A new bi-monthly open thread for climate solutions discussions. Climate science threads go here.
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704 Responses to "Forced Responses: July 2021"
Richard the Weaversays
And that dumb as dirt axiom that says that increases in efficiency increases consumption ignores the ABSOLUTE FACT that taxes MUST consume any such increase in efficiency. Mandating double efficiency? Add a 100% tax. ZERO stupidity allowed. Kind of a DUH thing, eh?
Killiansays
151
Wrong. There is no correlation between efficiency gains and taxation. Taxation has nothing to do with paying for programs or resticting funding for programs.
Jeavons is the typical response to increased efficiency, whether you like it or not.
Killiansays
147
The complete and utter irony of who posted this…
But the issue isn’t good/not good (you can’t even get that right), it’s dangerous/not dangerous.
Killiansays
141 Barton Paul Levenson says:
11 Jul 2021 at 6:21 AM
K 130, to Susan: When one is an enabler of lies, as you are
BPL: And the beat goes on.
As you seek it to be, encourage it to be, cause it to be.
Ergo…
The irony about of a Christian who consistently engages elementary playground-level taunts…
Killiansays
140 Barton Paul Levenson says:
11 Jul 2021 at 6:19 AM
K 124, to nigel: You’re a goddamned fool.
K 125, to Piotr: you’re a pedantic asshole.
BPL, to K: And you are a wonderfully calm, logical person who always has something rational and helpful to say.
1, no. I have always believed in honest expression of emitions. Things go better in the long run – but most people are plasticine.
2, 3, 4, yes. I’ll take 3 of 4.
At least one of us actually traying to solve the world’s problems, and that person is not you. Scoring points seems to be far more important to you.
Killiansays
137
Dude/Dudette,
I’ve been saying this for a REALLLLLLLLY long time.
Tell the truth.
Show the pathway.
It is not rocket science, yet, few listen.
Killiansays
136
In addition Killians simplification plan talks about burning biomass for energy and making use of timber because its a regenerative resources so even more demands for forests or planting.
But your limited little brain thinks this means tree farms and such shit. It does not. Also, all design is place-based – something you seem to willingly pretend doesn’t exist – so it would only be used WHERE APPROPRIATE and REGENRATIVELY. In fact, regeneratively INHERENTLY means none of your concerns would be an issue because IF IT WERE A POOR CHOICE IT WOULD NOT BE DONE.
There is no conflict here.
Three goddamned years of repeating these points to this denialist.
(Let Susan delude herself of where the issue WRT communication on this site originated.)
And population growth is expected to increase from current 7.9 billion people approx. to about 10.5 billion people later this century. Thats about a 25% increase in population wanting yet more food and timber.
And we can feed 12 billion JUST ON AERABLE LAND. If you add in all the reclaimable, repurposed, etc., already listed multiple times, even more so.
And climate change is going to impact on yields as well even if we make a herculanian effort to mitigate the problem.
This is the first intelligent comment you’ve made in a very long time. Sadly, not original… But your insane rants against regenerative practices saying we must keep DESTROYING THE ECOSYSTEM TO PROTECT THE FOOD SUPPLY completely ignore that every regenerative crop/garden/forest/food forest, etc., planted is MITIGATING the GHGs.
You are contradicting your own argument to keep chem ag.
If you’re advocating chem ag at this point, your ignorant of the issues, a a denier, or a liar.
Mikesays
at Carbon Brief:
“In the Daily Telegraph, columnist Tim Stanley writes: “The inevitable change in our climate, now horribly underway, is going to legitimise bits of the Left that hitherto were considered extreme. Unless conservatives use the state to preserve as much liberty as possible, a green-Left alliance will eventually be elected that uses environmentalism as cover to redistribute power and money. If you want to save capitalism, you’ve got to go green…There is a tension in conservatism between its promise of freedom and abundance, which are wonderful, and its determination to preserve ancient ways of living, which typically puts the spiritual before the material. There is nothing more conservative than an old lady lying down in front of a bulldozer to protect a tree from a digger. Some will say that I’ve drunk the green Kool-Aid, that this is all sheer alarmism – but I’m afraid we are simply beyond that. The things people once warned would happen, and too few of us listened, are now happening, and we cannot waste time quibbling over fact. Al Gore was right.” (behind paywall)
Some of that makes sense, other parts not so much. But the important thing to me is hearing a conservative party person expressing alarm about global warming. We can’t pass meaningful legislation in the US to address global warming until the GOP gets alarmed. Hasn’t happened yet. Facts don’t mean much to the GOP these days because they have alternative facts to embrace. The truthiness of the alternative facts is about zero, but that doesn’t really matter to a party that thinks it won the last presidential election.
The green infrastructure components of Biden’s legislative offer got dumped because the GOP would not accept those ideas yet. Pretty sad.
Thanks to K and N for getting me to review the Albert Bates wikipedia entry. Albert Bates looks like a genius to me. A futurist, a visionary, an amazing techno-savvy inventer. Is he a scientist? Yes, he clearly employs the scientific method to study matters. Science is a practice, a discipline of observation, calculation, hypotheses, testing, discovery, analysis.
Is Albert Bates a scientist? Was Leonardo da Vinci a scientist?
A bit of advice that will probably be ignored: don’t take the disagreements so seriously. These are not matter of honor, they are just disagreements. The parties who swing wildly back and forth on position are easy to spot and the swings are telling. The parties who mostly post nonsense and/or alternative facts are easy to spot. The facts on the ground as they develop over time will demonstrate clearly which groups (deniers, lukewarmers, centrist, alarmists, etc.) had it right. The fat tail consequences are rather severe if the alarmist crazies turn out to have been most accurate and it seems like a good application of the precautionary principle to err on the side of fixing the problem too fast rather than too slow, but time will sort all that out.
Most of us agree that we should fix global warming as fast as possible, we just don’t agree on the details regarding what is possible. How about a quote from that wonderful scientific documentary, The Princess Bride? “The battle of wits has begun. It ends when you decide and we both drink, and find out who is right… and who is dead.”
Cheers,
Mike
Carbomontanussays
Ladies ande Gentlemen
I see 158 Mike discussing who is a scientist?
That is n`t that easy.
I once had it defined by Prof Arne Næss in his teachbook on scientific method, “Science is sytematic knowledge”, regardless and of any kind.
I think that is the best definition, and thus “science” and “scientific” is hardly a fruitful conscept, because so many different (and even contradicting) diciplines are falling under it, and there is so much disagreement about it.
Trolls and cheaters are taking their advantage of that, often in a systematically trained, clever, and highly experienced way.
One must define it quite much better by official and facultary rules for each and every case.
To call it “science” or “scientific” is often just a cheap and arrogant bluff.
Think of those who claim that playing chess or chards, even Poker, is a science. That may be meaningful. Further “Wissenswchaftliche Sozialismus” having its dogmæ, eperimental praxis, experience, and systematics indeed.
And look over “Eristische Dialektik” by Arthur Shopenhauer, on how to be right when you are wrong.
Schopehauer was a very serious and systematic and facultary scientist in his way indeed. Many of Schopenhauers definitions from Eristische Dialektik have gone into the social and political sciences.
And V.I. Lenin, his ” the 21 conditions” found on Wikipedia.
And what about King Donald Grozny of North America? (everyone knows who I mean).
But I would say King Grozny is an example who was less systematic and scientific in most of his ways, which rather convinced and impressed a lot of people. It worked superbely along with The Republican War on Science.
