A bimonthly open thread on climate solutions. Perhaps unsurprisingly this is always the most contentious comment thread on the site, but please try and be constructive and avoid going off on wild tangents.
Reader Interactions
554 Responses to "Forced Responses: May 2021"
Peter Backessays
147 Killian says:
19 May 2021 at 4:14 AM
“If the effort is limited to restoration of degraded kelp forests, I’m all for it.”
I disagree that expanding kelp habitat is necessarily a bad thing. Artificial reefs are a thing and considered to be beneficial.
nigeljsays
Barton Paul Levenson @148 says “BPL: I’m not really qualified to diagnose you, (Killian) although tentatively I’d say you have something like narcissistic personality disorder. Definitely see a professional.”
I thought the same. Hopefully Killian doesn’t take your comment or mine as gaslighting or something, because it isn’t. Studies show about 25% of people have some sort of psychological issue at some time in their lives. It can happen to any of us. The problem with NPD is sufferers go into denial about having it. I think you would understand why. Regarding your other comment, you are going to be kept very busy.
Piotrsays
nigelj(142) Piotr @139 regarding the great “pivot”, and defending the indefensible. So true. I don’t know why people bother to do these things.
I agree that it is his narcissism, but also fundamentalism. If one is the Prophet of the One Complete Solution to Everything, then there can’t be any compromises with the lesser solutions, nor any admission of error, even in trivial things. In fact, to a true zealot, the biggest enemy is not somebody believing in different things, but one on the same side of the barricade, but challenging his unique position: Trotskyites to Stalinists, Shiite fundamentalists to the Sunni fundamentalists and vice-versa, going often harder than they go after the infidels, and that’s why Christian anti-Semites go after the Jews: they could have been the first to embrace Jesus, but given this chance – they rejected Him.
In the case of our simplicity fundamentalist, he gives a pass to a climate change denier: “KIA actually responded quite good-naturedly ” [e.g. by writing: here’s a website you may like – all comments are WOKE” and denying human impact on climate – “quite good natured” Earth-friendly banter…]
while reserving all the vitriol for Susan and everybody who dares to question Killian blowing the fuse on this one.
And now he posts a 1000-word post (144) in which he explains why Susan’s words: “ I know Killian is a little over earnest and can be annoying with it, but at least he understands our planetary emergency and is trying to address it.
were: “insulting”, “stupid”, “rude”, “unethical”, “unprovoked, off-base insult”, and how Susan was “ gaslighting”, “responsible for the constant flow of insults“, without ethical backbone (“ You need to get some goddamned backbone“), intolerant, hypocrite and aggressive (“Learn some tolerance. The hypocritical irony of your aggressiveness here… Jesus…“).
…and how Killian’s response [boldfaced above] was … none of that.
By their ability to see the beam in their eye you shall know them …
nigeljsays
Killian @ 146 (responding to KM). “Vulcan (an Australian multinational planning a German lithium brine extraction op) proposes an intriguing model: deep, hot brines will be pumped to the surface, the energy will be used to power the entire operation, and the brine (less lithium content) will then be returned to the deep aquifer.”
“I repeat, if Nature put it there and the ecosystem is functioning (and they are finding life very, very deep so assuming there is none there, or that future changes won’t make that aquifer available – less its lithium – in the future are naive, at best), history has proven: Leave it alone. Modern humans do *not* have a positive record in this regard.”
So despite the fact that lithium is not a dietary requirement, and despite evidence it can be toxic in excess, and despite the fact that any life at the bottom of an aquifer would obviously be small in quantity, and despite the fact only some aquifers would be mined, and we would be putting the water BACK, and somehow we still should desist from such mining and leave mother nature in peace? This is clearly the precautionary principle taken to an absurd extreme. Its just as bad as corporates wanting to do anything, with no limits imposed.
Killiansays
This is from a few years back, but just as accurate today. (Find the very bright economist on Twitter… unless you’re a driveling Chicago School zombie.)
We are experiencing deep economic problems and it is the fault of the economics discipline. Their macro theories suck. …The academic inbreeding that has resulted has led to dysfunctional theories and, despite the fact that there were economists who accurately forecast the Financial Crisis, because their work is incompatible with what is published in “good” journals it has been all but ignored. Economics is broken and there is no internal incentive to fix it.
Many of our domestic political and social struggles are linked in some way to a lack of economic opportunity… People who are not hungry, bewildered, and scared find it much easier to compromise and cooperate.
…the fault lies… with the economics discipline. Bad ideas have done at least as much damage to our world as anyone’s bad intentions. …we have the ability to solve these problems practically over night. What we lack is sound theory to guide our actions.
In point of fact there were actually a number of economists who correctly anticipated the coming collapse both in terms of the timing and the causes. …Not a single one of those identified used Neoclassically-based models.
“The general perspective of the micro students is that the macro courses are pretty worthless… we don’t see what is taught as a plausible description of the economy. …the models presented in the courses are not up to the job of explaining what is happening. There’s just a lot of math, and we can’t see the purpose of it”
In our hour of greatest need, societies around the world are left to grope in the dark without a theory. That, to us, is a systemic failure of the economics profession
The terrible bottom line here is that the school of thought that encouraged the idea that the financial system could properly price subprime derivatives is the same one that assumes the economy fixes itself and we don’t really need to pay too close attention to the banking sector.
And why some here – most? – are clueless. MMT, e.g., is *obvious*, yet…
“The banksters knew what was up. They didn’t hold those loans themselves; “?
The ‘free market”banksters’ were incompetent?
“As Axel Weber remarked, afterwards:
I asked the typical macro question: who are the twenty biggest suppliers of securitization products, and who are the twenty biggest buyers. I got a paper, and they were both the same set of institutions. . . . The industry was not aware at the time that while its treasury department was reporting that it bought all these products its credit department was reporting that it had sold off all the risk because they had securitized them…” 1h. 10m. in. http://www.lse.ac.uk/lse-player?id=1856
“Mike gaslights: How about a 30 day timeout for commenters who go off the deep end?”
No. Shakes head in despair. Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse where a person or group makes someone question their sanity, perception of reality, or memories . Mike clearly didn’t do that. Mike is referring to Killians response to Susan Anderson where he most certainly went off the deep end. SA called Killian well meaning a bit irritating and earnest ( a huge understatement I would have thought). In response Killian goes off the deep end with a whole lot of inflammatory, offensive, abrasive language thats a pain in the neck to read when he could so easily have disputed her comments in a civil way or just ignored them. Killian escalates things. He takes even the slightest criticism about him or what he writes, and responds with really nasty invective raising things about three levels. Im not saying other people are always innocent, or hes the only person who does this, but he really stands out.
“Yet, Susan saw fit to call my comments about what *is* a crime against humanity being a, you know, crime against humanity, “over the top” and “irritating.”
Looks more like Susan Anderson would be referring to Killians big ego, and his constant unfounded, accusations all and sundry are lying or ignorant or fools, judging by other comments she’s posted.
And yet this Killian guy who routinely makes nasty accusations against all and sundry (fools, liars, idiots,ignoramuses, especially economists apparently) has the timerity to claim people aren’t nice to him or his ‘ideas’. Its hard to get my head around this.
Gave up reading after that. I get fixated on all this awful stuff, but even I have my limits.
jbsays
If I were Charles Koch and I wanted to sabotage a popular and influential blog like Realclimate, how would I do it? Would I unleash comic relief trolls like Knucklehead in America or Weaktor? Not really, although they might be worth a few bucks a month. I think instead I would invest in what I like to call “the nuclear concern troll.” This troll would profess a zealous concern for the subject matter, as well as an exhaustive knowledge of the issues and most importantly, he would have THE ANSWERS. He would scream to the heavens words like “regenerative” and “simplify.” He would be cock-sure on all issues and would suffer no disagreement. At those who disagree, he would aim the strongest abuse he could muster – and because he is viewed as a sympathizer, he would likely get away with far more than would be tolerated from others.
Now, though he would swear that he has THE ANSWERS, and would tell all readers that he has issued THE ANSWERS in full detail in a deep dark past, he would never restate or reference THE ANSWERS. He would be prolific in his abuse and in his insistence on omniscience and very prolific, so much so that it would be nearly impossible to search the blog for THE ANSWERS. We would be assured that THE ANSWERS exist and we would all be kept hungry for his truth – a promise of salvation, always just out of reach.
Prolificness and abusiveness would be his essence. He would take up large amounts of white space. He would say so much without saying anything at all – except to hurl abuse. Visitors to the site would see the soiled white space and quickly conclude that staying there is a waste of time.
That would be my game plan if I were Charles Koch.
nigeljsays
Killian @133 on markets. So we should get rid of markets because they don’t always work perfectly or optimally. You do realise we could apply the same logic to all your case studies and proposals? Because make no mistake, none of that stuff works perfectly or optimally.
———————-
Killian @145, on lithium and what Kevin meant. Maybe Kevin said something wrong, maybe not. I don’t care about endless discussions like that because the main point is SCIENCE says lithium is not a necessary part of the diet, and that it may be toxic in excess, regardless of whether its already in the oceans or is added to the oceans, and there is no evidence its of benefit to the diet. Even if lithium was needed in the diet, and was not toxic, we would be extracting tiny quantities each year ( as piotr shows) why would it matter, and you could put an ultimate limit on how much is extracted. So where is the problem?
Killiansays
151 Peter Backes says:
19 May 2021 at 6:58 PM
I disagree that expanding kelp habitat is necessarily a bad thing. Artificial reefs are a thing and considered to be beneficial.
But that is not what I said. I said at the scale necessary to solve the problem. Some very limited increase? Fine. But it must be very specific, very limited because… why destroy one habitat for another? What is the net gain?
Killiansays
So despite the fact that lithium is not a dietary requirement, and despite evidence it can be toxic in excess, and despite the fact that any life at the bottom of an aquifer would obviously be small in quantity, and despite the fact only some aquifers would be mined, and we would be putting the water BACK, and somehow we still should desist from such mining and leave mother nature in peace? This is clearly the precautionary principle taken to an absurd extreme. Its just as bad as corporates wanting to do anything, with no limits imposed.
Nowhere have you shown the lithium plays no role in those ecosystems.
Your argument is the positives outweigh the unknown negatives. This is shit risk analysis.
You blithely ignore the ecosystem destruction to access the water.
You blithely ignore any such system would absolutely currently – and likely always – be unsustainable.
As ever.
Killiansays
Killian @133 on markets. So we should get rid of markets because they don’t always work perfectly or optimally.
Typical Straw Man. Not at all what I have said, and you know that.
—–
158
jb says:
20 May 2021 at 4:45 PM
I think instead I would invest in what I like to call “the nuclear concern troll.” This troll would profess a zealous concern for the subject matter, as well as an exhaustive knowledge of the issues and most importantly
Now, though he would swear that he has THE ANSWERS, and would tell all readers that he has issued THE ANSWERS in full detail in a deep dark past, he would never restate or reference THE ANSWERS.
Prolificness and abusiveness would be his essence.
That would be my game plan if I were Charles Koch.
Or just a member of the Peanut Gallery. There’s aa large group of you all doing these things.
—–
while reserving all the vitriol for Susan and everybody who dares to question Killian blowing the fuse on this one.
KIA’s MO is to lie his ass off with a polite smile. It’s classic climate trolling. So, no, he said nothing about my character, manner or style in any way. Susan did. Without cause, without justification, without reason. She had exactly zero reason to mention me in that post, let alone negatively.
She has done this before, and over a long period of time – like the rest of you – yet denies this. But that is the context. It wasn’t a one-off, it was a pattern. Like the rest of you. You like to pretend 6 years of abuse from a group against one person is not bizarre, is irrelevant to my reaction.
As I have said, you are engaging in a gaslighting gangbang.
Get some ethics and morals.
As for my responses, I have said for YEARS here, I consider this idea that an insult matters by it’s scale and can and should be met at exactly the same scale. No. An unprovoked, gaslit attack is an unprovoked, gaslit attack. You come at me in an insulting manner, I’ll knock your goddamned head off.
You all know this. You count in it. It’s how you justify your gaslighting: Yes, we provoke him from all sides (multiple Peanut Gallery members have stated explicitly they enjoy abusing others here), but he overreacts, so it’s OK!
Meanwhile, anything substantive I post gets a fraction of the responses that my RESPONSES to lies and insults get, thus proving this entire Peanut Gallery feeding frenzy is manufactured, as I PROVED last January – which you are all ignoring now as it goes against your gaslit narrative.
You do not want to discuss things actually important to climate so much as you all want to attack denialists and non-denialists who understand things better than you do, which makes you all feel insecure.
