This thread is the bimonthly open thread for discussion of climate solutions. A good starting point might be this clear description from Glen Peters on the feasibility of staying below 2ºC. Please stick to substantive points and refrain from attacking other commenters (as opposed to their ideas). The open thread for climate science issues is here.
Concrete as is, is not going to be sustainable. Now and for the foreseeable future the massive industry behind it is going to grow at huge rates – based on the old CO2 emitting recipe. With 5 to 8% it is a giant among the CO2 emittants.
But it is not only that, with the use of concrete there are common construction practices and restrictions in materials bundled and needed, all of these are huge (fossile based) CO2 emitters as well: steel, glasfibre, carbonfibre, petrochemical products. Concrete buildings, seen worldwide, make bad, unhealthy living environments because of the inferior air humidity and the rising need for air conditioning, compared to traditional resilient housing made of local usually abundant renewable materials: wood/bamboo, always neglected crops that sequester CO2 faster than trees: (straw, hemp, miscanthus…), clay, lime.
Straw buildings rendered with clay and/or lime for example are contrary to intuition extraordinarily fireproof, provide healthy living conditions with low to 0 energy demand and are typically already CO2 negative when you move in – with the oldest beeing already over 100 years old. Compare that to the new concrete/steel/glas towers that last 30 years (see China, and speculation in cities in general) before the have to be replaced and emitted tons of CO2 for Heating and Cooling meanwhile before they have to be downcycled with CO2 emission as well because the materials and their composites dont fit it a circular economy.
[let’s try to stay polite]
#142–Thanks, Hank. I’ve read a great deal of John Brunner in the past, but perhaps not “Sheep.” “Stand on Zanzibar” I found quite–influential, let’s say.
re #134, Murder, and Sheep,
Moralizing is so much more fun than problem-solving, particularly when you are never going to be on the armed front of “the revolution”.
Nation-States are gated communities, some with nuclear weapons. Nation-States control resources, and for some, their well-being is dependent on extracting them.
But hey, kumbaya, Russian (and others’) citizens are going to join the global noble-eco-village to impoverish themselves, according to all the children here. It’s only their leaders that are the problem.
But, as I said, it’s more fun than doing some real scientific reasoning– like, what would be the effect of reducing the global population by 10% as the result of reduced global fertility rates?
Carrie, culling the richest 10% would probably eliminate almost everyone who comments on this blog and most of the world climate scientists. Shall we hold off on that?
Re: The utility of engaging denialists: To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead. – Thomas Paine
Quote: “World is infested with p***ies and cowards imho.”
Gentlemen, So as not to offend 50% of the global population and in view of the assault on women now in progress, could we avoid gendered insults? To refer to our fellow humans as fools and cowards is sufficient, I would think.
For amusement, see Sally Fields’ tweet in response to Samantha Bee referring to Ivanka Trump as a feckless c**t.
– Thomas Paine
==================
con·tempt
kənˈtem(p)t/
the feeling that a person or a thing is beneath consideration, worthless, or deserving scorn.
“he showed his contempt for his job by doing it very badly”
synonyms: scorn, disdain, disrespect, scornfulness, contemptuousness, derision …
=============
Yep. Watch out for that.
Hank Roberts: Who was the theoretician here claiming that permafrost can’t exist underneath a lake?
AB: Twas obviously a conehead because even if the lake doesn’t freeze solid you have a lake bottom near 32F surrounded by a surface that averages less than 32F, so the cone of no-permafrost wouldn’t go terribly deep.
“Re: The utility of engaging denialists: To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead. – Thomas Paine”
True enough, but there are several reasons to at least respond to denialists, even although convincing them is unlikely in most cases. Smart peopole realise all this:
* Denialist claims left unchallenged tends to gain traction with people including decision makers.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” (Edmund Burke)
* It can help educate open minded observers, and people just not sure about climate change. It was rebuttals of denialist arguments that helped convince we we are warming the climate.
* Its fun for semi retired guys like me. Beats wasting time on facebook
* It does sometimes open up good discussion.
Having said this, I often dont bother if the comments are self evidently completely stupid as some are. We all know DNFTT and sometimes its best to not engage. Focus on the stuff that clearly does deserve a rebuttal.
I WAS RIGHT :-)
Again. You folks really are not as smart as you imagine yourselves to be. Dunning-Kruger writ large. (with a huge shrug)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atqFdYkdo-g
Great article on the hidden climate change refugee crisis in the U.S.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/sep/24/americas-era-of-climate-mass-migration-is-here
And we, all of us, all of civilization, are most vulnerable when it comes to sanitation. There simply are no long term solutions except migration.
“Twichell began to notice water pumps were spewing plastic bags, condoms and chip packets into the bay. Friends’ balconies started getting submerged. Twichell, a poet, found apocalyptic themes creeping into her work. Last year, she sold the apartment to a French businessman and moved back to upstate New York.”
“Sanitation is an immediate preoccupation for Stoddard, given the large proportion of residents who aren’t served by sewage works. “If you’re using a septic tank and your toilet starts to overflow into your bathroom because of water inundation, that’s a basis-of-civilization problem,” he said. “A medieval city wasn’t a nice smelling place and they had a lot of diseases.”