Divinity, Teology, is that scientific? They claim for serious that it is, and I would sustain it because they have been pioneers on classic linguistic diciplines for instance. Due to that, they are often still the best classical philologists and epistemologists of your neighbourhood.
We further have magicians and entertainers. (Not to mention Lawyers and Politicians). Trades that can be both honest and dishonest, and I would also say, quite often with a lot of science to it if they are masters of their trade.
But in my traditions along with my experience, science and scientific learning and experience, is thought and believed to have an educating and purifying effect on the soul and the morals of people, and believed to make the people better and wealthier, happier, and more peaceful and democratic citizens.
Then obviouswly not regardless what kind of science.
Killian: Wrong. There is no correlation between efficiency gains and taxation
RtW: for morons. But intelligent folks can understand math and motivation. Ya use math to motivate.
Or one just screams about how you are brilliant and everyone else is stupid.
Depends on whether one is interested in progress or self-aggrandizement.
Richard the Weaversays
Killian: no. I have always believed in honest expression of emitions.
RtW: yep. It’s ’emitions’ that induces misspelling. ::hic::
Richard the Weaversays
Piotr: So your logic has a form: “A is a better land use than B, because in the absence
of either A or B, the land use would be ….”0″?
RtW: Egad. You are not that stupid. So how did those words make it to my eyes??
If A destroys utility to the point of making a plot of ground useless and B allows said worthless ground that A destroyed to become 50% useful, then only a moron or a bullshitter could say that A is even remotely as good as B, assuming everything else is equal.
Richard the Weaversays
Killian: Jeavons is the typical response to
RtW: hmmm. Seems to me that your prognostications always assume a complete denial of ‘typical’.
Have you ever posted anything that passes your own tests?
Richard the Weaversays
Killian: It is not rocket science, yet, few listen.
RtW: Uh, true, drunkenness is not rocket science, but no, folks are both listening and laughing.
The site changes are distinctly negative in a host of ways, including legibility (seriously, blue is a lot harder to read than black). If you can’t restore comment numbering and set the text back to black, revert to the previous code.
You also seriously decreased the legibility by going to a too-large, too-weak sans-serif font and setting a ridiculously low-contrast text color (#999) for blockquotes. Further, the page no longer scrolls to newly-posted comments as it did before.
I STRONGLY suggest that you back out the changes and consider your design criteria more carefully before making changes of this magnitude.
Direct comment links now initially go to the top of the comments page. One has to click in the address bar and press return to get to the actual comment.
You’ve got a bunch of bugs to fix before this version can be considered ready for the public.
nigeljsays
Richard the Weaver @149
“Nigelj: No. He’s not a scientist.(Albert Bates)”
“RtW: Says you. But why? Go ahead. Give us a definition and some data.”
Nigelj: Scientist from wikipedia “A scientist is a person who conducts scientific research to advance knowledge in an area of interest.[1][2]
This sounds reasonable to me. It distinguishes such a person form a lawyer, inventor, teacher etc. I think the main point is to do that, so we don’t get any Tom, Dick and Harry claiming they are legitimately a scientist. Or the Church of Scientology, the Mormons and the GOP and god knows who else will be claiming they are scientists! Do you want that?
This definition of scientist doesn’t really fit Albert Bates: From wikipedia: “Albert Kealiinui Bates in 1981 Albert Kealiinui Bates (born January 1, 1947) is an influential figure in the intentional community and ecovillage movements. A lawyer , author and teacher , he has been director of the Global Village Institute for Appropriate Technology [1] since 1984 and of the Ecovillage Training Center at The Farm in Summertown, Tennessee , since 1994……”
Not much evidence of scientific research. Albert Bates has been an inventor. Some people claim inventors are scientists. I don’t buy that (with all due respect to yourself). I invented a new spaghetti bolagnese recipe a while back. Does that make me a scientist? I don’t think so. Not even for the five minutes I spent inventing it.
Science on wikipedia is defined as “Science (from the Latin word scientia, meaning “knowledge”)[1] is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.[2][3][4]”.
This seems reasonable. This is CLEARLY not the same as inventing. Of course inventing things sometimes involves use of applied science and the scientific method. This still doesn’t make it science. You can use the scientific method for figuring out or doing many things as I mentioned.
Do you have a BETTER definition of a scientist and science?
Again, Albert Bates sounds like a clever guy whos done some interesting work. I’m not putting him down and don’t know enough about his eco village work to evaluate it it. But even there the words eco village sound more like town planning and design than science. Not sure what you guy’s think you are achieving arguing otherwise.
Reality Checksays
@132 and previous comments become tedious because they are predominantly ideologically based, make statements replete with logical fallacies, contain fake news, falsehoods and seem motivated by a desire for argument and rhetoric versus determining what the important facts are, what the reality truly is and what’s of more importance long term.
It’s why I have at best only ever skimmed this posters comments. But will go through in a few reality check items in this last comment.
1) The claim: “The Texas power grid is not part of the U.S. power grid because they wanted to avoid federal regulation.” — Facebook post.
The winter blackouts that have forced millions of Texans to bear freezing temperatures without heat or power have drawn attention to the fact that Texas is the only state in the continental U.S. with its own power grid.
4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basslink two way underwater power link, part of the 5 state interconnection system in australia. state one can be backed up by state two, and then state two can draw extra supply from state three. The same kind of approach happens in the US and Europe.
5) https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/features/electricity-export-france/
France is Europe’s biggest net electricity exporter in 2019, says report
12 Dec 2019 … Germany was the second biggest market for France’s exports between … to another country which also reduces demand for new power plants.
iow Texas is the outlier, not the standard. Muddying the waters with other issues and different regions countries continents is unhelpful.
6) “Less electric use = lower standard of living…” Now that’s Fake News! a totally False claim. A logical Fallacy.
Reducing electricity use saves money. Energy efficiency saves money. Makes people and companies wealthier long term. Freeing up cash that can be redirected to increasing one’s standard of living. Individually and nationally.
Just because electricity use goes up with ongoing population increases or GDP increases nationally does not mean a higher standard of living is caused by electricity use.
7) Here’s another one “Electric transmission is an inherently regional thing; it’s far too costly to build out lines that can e.g. power Texas from Arizona sunshine…”
Known to be false. eg In the US, in canada, in Australia and across Europe too.
Conflating events and reality in europe with Texas and those blackouts, of muddying the waters between nuclear France vs others and renewables role is wasted (and biased) verbiage. What’s needed is some specifics, meaningful facts, supported by credible evidence and insights from experts in the field who actually know what they are talking about and can provide an accurate picture of reality. in my opinion.
It’s hard enough being well informed (or accurate) on the topic of climate change responses without this kind of input that creates it’s own version of fake facts, opinions and ideas that are unsubstantiated and not true.
I guess the lack of credible references was already a give away to others.
nigeljsays
Killian @157
“But your limited little brain thinks this means tree farms and such shit.”
At least I have a brain. Unlike a couple of people around here. And I don’t think that about trees. Trees might be incorporated as things like shelter belts, rather than new stand alone forests but it all puts demand on land area! You cant squeeze more and more onto a fixed area and expect the same outputs especially with a low tech. approach. Its obvious. There will be some gains but only up to a limit.
“And we can feed 12 billion JUST ON AERABLE LAND. If you add in all the reclaimable, repurposed, etc., already listed multiple times, even more so.”
That is all just a series of assertions. For example you havent shown the area of land is involved, whether it can realistically be reclaimed, and whether the total global land area can accommodate so many emerging competing demands and with a possible yields deficit from new farming systems. Sure “decisions are local” and won’t make unsustainable demands on resources, but that doesn’t answer these basic questions.