You surely remember all this started nearly six years ago because I kept suggesting pathways that others thought ridiculous and kept making predictions that indicated I was right? How sad. This all literally began because… I am the only one here who has made any specific predictions or broad predictions that have proven… correct. That’s not ego, it’s fact. That fact doesn’t support your claim, it supports mine: You’re all embarrassed a person weak in math can analyze climate so much more effectively than any of you, AND come up with a viable, if unpopular, comprehensive solution model.
Your collective embarrassment and fear of having to let go of your lifestyles has caused my comments here to serve as chum to the Peanut Gallery shark fenzy.
Now, kindly STFU. There are important issues about.
Killiansays
Last add: Proof in the pudding re: the bias here: Not one of you has acknowledged Susan’s comment was unnecessary, provocative and rude – or even slightly off-color. Not one.
Were there any ethics among you peanuts, you would have *at least* framed your responses as, “Yes, Susan was very mildly offensive and offered a tiny provocation, but…” But you lack the intestinal fortitude to even do that.
Again, STFU and get back to real issues.
Killiansays
Last last add: Kochs? Even the most cursory knowledge of my comments here and elsewhere make this the most ridiculously stupid bullshit ever posted on these fora. But you won’t be called on it. The Peanut Gallery protects its own.
Killiansays
I get fixated on all this awful stuff, but even I have my limits.
Since you joined this forum, you are the source of the vast majority of conflict. I remind you, for six months I bent over backwards educating you. For six months you kept using Straw Man arguments, false characterizations of my positions, etc., until I gave up and started calling you on these things. Nothing has changed.
And, yes, gaslighting. You are all collectively rewriting history to absolve yourselves of your lack of ethical and moral behavior – and not just against me. Every person who comes here talking about regenerative-focused climate responses gets the same treatment. Thomas and several others, which is why I am the only one who regularly posts on sane climate solutions.
Gaslighting is EXACTLY what you all do. You are doing it here. Susan’s comments were absolutly unnecessary and personal. They added zero utility to her post. You refuse to call that out. That is 1. lying, 2. revising history (That didn’t happen! it’s all you!), and therefore 3. gaslighting.
You know this. You cannot look yourself in the mirror and admit it, Straw Man.
BPL: “I have no idea what I am talking about. I need time to think of something that doesn’t sound like complete crap.”
Jasper Janes: “Killian’s general thesis is correct, and I find much of the flak he is receiving focused on winning debating points rather than helping to solve this overwhelming problem we face.”
“[Ray Ladbury]OK, Killian, let me draw you a map.
[Me]Patronization isn’t the most effective technique for binding allies together.
[Ray]…or most of the other hobby horses some here straddle.”
Etc.
OK. Done. I expect the assholery to continue, but, once again, I will do my part to try to avoid responding to an entire gang of abusers.
Killiansays
Climate as an asteroid impact. Maybe useful if you insist on sparring with denialist criminals, or just the denialism-duped (<– has some tiny chance of being useful).
Piotr @153 on fundamentalism etc, etc. Yes definitely sounds right. A healthy dose of scepticism is required of anything like that (the rational sort, not the climate denialist cherry picking drivel). Michael Shermers book Sceptic is a great read.
Jb @158, on the Koch brothers. Fyi the book “Dark Money” is about the Koch Brothers and money in climate denialism and is quite a good read. Have also seen interesting commentary somewhere recently showing fossil fuel people like the Koch Brothers promote reductions in carbon footprints and levels of consumption etc, to take attention off building a new energy grid and carbon taxes. Make it all a “personal choice and responsibility issue”. They know the probability of people reducing their consumption patterns significantly is small, so they aren’t worried by that. Anything to distract attention from pumping oil and building new coal fired plant. Not saying reducing carbon footprints is not important, and I’ve made some efforts myself, but I don’t see it happening with many people.
Killiansays
Issues in finance/econ, according to a prof of finance and economics. Note the irrationality:
My initial involvement included trying to talk to policymakers. I discovered it’s very difficult to get through if your message is challenging or inconvenient. I made some desperate attempts to reach various people, but many would not engage. It was very disturbing. I realized that we hit a raw nerve in banking.
…It felt like I encountered a sort of religion, where people want to believe certain things to be true.
…GR: The title of your paper says “it takes a village” (to maintain a dangerous financial system)..
AA: I saw that there were many different participants and that they somehow converged to a situation in which it was convenient for all of them to be in that system.
…It is a matter of public safety.
…if your model essentially assumes that financial crises are unpreventable like natural disasters, then you will conclude that little that can be done to prevent crises.
If you put 43 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere then we should remove the same amount by CCUS. If the Century plant in Texas removes 8.4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide each year, by calculation, building 5000 facilities should do the job? The difficult part is the financial side, but what if you could raise the capital? 2.6 trillion would be sufficient. I have a plan.
nigeljsays
This commentary posted by K attacks economics in general and discusses the 2008 global financial crash:
“1. Economists write to impress each other in a language only they can understand.”
Ha ha ha. You could say the same of any science especially something like physics. This stuff in many fields is COMPLICATED. This doesn’t make it wrong and there are plenty of good books simplifying economics for public consumption.
“2. As an economist, you are encouraged to think outside the box–except don’t!”
He argues that the peer review process tends to reinforce the dominant model (in economics its neoclassical economics). Again this is a problem throughout all sciences. So if Killian is using this to rubbish economics, he has to apply the same standard to virtually ALL sciences. Personally I agree that neoclassical thought gets too much dominance, and leaves something to be desired, but the failure of communism shows it can’t be lightly dismissed either. To anyone conversant with the issues.
“3. Mainstream economists have next to no knowledge of the schools of thought that did the best job of forecasting the Financial Crisis….Suffice it to say that there exists in economics a much broader range of approaches than just Neoclassicism …:”
Just his opinion. How would he really know this? He’s probably only talked to a small number of economists. I doubt its actually true. People normally have a general interest in whats going on around the fringes of their professions. The same could probably be said of other sciences anyway.
And the “alternative schools of economics have conflicting views” so which one do we believe if any?
“But I would argue (and have elsewhere) that Neoclassicism hardly has a monopoly on the truth. Indeed, when we look at who saw the Financial Crisis coming, their track record is actually pretty grim.”
Agreed. Economists track record predicting the GFC was grim. But I think its hard to predict something when the problems were so hidden. Nobody knew that the CDO mortgage packages were fatally flawed instruments based on bad maths. You cannot blame economics as a whole for a specific technical problem. It was rotten luck. Still it doesnt reflect all that well on the economics community as a whole didn’t see that trouble of some sort was coming. I mean all those sub prime loans made to poor people that couldn’t really afford the repayments were never going to end well ( no criticism of the home buyers, they have my sympathy).
I found 6 economists who are alleged to have predicted the 2008 GFC:
However they largely just predicted ” the housing market looking very overheated, and trouble is coming”. This was fairly obvious. I THOUGHT THAT! They mostly didn’t predict anthing specific about how bad it would get, or the credit crunch and failures of derivative markets which is what really lead to disaster, and the need for huge bank bail outs.
“4. Academic inbreeding has led to dysfunctional theories.”
Again this is a problem in all sciences to some extent, although it looks much worse in economics.
“This begs the question of what a “Neoclassically-based” model is. In macroeconomics, it means the assumption that the economy tends to come to full employment automatically (so long as no obstacles stand in its way)….Those claims sound ridiculous and I wouldn’t believe me, either.”
Yes. Some of the assumptions and theories of macro economics sound crazy to me. But I’m very hestitant to use this to discredit economics in general. There’s a lot of micro economics stuff that simply works. I admit I dont have formal qualifications in economics but I’m fairly conversant with the issues, always been a little bit interested.
“5. There’s no incentive to fix those dysfunctional theories”
Things do seem to be changing. Economists seem to be accepting some of the assumptions are just no longer tenable, more attention needs to be paid to humn psychology, and things like economic growth can’t be assume to continue forever. Based on articles I’ve read in the Economist Journal.
“Conclusions: ….. They also brought us the view that exporting jobs to China won’t really hurt us (remember, they assume we return to full employment automatically), we can allow merger after merger and not experience a decline in competitiveness (you know, like in health care), austerity measures help fix economies (they’ve done wonders for Greece), tax cuts for the rich increase investment (they actually increase saving, which lowers firm sales and thereby lowers investment), education needs to be privatized (so the poor get excluded), etc, etc….”
Trade with China has lead to low cost consumer goods and most of the negative impacts on employment have come from automation not China. Plenty of economists argued AGAINST austerity being applied so harshly to Greece. I’m not convinced economists promote mergers. It’s a basic tenet of economics that competition is a good thing.
Valid criticisms about tax and education policies. Conservative parties just love tax cuts for rich people and austerity…Politics plays a big role here people. Was all this stuff economists advice, or political expediency, or politicians cherry picking what advice they liked?
Mr. Know It Allsays
156 – James Charles
““The root problem of 2008 was a failure to recognize that the highly leveraged money center banks had used derivatives not to distribute subprime mortgage risk to the broad risk bearing capacity of the market as a whole but, rather, to concentrate it in themselves.””
The derivatives were a problem, but they were not the “root” problem. The root problem was lax lending standards pushed by Barney Frank and Clinton starting around 1992. NINJA loans – no income, no job, no assets and YOU can own this $500K home and become rich was the belief. The lax lending continued under Bush until the chickens came home to roost.
Best video on the internet on the topic; made in November 2006:
It is poor internet etiquette, but something you do constantly, to jump in between two people and pronounce your opinion of what someone else said or meant to say. It’s pretty much a guarantee of trouble.
I don’t care about endless discussions like that
Years of trolling the denial trolls
Years of the *0ff-topic* nuclear debate
Thou doth protest too much.
because the main point is SCIENCE says lithium is not a necessary part of the diet
I do not believe diet was even raised by me. What organism EATS lithium directly or intentionally (besides idiot humans, that is)?
You raise it because…?
Killiansays
171 nigelj says:
21 May 2021 at 2:21 AM
This commentary posted by K attacks economics in general and discusses the 2008 global financial crash:
You use the term “attacks” about a professor of economics and finance offering her view on economics and finance. It’s completely inappropriate to characterize professional academic analysis of one’s own profession and area of research and teaching as “attacking” its own area of study. What? It’s a suicidal view of her own life’s work?
You clearly demonstrate by this characterization you do not have the knowledge, insight or analytical skill to take on a professor of economics and finance critiquing her own field. I mean, you still don’t even understand MMT.
So, no, I didn’t read beyond the above quote.
Killiansays
Re 171:
HIS view. My bad.
But you can use the same response when nigel fails to restrain himself from responding to 169, so the use of “she” wasn’t entirely wasted.
If you sincerely enjoy good economics content, whether or not you agree with it, Harvey is super entertaining.
Killiansays
170 Steve Weeks says:
21 May 2021 at 1:20 AM
If you put 43 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere then we should remove the same amount by CCUS. If the Century plant in Texas removes 8.4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide each year, by calculation, building 5000 facilities should do the job? The difficult part is the financial side, but what if you could raise the capital? 2.6 trillion would be sufficient. I have a plan.
Let’s apply some context and a few regenerative principles to your comment.
Time: How long to build all those plants? Decades.
Problem: Two new studies this week indicate irreversible tipping points for Antarctica & Greenland centered around 2060 and/or +1.6C. That means significantly before both are entirely possible. Greenland, specifically, might have been triggered already by passing +0.8C.
Long-tail risk analysis makes waiting decades to do no better than stabilize CO2, while addressing no other aspect of our problems (at least, you mentioned none of them), a non-starter.
Circular systems: Do all outputs and wastes have uses elsewhere so there is essentially no waste, i.e. circular economy? No.
Waste: Do such plants have wastes? Yes. Actual physical wastes, ecosystem destruction where plants are built, non-renewable resources consumed, etc.
Hierarchy of responses: Are there natural means to draw down C with none of the negatives of CCUS? Yes. Why, then, would we jump to a worst-case response rather than the best-case response?
Etc.
nigeljsays
Killian @161
“Nowhere have you shown the lithium plays no role in those ecosystems.”
The evidence certainly suggests lithium doesn’t play a role in ecosystems, certainly no significant role. A simple google search shows lithium is not a necessary requirement of any organisms diet. Namely its not a micro nutrient. Piotr also demonstrated this with the oceans. And lithium is obviously not used in habitat. And where have you shown lithium DOES play a role in those ecosystems?. There has to be evidence that extracting lithium causes a significant HARM, and you have provided none.
Even if Lithium was needed in the diet, or had some value in health, the quantities we would be extracting are so small (as shown by pioter ) as to be insignificant as previously stated. You haven’t ANSWERED this. And if you are worried about extracting lithium, then limits can be imposed as previously stated. You haven’t ANSWERED this. Before you do answer please understand that imposing limits would be no more difficult than trying to convince people to follow your ‘simplification’ proposals.