The crisis is hidden because, for the most part, it is individuals making personal choices and bailing on a community. This is about to get real for most Americans.
Sth Florida elevation
https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=874.0;attach=108834
All climate change refugees will find themselves just a little bit poorer as a result. Some will be impoverished. As this gets worse, we will see huge numbers of Americans migrating with all of their worldly possessions in a U Haul trailer.
Prepare for 10 Feet [3.1 m] of Sea Level Rise, California Commission Tells Coastal Cities
Quote
California coastal cities should be prepared for the possibility that oceans will rise more than 10 feet by 2100 and submerge parts of beach towns, the state Coastal Commission warns in new draft guidance.
The powerful agency, which oversees most development along 1,100 miles of coast, will consider approving the guidance this fall. A staff report recommending the changes was released last week.
Earlier commission guidance put top sea-level rise at 6 feet by 2100. But according to the new report, there’s the “potential for rapid ice loss to result in an extreme scenario of 10.2 feet of sea level rise” by the end of the century. …
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/prepare-for-10-feet-of-sea-level-rise-california-commission-tells-coastal-cities/
I am afraid that most people, Americans included, have an amazing talent for ignoring information which does not impact them directly, or is not a problem right now. I fear this will be a long, slow retreat from the shores, steadily moving to higher ground.
A million people moving today is noticeable, but 2,740 people moving every day over one year = 1 million which is lost in the daily grind of our society, like that frog in a pot of water on the stove, slowly going over the edge.
But please do be nice and every so polite ….. and whatever you do, do not hold individuals nor groups of individuals to account even when they are obviously and provably consistent extremely high emitters NOR the nations like the USA that wins the highest prizes for historical global warming contribution.
And please, do not riot nor burn down Congressional buildings or blow up an oil sands pipeline if you’re disgusted pissed off about those in power are not doing about anything these critical issues.
Because that’s awfully ‘anti-social’ and very naughty of you to even think about such things. Now, go to your room!
155 MartinJB says:
27 Sep 2018 at 8:43 AM
Carrie, culling the richest 10% would probably eliminate almost everyone who comments on this blog and most of the world climate scientists. Shall we hold off on that?
…………………..
Would such a possibility be put on the table as a looming possibility, can you imagine how much it would immediately focus the minds and behavior of people on this blog, every other blog and news paper / media proprietor, and all the thousands of climate scientists as well!
I suspect it probably would not lead to any degree of focus but they would instead continue to be endlessly distracted by vapid bullshit and distinct lack of purpose and the constant lack of rational cooperation.
‘Dumb and Dumber’ (the movie) keeps getting Dumber to become Idiocracy (the movie) writ large in the real world!
The consequence of Florence was mainly FLOODS. The article shows how there was building development where one shouldn’t including draining wetlands, the response to floods is to build higher & bigger & more levees and dams and drain the swamps, but the real solution is to move to higher ground and restore wetlands, i.e. retreat.
Perhaps one can call it an example of geoengineering syndrome? (see “geoengineering-another rush for money” and “what’s new in Antarctica” for larger examples ?)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/we-need-help-nc-towns-plead-for-dam-levee-upgrades-after-second-major-flood-in-two-years/2018/09/18/1792b788-bb61-11e8-a8aa-860695e7f3fc_story.html?utm_term=.7143d120dbb4&wpisrc=nl_green&wpmm=1
‘We need help’: N.C. towns plead for dam, levee upgrades after second major flood in two years
Quote
When it inundated North Carolina in 2016, meteorologists called Hurricane Matthew a “500-year rain event,” the kind of downpour that was likely to occur once every half-millennium. But then, just two years later, here came Florence, a “1,000-year event” that hit all the same places in all the same ways, if not harder…….
…..The mayor wants to clear the area’s swamps and canals of fallen trees and debris from Matthew and past hurricanes, which he said would allow storm water to drain out of neighborhoods faster…….
…..Ryan Emanuel, an environmental scientist at North Carolina State University who studies the Lumber River, said that dredging and levee projects are not long-term fixes for the escalating problem. Canals and levees have allowed people to build homes on river margins and in swampy areas over the decades, yet research shows that wetlands can mitigate flooding by temporarily storing water after storms. Emanuel said that moving to higher ground and restoring swamps to their natural state are better ways to alleviate the problem.
………….
Quick we need that IPCC v6 Report out asap. It will certainly do the trick this time because people and the Mayors will all understand and act accordingly.
What if we only culled the politicians first? If that doesn’t work out then maybe cull the Voters next?
Of course funding the destruction of Iran with cruise missile and nukes might help, but am unsure how myself. The Saudis will simply lift production and buy more jet fighters, tanks, and missiles from the great satan to keep them in business.
So, we could cull the Saudi Royalty then as well as the ISIS lunatic terrorists not funded by Iran? Surely it is OK to cull head chopping rapists and slave traders like the Saudis and ISIS if it means saving the planet from +1.5C and Miami condos of the rich and famous not being flooded.