“If you’re advocating chem ag at this point, your ignorant of the issues, a a denier, or a liar.”
I’m not advocating that per se. I said if we adopt regenerative farming, and I think we should, it “may prove necessary to keep some limited use of chemical inputs to maintain adequate yields”. How many times do I need to repeat that? A limited compromise would still be an improvement on the status quo. It would be place specific anyway. You yourself have said that regenerative farms can use some limited chem ag in bad weather conditions, so you are accepting some environmental impacts. Same thing in principle. A compromise.
Reality Checksays
@156 yes, seems most important.
My difficulty is this aspect “actions to mitigate the danger” @137 – actions that people, communities, interest groups, and nations can actually take which mitigates the danger. What I see is an overwhelming powerlessness coupled with a lack of ability to implement a practical “efficacy.” Because peoples capacity is limited. There are not many examples of repeatable actions to mitigate out in the town square.
I think the options for action are incredibly limited to the majority of people. Voting hasn’t improved things much the last 30 years. Good news stories of mitigation examples are rare. Versus the flow of denialist arguments and the latest bad news/ data/info. COP agreements to hold to 1.5C etc. are not “actions”.
eg while M Mann is good to point out the political issues holding Australian action back, he doesn’t offer up any example of a successful political action that actually led to a permanent winning mitigation action.
While scientists plead for action to save the coral reefs examples of success stories are non existent. The impacts are still getting worse not better. iow we’re still mainly stuck at the “pleading” stage as far as winning mitigation actions are concerned.
I think we’ve already run out of road to kick the can down. The same people keep saying we still have time to act. There’s been 30 years of calls to rapidly cut GHG emissions by 2020 or at least by 2030. Nothing has really changed much. Except for the impacts of global warming we were told about 30 years ago.
Where are all the good news stories of successful mitigation to celebrate?
nigeljsays
Killian @154 says this about BPL “The irony about of a Christian who consistently engages elementary playground-level taunts…”
Except that NOBODY engages in more playground taunts on this website than Killian. Example from 157 “But your limited little brain…” and 166 “Dude/Dudette, I’ve been saying this for a REALLLLLLLLY long time.” On it goes endlessly. The hypocrisy is off the chart.
Reality Checksays
@158 ” We can’t pass meaningful legislation in the US to address global warming until the GOP gets alarmed. Hasn’t happened yet. Facts don’t mean much to the GOP these days because they have alternative facts to embrace. The truthiness of the alternative facts is about zero, but that doesn’t really matter to a party that thinks it won the last presidential election. ”
a recent article by Snowdon kind of addresses the same western political issues you are bringing up.
In democracies today, what is important to an increasing many is not what rights and freedoms are recognized, but what beliefs are respected: what history, or story, undergirds their identities as citizens, and as members of religious, racial, and ethnic communities. It’s this replacement-function of false conspiracies — the way they replace unified or majoritarian histories with parochial and partisan stories — that prepares the stage for political upheaval.
Especially pernicious is the way that false conspiracies absolve their followers of engaging with the truth. Citizenship in a conspiracy-society doesn’t require evaluating a statement of proposed fact for its truth-value, and then accepting it or rejecting it accordingly, so much as it requires the complete and total rejection of all truth-value that comes from an enemy source, and the substitution of an alternative plot, narrated from elsewhere. https://edwardsnowden.substack.com/p/conspiracy-pt1
(best read in context)
I don’t know why or how exactly, but there must be some solid reasons why things keep going in circles (remaining unresolved) or spiraling out of control and all reason. It’s a weird world. I have no solutions either. Only sharing a few thoughts.
nigeljsays
Mike @158, this is really simple. Killian said something about scientists breathlessly discovering how much carbon soils can sequester and getting all excited about it. I said I hadn’t really read that sort of reaction, scientists just talk about quantities and the chemistry. Show me an example. Killian quoted Albert Bates. I checked his wikipedia bio. His own bio lists him not aa a scientist, but as a lawyer, teacher and inventor.
Using the scientific method is not sufficient to be a scientist. You can use the scientific method to do all sorts of things. I gave you links on this previously when we were discussing all this. Also read the wikipedia definitions of science and scientist. Its not me trying to defend the indefensible. You two guys do this over and over. WE all see this just read what people say like me and Piotr etc.
Richard the Weaversays
Killian: because IF IT WERE A POOR CHOICE IT WOULD NOT BE DONE.
RtW: hi. I’m here to introduce you to a species called ‘homo sapiens’. It has never done diddly that follows your above claim.
Which begs the question: what species do you propose replacing humans with under your plan?
Richard the Weaversays
Mike’s link: There is a tension in conservatism between its promise of freedom and abundance, which are wonderful, and its
RtW: actual reality, which is destruction and inequality, where total losers get almost all of the rewards because they happened to be born rich.
Richard the Weaversays
Seriously, ask any conservative:
Take three people, all of whom have the same income. One has never done a lick of work their entire life. The second hasn’t done anything for years. And the third works his ass off.
Every GOPper will tell you that the first person (the inheritor) should pay zero tax, the second (the capitalist) should pay a tiny amount, and the third (the worker) should be squeezed.
Because GOPpers actually believe that work is stupid and should be punished. It’s in the damn title: “capitalism”, not “laborism”.
nigeljsays
Piotr@ 133 says to Killian “Calling your claim a “fact” and underscoring its factiness with capital letters – does not make it so. The claims live and die by their ability to withstand scrutiny……As for what you try to discredit as “bullshit to score points like a fucking 6th Grade debater” – questioning claims logic and facts is what is done in science. Then again “scientific” may not carry as much weight for you as me ….Calling this argument names (say:” cherry-picking, decontextualizing crap is disgusting“) won’t magically falsify it.”
I told him the same almost word for word about three years ago, twice, maybe before you arrived. Seems not to have percolated through his brain yet.
nigeljsays
Killian @155 says “I have always believed in honest expression of emitions”
Interesing how this guy turns vile language like youre an “ignorant lying fool” into something nice sounding like an “honest expression of emotions” as if that somehow makes it ok. Give him a job as a spin artist for a second rate public relations company. It sounds like the sort of excuse Donald Trump would make.
nigeljsays
Mike @158, you label me a centrist and luke warmer in various comments or insinuate I am. I admit I’m a centrist politically and proud of it. This doesn’t mean I don’t embrace radical change if its the best solution.
However I’m NOT a lukewarmer or climate centrist whatever that is. A luke warmer accepts humans are changing the climate by either only a degree or two by end of this century or it wont cause significant trouble. I do not subscribe to this. I dont see why you think I do. I have always stated the opposite view on this website that warming will be in line with IPCC predictions probably towards the upper 4 degrees and the effects will be very serious. The things I have been dismissive of are 1) crazy claims climate change will cause extinction (literally) of the human race or 2) things like 10 degrees c by end of this century. Perhaps you have a difficulty reading things or are very stubborn.
You and Killian aren’t alarmists. You mean well, but you are in your own little category of ultra hard left extreme catastrophists. You judge people from this position.
I contribute to many websites and I’m labelled a climate alarmist by 99% of people. I post comments over at http://www.skepticalscience.com ( a warmists website) and I know some of the people that run the website. Ask them if I’m a lukewarmer and they will laugh at you.
I think you just probably misinterpret stuff I say for some reason. I dont know why because I deliberately use simple language. I will try saying it more clearly. I think Americas best shot at the climate problem is rapid deployment of renewables perhaps with money creation.This is better than adding to the deficit, and you will never get a carbon tax past the Republicans. Well you might, but its a long shot given their ideologival position on taxes, and you might be better putting your efforts into lobbying for money creation.