“You blithely ignore the ecosystem destruction to access the water.”
Trivially concerning in terms of area especially when measured against what we have to gain, and easily minimised and mitigated. Its nothing compared to the massive ecosystem destruction caused by converting natural habitat to farming, which YOU ignore. All your time here is spent talking mining. And dont get me wrong. I’m as worried about the negative impacts of mining as anyone and have made submissions on this to our government opposing mining in a couple of specific cases, but I dont oppose mining in principle.
“You blithely ignore any such system would absolutely currently – and likely always – be unsustainable.”
Not sure what you mean. Perhaps you mean that we will eventually run out of lithium. We will probably eventually run out of some things. If we use them we will eventually run out. The only thing we can do is try not to run out too fast. You know some environmental stuff, but you just don’t appear to have a commonsense understanding of what’s meant by ‘sustainability’. I know that.s a bit critical but its not just my perception.
————————————————
Killian @162
“Killian @133 on markets. So we should get rid of markets because they don’t always work perfectly or optimally.”
“Typical Straw Man. Not at all what I have said, and you know that.
Not at all. You have spent your entire time on this forum criticising markets and free trade (which goes to the heart of markets), and offering an alternative proposal called ‘simplification’ which appears to have no markets, no private sector ownership (apart from personal possessions like clothes) and no economic competition and no money. You have said this several times as far as I can recall.
“So, no, he said nothing about my character, manner or style in any way. Susan did. Without cause, without justification, without reason. ”
She has every reason. You break moderation rules all the time badly, with your personally abusive tone and more and we are entitled to point that out. MAR gets a bit rough but not to the same extent and not with fellow warmists.Not saying SA is totally without blame in this, but what she did was trivial.
“You do not want to discuss things actually important to climate so much as you all want to attack denialists and non-denialists who understand things better than you do, which makes you all feel insecure.”
I attack (as in criticise) anything that looks wrong, and 90% of the time I’m right about that. I see it in comments of experts who say much the same things I do here and in about a dozen other forums. And I won’t be stopping this, not for anyone.
nigeljsays
Killian @165
“Since you joined this forum, you are the source of the vast majority of conflict. I remind you, for six months I bent over backwards educating you. For six months you kept using Straw Man arguments, false characterizations of my positions, etc., until I gave up and started calling you on these things. Nothing has changed.”
I’m a source of conflict with you? Only because you obviously don’t like my criticisms of what you post so you loose your temper and you engage in name calling etc. You have to respond diplomatically. I’ve been pretty diplomatic to you on the whole. Lets have a piotr poll. Anyone disagree? I’ve told you a dozen times its a better strategy to be polite (not nauseatingly polite of course.) Or use a bit of sarcasm is better than going ballistic.
I reject these suggestions I use strawman arguments etc. You sometimes misinterpret what people say including me. Your education of people here consists mainly of your beliefs like simplification. Haven’t seen this in any text books. So the point is you will get challenged, frequently.
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Killian @173
“Killian @145, on lithium and what Kevin meant.”
“It is poor internet etiquette, but something you do constantly, to jump in between two people and pronounce your opinion of what someone else said or meant to say. It’s pretty much a guarantee of trouble.
Yes I admit I should have let that one pass. I only intervened because I started discussion on this lithium mining issue so I had an interest.
“Years of the *0ff-topic* nuclear debate.”
It’s not off topic. Its an energy source. You cannot and should not try to shut down discussion like this, and if you do it will make people suspicious of you. And I’m not promoting nuclear power. Most of my responses have been to suggest nuclear power may have a place, but faces considerable obstacles and I’ve given up responding on the nuclear power issue. I’ve made my point on what I think.
Piotrsays
If the Century plant in Texas removes 8.4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide each year, by calculation, building 5000 facilities should do the job? 2.6 trillion would be sufficient. I have a plan.
1.That Century plant did cost $1.1bln – wouldn’t that make it 5.5, not 2.6 trillion. And that’s only building costs – what are the _operating_ costs?
2. How much GHGs does it take to extract a ton of CO2, to pipe it down the 160km pipeline and to pipe into the rocks?
3. Since the CO2 is being piped to “Occidental’s enhanced oil recovery (EOR) projects in the Permian Basin” – it is pumped into the rock to increases pressure
that bring the oil to the surface – but wouldn’t this CO2 come up with the oil
it is pushing up?
4. You would have to locate the power and recovery plants within reasonable distance from geological structures from impermeable to CO2 where you are going to pump the collected CO2 in.
5.It works only for large point emitters – you can’t use it in all small distributed sources (cars, ships, planes, furnaces etc). Perhaps some of the distributed sources could be powered with electricity or hydrogen from the new point sources, but wouldn’t it be simpler/cheaper to have solar, wind or nuclear providing that extra electricity/hydrogen?
6. You won’t be able to capture all? most? of CO2 from the gas or coal power plant – so you electricity EVEN after the capture of SOME of its CO2 is not really 100% carbon-free. Any idea what percentage of the supplied CO2 that Century plant is able to capture?
Your plan may need some work. ;-)
Killiansays
The “modern” economy, ergo markets, particularly in the common modern parlance, not only creates poverty, injustice and inequality, it also causes us to work more than 20% more.
Markets have not improved life or decreased poverty; the Capitialist use of “poverty” is as bullshit as Econ itself.
Consistent with influential theories from anthropology and economic history, the evidence suggests that greater market integration is associated with more total time spent working by men.
Of course, the lack of intellectual honesty on this forum will result in the logical fallacy of associating these ideas with me, personally, rather than as intellectually and scientifically rigorous findings in order to diminish these results due to personal animosities, but the non-bigots and serious-minded people reading here are not fooled by such tactics.
Killiansays
104 Adam Lea says:
21 May 2021 at 11:26 AM
70: ” Killian is utterly convinced his ‘simplification’ plan is right and anything not 100% like it gets rubbished.”
First, that person’s statement is a lie. I don’t “rubbish” non-sustainability, I point it out. Claiming I “rubbish” unsustainable solutions is a defensive reaction by those who *choose* to rationalize the unsustainable.
Their inability and/or unwillingness and/or fear of admitting what is and isn’t sustainable is their problem, not mine. Saying solar, wind, EVs, etc. are unsustainable is not an attack, i.e. “rubbishing, it’s a straightforward statement of fact.
I do heartily rubbish Econ, denialism/denialists and co-dependent aiding and abetting of denial by constantly engaging denialists – thus reinforcing their Big Lie – though.
I can’t help thinking he is ultimately correct here, and the only way for human civilisation to carry on forever (well until solar evolution puts an end to life on Earth), is for everyone to live sustainably. Sustainably means to me, living in a way that whatever we consume somehow has to be replenished by another process at at least the rate we consume it, and that what we discard is the raw material for another cycle. That means elements are consumed and produced at equal rates and you have processes like A->B-> C->C->A
You can’t help thinking it because it’s undeniable. There is no way around the logic of this. They get confused because they literally don’t accept an accurate definition of sustainable, which you have offered a simple version of here. A more typical (not necessarily better, but more appealing to the residents of Ivory Towers and issue silos) wording is offered here: “Sustainability: The use of the ecosystem in such a way as to not only not diminish the resources available to future generations, but to enhance the productivity and natural functioning of the ecosystem.” – Me, 2021 (slightly revised from many years ago)
which is the circular economy.
Weeeell… this implies sustainability depends on an economy (in the modern sense rather than the simpler concept of sharing of goods to meet needs, which I simply call “exchange”), but the opposite is the case. You do not describe a sustainable economy, you describe sustainable systems with or without an economy attached. When we add the “modern” concept of “economy” with ownership, buying and selling, market forces, finance, interest rates, real and fiat monies, etc., it is no longer sustainable. As I have said repeatedly, the reason Steve Keen is changing his Minsky model of a steady-state economy to one based on thermodynamic flows is concepts like “economy”, “money” and “markets” all are real examples of and/or proxies for energy flows. But ownership, profits, wealth, etc., are examples of sequestering energy which disrupts the flows of energy and results in waste. Thermodynamically, it is impossible to have a steady-state/circular economy based on ownership, profit, etc. One does not have to be a genius to understand this, so it boggles the mind why people don’t get it. Keen and Raworth do not yet get this. Nobody on this forum, with the possible exception of you, gets this, yet is cannot be said any more simply and is, truly, blindingly obvious. Why, then, do they not get this?
My theory is simple: They don’t want to. I.e., their blind acceptance of Econ as they have learned it prevents them from starting from a point of a tabula rasa rather than the flawed philosophical assumptions that are the quicksand underlying *all* economic theories. Even Keen’s and Raworth’s supposedly circular economics models maintain *all* of the underlying flawed philosophy of Econ even as they successfully revise some of the blatantly absurd secondary and tertiary nonsense.
Of course, these ideas will be attacked here based on the simple fact *I* have put them forward – a common fallacy employed here. A second fallacy will be that *I* can’t possibly know because big ideas can’t come from one person. Yet another related fallacy we will hear is *I*, untrained in economics, no advanced degrees, cannot be the person to figure out a new paradigm.
New paradigms are always first considered heretical.
The problem is on a global scale, we are a long way from that ideal
Agreed, but would extend it to “on every scale, with the exception of intact aboriginal societies…”
the wealthy countries are locked in this neo-liberal capitalism where the objective is more consuption which is partially fuelled by more waste (i.e. advertising to encourage people to throw away perfectly usable consumer goods and buy the latest models). The question is how we get from the state now to the optimal state of sustaiable living in the limited time we have?
#RegenerativeGovernance
(Not to be confused with a website out there with the same name and somewhat similar bent.)
BPL: “I have no idea what I am talking about. I need time to think of something that doesn’t sound like complete crap.”
BPL: Killian: I have to make up something BPL said and pretend it’s a quote, because an obvious straw man substitutes for my not being able to pin down any actual mistakes he made.
James Charlessays
‘The derivatives were a problem, but they were not the “root” problem.
I’m sure you wish believe that.
“When you add it all up, according to Das’ research, a single dollar of “real” capital supports $20 to $30 of loans. This spiral of borrowing on an increasingly thin base of real assets, writ large and in nearly infinite variety, ultimately created a world in which derivatives outstanding earlier this year stood at $485 trillion — or eight times total global gross domestic product of $60 trillion.”
James Charlessays
Prof Keen stated: ”The ‘No one could have seen this coming’ mantra is almost the exact opposite of the truth: the only way that one could fail to see this crisis coming was to be seriously misled by a naive view of how banks operate. Unfortunately economic theory is dominated by precisely such a naive view, which led those who believe that theory to a denial of reality as profound as that of those who pretended they could see clothing on The Naked Emperor. http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2009/07/15/no-one-saw-this-coming-balderdash/
Richard Caldwellsays
Wow. I’ve been focused on reality. Lots of things to do and to grow.
And when I check back here the data remains as constant as sunrise and sunset for a given day of the year.
What do you folks get out of the toxic stew y’all cook here?
I got stuff from it, but not anything I’d be proud of. Instant gratification followed by shame…
But it seems that many of you skip the shame, making for an addiction that *won’t* be broken.
This site is a microcosm, an example of why fighting rises to the top even as everyone here knows that cooperation is desperately needed.
So you’ll blame yourselves (each other) as the denizens if the handbasket get closer and closer to that proverbial destination.
Me? Similar proclivities, but I’m doing my best to stick to actually productive stuff.
So far the tale I’m leaving is working. Not as fast and not terribly close to my “plan”, but dayam, ya gotta beflexible and inclusive or your wheel-spinning will just cover everything with dirt (and not the carbon-sequesteting kind).
3. Since the CO2 is being piped to “Occidental’s enhanced oil recovery (EOR) projects in the Permian Basin” – it is pumped into the rock to increases pressure that bring the oil to the surface – but wouldn’t this CO2 come up with the oil it is pushing up?
Yes, much of it will.
The CO2 serves to recover oil that would otherwise be trapped in rock pores due to immiscibility with water (the technical term is “fractional flow”, look it up if you’re interested). The CO2 is at least somewhat miscible with oil, allowing it to dissolve into trapped oil droplets and swell them so that they reach out into the fluid flow and are carried to the extraction well. Further, there’s far more carbon in a liter of petroleum than there is in a liter of CO2, so even if the CO2 is extracted from the atmosphere it means a net increase in atmospheric CO2.
Perhaps some of the distributed sources could be powered with electricity or hydrogen from the new point sources, but wouldn’t it be simpler/cheaper to have solar, wind or nuclear providing that extra electricity/hydrogen?
In a word, yes.
On the other hand, we do need to get something like a trillion tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere. Pumping it into depleted oil fields and leaving it there isn’t a bad idea at first glance; the devil is in the details.