151 – Michael Burchert
Perhaps buildings in China only last 30 years – I’d believe that – I’ve read horror stories about poor construction of high rises in China – but that’s typical of communist nations.
Here in the USA, skyscrapers will last centuries if maintained:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEngineers/comments/1z02k9/what_is_the_life_expectancy_of_a_skyscraper/
156 – Al Bundy
“Giving PUBLIC funds to billionaires, even future billionaires is putrid.”
Lots of folks above bad-mouthing billionaires, the top 10%, etc. What a bunch of dumb-azzes. People become wealthy when they produce products that others are willing to spend their money on. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Phil Knight, Donald Trump, etc, etc, etc. Would you like a world without computers? Smart phones? Nike gear? Nice buildings and resorts? If you want socialism/communism so bad, go to Russia and try it. Go live with the peasants – they don’t burn much oil, they grow their own food, etc, and are exemplary environmental wackos compared to the average westerner – many of you will fit right in – in fact, why don’t you all go together and start a commune? You can sit in a circle every night and bash Trump without using electricity, the internet, satellites, etc – all you’ll need are blankets and a candle. UTOPIA!
Re #151 Michel Burchert said Concrete as is, is not going to be sustainable. Now and for the foreseeable future the massive industry behind it is going to grow at huge rates – based on the old CO2 emitting recipe. With 5 to 8% it is a giant among the CO2 emittants. But it is not only that, with the use of concrete there are common construction practices and restrictions in materials bundled and needed, all of these are huge (fossile based) CO2 emitters as well…
Straw buildings rendered with clay and/or lime for example are contrary to intuition extraordinarily fireproof, provide healthy living conditions with low to 0 energy demand and are typically already CO2 negative when you move in…
a circular economy.
Yes, Michel. My original response to the concrete thing didn’t go into detail because… this is common knowledge by now, or should be. It’s prima facie, ipso facto stuff for anyone with any time in such conversations, or should be.
Thanks for laying it out plainly, as I should have done in the first place as ignorance and agendas have no limits.
I really don’t care what you think about the death penalty, Kevin. You are pulling the list off-topic. Her comment was not intended to start a debate on morality, and you know that. It matters not a whit that you two disagree with each other on this.
Based solely on what the death penalty has been used for in the past, a large number of business and political “leaders” more than deserve it, and that was, in my opinion, her point. You know this, or should. She included a smiley for chrissake.
C’mon, people. Time is damned short. The Peanut Gallery needs to shut itself down.
Michel Burchert @151,
You criticise concrete on three grounds, the CO2 emitted during cement manufacture, the energy intensity of the construction indusrty and the slabby nature of concrete buildings. The building industry is not unaware certainly of the first two of these problems. Being less energy-intense (both in their own operations and also with the use of their products) is something all industries are hopefully signed up to.
But the emissions from cement manufacture is an extra head-ache for the construction industry. I have in the past heard of non-calcuim-based cements that are not CO2 generating during manufacture but I would assume a change in the chemistry is not so practical for the 4 billion tons of product worldwide.
And do note that concrete does re-absorb that emitted CO2 in a process called ‘carbonation’. It is not always welcomed by the civil engineers as it comes with a drop in pH which eats into steel reinforcement, but the CO2 absorption is significant. A 2016 paper found the CO2 emissions from cement production (5% of our total CO2 emissions) over the period 1930-2013 had been compensated 43% by subsequent carbonation of the concrete made using that cement. So in the grand scheme of things, atmospheric CO2 would have been 1ppm higher without that CO2 absorption. (And we could also say it would be another 1ppm lower today if the concrete-use had been replaced with non-CO2 emitting material.)
For the Lazy Unimaginative non-Creative stick in the muds :-P
https://youtu.be/HDeZzKZHcnM
No one else has much of worth to say, so please may I and allow me to steal the floor. I’ll do it anyway, but is supposed to be polite to ask nicely.
It’s been said a thousand different ways, a billion times before, yet still the penny does not drop.
The Pathology of the Rich – Chris Hedges 23 mins interview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6unS2JF8TA
Extract: You’ve written more recently about some other weaknesses of the people’s movement and here’s one and I’ll read read it, a piece you wrote called “let’s get this class war started”. The quote is “the inability to grasp the pathology of our oligarchic rulers is one of our gravest faults.”
Hedges: Because we don’t understand the pathology of the rich we’ve been saturated with cultural images and a kind of cultural deification of wealth and those who have wealth. We are being, you know they present people of immense wealth as somehow leaders, Oracle’s even, and we don’t grasp internally what it is an oligarchic class is finally about or how venal and morally bankrupt they are.
We need to recover the language of class warfare to grasp what is happening to us and we need to shatter this self-delusion that somehow, if as Obama
says we work hard enough and study hard enough, we can be one of them.
The fact is the people who created the economic mess that we’re in, were the best educated people in the country Larry Summers former president of Harvard and others the issue is not education, the issue is greed.
