory has much less environmental impact than an old one run with no concern for the environment, chucking its poisonous waste out into rivers etc. Or a wind turbine has less impact, per unit of power, than a coal-burning generating station.

The difficulty of estimating 'T' means you cannot just say "we have more objects, therefore our impact is multiplied by the increase in that number".

And the impact on renewable resources is not a linear thing; take fishing as an example. A modest amount of fishing in the world, whether with simple rod and line technology, or with motorised trawlers, is sustainable - we take the place of some existing predators in the ecosystem, but if we only take a small percentage of any species each year, it can breed enough replacements next year, and the populations stay steady. Take a little bit more than is sustainable, and populations crash, and out impact has suddenly become huge. There isn't just one 'number of fish caught' we can multiply by anything to work out the total impact.

It's almost impossible to compare the impact of hunter-gatherer technology with modern technology in terms you can use in a calculation. Impact on what? If someone hunts a species to extinction (eg the moa in New Zealand), or they burn large areas to drive animals in a certain direction, the impact is huge. We have impacts on non-renewable mineral resources that a hunter-gatherer never would. If killing an animal is a negative impact, is breeding them a positive impact? And so on.

[GliderGuider]

17. There is no way to make the concept fully calculable, as I point out.

I=PAT is essentially a conceptual aid intended to give a general sense of how we impact the planet, and to what extent.

I believe that the impact we're having is much more profound than most people recognize, and I'm looking for illustrative aids to promote that recognition. I=PAT is good, but most people can't get a handle on what it means. This was my attempt to provide a way for people to read some quantity into the concept. "Yeah, we have more impact on the planet than the hunter-gatherers, but how much more?" is a question I've heard more than once.

There are many, many proxies one could use for affluence or technology, all of which will have advantages and shortcomings. This was my attempt to come up with proxies. They have advantages and shortcomings. Such is life in the world of proxies and conceptual formulas.

Your comment about the difficulty of assigning GDP to H-G societies is precisely why I chose energy usage as a proxy for affluence. We haven't always used money, but we have always used energy, and the richer we are the more of it we use. It seems like a reasonable proxy to me.

There is also a crossover between technology and affluence, as you note. I was interested by the fact that that using my proxies we appear to be only a hundred times more affluent than a hunter-gatherer, while out technology seems to be 100,000 times higher. The two terms are open to a lot of interpretation and interplay.

While a wind farm may have less impact per unit of power than a coal plant, the electricity generated has exactly the same impact. We can nibble around the margins by making the generation technologies somewhat more benign, but much of the impact of electricity comes from the end use of the electricity itself, independent of the generation technology. The same goes for chemical factories. There are two aspects to their impact - that of the factory, and that of the product.

The deeper point I'm trying to make is that given the scale of our impact, it might not be entirely justified to put our hope in relatively small increases in production efficiency (whether of energy, food or materials) to alleviate the situation. It's perfectly fine to behave as though such improvements will help (which many of them will), but an awareness of the true scale of the problems one is trying to solve is always a good thing when trying to come up with realistic options.

How do you know my figure of 5 million times is "ridiculous"? It may be vastly too high, but saying so doesn't make it so. That's more of an emotional reaction than an objective assessment. What would you propose as a method for determining how big the human predicament is?

[muriel_volestrangler]

18. I think you are still deeply confused and lost

You have not made the concept remotely 'calculable', but you have nevertheless made claims based on your illegitimate calculation. A calculation has no meaning whatsoever unless its units are valid. These claims are therefore rubbish.

"Your comment about the difficulty of assigning GDP to H-G societies is precisely why I chose energy usage as a proxy for affluence. "

OK, then stick to energy usage. You cannot multiply a person's energy usage by the number of objects associated with them and get a meaningful number.

"I was interested by the fact that that using my proxies we appear to be only a hundred times more affluent than a hunter-gatherer, while out technology seems to be 100,000 times higher. the two terms are open to a lot of interpretation and interplay."

Your phrase "our technology seems to be 100,000 times higher" is twaddle. What are the units of this 'technology'? As already established, the 'T' in 'I=PAT' is about the impact of the technology used. Our present technology does not have 100,000 times the impact per unit of energy used than hunter-gatherer technology did. You also pulled the figure of 100,000 from thin air. You are not 'interpreting' the terms; you are completely misusing them.

"How do you know my figure of 5 million times is "ridiculous"?"

Because you have screwed the units up. I have shown that, with an objective assessment.