However this doesn’t mean you should embrace MMT in a wider sense. I have some doubts about MMT, but a short term limited version of money printing aimed just at renewables sounds acceptable. By analogy morphine has its uses, but not as a full time way of feeling good. I’m mystified why you and Killian dont get this point of view. It’s simple stuff. Disagree if you want with it as a solution, but its obviously not contradictory.
Reality Checksays
Something different?
An international consortium wants to build what would be the world’s biggest renewable energy hub in Australia’s south-west to convert wind and solar power into green fuels like hydrogen.
The group of energy companies announced the proposal over a 15,000 sq km area that could have a 50 gigawatt capacity and cost $100bn.
An area bigger than the size of greater Sydney has been identified in the south-east of Western Australia with “consistently high levels of wind and solar energy”.
Guardian Australia understands the Western Green Energy Hub (WGEH) could cost about $100bn.
The project’s 50GW capacity compares to the 54GW of generation capacity of all the coal, gas and renewables plants currently in the national energy market, which includes all states except WA and the Northern Territory. Australia’s biggest coal plant is just 2.9GW.
InterContinental Energy, CWP Global and Mirning Green Energy Limited announced plans for the mega project on Tuesday, saying it wants to build the scheme in three phases to produce up to 3.5m tonnes of green hydrogen or 20m tonnes of green ammonia each year.
Guardian Australia understands the consortium is looking to produce the first fuels from the project by 2030, and will look to construct an offshore facility to transfer fuels onto ships.
The consortium – which includes an Indigenous-owned energy company – said it wanted to tap into a global market for green hydrogen it expects will be worth US$50tn by 2050. About 30GW of the hub would focus on wind, with the rest coming from solar power.
Hydrogen and ammonia produced at the hub would be destined for use in power stations, shipping, heavy industry and aviation.
The hub would be larger than a 45GW renewables project announced by German company Svevind Energy and planned for Kazakhstan, reported to be the world’s biggest renewables project proposed so far.
Last month, Australia’s environment minister Sussan Ley rejected a plan for a 26GW hub in the north of WA for “clearly unacceptable” impacts on threatened migratory species and internationally recognised wetlands.
In a statement, Trevor Naley, chairman of the Mirning Traditional Lands Aboriginal Corporation and a board member on the consortium, said: “As First Nations land owners, the Mirning people are excited to hold such an integral and defining stake in this historical partnership with WGEH. This partnership, through robust governance and a seat at the table for Mirning people, will provide opportunities never before available to Indigenous corporations.” https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/13/plan-to-build-worlds-biggest-renewable-energy-hub-in-western-australia
KIA 134: The term [science] didn’t even exist until 1833
BPL: science (n.)
mid-14c., “what is known, knowledge (of something) acquired by study; information;” also “assurance of knowledge, certitude, certainty,” from Old French science “knowledge, learning, application; corpus of human knowledge” (12c.), from Latin scientia “knowledge, a knowing; expertness,” from sciens (genitive scientis) “intelligent, skilled,” present participle of scire “to know,” probably originally “to separate one thing from another, to distinguish,” related to scindere “to cut, divide” (from PIE root *skei- “to cut, split;” source also of Greek skhizein “to split, rend, cleave,” Gothic skaidan, Old English sceadan “to divide, separate”).
From late 14c. in English as “book-learning,” also “a particular branch of knowledge or of learning;” also “skillfulness, cleverness; craftiness.” From c. 1400 as “experiential knowledge;” also “a skill, handicraft; a trade.” From late 14c. as “collective human knowledge” (especially that gained by systematic observation, experiment, and reasoning). Modern (restricted) sense of “body of regular or methodical observations or propositions concerning a particular subject or speculation” is attested from 1725; in 17c.-18c. this concept commonly was called philosophy. Sense of “non-arts studies” is attested from 1670s.
RtW 149: Says you. But why? Go ahead. Give us a definition and some data.
BPL: That last one posted before I was ready. This forum is not very user friendly in some ways.
I know nothing about the man in question. Let’s try a simple test: has he published any articles in peer reviewed journals? I don’t know one way or the other. We could look in Google Scholar.
Piotrsays
Scott E Strough (114) “Ok I have had about enough of this again Piotr. Converting cornfields to grasslands does not increase cultivated land. It reduces it.”
Maybe we differ in the definition of what “cultivated land” means (where is a zebra when you need one…).
For me, land is “cultivated”, when we work on it to obtain crops. Under such definition – in YOUR example:
– when the farm was abandoned – it was taken OUT of cultivation (and the rewilding process of the secondary succession started, on its way toward the local climax ecosystem).
– and conversely – when your regenerative farmer moved in AND STARTED doing things on the land and extracting from it crops (at 50% of the average yield), it went from “no-longer cultivated” to the “again cultivated land”. Under SUCH definition, the regenerative farmer “increased” the total cultivated land, not “reduced it”, as you so emphatically claim.
Your other points – I’ll answer in the next post.
Piotrsays
cont.:
Scott (114): “ any mitigation strategy that includes regenerative farming sequestering carbon in the soil has multiple beneficial side effects There is no trade off. It’s a true win/win ”
My point was that “no trade-off” is obvious ONLY if you apply ZERO for your control. This is a frequent fallacy in the area of policy and politics, where proponents oversell their ideas, making them look better by ignoring the potential benefits of the alternatives that would have to be forgone if their idea is chosen. Their idea MIGHT be still better that the alternative, but we don’t know if, and if “yes” – by how much.
Here you advocated regenaritive by implicitly assuming that the “zero benefits” control IN TWO separate parts of your argument
1. when comparing ag use with industrial farming, AND
2. when comparing ag use with benefits of leaving the farm to nature.
In BOTH cases you implicitly assumed a ZERO value for the alternatives. And it is this which I called you on:
Piotr(106) You use a WRONG CONTROL – your reference yield should NOT be “zero”, but instead the yield that did not break even for the OLD owners – which is the most likely reason for the abandoning of the farm.
So, if 50% lower yield was more than break-even point for the NEW owners, then the OLD owner, having been burdened by SEVERAL times higher costs per ha in the industrial ag., could have well produced, say, 70%, AND WOULD STILL go under. In such a case your CONTROL would be 70%, INSTEAD of the 0% you used in your argument.
And if you extend your ag to take over NON_ABNADONED industrial farming (which as I understand is the goal) – then you potentially replace HIGHER yield industrial ag with lower yield reg ag. Let’s see it on example of Mike’s paper that deals with the non-abandoned farms – the difference in yields was 29% – which means that ag farm was 71% as productive as the ind. Farm. So at least for now – converting a non-abandoned industry. farm to reg. ag – results in 29% “reduction” in the crops, not “71%” Increases as comparing things to zero implicit in your argument would suggest. So there IS a trade-off at least for now. Things may change in the future – for some reasons in the future – but the question is can we feed all the people with LESS food IN THE MEANTIME.
An analogous argument was against you using ZERO as the control in setting to zero the non-crop benefits of allowing the abandoned farm to rewild:
Scott(94): “ [This is also a massive] increase in soil carbon, increase in biodiversity, increase in wildlife, restoration of hydrological and nutrient cycles etc etc etc. with regenerative ag.”