[ insert this here: September 28, 2018 Royal Commissioner Kenneth Hayne has identified “greed” as the key reason banks and other financial institutions repeatedly broke the law …. and repeated decisions by the ASIC and the Prudential Regulation Authority not to properly punish them. https://theconversation.com/banking-royal-commissions-damning-report-things-are-so-bad-that-new-laws-might-not-help-104058 ]
I, unfortunately had the experience of being shipped off to a private boarding school at the age of 10 as a scholarship student, I was
one of sixteen kids on scholarship, and I lived among the super-rich and I watched them, and I think much of my hatred of authority and my repugnance for the ruling elite comes from having been among them for so long.
Yeah, people don’t understand the elite schools, even at the high school level. That they get the kids excellent education, but if they learn the whole culture of hundreds or thousands of years of how to rule right, and it’s a deep rich understanding of it, not only that but they, and George Bush is a perfect example of that, not so much an example of deep rich understanding no, but of how you know affirmative action for the rich operates.
I came, certainly on my mother’s side of the family, from lower working-class when people, one of my uncles lived in a trailer in Maine, and certainly people with no means and I would juxtapose the world I was in with that world and it was very clear that it wasn’t about intelligence or aptitude.
The fact is if you’re poor you only get one chance. If you’re wealthy like GW Bush you get chance, after chance, after chance, after chance. So you’re a C student at Andover and you go to Yale, and you go to Harvard Business School, and you’re AWOL from your National Guard unit, and you’re a cokehead, it doesn’t really matter. You don’t even really have a job till you’re 40 and you become President of the United States.
So that was what was particularly insidious how those small tight elite oligarchic circles perpetuated themselves and promoted mediocrity, because many of these people like Bush are very mediocre human beings, at the expense of the rest of us. How with money they Game the System.
Of course now we live in an oligarchic state where we’ve been rendered utterly powerless. As are the judiciary, the legislative, the executive branch is all subservient to an oligarchic corporate elite and the press is owned by an oligarchic corporate elite which makes sure that any critique of them is never broadcast over the airwaves either.
[end quote]
PS Often times now it is called predatory capitalism, and everywhere the label of neoliberal ideology beginning in the 1970s is applied quite rightly. But it’s the ingrained privileged pathology that drives it all, including the disinformation distraction technique of climate science denial. Who knew? Deeply disturbing cases of extremely entitled narcissistic egos and all the sociopaths with money and powerful friends cannot be “fixed” with laws and regulations.
They have no interest in dialogue about solutions, or the latest science paper on global warming threats. Like you need to come to grips with the fact they it;s not that they do not care, they are wired in a way that they cannot care. It’s been bred out of them or socialized out of them.
“To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead.” – Thomas Paine
Why waste your time with lost causes. Find out who they are and then do everything possible to mark them, to confront them directly and out them publicly, then increasingly isolate them and eventually cull them from all positions of power and influence anywhere for all time.
Of course this will not happen. 90% of the population are submissive placaters and simply don’t have the stomach for it. When they finally get their Tesla 3 they will feel a little bit like Elon Musk and that’s a good thing for sure.
But what about those on these pages? Surely they are not driven by “greed” or are a part of this mega-wealthy class.
Chris Hedges con’t
Because the whole notion of the free market, laissez faire Capitalism and Globalization is a very thin rationale for unmitigated greed by a tiny oligarchic elite and they have made sure that that ideology is taught in universities across the country and people especially economists, (engineers, journalists, marketers, tech heads, scientists and more) to deviate from that core ideology have been pushed aside and become pariahs instead.
And yet the driving ethos of that ideology is really to justify the hoarding of immense amounts of wealth by a very tiny percentage of you know the upper ruling class that’s what it is. It means the whole lie of globalization perpetuated by people who popularize it, like Tom Friedman, has already been exposed as a lie. I mean the idea that it’s going to lift all of us up and create a new vibrant middle class with luxury electric Teslas and no more carbon pollution and end to global warming and SLR and you know a well compensated working-class families in the third world … making iPhones for Apple in China, I mean all of it’s been exposed as lies.
In that sense the ideology serves the system. The Intellectual Class, the Universities as well coalesce unconsciously subconsciously to serve the system. Those economists whose voices are heard who get tenure, serve the system and those who don’t serve the system don’t get tenure, and don’t have a job on MSNBC or at the NYTs. Scientists won’t get ahead at MIT or at NASA or at Columbia unless they are somehow serving the ideology system, at some level or other.
I think that’s extremely true, I mean we don’t live in a genuine free-market society. We live in a society where corporations that will loot the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve and are bailed out by the taxpayer and yet that fact of a kind of corporate socialism for corporations is ignored and yet you know it is and that’s dangerous because there’s an utter disconnect from the language that we use to describe our economic system and the reality of our economic system.
Which is essentially a system where corporations owned and operated by an oligarchy of elites who have become predators on government and taxpayer money and we’re all going to pay for it.
[end quote]
It’s predatory capitalism for the elite oligarchs, the already wealthy and for their children and no one else’s. This isn’t a “meritocracy” it’s a “kleptocracy.”
We’re the ones paying for it but we get nothing for it, except an unlivable planet that will become unable to sustain human life or at least not civilization as we know it.