If you want a method for measuring our predicament, I suggest you look at the WWF Living Planet Report, for which a new edition is just out. In particular:

The Ecological Footprint tracks the area of biologically productive
land and water required to provide the renewable resources people
use, and includes the space needed for infrastructure and vegetation
to absorb waste carbon dioxide (CO2).

They have figures for hectares used per person in each country. The end result is that the world needs 1.5 times the available resources to maintain our current lifestyle, though of course developed countries use a lot more than undeveloped ones. You could attempt to compare the number of hectares needed for a hunter gatherer to those used by the populations of various countries.

[GliderGuider]

19. That's fine with me.

I'd much rather be lost than certain :-)

Ecological footprint is a very useful measure. It's useful in telling us whether our current practices are sustainable (they're not, of course). It's not helpful for giving us a sense of the full impact we're having on planet, and doesn't purport to do that.

Do you have a suggestion for a technology proxy that's not "twaddle"?

[muriel_volestrangler]

20. The WWF's use of 'global hectares' is the closest you'll get to a universal measurement

If the impact you are concerned with is "carbon dioxide production", and you're measuring affluence as energy usage per capita, then it's something like 'tonnes of CO2 per megajoule'. If the impact is 'percentage of world population of fish caught', then it's 'fish caught per megajoule used to catch fish'. There's some justification for converting these to areas - an area of land or ocean can absorb CO2, or be the breeding and feeding grounds for a number of fish. Even these involve a certain amount of hand-waving.

Whether our practices are sustainable is the central point of "the full impact we're having on planet". Are you trying to measure a visual impact or something? Or how 'nice' our impact is? Apart from sustainability, what aspect of impact can be described objectively (let alone quantitatively?) If you compare human energy usage to the total energy flux for the planet, it is still minute, even though we're damaging things. So a measure of "how much of the earth's energy flux is diverted for humans" makes everything sound hunky-dory. The percentage of the earth's area devoted to human activity is a bit better, but that's back to the ecological footprint, more or less (and there are still questions about that - if we irrigate a desert, and increase the biomass, and biomass turnover, in it, have we done a good thing? Or have we 'spoiled' a unique place, even if it didn't have much life in it?).

[GliderGuider]

21. I'm basically thinking out loud.

Not trying to win a Nobel here, or anything.

I don't think that extinct species care very much if our practices are sustainable once they've been impacted out of existence by our sustainable actions.

[GliderGuider]

22. Ecological footprint is not the same as human impact.

“Sustainability” and “ecological footprint” are essentially anthropocentric measures. Our actions are said to be sustainable if we survive over the long haul. Sustainability requires that a certain degree of “natural infrastructure” remain intact to support us, but does not directly account for the impact we have on planetary systems that are not essential for our survival.

“Impact” in the sense that I=PAT describes it is less anthropocentric. It is concerned as much, if not more, with the effect our actions – sustainable or not – have on the rest of the inhabitants of the planet.

I'm becoming more and more interested in preserving a web of life that isn't simply a resource base for the human experiment, but has intrinsic value of its own. From that perspective it's essential that we move further than simple anthropocentric metrics like ecological footprint.

[muriel_volestrangler]

24. If you're still unsure how to define 'impact', then you shouldn't use it in equations

Equations are for when you have real numbers to use. If I were you, I'd forget about "I=PAT", since you do not have the concepts of the quantities involved defined at all.

[GliderGuider]

26. Fortunately, you're not me :-)

The fact that I=PAT is framed as a mathematical equation seems to be throwing you off. While it can be used that way, and has been by the IPCC for CO2 measurements, by far its most valuable quality is as tool for reframing one's thinking about what's going on out there. I'm trying to strike a middle ground here between the purely qualitative, "gut-feel" approach and the purely quantitative approach. I'm trying to give the "gut-feel" folks a bit more substance to chew on, but my approach is bound to displease the numerologists.

[kristopher]

30. Actually what you are doing is plowing the field for nuclear...

You did the same thing with peak oil - make up wild ass, harebrained "doom is right around the corner" scenarios in one post then point people to nuclear as a solution three days later.

You think you're slick, but you are really pretty obvious.