(Whatever happened to the preview? I used to get one when I pasted in my comment. Today, nothing.)
nigeljsays
James Charels @183 and 184, I think you are half right. Yes the main thing that turned the 2008 global financial crash from a typical recession into an almighty crash was the structure of the housing derivatives – a type of CDO instrument. They had bad maths. This is easily enough googled. This bought the financial sector to its knees and caused the credit crunch. But NOBODY could have predicted something like that would happen.
There were loans to poor people but the system should have been able to handle this. The problem was how the loans were packaged. The most you could predict was that the housing market was very hot and so a recession was inevitable.
Killiansays
Reminder: We are in overshoot globally. The only way a collapsing society can survive massive overshoot is simplification. Historical fact.
Sometimes to understand a thing you need to walk away from the numbers and theories and allow the logic of what you objectively see come through. No amount of additional scientific knowledge, research or study is going to change this. No amount of innovation or technology is going to fix this. Without simplification at the core of our future pathway, the chances of avoiding uncontrolled, disastrous collapse is essentially zero.
nigeljsays
Richard Caldwell @185 you complain about the alleged “toxic stew” here when your own opening statement was a patronising and demeaning “Wow. I’ve been focused on reality. Lots of things to do and to grow.” Hmmmm. I trust you get the point.
I do agree with many of your complaints broadly speaking, and I don’t like toxic websites discussion either. Unmoderated and lightly moderated websites (like this one) are a bit brutal. As you know I prefer slightly stronger website moderation, but its not my website.
And ultimately if its too much for your delicate sensibilities you don’t have to participate. Yes despite your protests and hissy fits you keep coming back. Hmmm :)
But it disgusts me how you apply so much false equivalence.
I think you take it all too seriously anyway. Much of the discussion here is a form of sophisticated gossip (if a bit too aggressive at times). And gossip is natural and healthy. Read the book Sapiens, A short History of Humankind by N Y Hariri.
You have a binary sort of view of things. Its more about balance and shades of grey. Human beings are basically selfish and as individuals we are interested in our own survival, pleasures, interests, and families etc. We only “cooperate” and help others if there’s something “in it for us” and to avoid brutal physical conflicts. Its the selfish gene Richard Dawkins talks about. So that’s what we have to work with. You aren’t going to get rid of self interest, sarcasm, aggression and conflicts unless you want to turn people into jellyfish or zombies.
All we can do is try like hell to avoid huge conflicts and nastiness and lean a little bit more towards niceness, cooperation and sharing. But I’m a realist. And all this is why most websites have quite tough moderation rules. To keep things roughly in check.
jbsays
Re my comment at 158:
I’m going to have to revise my comment. I shouldn’t have said “nuclear concern troll.” It should have been “thermonuclear concern troll,” or maybe “Tsar Bomba Concern Troll.”
Someone above put it best: “What do you folks get out of the toxic stew y’all cook here?”
Killiansays
114 nigelj says:
23 May 2021 at 6:45 PM
Adam Lea @104 I agree the circular economy is a useful idea, and there is something to be said in favour of the simple living concept. However I have my doubts about Killian’s particular “simplification plan”.
Because you hate Nature?
This plan includes things like the 1)enhanced use of biomass for energy and building
Does it? Hmmm…. seems to me I have said things like, e.g., embedded energy, bridge technologies, etc., are already in place and so… use them? I mean, right? Besides, most energy can be passive rather than bio. Etc. Your “mud huts” claim is baseless. But, still, please explain why bio-energy would be a bad thing as you clearly are implying?
2)going right back to traditional farming or using regenerative agriculture in such a stringent and uncompromising way
This is just weird. Traditional farming? When have I ever said that? And, given regenerative agriculture is now globally recognized as THE goal WRT agriculture for both food and carbon capture, are you really so out of touch as to imply this is in any way a bad thing? Oooh! Ick! Regenerative farming! My GAAAAWD! Seriously? This continued solutions denial by you merely reinforces that you are now what you have always been: Soft denier.
3)going back to horse and cart, walking and cycling apart from long distance travel
Well, you are leaving out a hell of a lot context here, such as small, walkable communities… which would make all those things perfect choices. Again, this would be bad how? What is it you are objecting to about healthy, carbon-sequestering, equitable communities?
4)scaling back use of modern technology apart from just a few essentials
Stop those things that are destroying the planet seems… sane, no? Once again, your objection to healthy planet is… what, exactly?
5) getting rid of all private ownership, apart from very personal possessions like clothing
Again, where is the context? You know, things like humanity has lived this way since the very beginning and the outlier is the “modern” societies of the last 10k~4k years. So, 300k years of all of the above and 10k or less of the shit we do now… Hmmm…
Thee’s also that there is no poverty in intact aboriginal communities, virtually no mental illness, virtually none of the “modern” diseases, little or no drug abuse, the needs of all in the community are met, they are happier and healthier, etc. But, sure, let’s just blindly dismiss the idea of mimicking these regenerative communities, modified to the built environment we have saddled ourselves with, because….? Seems to be as simple as “I don’t wanna” or that asinine “But people won’t!”
getting rid of hierarchies in organisations, groups, management etc.
Again, why not? Those got us here. Why would you keep them and expect them to suddenly be about We, the People rather than power, control and wealth? Remember that definition of crazy, eh?
All to be done as rapidly as possible.
And your objection to avoiding tipping points is…?
As usual, you have written much and said nothing.
nigeljsays
Kevin McKinney @113 (UV).
“But I think it’s a mistake to overweight “ultimately.” What we need is to consider thoughtfully what we can afford to use and how fast, and make rational, fair decisions about whether, in each particular case, we should use it. We’re not balancing in place, we’re surfing a wave. And as always, the ride won’t last forever; we’ll either fall, or the wave will break.”
Yes, perceptive. I think we all see the same basic fundamental problem that we are destroying natural habitat at an alarming rate, and have to conserve renewable resources like natural habitat. This is going to require we stop destroying it for farm land. This means a switch to a low meat diet and perhaps less use of timber overall. We simply cannot afford this endless loss of biodiversity.
Secondly we all see that using non renewables (minerals) can’t continue indefinitely, (just like your comments on energy use), but its a question of how far it makes sense to cut back use of non renewables in the short term for the good of future generations. The thing is this obviously comes down to the real world use of resources at a personal level.There is unlikely to ever be some political body or any other body that will make these decisions for us. It would certainly be a cop out to wait for such a thing to happen (not that you are saying that).
So lets take an example. if I need to replace my television for example, do I buy a big 60 inch television, something smaller, or none at all and just rely on a little radio? Or nothing at all. Its not an easy decision. There is certainly no mathematical formula I’m aware of that tells us the right thing to do. I compromise and buy a 32 inch television. I think this strikes a good balance between not being too greedy, and not being a fool who goes without when nobody else is, and downgrading my quality of life to ridiculous lows. It’s just an example, but the principle applies to literally everything. Of course some materials are abundant like iron ore and some are rare so this has to be considered.
Some people are a little bit more slanted towards going without. Perhaps because they think extraction of minerals is so devastating on the environment it should just stop or that reserves are in imminent danger of running out. Others have a dismissive view that life should go on as normal, and people in the future will sort out a solution. They will innovate and sort out some solutions, but they wont be able to easily fix something like runaway climate change or 90% of species wiped out, or no cobalt, lead or tin left at affordable prices. Then we really will all be going back to subsistence farming! I sit somewhere between these pessimistic and optimistic views of things.
Zebra is also 100% right population pressure is a big source of all our problems and smaller population is the big part of the solution. However we are in danger of leaving them a mess. The tricky bit is navigating the transition period which will be about two centuries, and doing it sensibly in a workable way. Or should I say “surfing it” to use your term.
nigeljsays
Piotr @179 regarding direct air capture of CO2. I do largely agree with your concerns. I think this looks expensive looking and a last resort sort of option, however I found this some time ago that suggests it might be a little bit more feasable than we think. FYI:
Remember what I was saying @168 “Have also seen interesting commentary somewhere recently showing fossil fuel people like the Koch Brothers promote reductions in carbon footprints and levels of consumption etc, to take attention off building a new energy grid and carbon taxes. Make it all a “personal choice and responsibility issue”.
“Supran said there is nothing unique about the way Exxon has framed its messaging about climate change. It was BP, for example, that popularized the term “carbon footprint” in the mid-2000s, shifting responsibility for emissions from corporations to the consumer. But the researchers have not been able to obtain the same set of documents from other companies that would allow them to compare public statements with internal discussions.”
“What do you folks get out of the toxic stew y’all cook here?”
I learn stuff–partly directly from other’s posts, but also very significantly through fact-checking and rethinking what I think I already know. Plus, some thinking out loud–thanks to all for tolerating it, more or less.
Piotrsays
Re: Nigel(193).
It is a different application – it captures CO2 from air (batteries of giant fans) instead of capturing industrial post-combustion gases the post I was responding to was.
They concentrate CO2 and then reduce it with H2 from hydrolysis – to create low net carbon fuel – so in this setup it would be used to reduce positive emissions (as opposed to negative emissions). They assume that energy for running the fans AND for hydrolysis will come from renewables, so the question is why would you not use that renewable energy directly – either powering EVs or producing the hydrogen for hydrogen portable energy uses.
IN other words, the scheme makes sense only for applications in which you can’t use direct electricity and H2, or the life-cycle analysis shows that it is more effective use of renewable energy.
I guess you could use it also as a form of virtual storage – you run your system only in seasons and times of the day when the supply of electricity is higher than demand, but of course you could do the same with generating hydrogen. So the scheme would be advantageous over using electricity directly or stored in H2 if we had applications in which the fuel produced there is better/safer/easier to transport than electricity or hydrogen.
The other potential application – would be to use the collected CO2 to pump into the ground – which would be the net negative emissions (i.e. sequestration) but this runs into the same limitations I have described in (179)
Finally, there is a line in the article: “ there’s no way yet to know whether it can scale up“.
That said, I think it should be developed – it’s not “all or nothing” – there is no single silver bullet that will instantly solve the problem and we may nedd to have diverse options – we should have this technology:
– for applications in which we can replace fossil fuels more effectively with these than with direct use of electricity and H2,
and/or if/where we can avoid the limitations of the CO2 sequestration in rocks.
I think we all see the same basic fundamental problem that we are destroying natural habitat at an alarming rate, and have to conserve renewable resources like natural habitat. This is going to require we stop destroying it for farm land.
Also stop things like converting farm land to suburbs. This means ending all sources of population growth, especially immigration.
People don’t appreciate it, but “renewables” are extraordinarily destructive of nature. PV farms and forests are mutually exclusive, to give one example, and trees aren’t typically grown within wind farms either. This is another reason I’m pro-nuclear; plants use very little land for the plant proper, and have large natural buffer zones around them which effectively become wildlife sanctuaries.
This means a switch to a low meat diet and perhaps less use of timber overall.
Between bacteria-based feed and things like giant kelp, I doubt we’re going to run out of ways to feed animals even if we don’t disturb forests to do it. Giant kelp growing on artificial substrates in waters too deep to support rooted plants is one way to expand ecosystems and make relatively “dead” waters much more productive.
Aluminum-based means cheap and no lithium limitations. 7 kW/kg and 140 Wh/kg means a charging time OTOO 1 minute, and would make really nice PHEV supercars.
Piotrsays
Nigel(94) “ Supran said […] But the researchers have not been able to obtain the same set of documents from other companies that would allow them to compare public statements with internal discussions.”
I don’t think it is clear that this applies to the PRIOR research – one of the NEW things about Supran and Oreskes study was that they WERE able to obtain some internal documents:
“ of 180 ExxonMobil climate change communications, including peer-reviewed publications, internal company documents and advertorials in The New York Times.“.
In fact, one of the main strengths of the paper was being able to document and quantify – what we all thought: that internal language was wildly fifferent than the message to the outside: See for instance their
Table 2. Rhetorical tropes and taboos: Highly divergent terms in (left) advertorials versus (right) internal documents, by LL ratio (G2) and FS.
using the insight of best ad agencies on how to use language to shape what people think.
or Table 5. Rhetoric of individualized responsibility: Highly divergent terms in (top) advertorials and (bottom) internal and/or peer-reviewed documents, by LL ratio (G2) and FS
which corresponds to the message of the individualized responsibility pushed by the oil companies to divert the attention from their responsibility –
used to undermine as “hypocrites” the critics if they are not 100%-free of emissions (“do you eat meat?”, “do you own a car?”, “how did you come to this climate change conference?”) and shift the attention from the decreasing the industrial emissions and pricing of the carbon onto …. individual responsibility.
Not a single bite. Either people were preoccupied with some much more important topic, or nobody disagreed with me. If the latter – it would be a first … ;-)
Piotrsays
(179): CO2 is pumped into the rock to increases pressure that bring the oil to the surface – but wouldn’t this CO2 come up with the oil it is pushing up?