So there’s a choice that could be had. Cull the kleptocrats, the elite oligarchs and their kind, remove them from their positions to abuse their power, to lie cheat and steal to feed their greed and their massive egos, or murder the planet instead?
Logically morally ethically and scientifically there is no choice there to be had.
Last month, deep in a 500-page environmental impact statement, the Trump administration made a startling assumption: On its current course, the planet will warm a disastrous seven degrees by the end of this century.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/trump-administration-sees-a-7-degree-rise-in-global-temperatures-by-2100/2018/09/27/b9c6fada-bb45-11e8-bdc0-90f81cc58c5d_story.html?utm_term=.35fb9b38ae6e
And, so, as I have said, lo, these many years, back to the future:
http://www.pnas.org/content/107/17/7823
This flows, of course, from the fairly recent realization that the Amazon actually was like Father Gaspar de Carvajal described in his writings on the Orellana expedition.
This awareness of the vibrant life in the Amazon, and the realization up to 20 million people had lived there in pre-Columbian times, did much to give me confidence in the Regenerative Governance model and the need for, and viability of, simplicity via small, networked communities. Later work by Helga Ingeborg Vierich, helps affirm my view.
Re #106 nigelj said It’s not economically rational to make self sacrifices too much unless there is confidence that the whole system is going in the right direction in a coordinated effort. Why KIA can’t grasp this mystifies me.
No corporation or company is economically viable if it’s ecological costs are included. It makes no economic sense to *not* change, in fact.
Killian, #168–
Well, it sure could matter the next time some denialist points to the public RC exchange as ‘proof’ that ‘greenies’ are all a step away from murder, if that. The face we collectively put forward here matters–and it’s been getting uglier and uglier lately.
Moreover, I would point out that the idea that murder is wrong is considerably more than ‘my opinion.’
:)
Re low-emissions concrete:
These guys seem to have a low-CO2 ‘family’ of mixes on the market, claimed to lower emissions by 50% by using ‘alternate cementitious materials’. I don’t see anything on prices.
http://centralconcrete.com/sustainability/low-co2-concrete/
Concrete block with a claimed 70% reduction in emissions:
https://www.ecohome.net/guides/3230/reducing-emissions-with-co2-cured-concrete/
Theoretical basics, including the note that aggregate operations are already pretty localized (ie., most aggregate is sourced within a distance of 40 km.)
http://lowcarboneconomy.cembureau.eu/index.php?page=low-carbon-concrete
Note, too, that concrete-making is a great way to sequester all the coal ash scattered around the countryside–it actually improves the characteristics of the mix.
And then there’s this candidate technology, announced earlier this year:
https://cleantechnica.com/2018/04/30/graphene-makes-concrete-stronger-while-reducing-carbon-emissions/
So there’s a lot of work going on to reduce the climate impacts of concrete. One can argue that it’s all ‘less bad’, and therefore not really ‘sustainable.’ But that’s part of a much wider conversation that really needs to happen.
Carrie: I WAS RIGHT :-)
AB: I only saw a reference to the comment, but somebody pondered that Carrie might be Killian’s sockpuppet. Hmm, is Killian bright enough to create a “fat ugly female” alter ego who denigrates males by saying they, to say it nicely, are too female-like?
———–
Mr KillingInaction: People become wealthy when they produce products that others are willing to spend their money on. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Phil Knight, Donald Trump, etc, etc, etc. Would you like a world without computers? Smart phones? Nike gear? Nice buildings and resorts? If you want socialism/communism
AB: Huh? I said that when the TAXPAYER invests money the TAXPAYER should reap the rewards. What on Earth does that have to do with communism? YOU are the one supporting the giving of TAXPAYER money to somebody for nothing. What venture capitalist would agree to the deal you are stridently defending (with completely irrelevant doofisms)?
You remind me of a book I started to read. “You didn’t build that” or something…
Anyway, the author used as her example the Salk vaccine for Polio. She maintained that Dr Salk deserved ZERO credit. The guys who designed and built the refrigeration system that allowed for the vaccine to be distributed without spoiling deserved ZERO credit. 100.0000000000% of the credit belonged to a couple of guys who invested a few thousand dollars, which allowed the engineers to build the refrigerator. (The engineers were so beneath consideration that she didn’t even name them. She just gushed on and on about how these two investors single-handedly saved the world!!!!!
Oops, here the funders deserve everything. Your team’s illogic is hard to keep up with. So, a straight answer for once: When a person or group puts up money for a project should the person or group be entitled to a share of the proceeds? Does your answer exclude certain groups, say, taxpayers? If so, why?
Re #160: You are, of course, wrong.
https://medium.com/@gary.francione/the-referee-has-spoken-how-an-academic-changed-bbc-policy-on-debating-climate-change-with-a-f6de7aeadb68
166 Mr. Know It All seriously cracks me up this time:
156 – Al Bundy
“Giving PUBLIC funds to billionaires, even future billionaires is putrid.”
Lots of folks above bad-mouthing billionaires, the top 10%, etc. What a bunch of dumb-azzes. People become wealthy when they produce products that others are willing to spend their money on. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Phil Knight, Donald Trump, etc, etc, etc.