[GliderGuider]

28. One of the problems with quantifying impact is the variety of effects involved

The effects I'm interested in include:

Climate change
Habitat destruction through human habitation, agriculture and mining
Biodiversity loss and extinctions
Changing ocean pH
Toxicity of manufacturing processes and waste streams
Dropping fossil water tables
Shifting genomes due to hybridization, cultivation and genetic modification
Desertification, deforestation and salination
Growing oceanic dead zones
Dropping fertility of agricultural soils

The effects are so varied that if one wishes to estimate the overall impact of man on the planet it's impossible to arrive at a single metric. It's possible to use substantive metrics if one wishes to examine a single domain, but that's not what interests me. We don't get the big picture if we take such a reductionist approach. I'm a holistic kind of guy, so I'm satisfied to pick a couple of reasonable metrics and riff on them. YMMV

[TheMadMonk]

35. It may or may not be ridiculous. It IS meaningless.

Some technologies offset other technologies. Smokestack scrubbers would be the most visibly obvious example if they suddenly disappeared. We occasionally point the finger at the pollution plume wafting off China, imangine a truly Dickensian China if you would. A world literally inches deep in soot.

Set six billion hunter gatherers loose on the planet and imagine how long it would last.

A tribe of 20 hunter gatherers are fully capable of permanently altering the ecological landscape for tens of kilometres around them. Pick your criteria and 20 bison bothering individuals can have an impact that is comparable in a limited sense to the impact of 20 million urbanites.

Our collective eccological footprint may well be high. However, divided by six billion, to arrive at an individual's portion of the current total impact may well come up with a historically low figure.

[GliderGuider]

25. Revisiting the numbers, with a surprise ending.

I’d like to revisit the question of the relative impact of modern man and hunter-gatherers, with a bit more discussion of the proxies I chose.

The numbers here are my own SWAG (Scientific Wild-Ass Guess) , intended to get us into some sort of ballpark for discussion. I’ve tried in each case to maximize the Paleolithic impact and minimize the impact of modern man.

Regarding the use of energy as a proxy for affluence, this still seems reasonable, because the wealthier one is the more energy they tend to consume in general. This is OK except for one major factor. The energy used by Paleolithic man was entirely renewable, so obviously had a lower impact on the planet. A hunter-gatherer’s wood fires had less impact in production, use and waste products than the coal, oil, gas, nuclear and hydro power that we use today. So it would probably help to weight the impact of each.

With a bit of reflection I’m inclined to give wood fire a weighting of 1 and modern energy production a weighting of about 10, meaning that the affluence represented by a gigajoule of modern energy comes with 10 times the cost in terms of planetary impact. I think it might be higher than that, but this will do for starters.

I’ve also been thinking a little more about the technology factor. I still think that counting objects is a reasonable approach, especially from a point of view that’s as globally aggregated as the one I’m exploring. After all, technology is defined as “the usage and knowledge of tools, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization.”

Out of the 10,000 or so functionally different types of Paleolithic artifacts that existed globally, a hunter gatherer might use about 100 manufactured items on a daily basis, from clothing to stone, bone and wood tools. Most of these were very low-impact, because they were either made from renewable materials or were used in very small numbers (an individual wouldn’t likely possess more than a couple of stone hammers or a dozen spear tips, for example).

Out of the billions of functionally different manufactured items that exist today, a modern man might use 50,000 on a daily basis, either directly or indirectly. The direct uses would consist of objects like clothing, vehicles, electronics, power tools, buildings and furnishings, and all their distinct component parts. The indirect uses would include things like a pro-rated portion of all the factory components required to produce the direct-use items. I think 50,000 is probably a low estimate.

In addition, the objects we use today have a much higher impact than Paleolithic hammers, spear tips and bone knives. Like our energy, much of our modern manufacturing is done with non-renewable materials, whose extraction, processing and waste streams have a greater impact on the planet’s natural systems. Again, a weighting factor is appropriate here. I’d give an impact weighting of 1 to Paleolithic technology, and an impact weighting of 10 to modern technology. Again, I think that’s a low estimate for modern technology.

So, let’s see where that leaves us.

A hunter-gatherer gets a score of 0.5 (GJ) for Affluence with a weighting factor of 1, and a score of 100 (objects) for Technology with a weighting factor of 1.

A modern human gets a score of 50 (GJ) for Affluence with a weighting factor of 10, and a score of 50,000 (objects) with a weighting factor of 10 for Technology.

Let’s put it all together and see where we are:

In both cases P = 1 since we’re measuring the per-person impact.

For hunter gatherers I = 0.5 x 1; and T = 100 x 1 = 100.

So for a hunter-gatherer Impact = 0.5 x 100 = 50. No associated unit is required, since this number is only valid in comparison to what follows.