(186):” Yes, much of it will.
Hence using such CO2 in the enhanced recovery would affect the CO2 in the atmosphere only IF the used CO2 displaced burning on purpose fossil fuels on spot only to get CO2 out of them.
Which would be not only environmentally but economically crazy, unless the volume of needed CO2 was so SMALL, or you couldn’t get the electricity out (i.e. if you were on a isolated platform) to justify NOT building a power plant on site. But obviously the volume is not that small, if in the example here they built 160 km pipeline to transport the CO2.
147 Killian says:
19 May 2021 at 4:14 AM
“If the effort is limited to restoration of degraded kelp forests, I’m all for it.”
That appears to be at least some of their idea:
https://www.runningtide.com/restoring
I disagree that expanding kelp habitat is necessarily a bad thing. Artificial reefs are a thing and considered to be beneficial.
Barton Paul Levenson @148 says “BPL: I’m not really qualified to diagnose you, (Killian) although tentatively I’d say you have something like narcissistic personality disorder. Definitely see a professional.”
I thought the same. Hopefully Killian doesn’t take your comment or mine as gaslighting or something, because it isn’t. Studies show about 25% of people have some sort of psychological issue at some time in their lives. It can happen to any of us. The problem with NPD is sufferers go into denial about having it. I think you would understand why. Regarding your other comment, you are going to be kept very busy.
nigelj(142) Piotr @139 regarding the great “pivot”, and defending the indefensible. So true. I don’t know why people bother to do these things.
I agree that it is his narcissism, but also fundamentalism. If one is the Prophet of the One Complete Solution to Everything, then there can’t be any compromises with the lesser solutions, nor any admission of error, even in trivial things. In fact, to a true zealot, the biggest enemy is not somebody believing in different things, but one on the same side of the barricade, but challenging his unique position: Trotskyites to Stalinists, Shiite fundamentalists to the Sunni fundamentalists and vice-versa, going often harder than they go after the infidels, and that’s why Christian anti-Semites go after the Jews: they could have been the first to embrace Jesus, but given this chance – they rejected Him.
In the case of our simplicity fundamentalist, he gives a pass to a climate change denier: “KIA actually responded quite good-naturedly ” [e.g. by writing: here’s a website you may like – all comments are WOKE” and denying human impact on climate – “quite good natured” Earth-friendly banter…]
while reserving all the vitriol for Susan and everybody who dares to question Killian blowing the fuse on this one.
And now he posts a 1000-word post (144) in which he explains why Susan’s words: “ I know Killian is a little over earnest and can be annoying with it, but at least he understands our planetary emergency and is trying to address it.
were: “insulting”, “stupid”, “rude”, “unethical”, “unprovoked, off-base insult”, and how Susan was “ gaslighting”, “responsible for the constant flow of insults“, without ethical backbone (“ You need to get some goddamned backbone“), intolerant, hypocrite and aggressive (“Learn some tolerance. The hypocritical irony of your aggressiveness here… Jesus…“).
…and how Killian’s response [boldfaced above] was … none of that.
By their ability to see the beam in their eye you shall know them …
Killian @ 146 (responding to KM). “Vulcan (an Australian multinational planning a German lithium brine extraction op) proposes an intriguing model: deep, hot brines will be pumped to the surface, the energy will be used to power the entire operation, and the brine (less lithium content) will then be returned to the deep aquifer.”
“I repeat, if Nature put it there and the ecosystem is functioning (and they are finding life very, very deep so assuming there is none there, or that future changes won’t make that aquifer available – less its lithium – in the future are naive, at best), history has proven: Leave it alone. Modern humans do *not* have a positive record in this regard.”
So despite the fact that lithium is not a dietary requirement, and despite evidence it can be toxic in excess, and despite the fact that any life at the bottom of an aquifer would obviously be small in quantity, and despite the fact only some aquifers would be mined, and we would be putting the water BACK, and somehow we still should desist from such mining and leave mother nature in peace? This is clearly the precautionary principle taken to an absurd extreme. Its just as bad as corporates wanting to do anything, with no limits imposed.
This is from a few years back, but just as accurate today. (Find the very bright economist on Twitter… unless you’re a driveling Chicago School zombie.)
And why some here – most? – are clueless. MMT, e.g., is *obvious*, yet…
https://evonomics.com/blame-economics-discipline-john-harvey/
“The banksters knew what was up. They didn’t hold those loans themselves; “?
The ‘free market”banksters’ were incompetent?
“As Axel Weber remarked, afterwards:
I asked the typical macro question: who are the twenty biggest suppliers of securitization products, and who are the twenty biggest buyers. I got a paper, and they were both the same set of institutions. . . . The industry was not aware at the time that while its treasury department was reporting that it bought all these products its credit department was reporting that it had sold off all the risk because they had securitized them…” 1h. 10m. in.
http://www.lse.ac.uk/lse-player?id=1856
“The root problem of 2008 was a failure to recognize that the highly leveraged money center banks had used derivatives not to distribute subprime mortgage risk to the broad risk bearing capacity of the market as a whole but, rather, to concentrate it in themselves.”
https://equitablegrowth.org/misdiagnosis-of-2008-and-the-fed-inflation-targeting-was-not-the-problem-an-unwillingness-to-vaporize-asset-values-was-not-the-problem/
Killian @144 says:
“Mike gaslights: How about a 30 day timeout for commenters who go off the deep end?”
No. Shakes head in despair. Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse where a person or group makes someone question their sanity, perception of reality, or memories . Mike clearly didn’t do that. Mike is referring to Killians response to Susan Anderson where he most certainly went off the deep end. SA called Killian well meaning a bit irritating and earnest ( a huge understatement I would have thought). In response Killian goes off the deep end with a whole lot of inflammatory, offensive, abrasive language thats a pain in the neck to read when he could so easily have disputed her comments in a civil way or just ignored them. Killian escalates things. He takes even the slightest criticism about him or what he writes, and responds with really nasty invective raising things about three levels. Im not saying other people are always innocent, or hes the only person who does this, but he really stands out.
“Yet, Susan saw fit to call my comments about what *is* a crime against humanity being a, you know, crime against humanity, “over the top” and “irritating.”
Looks more like Susan Anderson would be referring to Killians big ego, and his constant unfounded, accusations all and sundry are lying or ignorant or fools, judging by other comments she’s posted.
And yet this Killian guy who routinely makes nasty accusations against all and sundry (fools, liars, idiots,ignoramuses, especially economists apparently) has the timerity to claim people aren’t nice to him or his ‘ideas’. Its hard to get my head around this.
Gave up reading after that. I get fixated on all this awful stuff, but even I have my limits.
If I were Charles Koch and I wanted to sabotage a popular and influential blog like Realclimate, how would I do it? Would I unleash comic relief trolls like Knucklehead in America or Weaktor? Not really, although they might be worth a few bucks a month. I think instead I would invest in what I like to call “the nuclear concern troll.” This troll would profess a zealous concern for the subject matter, as well as an exhaustive knowledge of the issues and most importantly, he would have THE ANSWERS. He would scream to the heavens words like “regenerative” and “simplify.” He would be cock-sure on all issues and would suffer no disagreement. At those who disagree, he would aim the strongest abuse he could muster – and because he is viewed as a sympathizer, he would likely get away with far more than would be tolerated from others.
Now, though he would swear that he has THE ANSWERS, and would tell all readers that he has issued THE ANSWERS in full detail in a deep dark past, he would never restate or reference THE ANSWERS. He would be prolific in his abuse and in his insistence on omniscience and very prolific, so much so that it would be nearly impossible to search the blog for THE ANSWERS. We would be assured that THE ANSWERS exist and we would all be kept hungry for his truth – a promise of salvation, always just out of reach.
Prolificness and abusiveness would be his essence. He would take up large amounts of white space. He would say so much without saying anything at all – except to hurl abuse. Visitors to the site would see the soiled white space and quickly conclude that staying there is a waste of time.
That would be my game plan if I were Charles Koch.
Killian @133 on markets. So we should get rid of markets because they don’t always work perfectly or optimally. You do realise we could apply the same logic to all your case studies and proposals? Because make no mistake, none of that stuff works perfectly or optimally.
———————-
Killian @145, on lithium and what Kevin meant. Maybe Kevin said something wrong, maybe not. I don’t care about endless discussions like that because the main point is SCIENCE says lithium is not a necessary part of the diet, and that it may be toxic in excess, regardless of whether its already in the oceans or is added to the oceans, and there is no evidence its of benefit to the diet. Even if lithium was needed in the diet, and was not toxic, we would be extracting tiny quantities each year ( as piotr shows) why would it matter, and you could put an ultimate limit on how much is extracted. So where is the problem?
151 Peter Backes says:
19 May 2021 at 6:58 PM
I disagree that expanding kelp habitat is necessarily a bad thing. Artificial reefs are a thing and considered to be beneficial.
But that is not what I said. I said at the scale necessary to solve the problem. Some very limited increase? Fine. But it must be very specific, very limited because… why destroy one habitat for another? What is the net gain?
So despite the fact that lithium is not a dietary requirement, and despite evidence it can be toxic in excess, and despite the fact that any life at the bottom of an aquifer would obviously be small in quantity, and despite the fact only some aquifers would be mined, and we would be putting the water BACK, and somehow we still should desist from such mining and leave mother nature in peace? This is clearly the precautionary principle taken to an absurd extreme. Its just as bad as corporates wanting to do anything, with no limits imposed.
Nowhere have you shown the lithium plays no role in those ecosystems.
Your argument is the positives outweigh the unknown negatives. This is shit risk analysis.
You blithely ignore the ecosystem destruction to access the water.
You blithely ignore any such system would absolutely currently – and likely always – be unsustainable.
As ever.
Killian @133 on markets. So we should get rid of markets because they don’t always work perfectly or optimally.
Typical Straw Man. Not at all what I have said, and you know that.
—–
158
jb says:
20 May 2021 at 4:45 PM
I think instead I would invest in what I like to call “the nuclear concern troll.” This troll would profess a zealous concern for the subject matter, as well as an exhaustive knowledge of the issues and most importantly
Now, though he would swear that he has THE ANSWERS, and would tell all readers that he has issued THE ANSWERS in full detail in a deep dark past, he would never restate or reference THE ANSWERS.
Prolificness and abusiveness would be his essence.
That would be my game plan if I were Charles Koch.
Or just a member of the Peanut Gallery. There’s aa large group of you all doing these things.
—–
while reserving all the vitriol for Susan and everybody who dares to question Killian blowing the fuse on this one.
KIA’s MO is to lie his ass off with a polite smile. It’s classic climate trolling. So, no, he said nothing about my character, manner or style in any way. Susan did. Without cause, without justification, without reason. She had exactly zero reason to mention me in that post, let alone negatively.
She has done this before, and over a long period of time – like the rest of you – yet denies this. But that is the context. It wasn’t a one-off, it was a pattern. Like the rest of you. You like to pretend 6 years of abuse from a group against one person is not bizarre, is irrelevant to my reaction.
As I have said, you are engaging in a gaslighting gangbang.
Get some ethics and morals.
As for my responses, I have said for YEARS here, I consider this idea that an insult matters by it’s scale and can and should be met at exactly the same scale. No. An unprovoked, gaslit attack is an unprovoked, gaslit attack. You come at me in an insulting manner, I’ll knock your goddamned head off.
You all know this. You count in it. It’s how you justify your gaslighting: Yes, we provoke him from all sides (multiple Peanut Gallery members have stated explicitly they enjoy abusing others here), but he overreacts, so it’s OK!
Meanwhile, anything substantive I post gets a fraction of the responses that my RESPONSES to lies and insults get, thus proving this entire Peanut Gallery feeding frenzy is manufactured, as I PROVED last January – which you are all ignoring now as it goes against your gaslit narrative.
You do not want to discuss things actually important to climate so much as you all want to attack denialists and non-denialists who understand things better than you do, which makes you all feel insecure.
You surely remember all this started nearly six years ago because I kept suggesting pathways that others thought ridiculous and kept making predictions that indicated I was right? How sad. This all literally began because… I am the only one here who has made any specific predictions or broad predictions that have proven… correct. That’s not ego, it’s fact. That fact doesn’t support your claim, it supports mine: You’re all embarrassed a person weak in math can analyze climate so much more effectively than any of you, AND come up with a viable, if unpopular, comprehensive solution model.
Your collective embarrassment and fear of having to let go of your lifestyles has caused my comments here to serve as chum to the Peanut Gallery shark fenzy.
Now, kindly STFU. There are important issues about.
Last add: Proof in the pudding re: the bias here: Not one of you has acknowledged Susan’s comment was unnecessary, provocative and rude – or even slightly off-color. Not one.