Carrie: Nice myth that is. Heard it all before. It’s a lie.
Would you like a world without computers? Smart phones? Nike gear? Nice buildings and resorts?
I’m not fussed either way. But I definitely would like a world to live on and for my decedents too. If that’s at all possible I’d give up all the former for that one thing to survive.
Would the Billionaires do the same?
Would you?
No!
#179, Killian–
Not a parallel case. In the BBC instance, it’s about a news organization giving access to long-discredited views. The only folks here who can make that determination are the mods.
Nigel is saying–and I agree with him, FWIW–that once those views appear in a given forum–this forum!–there is merit in debunking them. It’s not because one hopes to convince the denialist; its first aim to avoid any possibility of being swift-boated on whatever point, the second, to give good information (ie., to educate).
IOW, it’s for readers on the site.
Carrie 161: You folks really are not as smart as you imagine yourselves to be.
BPL: Who made you a judge over us?
KIA 166: People become wealthy when they produce products that others are willing to spend their money on.
BPL: Or when they inherit the money. Or when they lie, cheat and steal to make the money.
K 168: The Peanut Gallery needs to shut itself down.
BPL: You first.
C 171: No one else has much of worth to say
BPL: In your highly valuable opinion.
K 174: This awareness of the vibrant life in the Amazon, and the realization up to 20 million people had lived there in pre-Columbian times
BPL: 20 million people did not live in the Amazon in pre-Columbian times. In Latin America, maybe, but not in the Amazon. The Amazon refers to A) a river, or B) the rain forest surrounding the river.
Killian @175 I was thinking individuals as well as corporations, but yes if ecological costs are included then it makes no sense not to change. This is why we need a carbon tax or something like that, which forces everyone to at least change something (hopefully the right things). It’s sort of a self imposed pressure or management tool.
A tax helps break the psychological deadlock where the majority of humans don’t particularly like to change their ways, unless they see large numbers of people changing first. Of course some lateral thinkers innovate and do their own thing regardless of what other people do but it seems like the majority are followers. That’s not a bad thing because all change carries risks, however in emergency situations we have to speed up the process of change using every device possible.
The question is what do we do with this situation of climate change, which is close to spinning into an emergency if it isn’t already? A carbon tax and dividend is a reasonably benign device in the sense it can be powerful, but its ethical and avoids huge impositions on personal freedom (that conservatives are very concerned about) or experiments with more novel and uncertain mechanisms.
While the rich sometimes behave very badly, culling rich people as advocated by Carrie runs into ethical problems, and I cannot personally endorse such ideas. Even if the top 10% were culled in some way in America for example, massive levels of emissions would remain because most people own cars or at least get buses and culling rich people would not alter that.
Would a command and control wartime economy be justified?
Should we radically reduce energy use? This option cannot be ignored, but it has to be weighed against quality of life and essential basic needs.
Mr KillingInaction: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Phil Knight, Donald Trump, etc, etc, etc. Would you like a world without computers?
AB: Bill Gates? A thief who didn’t develop much as a capitalist. He was more into forming (or negotiating to form) partnerships with less powerful but far more creative people and then stealing their stuff. However, since he’s gone socialist (via the B&MG foundation) he’s been doing some wonderful things.
https://pieceofmindful.com/2011/05/10/the-genius-of-bill-gates-steal-it-first/
Donald Trump? He’s a moron who has never created anything except the catchphrase “You’re fired”.
“Fred Trump wove a safety net that rescued his son from one bad bet after another”
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/02/us/politics/trump-family-wealth.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/02/us/politics/donald-trump-wealth-fred-trump.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
Bell Labs developed the transistor and the solar cell, along with a zillion other things. So there would be NO computers without socialism. Then consider NASA. Velcro is one thing that sticks in my mind. Without socialism all that stuff would NEVER be invented. And then there’s universities. Even today nearly every advance I read about comes from a SOCIALIST university.
Of course, I was following you down your rabbit hole of illogic. One can’t say that because of some person in some organization doing something that thing would never be done without that organization (or the system within which it operates). The truth is the opposite. If Alexander Bell hadn’t invented the telephone the world would have had to wait zero seconds for the phone. Elisha Gray did the same work. The telephone was invented because it was time for it to be invented.
It’s obvious that you’ve never met a creative, and so you’ve projected your motivations on us. We do what we do because it brings joy to us, NOT for money. Note that the best software is open source. Note that Facebook’s content is provided by zillions of users for free. Note that RealClimate’s posts and comments are all provided by SOCIALISM. There is very very very little that capitalism creates. Capitalism vacuums up benefits and stuffs them in certain folks’ pockets. Capitalism is a crude way to replicate advances made by other people. Nowadays more and more stuff is replicated for free. The incremental cost of a copy of a song is less than a penny. This makes capitalists pretty useless. Want an encyclopedia with billions of hours worth of labor embedded? No capitalist could ever build a Wikipedia.
Again, creatives create and we do it because that is who we are, not because of capitalism.