For modern man I = 50 x 10 = 500; and T = 50,000 x 10 = 500,000.

So for a modern man, Impact = 500 x 500,000 = 250,000,000 (again with no units).

When we normalize these numbers by simple division, we discover that a modern human has 250,000,000 / 50 = 5 million times the impact of a hunter-gatherer.

In other words, even with what I believe are conservative estimates for the impact of our energy and technology on the planet, each one of us has the same estimated planetary impact as all the human beings alive 12,000 years ago.

Given that our population is 1,000 times the size it was back then, modern man has an aggregate impact 5 billion times greater than the total Paleolithic population. This is the same order of magnitude as my previous SWAG.

I know it’s hard to accept, but there it is.

Comments and critiques are welcome.

[guardian]

27. Nothing left to do now

but wring our hands and go shoot up the Discovery Channel headquarters. Wow! I thought we were just at DOOM DOOM DOOM stage. But we are actually at

5DOOM⁹

I guess the scientific 'proof' for I=PAT is the empirical data that CO² PPM is 5 billion times higher than the level from 10,000 years ago. Conclusive evidence indeed.

Quick let's eat our pets, build an ark, and chisel out a stone cup for our Mocha Latte.

[GliderGuider]

29. Why on earth would we just give up? You can if you want, but I have no such intention. nt

[muriel_volestrangler]

31. WTF? That's what you call 'the middle ground'?

You say "I'm trying to strike a middle ground here between the purely qualitative, "gut-feel" approach and the purely quantitative approach. I'm trying to give the "gut-feel" folks a bit more substance to chew on, but my approach is bound to displease the numerologists."

And then you dive straight into making numbers up from thin air, completely ignore anything whatsoever about units, and then repull your own happy "each one of us has the same estimated planetary impact as all the human beings alive 12,000 years ago" garbage conclusion out of the dark place you've been keeping it in.

Numerologists will be dancing with joy at what you're doing. You are worshipping digits, making up anything you feel like, and pretending you have some acquaintance with mathematics. You are a numerologist. There is nothing 'scientific' about your post above. It's so wild, it doesn't deserve the name 'guess'.

It's complete bullshit.

I'm wondering if this is all a complete wind-up - a satire on innumerate musings on the environment. But your past posts here indicate you are genuinely concerned about the environment, so I can't see why you'd pretend to produce such a load of rubbish.

You've achieved one surprising thing - I agree with guardian about something. Your post is a farcical embarrassment to DU.

[GliderGuider]

32. That's a pretty intense reaction.

No, it's not a wind-up, this is how I actually think about things. I'm not a scientist in real life, and I'm not trying to play one on DU. I've never felt it was necessary to pretend to be scientific just to use a few numbers as a tool in a thought experiment. That's all this is, you know, just my thought experiment. I'm not sure why it embarrasses you.

[muriel_volestrangler]

33. The problem is that you are trying to play a scientist

You manufacture a bogus figure like "a modern human has 5 million times the impact of a palaeolithic one", and then quote it in other threads as if it's real. Your numbers are complete tripe. They don't deserve the name of 'thought experiment'. If you have no clue about numbers, then you shouldn't make them up and try to use them.

It's embarrassing because people will link to your posts and say "look how innumerate DUers are".

[GliderGuider]

34. It sounds like you'd prefer it

if I spoke only in ways you find acceptable. That's disappointing.

Unfortunately, I think the way I think and I tend to speak my thoughts. You are free to reject them, ignore them or dispute them. But I won't change my thoughts or speech to save you from a bit of potential embarrassment. Sorry, I just don't do that.

[Nihil]

36. You say that as if he was the only one to do so.

> The problem is that you are trying to play a scientist

Just look in this forum alone at the number of people who seem to
be "trying to play a scientist" every day. You don't even need to
get to GD and the rest of the sandpits beyond to find people who
(deliberately or innocently) f*ck up their figures.


> It's embarrassing because people will link to your posts and
> say "look how innumerate DUers are".

You appear to be claiming that GliderGuider is all the evidence that
"people" will find on DU to be able to say that. That claim is far
more fallacious than anything GG has said so far as there are literally
hundreds of illiterate, innumerate and downright ignorant DUers, found
on every forum & group and providing evidence of their stupidity every day.

It can be frustrating but you are taking this right out of context
if you think that a thread like this (involving GG's hand-waves for
discussion) is somehow more "proof" than the continued presence of
various deniers (one of whom you happily support elsewhere on this
thread), fantasists (whether or not they are confined to one of the
appropriate dungeons - I/P, Guns, 9/11, Lounge) or other complete
fruitcakes that make up the "rich tapestry of DU".