Were there any ethics among you peanuts, you would have *at least* framed your responses as, “Yes, Susan was very mildly offensive and offered a tiny provocation, but…” But you lack the intestinal fortitude to even do that.
Again, STFU and get back to real issues.
Last last add: Kochs? Even the most cursory knowledge of my comments here and elsewhere make this the most ridiculously stupid bullshit ever posted on these fora. But you won’t be called on it. The Peanut Gallery protects its own.
I get fixated on all this awful stuff, but even I have my limits.
Since you joined this forum, you are the source of the vast majority of conflict. I remind you, for six months I bent over backwards educating you. For six months you kept using Straw Man arguments, false characterizations of my positions, etc., until I gave up and started calling you on these things. Nothing has changed.
And, yes, gaslighting. You are all collectively rewriting history to absolve yourselves of your lack of ethical and moral behavior – and not just against me. Every person who comes here talking about regenerative-focused climate responses gets the same treatment. Thomas and several others, which is why I am the only one who regularly posts on sane climate solutions.
Gaslighting is EXACTLY what you all do. You are doing it here. Susan’s comments were absolutly unnecessary and personal. They added zero utility to her post. You refuse to call that out. That is 1. lying, 2. revising history (That didn’t happen! it’s all you!), and therefore 3. gaslighting.
You know this. You cannot look yourself in the mirror and admit it, Straw Man.
Reality check, recent history: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/01/forced-responses-jan-2021/comment-page-2/#comment-783797
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/01/forced-responses-jan-2021/comment-page-3/#comment-783826
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/01/forced-responses-jan-2021/comment-page-3/#comment-783896
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/01/forced-responses-jan-2021/comment-page-3/#comment-783897
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/01/forced-responses-jan-2021/comment-page-3/#comment-783900
THE MONEY SHOT! From 2015:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/01/forced-responses-jan-2021/comment-page-3/#comment-783902
BPL: “I have no idea what I am talking about. I need time to think of something that doesn’t sound like complete crap.”
Jasper Janes: “Killian’s general thesis is correct, and I find much of the flak he is receiving focused on winning debating points rather than helping to solve this overwhelming problem we face.”
“[Ray Ladbury]OK, Killian, let me draw you a map.
[Me]Patronization isn’t the most effective technique for binding allies together.
[Ray]…or most of the other hobby horses some here straddle.”
Etc.
OK. Done. I expect the assholery to continue, but, once again, I will do my part to try to avoid responding to an entire gang of abusers.
Climate as an asteroid impact. Maybe useful if you insist on sparring with denialist criminals, or just the denialism-duped (<– has some tiny chance of being useful).
https://profmandia.wordpress.com/2018/10/30/an-asteroid-is-approaching-earth-what-is-your-politician-doing-to-prevent-the-worst-impacts/#more-3448
Piotr @153 on fundamentalism etc, etc. Yes definitely sounds right. A healthy dose of scepticism is required of anything like that (the rational sort, not the climate denialist cherry picking drivel). Michael Shermers book Sceptic is a great read.
Jb @158, on the Koch brothers. Fyi the book “Dark Money” is about the Koch Brothers and money in climate denialism and is quite a good read. Have also seen interesting commentary somewhere recently showing fossil fuel people like the Koch Brothers promote reductions in carbon footprints and levels of consumption etc, to take attention off building a new energy grid and carbon taxes. Make it all a “personal choice and responsibility issue”. They know the probability of people reducing their consumption patterns significantly is small, so they aren’t worried by that. Anything to distract attention from pumping oil and building new coal fired plant. Not saying reducing carbon footprints is not important, and I’ve made some efforts myself, but I don’t see it happening with many people.
Issues in finance/econ, according to a prof of finance and economics. Note the irrationality:
https://evonomics.com/takes-village-media-business-policy-academic-experts-maintain-dangerous-financial-system/
If you put 43 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere then we should remove the same amount by CCUS. If the Century plant in Texas removes 8.4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide each year, by calculation, building 5000 facilities should do the job? The difficult part is the financial side, but what if you could raise the capital? 2.6 trillion would be sufficient. I have a plan.
This commentary posted by K attacks economics in general and discusses the 2008 global financial crash:
https://evonomics.com/blame-economics-discipline-john-harvey/
Lets have a look at its main points:
“1. Economists write to impress each other in a language only they can understand.”
Ha ha ha. You could say the same of any science especially something like physics. This stuff in many fields is COMPLICATED. This doesn’t make it wrong and there are plenty of good books simplifying economics for public consumption.
“2. As an economist, you are encouraged to think outside the box–except don’t!”
He argues that the peer review process tends to reinforce the dominant model (in economics its neoclassical economics). Again this is a problem throughout all sciences. So if Killian is using this to rubbish economics, he has to apply the same standard to virtually ALL sciences. Personally I agree that neoclassical thought gets too much dominance, and leaves something to be desired, but the failure of communism shows it can’t be lightly dismissed either. To anyone conversant with the issues.
“3. Mainstream economists have next to no knowledge of the schools of thought that did the best job of forecasting the Financial Crisis….Suffice it to say that there exists in economics a much broader range of approaches than just Neoclassicism …:”
Just his opinion. How would he really know this? He’s probably only talked to a small number of economists. I doubt its actually true. People normally have a general interest in whats going on around the fringes of their professions. The same could probably be said of other sciences anyway.
And the “alternative schools of economics have conflicting views” so which one do we believe if any?
“But I would argue (and have elsewhere) that Neoclassicism hardly has a monopoly on the truth. Indeed, when we look at who saw the Financial Crisis coming, their track record is actually pretty grim.”
Agreed. Economists track record predicting the GFC was grim. But I think its hard to predict something when the problems were so hidden. Nobody knew that the CDO mortgage packages were fatally flawed instruments based on bad maths. You cannot blame economics as a whole for a specific technical problem. It was rotten luck. Still it doesnt reflect all that well on the economics community as a whole didn’t see that trouble of some sort was coming. I mean all those sub prime loans made to poor people that couldn’t really afford the repayments were never going to end well ( no criticism of the home buyers, they have my sympathy).
I found 6 economists who are alleged to have predicted the 2008 GFC:
https://www.intheblack.com/articles/2015/07/07/6-economists-who-predicted-the-global-financial-crisis-and-why-we-should-listen-to-them-from-now-on
However they largely just predicted ” the housing market looking very overheated, and trouble is coming”. This was fairly obvious. I THOUGHT THAT! They mostly didn’t predict anthing specific about how bad it would get, or the credit crunch and failures of derivative markets which is what really lead to disaster, and the need for huge bank bail outs.
“4. Academic inbreeding has led to dysfunctional theories.”
Again this is a problem in all sciences to some extent, although it looks much worse in economics.
“This begs the question of what a “Neoclassically-based” model is. In macroeconomics, it means the assumption that the economy tends to come to full employment automatically (so long as no obstacles stand in its way)….Those claims sound ridiculous and I wouldn’t believe me, either.”
Yes. Some of the assumptions and theories of macro economics sound crazy to me. But I’m very hestitant to use this to discredit economics in general. There’s a lot of micro economics stuff that simply works. I admit I dont have formal qualifications in economics but I’m fairly conversant with the issues, always been a little bit interested.
“5. There’s no incentive to fix those dysfunctional theories”
Things do seem to be changing. Economists seem to be accepting some of the assumptions are just no longer tenable, more attention needs to be paid to humn psychology, and things like economic growth can’t be assume to continue forever. Based on articles I’ve read in the Economist Journal.
“Conclusions: ….. They also brought us the view that exporting jobs to China won’t really hurt us (remember, they assume we return to full employment automatically), we can allow merger after merger and not experience a decline in competitiveness (you know, like in health care), austerity measures help fix economies (they’ve done wonders for Greece), tax cuts for the rich increase investment (they actually increase saving, which lowers firm sales and thereby lowers investment), education needs to be privatized (so the poor get excluded), etc, etc….”
Trade with China has lead to low cost consumer goods and most of the negative impacts on employment have come from automation not China. Plenty of economists argued AGAINST austerity being applied so harshly to Greece. I’m not convinced economists promote mergers. It’s a basic tenet of economics that competition is a good thing.
Valid criticisms about tax and education policies. Conservative parties just love tax cuts for rich people and austerity…Politics plays a big role here people. Was all this stuff economists advice, or political expediency, or politicians cherry picking what advice they liked?
156 – James Charles
““The root problem of 2008 was a failure to recognize that the highly leveraged money center banks had used derivatives not to distribute subprime mortgage risk to the broad risk bearing capacity of the market as a whole but, rather, to concentrate it in themselves.””
The derivatives were a problem, but they were not the “root” problem. The root problem was lax lending standards pushed by Barney Frank and Clinton starting around 1992. NINJA loans – no income, no job, no assets and YOU can own this $500K home and become rich was the belief. The lax lending continued under Bush until the chickens came home to roost.
Best video on the internet on the topic; made in November 2006:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jj8rMwdQf6k
More:
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/12/hey-barney-frank-the-government-did-cause-the-housing-crisis/249903/
https://www.forbes.com/2009/02/13/housing-bubble-subprime-opinions-contributors_0216_peter_wallison_edward_pinto.html?sh=2918287f778b
159 nigelj says:
20 May 2021 at 5:26 PM
Killian @145, on lithium and what Kevin meant.
It is poor internet etiquette, but something you do constantly, to jump in between two people and pronounce your opinion of what someone else said or meant to say. It’s pretty much a guarantee of trouble.
I don’t care about endless discussions like that
Years of trolling the denial trolls
Years of the *0ff-topic* nuclear debate
Thou doth protest too much.
because the main point is SCIENCE says lithium is not a necessary part of the diet
I do not believe diet was even raised by me. What organism EATS lithium directly or intentionally (besides idiot humans, that is)?
You raise it because…?
171 nigelj says:
21 May 2021 at 2:21 AM
You use the term “attacks” about a professor of economics and finance offering her view on economics and finance. It’s completely inappropriate to characterize professional academic analysis of one’s own profession and area of research and teaching as “attacking” its own area of study. What? It’s a suicidal view of her own life’s work?
You clearly demonstrate by this characterization you do not have the knowledge, insight or analytical skill to take on a professor of economics and finance critiquing her own field. I mean, you still don’t even understand MMT.
So, no, I didn’t read beyond the above quote.
Re 171:
HIS view. My bad.
But you can use the same response when nigel fails to restrain himself from responding to 169, so the use of “she” wasn’t entirely wasted.
If you sincerely enjoy good economics content, whether or not you agree with it, Harvey is super entertaining.
170 Steve Weeks says:
21 May 2021 at 1:20 AM
Let’s apply some context and a few regenerative principles to your comment.
Time: How long to build all those plants? Decades.
Problem: Two new studies this week indicate irreversible tipping points for Antarctica & Greenland centered around 2060 and/or +1.6C. That means significantly before both are entirely possible. Greenland, specifically, might have been triggered already by passing +0.8C.
Long-tail risk analysis makes waiting decades to do no better than stabilize CO2, while addressing no other aspect of our problems (at least, you mentioned none of them), a non-starter.
Circular systems: Do all outputs and wastes have uses elsewhere so there is essentially no waste, i.e. circular economy? No.
Waste: Do such plants have wastes? Yes. Actual physical wastes, ecosystem destruction where plants are built, non-renewable resources consumed, etc.
Hierarchy of responses: Are there natural means to draw down C with none of the negatives of CCUS? Yes. Why, then, would we jump to a worst-case response rather than the best-case response?
Etc.
Killian @161
“Nowhere have you shown the lithium plays no role in those ecosystems.”
The evidence certainly suggests lithium doesn’t play a role in ecosystems, certainly no significant role. A simple google search shows lithium is not a necessary requirement of any organisms diet. Namely its not a micro nutrient. Piotr also demonstrated this with the oceans. And lithium is obviously not used in habitat. And where have you shown lithium DOES play a role in those ecosystems?. There has to be evidence that extracting lithium causes a significant HARM, and you have provided none.
Even if Lithium was needed in the diet, or had some value in health, the quantities we would be extracting are so small (as shown by pioter ) as to be insignificant as previously stated. You haven’t ANSWERED this. And if you are worried about extracting lithium, then limits can be imposed as previously stated. You haven’t ANSWERED this. Before you do answer please understand that imposing limits would be no more difficult than trying to convince people to follow your ‘simplification’ proposals.
“You blithely ignore the ecosystem destruction to access the water.”
Trivially concerning in terms of area especially when measured against what we have to gain, and easily minimised and mitigated. Its nothing compared to the massive ecosystem destruction caused by converting natural habitat to farming, which YOU ignore. All your time here is spent talking mining. And dont get me wrong. I’m as worried about the negative impacts of mining as anyone and have made submissions on this to our government opposing mining in a couple of specific cases, but I dont oppose mining in principle.