Piotr (106): Again, WITHOUT control, you don’t know if it is massive, OR EVEN IF IT IS an INCREASE: you have set your control again to ZERO – when in reality abandoned farms left to themselves and their secondary succession – would have “massive increases biodiversity, increase in wildlife, restoration of hydrological and nutrient cycle, all in the ABSENCE of ANY agriculture. Again, I have ALREADY explained it to you in my previous post:
Piotr(63): “So your “additional” food production comes at the price of forgoing the rewilding/reforestation and the associated ecological and carbon capture benefits that would have happened, if we left the land alone. And the newly growing forest would have been more effective in carbon capture than the already existing forests which are close to zero or a net source (so we need them not for capture, but for preventing the return of the already captured to the atmosphere).”
Scott “ I am sure in your field you have a brilliant mind. I would likely be just as ignorant trying to discuss your silo as you are discussing mine. It’s just that your field is not regenerative farming nor soil science, and thus you have no idea how silly what you are saying sounds ”
My questioning:
– of your claim that using abandoned farm for reg ag cultivation, thus preventing it from rewilding, “dose not increase but decreases” …. the (total cultivated) area;
– my questioning the validity of your setting the controls (= the benefits of the alternatives) to zero,
are questions of elementary logic, and such: universal, hence apply to ANY field of study. Not understanding what I was asking, and instead paternalistic lecturing me: “ you have no idea how silly what you are saying sounds ” – proves nothing, at least about me.
Richard the Weaversays
I am sorry, Killian. I was drunk and projecting.
And boy did I pay for it. Couldn’t keep water down all day today.
Richard the Weaversays
Killian: There is no correlation between efficiency gains and taxation.
RtW: In the future they might be closely coupled. Tax rates can be variable, say exactly where gas taxes are today, but automatically adjusted each year to consume all efficiency gains as average mpg goes up. Efficiency doubles? So does the price at the pump.
Reality Checksays
#158 mike, this quote is more telling and more widely held long term… NIMBY thinking.
(from carbon brief summary page) The Times view of Boris Johnson’s green agenda: No hot air – Editorial, The Times
David Smith, the economics editor of the Sunday Times, looks at the the recent report by Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR): “The biggest increases in emissions in recent years, unsurprisingly, have been in China and India. This creates a political problem, rooted in the economics of net-zero. As the OBR puts it, the physical risks from global warming are “largely exogenous” – in other words, coming from outside this country – while the costs and risks are “endogenous”, to be borne at home. That is what makes it a challenge. It is one thing for the government to take on its share of the cost of decarbonisation, it is another to persuade the public to do so without very large incentives.” https://www.carbonbrief.org/daily-brief/g20-ministers-endorse-carbon-pricing-to-help-tackle-climate-change OR https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-times-view-of-boris-johnsons-green-agenda-no-hot-air-6z5dnhmtg
Another constant problem barrier to action is there are already major dramas confronting nations and regions already that are much more critical to address today. from civil unrest, to wars, to covid, to crime, to housing affordability, homelessness, heath challenges, mental heath car ( or lack thereof) and of course the usual nations state conflicts and lack of trust cooperation and or trade wars. Trumpsters think the world is coming to the end unless the evil left is destroyed. Others argue about nuclear energy and hundred other things. There’s not much room left to ponder about solving very long term global warming .. especially if it’s china and india causing all the problems today …. easy for the West to forget 200+ years of being 100% responsible for what got us to today’s high temps, ice loss and extreme weather.
The reality of inaction continuing is most likely with a high degree of confidence. There are 30 years of accumulated evidence (and human history) supporting such a prognosis.
Like the UK hypothetical plans, the Paris Agreement is barely even a plan, it’s not an action. This is the reality today.
Reality Checksays
Another not so encouraging (fear based, doom n gloom, reality based) opinion piece about climate …
Our climate change turning point is right here, right now
Rebecca Solnit
People are dying. Aquatic animals are baking in their shells. Fruit is being cooked on the tree. It’s time to act. Climate catastrophe is a slow shattering of the stable patterns that governed the weather, the seasons, the species and migrations, all the beautifully orchestrated systems of the holocene era we exited when we manufactured the anthropocene through a couple of centuries of increasingly wanton greenhouse gas emissions and forest destruction. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/12/our-climate-change-turning-point-is-right-here-right-now
includes a nod to the IPCC data…
Summarizing the leaked contents of a forthcoming IPCC report, the Agence France-Presse reports: “Climate change will fundamentally reshape life on Earth in the coming decades, even if humans can tame planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions […]
Species extinction, more widespread disease, unliveable heat, ecosystem collapse, cities menaced by rising seas — these and other devastating climate impacts are accelerating and bound to become painfully obvious before a child born today turns 30.
The choices societies make now will determine whether our species thrives or simply survives as the 21st century unfolds, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says in a draft report seen exclusively by AFP.
Mr Gotsch spent some time observing his natural rainforest surroundings and learning from the native indigenous people, before using his newfound knowledge to grow his own crops….
“The most abundant system that we have on the planet is the rainforest, and with crops we are trying to move to abundance,” he said.
Other methodologies taken from the forest include the maximisation of photosynthesis through controlled access to sunlight, natural ground covers and natural succession.
“One plant’s always nurturing the new generation to come so there are always young plants under big trees and these big trees are always nurturing the forests of the future,” he said.”
Silvia Leahu-Aluassays
The most effective solution might be found in the judicial system. Nothing else has worked so far, timely and effectively, at global scale.
The definition of ecocide has been drawn and is under consideration at the International Criminal Court. “The draft law, unveiled on Tuesday, defines ecocide as “unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts”.”
Along with many successful or ongoing lawsuits against governments and the fossil industry, this law might save us and the biosphere, just in time.
The great lumbering ship of the EU does seem to be gradually turning away from the giant iceberg of climate disaster. Whether it turns fast enough and others do the same remains to be seen of course.
About 800,000 hectares of forest destroyed so far in region enveloped by smoke as Russia suffers through ‘abnormal heatwave’
Russia has seen its annual fire season become more ferocious in recent years, as climate change has driven unusually high temperatures across the northern Siberian tundra. This year, temperatures have already hit new record highs.
“The fire risk has seriously flared up across practically the entire country because of the abnormal heatwave,” defence minister Sergei Shoigu said on Tuesday.
The country has struggled under a heatwave that has broken several temperature records in western Russia. In Siberia, the city of Yakutsk hit 35C at one point; and the region’s city of Verkhoyansk – seen as one of the coldest places on Earth – saw temperatures of over 30C, the state weather forecast agency said.
“The temperature is really high, 8-10 degrees higher than the norm. It’s really unusual for the temperature to be over 30 degrees towards the north,” the agency’s head of science, Roman Vilfand, said at a briefing.
— I note the EU is upping their action plans and rules. Will that be enough, will other nations go that hard? Seems unlikely given past history so far.
Scott E Stroughsays
@185 & 184 Piotr,
OK Piotr. I will try again since at least this time you asked pertinent questions and did not take my response out of context too badly. As Killian stated, I might be giving you more respect than deserved, but I will take a stab at it. (albeit mostly for others who might read this)
Yes studies on yields and regenerative and various organic ag methods have used controls. That particular study I mentioned had a discussion on yields much as an after thought, because in general the topic of the study was observing carbon sequestration rate, not optimizing yields. Pretending I did not notice that was what got me annoyed in the first place. I said it myself in that particular post! There are also plenty of yield studies that do not have rigid controls on carbon sequestration, but excellent controls on yields! Neither makes any sense unless the whole system changes.
However, other studies have specifically tested various regenerative ag methods against both total rest and alternative methods. Yes regenerative ag has shown to restore the carbon cycle much faster than just letting it “rewild”, as as farmers call it, go fallow. Restores the hydrological cycles and function faster too. Restores wildlife and biodiversity much faster too.