So that you might learn something for once in your life, repeat the following:
“When I speak of socialism I will use Scandinavia and Israel as my examples. I am able to learn that NOBODY who advocates socialism thinks that the Soviet Union had ANYTHING to do with socialism. The USSR was a totalitarian state that used the theory of communism as a cover even though it was NOT communist, let alone socialist.”
There, maybe you’ve learned something. Naw….
If you love capitalism so much go live in Russia. (I note that you haven’t noticed that your go-to boogeyman has gone Gangster Capitalist. You really need to update your insults because nowadays they point straight at your heroes.)
https://www.facebook.com/InkwellForest/photos/a.1075969212476114/2268706123202411/?type=3&eid=ARCpRp_hA6EXq7lCP5r8DEWz4FknLjq3vgAl0_tjRcLEiDxjjOyfLe3RSAJjrynHqz6zoKsjv7OQp8J2&__xts__%5B0%5D=68.ARAEfylHQkIyHRQ_1g1Wi7zuU0ZDpXgnPOnISMtJCN3CMLkB2nJbxLSvw_rXfNUgXoZxYT6erRBFzN64iBGxNp-0GB22nIe9RJIkqFElTCkdpqqwC9C-IK2-rGVz7aGklAtnKCqxTg9WtHHagQsmUamjTzq6CnpE-SYl2LFei1ncd0E_H_NtOw&__tn__=EHH-R
A blast from the past that kind of summarizes solutions.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/01/unforced-variations-jan-2013/comment-page-4/#comment-314611k
Re #177 Kevin McKinney said Re low-emissions concrete…
And then there’s this candidate technology, announced earlier this year:
https://cleantechnica.com/2018/04/30/graphene-makes-concrete-stronger-while-reducing-carbon-emissions/
So there’s a lot of work going on to reduce the climate impacts of concrete. One can argue that it’s all ‘less bad’, and therefore not really ‘sustainable.’ But that’s part of a much wider conversation that really needs to happen.
The conversation already happened. The process to design for zero carbon already exists. That you don’t accept the outcome does not mean the conversation hasn’t happened.
Re #176 Kevin McKinney said Killian, #168–
Well, it sure could matter the next time some denialist points to the public RC exchange as ‘proof’ that ‘greenies’ are all a step away from murder
I never accept stupid as reason to do, nor not do, anything. I suggest this as a general precept for all. An Authoritarian and/or zealot will do so even without evidence, so policing ourselves from colloguial, semi-playful speech (remember the smiley) is a rather foolish waste of living, imo.
#172 Carrie said So there’s a choice that could be had. Cull the kleptocrats, the elite oligarchs and their kind, remove them from their positions to abuse their power, to lie cheat and steal to feed their greed and their massive egos, or murder the planet instead?
Logically morally ethically and scientifically there is no choice there to be had.
But there is. Regenerative simplicity is the solution, even in this. To the far right of the Regenerative Governance graphic are two arrows, one pointing down, the rightmost up. The left one is labeled Opt Out, the right one Opt In.
A velvet revolution, if you will. I found this quote after I had created a 15-page White Paper on the graphic for what I then called PermOccupy and now call Regenerative Governance. (You can go to the Deep Simplicity page on Facebook or simply search on either term to see the graphic.) It fit perfectly with what I was trying to say. Then the Einstein quote about using different thinking to solve a problem than the thinking that created it. These two perfectly encapsulate why a new paradigm is so important, but also how that new paradigm can be achieved non-violently.
Then there is simple logic, the logic of using one’s momentum against them, as in martial arts. If Capitalism is the problem, then Capitalism is the key to killing Capitalism: Stop buying. Simplicity does that implicitly. Yet, the creation of simplicity inherently creates the systems to survive the end of Capitalism.
Water capture of your roof to give you drinking water and supply your garden to give you food plus some localized energy = the ability to resist peacefully by creating the new reality.
+1
Ralph Nader discusses his book, “To The Ramparts”, at Politics and Prose on 9/23/18.
Since the release of Unsafe at Any Speed in 1965, Nader has led the charge against destructive and exploitative corporate power. The co-founder of public interest groups including Public Citizen, Critical Mass, Commercial Alert, and the Center for the Study of Responsive Law, Nader continues to demonstrate the efficacy of grassroots activism for democratic change. His new book is a searing analysis of how Big Business, abetted by the flaws of recent presidential administrations, created the political climate that put Trump in the White House. As provocative as ever, Nader takes both Democrats and Republicans to task for their failures to curb corporate excesses and their abandonment of the poor and middle-classes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWxc_kYmPTE
#178 Al Bundy said Carrie: I WAS RIGHT :-)
AB: I only saw a reference to the comment, but somebody pondered that Carrie might be Killian’s sockpuppet. Hmm, is Killian bright enough to create a “fat ugly female” alter ego who denigrates males by saying they, to say it nicely, are too female-like?
Thanks for the motivation. This kind of ad hom is unacceptable.
#183 Killian
“I repeat: the Arctic started melting at 310 – 315 ppm. Factor in ocean lag time of thirty years and it’s… fairly certain to be sub-300 ppm. That’s your limit. You do not need to know anything else.”