“You blithely ignore any such system would absolutely currently – and likely always – be unsustainable.”
Not sure what you mean. Perhaps you mean that we will eventually run out of lithium. We will probably eventually run out of some things. If we use them we will eventually run out. The only thing we can do is try not to run out too fast. You know some environmental stuff, but you just don’t appear to have a commonsense understanding of what’s meant by ‘sustainability’. I know that.s a bit critical but its not just my perception.
————————————————
Killian @162
“Killian @133 on markets. So we should get rid of markets because they don’t always work perfectly or optimally.”
“Typical Straw Man. Not at all what I have said, and you know that.
Not at all. You have spent your entire time on this forum criticising markets and free trade (which goes to the heart of markets), and offering an alternative proposal called ‘simplification’ which appears to have no markets, no private sector ownership (apart from personal possessions like clothes) and no economic competition and no money. You have said this several times as far as I can recall.
“So, no, he said nothing about my character, manner or style in any way. Susan did. Without cause, without justification, without reason. ”
She has every reason. You break moderation rules all the time badly, with your personally abusive tone and more and we are entitled to point that out. MAR gets a bit rough but not to the same extent and not with fellow warmists.Not saying SA is totally without blame in this, but what she did was trivial.
“You do not want to discuss things actually important to climate so much as you all want to attack denialists and non-denialists who understand things better than you do, which makes you all feel insecure.”
I attack (as in criticise) anything that looks wrong, and 90% of the time I’m right about that. I see it in comments of experts who say much the same things I do here and in about a dozen other forums. And I won’t be stopping this, not for anyone.
Killian @165
“Since you joined this forum, you are the source of the vast majority of conflict. I remind you, for six months I bent over backwards educating you. For six months you kept using Straw Man arguments, false characterizations of my positions, etc., until I gave up and started calling you on these things. Nothing has changed.”
I’m a source of conflict with you? Only because you obviously don’t like my criticisms of what you post so you loose your temper and you engage in name calling etc. You have to respond diplomatically. I’ve been pretty diplomatic to you on the whole. Lets have a piotr poll. Anyone disagree? I’ve told you a dozen times its a better strategy to be polite (not nauseatingly polite of course.) Or use a bit of sarcasm is better than going ballistic.
I reject these suggestions I use strawman arguments etc. You sometimes misinterpret what people say including me. Your education of people here consists mainly of your beliefs like simplification. Haven’t seen this in any text books. So the point is you will get challenged, frequently.
————————-
Killian @173
“Killian @145, on lithium and what Kevin meant.”
“It is poor internet etiquette, but something you do constantly, to jump in between two people and pronounce your opinion of what someone else said or meant to say. It’s pretty much a guarantee of trouble.
Yes I admit I should have let that one pass. I only intervened because I started discussion on this lithium mining issue so I had an interest.
“Years of the *0ff-topic* nuclear debate.”
It’s not off topic. Its an energy source. You cannot and should not try to shut down discussion like this, and if you do it will make people suspicious of you. And I’m not promoting nuclear power. Most of my responses have been to suggest nuclear power may have a place, but faces considerable obstacles and I’ve given up responding on the nuclear power issue. I’ve made my point on what I think.
If the Century plant in Texas removes 8.4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide each year, by calculation, building 5000 facilities should do the job? 2.6 trillion would be sufficient. I have a plan.
1.That Century plant did cost $1.1bln – wouldn’t that make it 5.5, not 2.6 trillion. And that’s only building costs – what are the _operating_ costs?
2. How much GHGs does it take to extract a ton of CO2, to pipe it down the 160km pipeline and to pipe into the rocks?
3. Since the CO2 is being piped to “Occidental’s enhanced oil recovery (EOR) projects in the Permian Basin” – it is pumped into the rock to increases pressure
that bring the oil to the surface – but wouldn’t this CO2 come up with the oil
it is pushing up?
4. You would have to locate the power and recovery plants within reasonable distance from geological structures from impermeable to CO2 where you are going to pump the collected CO2 in.
5.It works only for large point emitters – you can’t use it in all small distributed sources (cars, ships, planes, furnaces etc). Perhaps some of the distributed sources could be powered with electricity or hydrogen from the new point sources, but wouldn’t it be simpler/cheaper to have solar, wind or nuclear providing that extra electricity/hydrogen?
6. You won’t be able to capture all? most? of CO2 from the gas or coal power plant – so you electricity EVEN after the capture of SOME of its CO2 is not really 100% carbon-free. Any idea what percentage of the supplied CO2 that Century plant is able to capture?
Your plan may need some work. ;-)
The “modern” economy, ergo markets, particularly in the common modern parlance, not only creates poverty, injustice and inequality, it also causes us to work more than 20% more.
Markets have not improved life or decreased poverty; the Capitialist use of “poverty” is as bullshit as Econ itself.
https://www.pnas.org/content/116/44/22100
Of course, the lack of intellectual honesty on this forum will result in the logical fallacy of associating these ideas with me, personally, rather than as intellectually and scientifically rigorous findings in order to diminish these results due to personal animosities, but the non-bigots and serious-minded people reading here are not fooled by such tactics.
104 Adam Lea says:
21 May 2021 at 11:26 AM
70: ” Killian is utterly convinced his ‘simplification’ plan is right and anything not 100% like it gets rubbished.”
First, that person’s statement is a lie. I don’t “rubbish” non-sustainability, I point it out. Claiming I “rubbish” unsustainable solutions is a defensive reaction by those who *choose* to rationalize the unsustainable.
Their inability and/or unwillingness and/or fear of admitting what is and isn’t sustainable is their problem, not mine. Saying solar, wind, EVs, etc. are unsustainable is not an attack, i.e. “rubbishing, it’s a straightforward statement of fact.
I do heartily rubbish Econ, denialism/denialists and co-dependent aiding and abetting of denial by constantly engaging denialists – thus reinforcing their Big Lie – though.
I can’t help thinking he is ultimately correct here, and the only way for human civilisation to carry on forever (well until solar evolution puts an end to life on Earth), is for everyone to live sustainably. Sustainably means to me, living in a way that whatever we consume somehow has to be replenished by another process at at least the rate we consume it, and that what we discard is the raw material for another cycle. That means elements are consumed and produced at equal rates and you have processes like A->B-> C->C->A
You can’t help thinking it because it’s undeniable. There is no way around the logic of this. They get confused because they literally don’t accept an accurate definition of sustainable, which you have offered a simple version of here. A more typical (not necessarily better, but more appealing to the residents of Ivory Towers and issue silos) wording is offered here: “Sustainability: The use of the ecosystem in such a way as to not only not diminish the resources available to future generations, but to enhance the productivity and natural functioning of the ecosystem.” – Me, 2021 (slightly revised from many years ago)
which is the circular economy.
Weeeell… this implies sustainability depends on an economy (in the modern sense rather than the simpler concept of sharing of goods to meet needs, which I simply call “exchange”), but the opposite is the case. You do not describe a sustainable economy, you describe sustainable systems with or without an economy attached. When we add the “modern” concept of “economy” with ownership, buying and selling, market forces, finance, interest rates, real and fiat monies, etc., it is no longer sustainable. As I have said repeatedly, the reason Steve Keen is changing his Minsky model of a steady-state economy to one based on thermodynamic flows is concepts like “economy”, “money” and “markets” all are real examples of and/or proxies for energy flows. But ownership, profits, wealth, etc., are examples of sequestering energy which disrupts the flows of energy and results in waste. Thermodynamically, it is impossible to have a steady-state/circular economy based on ownership, profit, etc. One does not have to be a genius to understand this, so it boggles the mind why people don’t get it. Keen and Raworth do not yet get this. Nobody on this forum, with the possible exception of you, gets this, yet is cannot be said any more simply and is, truly, blindingly obvious. Why, then, do they not get this?
My theory is simple: They don’t want to. I.e., their blind acceptance of Econ as they have learned it prevents them from starting from a point of a tabula rasa rather than the flawed philosophical assumptions that are the quicksand underlying *all* economic theories. Even Keen’s and Raworth’s supposedly circular economics models maintain *all* of the underlying flawed philosophy of Econ even as they successfully revise some of the blatantly absurd secondary and tertiary nonsense.
Of course, these ideas will be attacked here based on the simple fact *I* have put them forward – a common fallacy employed here. A second fallacy will be that *I* can’t possibly know because big ideas can’t come from one person. Yet another related fallacy we will hear is *I*, untrained in economics, no advanced degrees, cannot be the person to figure out a new paradigm.
New paradigms are always first considered heretical.
The problem is on a global scale, we are a long way from that ideal
Agreed, but would extend it to “on every scale, with the exception of intact aboriginal societies…”
the wealthy countries are locked in this neo-liberal capitalism where the objective is more consuption which is partially fuelled by more waste (i.e. advertising to encourage people to throw away perfectly usable consumer goods and buy the latest models). The question is how we get from the state now to the optimal state of sustaiable living in the limited time we have?
#RegenerativeGovernance
(Not to be confused with a website out there with the same name and somewhat similar bent.)
K 166:
BPL: “I have no idea what I am talking about. I need time to think of something that doesn’t sound like complete crap.”
BPL: Killian: I have to make up something BPL said and pretend it’s a quote, because an obvious straw man substitutes for my not being able to pin down any actual mistakes he made.
‘The derivatives were a problem, but they were not the “root” problem.
I’m sure you wish believe that.
“When you add it all up, according to Das’ research, a single dollar of “real” capital supports $20 to $30 of loans. This spiral of borrowing on an increasingly thin base of real assets, writ large and in nearly infinite variety, ultimately created a world in which derivatives outstanding earlier this year stood at $485 trillion — or eight times total global gross domestic product of $60 trillion.”
Prof Keen stated: ”The ‘No one could have seen this coming’ mantra is almost the exact opposite of the truth: the only way that one could fail to see this crisis coming was to be seriously misled by a naive view of how banks operate. Unfortunately economic theory is dominated by precisely such a naive view, which led those who believe that theory to a denial of reality as profound as that of those who pretended they could see clothing on The Naked Emperor.
http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2009/07/15/no-one-saw-this-coming-balderdash/
Wow. I’ve been focused on reality. Lots of things to do and to grow.
And when I check back here the data remains as constant as sunrise and sunset for a given day of the year.
What do you folks get out of the toxic stew y’all cook here?
I got stuff from it, but not anything I’d be proud of. Instant gratification followed by shame…
But it seems that many of you skip the shame, making for an addiction that *won’t* be broken.
This site is a microcosm, an example of why fighting rises to the top even as everyone here knows that cooperation is desperately needed.
So you’ll blame yourselves (each other) as the denizens if the handbasket get closer and closer to that proverbial destination.
Me? Similar proclivities, but I’m doing my best to stick to actually productive stuff.
So far the tale I’m leaving is working. Not as fast and not terribly close to my “plan”, but dayam, ya gotta beflexible and inclusive or your wheel-spinning will just cover everything with dirt (and not the carbon-sequesteting kind).
Toxic is as toxic fights
@179:
Yes, much of it will.
The CO2 serves to recover oil that would otherwise be trapped in rock pores due to immiscibility with water (the technical term is “fractional flow”, look it up if you’re interested). The CO2 is at least somewhat miscible with oil, allowing it to dissolve into trapped oil droplets and swell them so that they reach out into the fluid flow and are carried to the extraction well. Further, there’s far more carbon in a liter of petroleum than there is in a liter of CO2, so even if the CO2 is extracted from the atmosphere it means a net increase in atmospheric CO2.
In a word, yes.
On the other hand, we do need to get something like a trillion tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere. Pumping it into depleted oil fields and leaving it there isn’t a bad idea at first glance; the devil is in the details.
(Whatever happened to the preview? I used to get one when I pasted in my comment. Today, nothing.)
James Charels @183 and 184, I think you are half right. Yes the main thing that turned the 2008 global financial crash from a typical recession into an almighty crash was the structure of the housing derivatives – a type of CDO instrument. They had bad maths. This is easily enough googled. This bought the financial sector to its knees and caused the credit crunch. But NOBODY could have predicted something like that would happen.
There were loans to poor people but the system should have been able to handle this. The problem was how the loans were packaged. The most you could predict was that the housing market was very hot and so a recession was inevitable.
Reminder: We are in overshoot globally. The only way a collapsing society can survive massive overshoot is simplification. Historical fact.
Sometimes to understand a thing you need to walk away from the numbers and theories and allow the logic of what you objectively see come through. No amount of additional scientific knowledge, research or study is going to change this. No amount of innovation or technology is going to fix this. Without simplification at the core of our future pathway, the chances of avoiding uncontrolled, disastrous collapse is essentially zero.