It is impossible to take one study and try to extrapolate everything from it. Context is key. Systems science and synthesis are required. For example, Rodale did a properly controlled long term ongoing study started in 1981. Soil organic matter started increasing immediately. Within 5 years yields for the organic systems surpassed conventional, even with industrial ag’s added chemical fertilizers and pesticide inputs. Their are many other quality benefits too like nutrient density in those yields. https://rodaleinstitute.org/science/farming-systems-trial/
(note: SOM is not SOC but is closely related, nor was the labile fraction to stable fraction calculated by Rodale)
But even as good as this study proves yields will go up, not down, and even as good as the controls are run, it does not address at all the failings in the commodity crop system that grows too much non food commodity crops in the first place! All it shows is that the land we ultimately do use to grow those crops will have higher yields, and be more resilient to things like floods and droughts.
There is a systemic problem with agriculture that is even more important. Why are we growing commodity crops we don’t even need? For example, only a tiny fraction of corn grown in the U.S. directly feeds the people, and much of that is from high-fructose corn syrup. Hardly a nutritious food. The insanity of growing it for cars is ridiculous. The system is inefficient at feeding people. Increasing yields for a certain crop is not always a good thing, if imbedded in an inefficient system. Change the system and you can get an immediate improvement, even before waiting the ~3-5 years for enough carbon to be sequestered to offset industrialized agriculture’s high inputs.
Regenerative ag does indeed improve yields for almost all crops, but more importantly, uses far more efficient systems that often would not grow that particular crop in the first place! The last thing we need is higher yields of corn and soy, when we already grow too much to begin with!
Rewilding as you call it is very very naïve. That actually takes effort in most cases of abandoned farms, since most have undergone total ecosystem cascade effect collapse. Sure eventually some might recover some, but many just continue to get even worse and might take hundreds, or thousands of years or even more to recover “naturally” since many many keystone species are simply gone, either extinct or extirpated. Untold numbers of symbiotic interactions are broken. It takes an active input to “regenerate” this land in most cases. The idea that simply a hands off approach might work has been proven to fail over and over again. Latest failure, the ignorant “hands off” approach California (and Australia) has taken, resulting in massive failure, down in flames.
But a regenerative farmer actually can manage the recovery to the benefit of both man and wildlife. That’s our function as the planets premier engineer species. Yes humans can cause great harm, but we are equally capable of great healing too. Both far in excess of any “natural” capacity of the land to recover.
Watch this just for fun. Its not science, just an example of why you cant even begin to talk about “yields” and “controls” in the way that you have suggested. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRPP4Ilpxso
“Here, we explored the potential impact of dietary changes on achieving ambitious climate stabilization levels. By using an integrated assessment model, we found a global food transition to less meat, or even a complete switch to plant-based protein food to have a dramatic effect on land use. Up to 2,700 Mha of pasture and 100 Mha of cropland could be abandoned, resulting in a large carbon uptake from regrowing vegetation. Additionally, methane and nitrous oxide emission would be reduced substantially. A global transition to a low meat-diet as recommended for health reasons would reduce the mitigation costs to achieve a 450 ppm CO2-eq. stabilisation target by about 50% in 2050 compared to the reference case.”
link from Ben McM in discussion at andthentheresphysics
We went “default vegan”, by which I mean our meals at home are, by default vegan–with exceptions only for a) restaurant leftovers, and b) my addiction to good cheese (yeah, I know.)
Result: return of Connie’s cholesterol levels to normal, and avoidance of statin drugs to manage them.
OK, we had to learn some new recipes & ingredients. But the sky didn’t fall. In fact, it was kind of fun.
6) “Less electric use = lower standard of living…” Now that’s Fake News! a totally False claim. A logical Fallacy.
If you can’t afford to use an electric vehicle because electric power costs more than running on gasoline, your standard of living is most certainly lowered. And so is everyone else’s, because they’ll still be exposed to vehicle exhaust.
Reducing electricity use saves money. Energy efficiency saves money. Makes people and companies wealthier long term.
Efficiency costs money. Further, you can only get so efficient; LED lamps are pushing the limits already, and it’s going to take the same amount of energy to boil a pot of water no matter what it costs. If energy gets too expensive, people have to start sacrificing benefits they’d otherwise enjoy, and even cut back on essentials. We’ve seen people cut off from electricity entirely in Germany because they can’t pay the inflated bills; what does THAT do for standard of living? (Rhetorical question.)
The project’s 50GW capacity compares to the 54GW of generation capacity of all the coal, gas and renewables plants currently in the national energy market, which includes all states except WA and the Northern Territory. Australia’s biggest coal plant is just 2.9GW.
InterContinental Energy, CWP Global and Mirning Green Energy Limited announced plans for the mega project on Tuesday, saying it wants to build the scheme in three phases to produce up to 3.5m tonnes of green hydrogen or 20m tonnes of green ammonia each year.
Doing the math:
3.5 million metric tons = 3.5 billion kg. At 50 kWh/kg ballpark, this requires 175 billion kWh of electricity. Dividing this quantity by 8760 hours/yr, I get almost exactly 20 GW average electric consumption.
The expectation is that the “renewables” will function at an average of about 40% capacity factor. An interesting admission against interest.
And that dumb as dirt axiom that says that increases in efficiency increases consumption ignores the ABSOLUTE FACT that taxes MUST consume any such increase in efficiency. Mandating double efficiency? Add a 100% tax. ZERO stupidity allowed. Kind of a DUH thing, eh?
151
Wrong. There is no correlation between efficiency gains and taxation. Taxation has nothing to do with paying for programs or resticting funding for programs.
Jeavons is the typical response to increased efficiency, whether you like it or not.
147
The complete and utter irony of who posted this…
But the issue isn’t good/not good (you can’t even get that right), it’s dangerous/not dangerous.
141 Barton Paul Levenson says:
11 Jul 2021 at 6:21 AM
K 130, to Susan: When one is an enabler of lies, as you are
BPL: And the beat goes on.
As you seek it to be, encourage it to be, cause it to be.
Ergo…
The irony about of a Christian who consistently engages elementary playground-level taunts…
140 Barton Paul Levenson says:
11 Jul 2021 at 6:19 AM
K 124, to nigel: You’re a goddamned fool.
K 125, to Piotr: you’re a pedantic asshole.
BPL, to K: And you are a wonderfully calm, logical person who always has something rational and helpful to say.
1, no. I have always believed in honest expression of emitions. Things go better in the long run – but most people are plasticine.
2, 3, 4, yes. I’ll take 3 of 4.
At least one of us actually traying to solve the world’s problems, and that person is not you. Scoring points seems to be far more important to you.
137
Dude/Dudette,
I’ve been saying this for a REALLLLLLLLY long time.
Tell the truth.
Show the pathway.
It is not rocket science, yet, few listen.
136
In addition Killians simplification plan talks about burning biomass for energy and making use of timber because its a regenerative resources so even more demands for forests or planting.
But your limited little brain thinks this means tree farms and such shit. It does not. Also, all design is place-based – something you seem to willingly pretend doesn’t exist – so it would only be used WHERE APPROPRIATE and REGENRATIVELY. In fact, regeneratively INHERENTLY means none of your concerns would be an issue because IF IT WERE A POOR CHOICE IT WOULD NOT BE DONE.
There is no conflict here.
Three goddamned years of repeating these points to this denialist.
(Let Susan delude herself of where the issue WRT communication on this site originated.)