I love it! You’re right. 100% right. Occam’s Razor cuts deep :-)
Anything else is bullshit, likely ego at work, and unnecessary complexity. Great post but the url caught a small error.
Use this one
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/01/unforced-variations-jan-2013/comment-page-4/#comment-314611
Killian, —
It isn’t about me. It’s about all of us as a society. And until (functionally) everybody is aware of the realities and choices we face, the necessary conversation has not been had. Clearly, that is not yet the case.
Killian, #185–
And you never seem to miss a chance to categorize disagreement as either stupid or dishonest. That’s a prime reason why “conversation” with you tends not to go well.
It’s a shame, because you have some good points to make. But they get buried in avalanches of insult, offense-taking and projection.
In my opinion, of course.
Al Bundy @188, yes inventors and scientists are the unsung heroes, motivated as much by love of the work as money, and so called big government has been responsible for many technological innovations and other achievements. NASA is funded by government and the internet was basically a government initiative in collaboration with the universities.
However you still need manufacture, supply chains and finance to get products to the consumer. Free market corporates can be very badly behaved, but have given us cheap technology because of mass production at scale and competition, and if you destroy the goose that lays the golden egg theres a potential problem.
a long add-on, because what people say at times really pisses me off no end.
198 Kevin McKinney and in other comments, with respect, you mean well, you honestly believe what you believe eg “And until (functionally) everybody is aware of the realities and choices we face, the necessary conversation has not been had. Clearly, that is not yet the case.”
Look seriously, you have this all upside down and back to front. Your “goal” is impossible and it is not even required. You’re creating unnecessary problems and setting up barriers that do not exists and will never exist except in your and so may others personal Belief Systems … you’re spreading Myths here, complete falsehoods and you should really stop and totally re-orientate your thinking …. IF you truly do want to contribute t making a positive difference …. because when you speak like that quite and in other similar ways you are THE problem not the solution. You are unknowingly poisoning the well.
Killian is not hurting anyone. Not even you. Killian is noyt creating false barriers. Killian is not getting in he way of anyone nor any genuine long term solution. Killian knows what he is talking about. And it does matter one bit how he talks back to you and other people.
If you did not accuse him of falsehoods, didn;t keep telling you his solutions are wrong useless won’t work becasue of x y z ad nauseum (but you are totally wriong about that) then there’s no reason for him come back say the things he says in the manner in which he says him. His behavior is 100% sane rational and his areguent sare 100% on point — it’s you and the others who have the problems dealin gwiht the truth and relaity, not Killian.
The world is toast – why give a toss becaseu Killian isn;t polite enough for your perosnal tases … bloody hell ok, itl;s a bloody emergency it is a crisis the shit is alrady hitting the fan and people here bitch and moan because Killian pretty much calls you all out for being total mindless ignorant self-defaeting IDIOTS all the time. Hey, get with it, he is RIGHT, 100% right about that.
Fix yourselves and he won;t have word to say. Like seriously get this it is you and your beliefs and your opinions about solutions and your stupid insipid “social standards” of self-importance that is wrong and screwed up – NOT KILLIAN …. listen to me wake up stop fix this in yourself, or just shut up. The house is burning down now – get with it – drop the pretenses and get real, like really really real!
But what about CONTENT …. ok all of society does not need to be convinced of anything and all of society does need to participate is fanciful “major conversation” about solutions. That is a fantasy. It;s a LIE. It;s not true, and it has never been true. You are lying to yourself and lying to people here every time you say stuff like that. You’re wrong. Every expert in the field of “society” and “community agreements” in academia and science based analysis know you are wrong too.
So step one in the program is Stop it. Drop that belief and find out what is actually true about driving society wide cultural changes …. and then work out what needs to change. Fir that look to Killian and everyone like him. It’s the System stupid the whole system is crap. Not energy use, the whole damned structures are crap, democracy is hollowed out, capitalism as it is now is broke. Not partially broke where a few tune ups are needed – at it’s CORE IT HAS COLLAPSED ONTO OUR HEADS and it is KILLING US ALL, slowly.
The US is a criminal regime that needs a revolution to clean it up. Not next year next decade, now today.
You do not 300 million people calling for chnage and shaking the foundations of the political system … all you need is about a million people in lock step to tear it to pieces and the “99%” will happily go along and the 1% can go to hell or New Zealand with whatever cash they can hold onto.
“People like you are still living in what we call the reality-based community. You believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality. That’s not the way the world really works anymore. We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you are studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors, and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” sourced to Karl rove.
That’s the enemy right there. Not naughty words from killian. shit man! The solutions are also in that statement.
Now go watch that Ralph Nader video and for crying out loud STOP voting for democrats unless they are someone exactly like Tulsi Gabbard, after she and others create a new 3rd party to take Middle America back to the polls and to a simpler life not a criminal war machine of thieves and liars.
Don’t work within the System ….. break it and create a new one is the only answer, in the US and everywhere else. Greed Kills Community and Empathy and Caring rocks.
—-
That’s it, I’m done not wasting my time anymore. Gonna go have some fun and enjoy life. You guys can go fix the world and stop global warming and GHGs.
I quit.