Richard Caldwell @185 you complain about the alleged “toxic stew” here when your own opening statement was a patronising and demeaning “Wow. I’ve been focused on reality. Lots of things to do and to grow.” Hmmmm. I trust you get the point.
I do agree with many of your complaints broadly speaking, and I don’t like toxic websites discussion either. Unmoderated and lightly moderated websites (like this one) are a bit brutal. As you know I prefer slightly stronger website moderation, but its not my website.
And ultimately if its too much for your delicate sensibilities you don’t have to participate. Yes despite your protests and hissy fits you keep coming back. Hmmm :)
But it disgusts me how you apply so much false equivalence.
I think you take it all too seriously anyway. Much of the discussion here is a form of sophisticated gossip (if a bit too aggressive at times). And gossip is natural and healthy. Read the book Sapiens, A short History of Humankind by N Y Hariri.
You have a binary sort of view of things. Its more about balance and shades of grey. Human beings are basically selfish and as individuals we are interested in our own survival, pleasures, interests, and families etc. We only “cooperate” and help others if there’s something “in it for us” and to avoid brutal physical conflicts. Its the selfish gene Richard Dawkins talks about. So that’s what we have to work with. You aren’t going to get rid of self interest, sarcasm, aggression and conflicts unless you want to turn people into jellyfish or zombies.
All we can do is try like hell to avoid huge conflicts and nastiness and lean a little bit more towards niceness, cooperation and sharing. But I’m a realist. And all this is why most websites have quite tough moderation rules. To keep things roughly in check.
Re my comment at 158:
I’m going to have to revise my comment. I shouldn’t have said “nuclear concern troll.” It should have been “thermonuclear concern troll,” or maybe “Tsar Bomba Concern Troll.”
Someone above put it best: “What do you folks get out of the toxic stew y’all cook here?”
114 nigelj says:
23 May 2021 at 6:45 PM
Adam Lea @104 I agree the circular economy is a useful idea, and there is something to be said in favour of the simple living concept. However I have my doubts about Killian’s particular “simplification plan”.
Because you hate Nature?
This plan includes things like the 1)enhanced use of biomass for energy and building
Does it? Hmmm…. seems to me I have said things like, e.g., embedded energy, bridge technologies, etc., are already in place and so… use them? I mean, right? Besides, most energy can be passive rather than bio. Etc. Your “mud huts” claim is baseless. But, still, please explain why bio-energy would be a bad thing as you clearly are implying?
2)going right back to traditional farming or using regenerative agriculture in such a stringent and uncompromising way
This is just weird. Traditional farming? When have I ever said that? And, given regenerative agriculture is now globally recognized as THE goal WRT agriculture for both food and carbon capture, are you really so out of touch as to imply this is in any way a bad thing? Oooh! Ick! Regenerative farming! My GAAAAWD! Seriously? This continued solutions denial by you merely reinforces that you are now what you have always been: Soft denier.
3)going back to horse and cart, walking and cycling apart from long distance travel
Well, you are leaving out a hell of a lot context here, such as small, walkable communities… which would make all those things perfect choices. Again, this would be bad how? What is it you are objecting to about healthy, carbon-sequestering, equitable communities?
4)scaling back use of modern technology apart from just a few essentials
Stop those things that are destroying the planet seems… sane, no? Once again, your objection to healthy planet is… what, exactly?
5) getting rid of all private ownership, apart from very personal possessions like clothing
Again, where is the context? You know, things like humanity has lived this way since the very beginning and the outlier is the “modern” societies of the last 10k~4k years. So, 300k years of all of the above and 10k or less of the shit we do now… Hmmm…
Thee’s also that there is no poverty in intact aboriginal communities, virtually no mental illness, virtually none of the “modern” diseases, little or no drug abuse, the needs of all in the community are met, they are happier and healthier, etc. But, sure, let’s just blindly dismiss the idea of mimicking these regenerative communities, modified to the built environment we have saddled ourselves with, because….? Seems to be as simple as “I don’t wanna” or that asinine “But people won’t!”
getting rid of hierarchies in organisations, groups, management etc.
Again, why not? Those got us here. Why would you keep them and expect them to suddenly be about We, the People rather than power, control and wealth? Remember that definition of crazy, eh?
All to be done as rapidly as possible.
And your objection to avoiding tipping points is…?
As usual, you have written much and said nothing.
Kevin McKinney @113 (UV).
“But I think it’s a mistake to overweight “ultimately.” What we need is to consider thoughtfully what we can afford to use and how fast, and make rational, fair decisions about whether, in each particular case, we should use it. We’re not balancing in place, we’re surfing a wave. And as always, the ride won’t last forever; we’ll either fall, or the wave will break.”
Yes, perceptive. I think we all see the same basic fundamental problem that we are destroying natural habitat at an alarming rate, and have to conserve renewable resources like natural habitat. This is going to require we stop destroying it for farm land. This means a switch to a low meat diet and perhaps less use of timber overall. We simply cannot afford this endless loss of biodiversity.
Secondly we all see that using non renewables (minerals) can’t continue indefinitely, (just like your comments on energy use), but its a question of how far it makes sense to cut back use of non renewables in the short term for the good of future generations. The thing is this obviously comes down to the real world use of resources at a personal level.There is unlikely to ever be some political body or any other body that will make these decisions for us. It would certainly be a cop out to wait for such a thing to happen (not that you are saying that).
So lets take an example. if I need to replace my television for example, do I buy a big 60 inch television, something smaller, or none at all and just rely on a little radio? Or nothing at all. Its not an easy decision. There is certainly no mathematical formula I’m aware of that tells us the right thing to do. I compromise and buy a 32 inch television. I think this strikes a good balance between not being too greedy, and not being a fool who goes without when nobody else is, and downgrading my quality of life to ridiculous lows. It’s just an example, but the principle applies to literally everything. Of course some materials are abundant like iron ore and some are rare so this has to be considered.
Some people are a little bit more slanted towards going without. Perhaps because they think extraction of minerals is so devastating on the environment it should just stop or that reserves are in imminent danger of running out. Others have a dismissive view that life should go on as normal, and people in the future will sort out a solution. They will innovate and sort out some solutions, but they wont be able to easily fix something like runaway climate change or 90% of species wiped out, or no cobalt, lead or tin left at affordable prices. Then we really will all be going back to subsistence farming! I sit somewhere between these pessimistic and optimistic views of things.
Zebra is also 100% right population pressure is a big source of all our problems and smaller population is the big part of the solution. However we are in danger of leaving them a mess. The tricky bit is navigating the transition period which will be about two centuries, and doing it sensibly in a workable way. Or should I say “surfing it” to use your term.
Piotr @179 regarding direct air capture of CO2. I do largely agree with your concerns. I think this looks expensive looking and a last resort sort of option, however I found this some time ago that suggests it might be a little bit more feasable than we think. FYI:
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/06/cost-plunges-capturing-carbon-dioxide-air
Remember what I was saying @168 “Have also seen interesting commentary somewhere recently showing fossil fuel people like the Koch Brothers promote reductions in carbon footprints and levels of consumption etc, to take attention off building a new energy grid and carbon taxes. Make it all a “personal choice and responsibility issue”.
A new research study confirms all this:
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/13052021/exxon-mobil-communications-messaging-research/
“Supran said there is nothing unique about the way Exxon has framed its messaging about climate change. It was BP, for example, that popularized the term “carbon footprint” in the mid-2000s, shifting responsibility for emissions from corporations to the consumer. But the researchers have not been able to obtain the same set of documents from other companies that would allow them to compare public statements with internal discussions.”
RC, #whatever–
“What do you folks get out of the toxic stew y’all cook here?”
I learn stuff–partly directly from other’s posts, but also very significantly through fact-checking and rethinking what I think I already know. Plus, some thinking out loud–thanks to all for tolerating it, more or less.
Re: Nigel(193).
It is a different application – it captures CO2 from air (batteries of giant fans) instead of capturing industrial post-combustion gases the post I was responding to was.
They concentrate CO2 and then reduce it with H2 from hydrolysis – to create low net carbon fuel – so in this setup it would be used to reduce positive emissions (as opposed to negative emissions). They assume that energy for running the fans AND for hydrolysis will come from renewables, so the question is why would you not use that renewable energy directly – either powering EVs or producing the hydrogen for hydrogen portable energy uses.
IN other words, the scheme makes sense only for applications in which you can’t use direct electricity and H2, or the life-cycle analysis shows that it is more effective use of renewable energy.
I guess you could use it also as a form of virtual storage – you run your system only in seasons and times of the day when the supply of electricity is higher than demand, but of course you could do the same with generating hydrogen. So the scheme would be advantageous over using electricity directly or stored in H2 if we had applications in which the fuel produced there is better/safer/easier to transport than electricity or hydrogen.
The other potential application – would be to use the collected CO2 to pump into the ground – which would be the net negative emissions (i.e. sequestration) but this runs into the same limitations I have described in (179)
Finally, there is a line in the article: “ there’s no way yet to know whether it can scale up“.
That said, I think it should be developed – it’s not “all or nothing” – there is no single silver bullet that will instantly solve the problem and we may nedd to have diverse options – we should have this technology:
– for applications in which we can replace fossil fuels more effectively with these than with direct use of electricity and H2,
and/or if/where we can avoid the limitations of the CO2 sequestration in rocks.
@192:
Also stop things like converting farm land to suburbs. This means ending all sources of population growth, especially immigration.
People don’t appreciate it, but “renewables” are extraordinarily destructive of nature. PV farms and forests are mutually exclusive, to give one example, and trees aren’t typically grown within wind farms either. This is another reason I’m pro-nuclear; plants use very little land for the plant proper, and have large natural buffer zones around them which effectively become wildlife sanctuaries.
Between bacteria-based feed and things like giant kelp, I doubt we’re going to run out of ways to feed animals even if we don’t disturb forests to do it. Giant kelp growing on artificial substrates in waters too deep to support rooted plants is one way to expand ecosystems and make relatively “dead” waters much more productive.
(Hmmm, preview is still not working.)
A battery likely to be a game-changer for many things out of Australia:
https://www.greencarcongress.com/2021/05/20210523-uqgmg.html
Aluminum-based means cheap and no lithium limitations. 7 kW/kg and 140 Wh/kg means a charging time OTOO 1 minute, and would make really nice PHEV supercars.
Nigel(94) “ Supran said […] But the researchers have not been able to obtain the same set of documents from other companies that would allow them to compare public statements with internal discussions.”
I don’t think it is clear that this applies to the PRIOR research – one of the NEW things about Supran and Oreskes study was that they WERE able to obtain some internal documents:
“ of 180 ExxonMobil climate change communications, including peer-reviewed publications, internal company documents and advertorials in The New York Times.“.
In fact, one of the main strengths of the paper was being able to document and quantify – what we all thought: that internal language was wildly fifferent than the message to the outside: See for instance their
Table 2. Rhetorical tropes and taboos: Highly divergent terms in (left) advertorials versus (right) internal documents, by LL ratio (G2) and FS.
using the insight of best ad agencies on how to use language to shape what people think.
or Table 5. Rhetoric of individualized responsibility: Highly divergent terms in (top) advertorials and (bottom) internal and/or peer-reviewed documents, by LL ratio (G2) and FS
which corresponds to the message of the individualized responsibility pushed by the oil companies to divert the attention from their responsibility –
used to undermine as “hypocrites” the critics if they are not 100%-free of emissions (“do you eat meat?”, “do you own a car?”, “how did you come to this climate change conference?”) and shift the attention from the decreasing the industrial emissions and pricing of the carbon onto …. individual responsibility.
But I am glad that you brought the Supran and Oreskes paper up – I have posted on it a week ago in Unforced Variation (81), gave a link to a CBC-radio podcast with an extended interview with both authors (this part starts about 5:30 into the podcast): https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-429-what-on-earth/clip/15843325-from-denial-delay-exxonmobil-language-climate-change
and I listed several things I found new to me and/or interesting.
Not a single bite. Either people were preoccupied with some much more important topic, or nobody disagreed with me. If the latter – it would be a first … ;-)
(179): CO2 is pumped into the rock to increases pressure that bring the oil to the surface – but wouldn’t this CO2 come up with the oil it is pushing up?
(186):” Yes, much of it will.
Hence using such CO2 in the enhanced recovery would affect the CO2 in the atmosphere only IF the used CO2 displaced burning on purpose fossil fuels on spot only to get CO2 out of them.
Which would be not only environmentally but economically crazy, unless the volume of needed CO2 was so SMALL, or you couldn’t get the electricity out (i.e. if you were on a isolated platform) to justify NOT building a power plant on site. But obviously the volume is not that small, if in the example here they built 160 km pipeline to transport the CO2.