And population growth is expected to increase from current 7.9 billion people approx. to about 10.5 billion people later this century. Thats about a 25% increase in population wanting yet more food and timber.
And we can feed 12 billion JUST ON AERABLE LAND. If you add in all the reclaimable, repurposed, etc., already listed multiple times, even more so.
And climate change is going to impact on yields as well even if we make a herculanian effort to mitigate the problem.
This is the first intelligent comment you’ve made in a very long time. Sadly, not original… But your insane rants against regenerative practices saying we must keep DESTROYING THE ECOSYSTEM TO PROTECT THE FOOD SUPPLY completely ignore that every regenerative crop/garden/forest/food forest, etc., planted is MITIGATING the GHGs.
You are contradicting your own argument to keep chem ag.
If you’re advocating chem ag at this point, your ignorant of the issues, a a denier, or a liar.
at Carbon Brief:
“In the Daily Telegraph, columnist Tim Stanley writes: “The inevitable change in our climate, now horribly underway, is going to legitimise bits of the Left that hitherto were considered extreme. Unless conservatives use the state to preserve as much liberty as possible, a green-Left alliance will eventually be elected that uses environmentalism as cover to redistribute power and money. If you want to save capitalism, you’ve got to go green…There is a tension in conservatism between its promise of freedom and abundance, which are wonderful, and its determination to preserve ancient ways of living, which typically puts the spiritual before the material. There is nothing more conservative than an old lady lying down in front of a bulldozer to protect a tree from a digger. Some will say that I’ve drunk the green Kool-Aid, that this is all sheer alarmism – but I’m afraid we are simply beyond that. The things people once warned would happen, and too few of us listened, are now happening, and we cannot waste time quibbling over fact. Al Gore was right.” (behind paywall)
some relevant links: https://www.politicshome.com/thehouse/article/net-zero-tory-split?utm_campaign=Carbon%20Brief%20Daily%20Briefing&utm_content=20210712&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Revue%20Daily
https://www.carbonbrief.org/daily-brief/g20-ministers-endorse-carbon-pricing-to-help-tackle-climate-change
Some of that makes sense, other parts not so much. But the important thing to me is hearing a conservative party person expressing alarm about global warming. We can’t pass meaningful legislation in the US to address global warming until the GOP gets alarmed. Hasn’t happened yet. Facts don’t mean much to the GOP these days because they have alternative facts to embrace. The truthiness of the alternative facts is about zero, but that doesn’t really matter to a party that thinks it won the last presidential election.
The green infrastructure components of Biden’s legislative offer got dumped because the GOP would not accept those ideas yet. Pretty sad.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/11/biden-administration-clean-energy-climate-crisis
Thanks to K and N for getting me to review the Albert Bates wikipedia entry. Albert Bates looks like a genius to me. A futurist, a visionary, an amazing techno-savvy inventer. Is he a scientist? Yes, he clearly employs the scientific method to study matters. Science is a practice, a discipline of observation, calculation, hypotheses, testing, discovery, analysis.
Is Albert Bates a scientist? Was Leonardo da Vinci a scientist?
A bit of advice that will probably be ignored: don’t take the disagreements so seriously. These are not matter of honor, they are just disagreements. The parties who swing wildly back and forth on position are easy to spot and the swings are telling. The parties who mostly post nonsense and/or alternative facts are easy to spot. The facts on the ground as they develop over time will demonstrate clearly which groups (deniers, lukewarmers, centrist, alarmists, etc.) had it right. The fat tail consequences are rather severe if the alarmist crazies turn out to have been most accurate and it seems like a good application of the precautionary principle to err on the side of fixing the problem too fast rather than too slow, but time will sort all that out.
Most of us agree that we should fix global warming as fast as possible, we just don’t agree on the details regarding what is possible. How about a quote from that wonderful scientific documentary, The Princess Bride? “The battle of wits has begun. It ends when you decide and we both drink, and find out who is right… and who is dead.”
Cheers,
Mike
Ladies ande Gentlemen
I see 158 Mike discussing who is a scientist?
That is n`t that easy.
I once had it defined by Prof Arne Næss in his teachbook on scientific method, “Science is sytematic knowledge”, regardless and of any kind.
I think that is the best definition, and thus “science” and “scientific” is hardly a fruitful conscept, because so many different (and even contradicting) diciplines are falling under it, and there is so much disagreement about it.
Trolls and cheaters are taking their advantage of that, often in a systematically trained, clever, and highly experienced way.
One must define it quite much better by official and facultary rules for each and every case.
To call it “science” or “scientific” is often just a cheap and arrogant bluff.
Think of those who claim that playing chess or chards, even Poker, is a science. That may be meaningful. Further “Wissenswchaftliche Sozialismus” having its dogmæ, eperimental praxis, experience, and systematics indeed.
And look over “Eristische Dialektik” by Arthur Shopenhauer, on how to be right when you are wrong.
Schopehauer was a very serious and systematic and facultary scientist in his way indeed. Many of Schopenhauers definitions from Eristische Dialektik have gone into the social and political sciences.
And V.I. Lenin, his ” the 21 conditions” found on Wikipedia.
And what about King Donald Grozny of North America? (everyone knows who I mean).
But I would say King Grozny is an example who was less systematic and scientific in most of his ways, which rather convinced and impressed a lot of people. It worked superbely along with The Republican War on Science.
Divinity, Teology, is that scientific? They claim for serious that it is, and I would sustain it because they have been pioneers on classic linguistic diciplines for instance. Due to that, they are often still the best classical philologists and epistemologists of your neighbourhood.
We further have magicians and entertainers. (Not to mention Lawyers and Politicians). Trades that can be both honest and dishonest, and I would also say, quite often with a lot of science to it if they are masters of their trade.
But in my traditions along with my experience, science and scientific learning and experience, is thought and believed to have an educating and purifying effect on the soul and the morals of people, and believed to make the people better and wealthier, happier, and more peaceful and democratic citizens.
Then obviouswly not regardless what kind of science.
michael Sweet might care to read
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhruva_reactor
Killian: Wrong. There is no correlation between efficiency gains and taxation
RtW: for morons. But intelligent folks can understand math and motivation. Ya use math to motivate.
Or one just screams about how you are brilliant and everyone else is stupid.
Depends on whether one is interested in progress or self-aggrandizement.
Killian: no. I have always believed in honest expression of emitions.
RtW: yep. It’s ’emitions’ that induces misspelling. ::hic::
Piotr: So your logic has a form: “A is a better land use than B, because in the absence
of either A or B, the land use would be ….”0″?
RtW: Egad. You are not that stupid. So how did those words make it to my eyes??
If A destroys utility to the point of making a plot of ground useless and B allows said worthless ground that A destroyed to become 50% useful, then only a moron or a bullshitter could say that A is even remotely as good as B, assuming everything else is equal.
Killian: Jeavons is the typical response to
RtW: hmmm. Seems to me that your prognostications always assume a complete denial of ‘typical’.
Have you ever posted anything that passes your own tests?
Killian: It is not rocket science, yet, few listen.
RtW: Uh, true, drunkenness is not rocket science, but no, folks are both listening and laughing.
Did ya notice all the typos in your recent posts?
Just saying..
To the management:
The site changes are distinctly negative in a host of ways, including legibility (seriously, blue is a lot harder to read than black). If you can’t restore comment numbering and set the text back to black, revert to the previous code.
To the management:
You also seriously decreased the legibility by going to a too-large, too-weak sans-serif font and setting a ridiculously low-contrast text color (#999) for blockquotes. Further, the page no longer scrolls to newly-posted comments as it did before.