A little perspective here maybe?
:shrug:

[muriel_volestrangler]

37. The wish to get figures by multiplying number is the whole basis of this thread

and GG asked for comments and critiques as well.

My 'support' for a 'denier' in this thread has consisted of agreeing with him about the absurdity of the result GG has arrived at - and I noted that it's very unusual for me to agree with him about anything. I've have plenty of arguments with him in this forum. And with various fantasists around DU - I haven't taken them all on, but it's next to impossible for any one person to do so. That's no reason not to point out fundamental errors when you see them. I pointed out a complete fabrication in another thread in this forum 2 days ago, and, yesterday, that the basic claim in another thread was completely wrong. I'm not just picking on GG.

[GliderGuider]

40. You still haven't said why you think the result is absurd, but never mind.

I've realized it doesn't matter. We are where we are, the arrow of time flies only forward, and looking backward isn't helpful.

Cheers,
GG

[muriel_volestrangler]

41. It's your use of the 'technology' component that is most absurd

As I have said repeatedly, your units of 'objects' are nothing to do with 'impact of technology'.

Maybe, more precisely, I should say your dimensions are completely wrong.

As an example, the electrical equation P=IV (power equals current times voltage) only works if you put a value that measures a voltage in for 'V'. You cannot just say "I'll put a resistance in there, because I know that number".

So, the equation I=PAT works when the dimensions of P, A, and T, all multiplied together, have the dimensions of I. So, if P is a number of people, A energy use per person, and I 'impact', then T has to be measured in impact per unit of energy. Counting objects is not the same as measuring the impact of some energy.

Apart from that, you pull some other numbers out of thin air, for instance "with a bit of reflection I’m inclined to give wood fire a weighting of 1 and modern energy production a weighting of about 10, meaning that the affluence represented by a gigajoule of modern energy comes with 10 times the cost in terms of planetary impact"; that '10' is actually the number that would be appropriate to use for 'T', but you give no justification for this '10' at all. Wood fire has a high impact if a living tree is cut down to get the wood, for instance. Deforestation has been a major problem in human history. Just making up a number without evidence is pretty pointless. Making it the base of the decimal system really makes it look as though you've never even tried to calculate it in any form.

[GliderGuider]

42. OK, thanks. nt

[kristopher]

44. Unless...

...it helps you make a bogus argument to either support nuclear power or disparage renewables, you mean.

[bananas]

43. Thanks for linking to those posts.

I don't read every post.

[Nihil]

45. We've noticed that! (n/t)

:P

[Nederland]

38. A small correction to your numbers

Well, as long as we are making things up using arbitrary criteria...


A hunter-gatherer gets a score of 1.0 for Affluence because we are using it as a baseline.

A modern human gets a score of 2.4 for Affluence because modern humans live on average 2.4 times longer than hunter gathers (an estimate based upon this: http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/faculty/gurven/papers/pdrdraft04182006.pdf)

A hunter-gatherer gets a score of 36000 for Technology because that is how many seconds it took him/her to acquire the calories necessary to survive for one day (10 hours hunting/gathering = 600 minutes = 36000 seconds)

A modern human gets a score of 150 for Technology because that is how many seconds it takes him/her to acquire the calories necessary to survive for one day (The average US farmer produces enough food to feed 144 people. Assume an average ~40 hour work week, 6 hours a day = 360 minutes = 21600 seconds / 144 = 150).


Let’s put it all together and see where we are:

In both cases P = 1 since we’re measuring the per-person impact.

For hunter gatherers Impact is 36000 (I = 1 x 1.0 x 36000)

For modern man Impact is 360 (I = 1 x 2.4 x 150)

When we normalize these numbers by simple division, we discover that a modern human has 360 / 36000 = 1/100 the impact of a hunter-gatherer.

Given that our population is 1,000 times the size it was back then, modern man has an aggregate impact 10 times greater than the total Paleolithic population. This corrected version is many orders of magnitude lower than your SWAG.

[GliderGuider]

39. Right, then. Carry on.

You and muriel play nice, now.

[GliderGuider]

15. Jesus H. Christ, give it a rest, already.

Yeah, yeah, the world's going to end. We got it.

Now put on this rubber nose and the wig and go outside if you REALLY want to scare the children.

[GliderGuider]

23. So much for giving it a rest, eh?

Clown.