I STRONGLY suggest that you back out the changes and consider your design criteria more carefully before making changes of this magnitude.
To the management:
Direct comment links now initially go to the top of the comments page. One has to click in the address bar and press return to get to the actual comment.
You’ve got a bunch of bugs to fix before this version can be considered ready for the public.
Richard the Weaver @149
“Nigelj: No. He’s not a scientist.(Albert Bates)”
“RtW: Says you. But why? Go ahead. Give us a definition and some data.”
Nigelj: Scientist from wikipedia “A scientist is a person who conducts scientific research to advance knowledge in an area of interest.[1][2]
This sounds reasonable to me. It distinguishes such a person form a lawyer, inventor, teacher etc. I think the main point is to do that, so we don’t get any Tom, Dick and Harry claiming they are legitimately a scientist. Or the Church of Scientology, the Mormons and the GOP and god knows who else will be claiming they are scientists! Do you want that?
This definition of scientist doesn’t really fit Albert Bates: From wikipedia: “Albert Kealiinui Bates in 1981 Albert Kealiinui Bates (born January 1, 1947) is an influential figure in the intentional community and ecovillage movements. A lawyer , author and teacher , he has been director of the Global Village Institute for Appropriate Technology [1] since 1984 and of the Ecovillage Training Center at The Farm in Summertown, Tennessee , since 1994……”
Not much evidence of scientific research. Albert Bates has been an inventor. Some people claim inventors are scientists. I don’t buy that (with all due respect to yourself). I invented a new spaghetti bolagnese recipe a while back. Does that make me a scientist? I don’t think so. Not even for the five minutes I spent inventing it.
Science on wikipedia is defined as “Science (from the Latin word scientia, meaning “knowledge”)[1] is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.[2][3][4]”.
This seems reasonable. This is CLEARLY not the same as inventing. Of course inventing things sometimes involves use of applied science and the scientific method. This still doesn’t make it science. You can use the scientific method for figuring out or doing many things as I mentioned.
Do you have a BETTER definition of a scientist and science?
Again, Albert Bates sounds like a clever guy whos done some interesting work. I’m not putting him down and don’t know enough about his eco village work to evaluate it it. But even there the words eco village sound more like town planning and design than science. Not sure what you guy’s think you are achieving arguing otherwise.
@132 and previous comments become tedious because they are predominantly ideologically based, make statements replete with logical fallacies, contain fake news, falsehoods and seem motivated by a desire for argument and rhetoric versus determining what the important facts are, what the reality truly is and what’s of more importance long term.
It’s why I have at best only ever skimmed this posters comments. But will go through in a few reality check items in this last comment.
1) The claim: “The Texas power grid is not part of the U.S. power grid because they wanted to avoid federal regulation.” — Facebook post.
The winter blackouts that have forced millions of Texans to bear freezing temperatures without heat or power have drawn attention to the fact that Texas is the only state in the continental U.S. with its own power grid.
PolitiFact rating: True. An aversion to federal regulation was one of the main reasons that Texas energy companies opted for a power grid that didn’t cross state lines. Texas has resisted regulation in major court cases.
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/politifact/article/Fact-check-Why-does-Texas-have-its-own-power-15964085.php
2) Explainer: Texas’s one-of-a-kind power system raises questions during price spike
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-weather-power-prices-explainer-idUSKBN2AG2KD
3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Interconnection
4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basslink two way underwater power link, part of the 5 state interconnection system in australia. state one can be backed up by state two, and then state two can draw extra supply from state three. The same kind of approach happens in the US and Europe.
5) https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/features/electricity-export-france/
France is Europe’s biggest net electricity exporter in 2019, says report
12 Dec 2019 … Germany was the second biggest market for France’s exports between … to another country which also reduces demand for new power plants.
Norway Overtakes France as Europe’s Biggest Electricity Exporter
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-08/norway-overtakes-france-as-europe-s-biggest-electricity-exporter
iow Texas is the outlier, not the standard. Muddying the waters with other issues and different regions countries continents is unhelpful.
6) “Less electric use = lower standard of living…” Now that’s Fake News! a totally False claim. A logical Fallacy.
Reducing electricity use saves money. Energy efficiency saves money. Makes people and companies wealthier long term. Freeing up cash that can be redirected to increasing one’s standard of living. Individually and nationally.
Just because electricity use goes up with ongoing population increases or GDP increases nationally does not mean a higher standard of living is caused by electricity use.
7) Here’s another one “Electric transmission is an inherently regional thing; it’s far too costly to build out lines that can e.g. power Texas from Arizona sunshine…”
Known to be false. eg In the US, in canada, in Australia and across Europe too.
Conflating events and reality in europe with Texas and those blackouts, of muddying the waters between nuclear France vs others and renewables role is wasted (and biased) verbiage. What’s needed is some specifics, meaningful facts, supported by credible evidence and insights from experts in the field who actually know what they are talking about and can provide an accurate picture of reality. in my opinion.
It’s hard enough being well informed (or accurate) on the topic of climate change responses without this kind of input that creates it’s own version of fake facts, opinions and ideas that are unsubstantiated and not true.
I guess the lack of credible references was already a give away to others.
Killian @157
“But your limited little brain thinks this means tree farms and such shit.”
At least I have a brain. Unlike a couple of people around here. And I don’t think that about trees. Trees might be incorporated as things like shelter belts, rather than new stand alone forests but it all puts demand on land area! You cant squeeze more and more onto a fixed area and expect the same outputs especially with a low tech. approach. Its obvious. There will be some gains but only up to a limit.
“And we can feed 12 billion JUST ON AERABLE LAND. If you add in all the reclaimable, repurposed, etc., already listed multiple times, even more so.”
That is all just a series of assertions. For example you havent shown the area of land is involved, whether it can realistically be reclaimed, and whether the total global land area can accommodate so many emerging competing demands and with a possible yields deficit from new farming systems. Sure “decisions are local” and won’t make unsustainable demands on resources, but that doesn’t answer these basic questions.
“If you’re advocating chem ag at this point, your ignorant of the issues, a a denier, or a liar.”
I’m not advocating that per se. I said if we adopt regenerative farming, and I think we should, it “may prove necessary to keep some limited use of chemical inputs to maintain adequate yields”. How many times do I need to repeat that? A limited compromise would still be an improvement on the status quo. It would be place specific anyway. You yourself have said that regenerative farms can use some limited chem ag in bad weather conditions, so you are accepting some environmental impacts. Same thing in principle. A compromise.
@156 yes, seems most important.
My difficulty is this aspect “actions to mitigate the danger” @137 – actions that people, communities, interest groups, and nations can actually take which mitigates the danger. What I see is an overwhelming powerlessness coupled with a lack of ability to implement a practical “efficacy.” Because peoples capacity is limited. There are not many examples of repeatable actions to mitigate out in the town square.
I think the options for action are incredibly limited to the majority of people. Voting hasn’t improved things much the last 30 years. Good news stories of mitigation examples are rare. Versus the flow of denialist arguments and the latest bad news/ data/info. COP agreements to hold to 1.5C etc. are not “actions”.
eg while M Mann is good to point out the political issues holding Australian action back, he doesn’t offer up any example of a successful political action that actually led to a permanent winning mitigation action.
While scientists plead for action to save the coral reefs examples of success stories are non existent. The impacts are still getting worse not better. iow we’re still mainly stuck at the “pleading” stage as far as winning mitigation actions are concerned.
I think we’ve already run out of road to kick the can down. The same people keep saying we still have time to act. There’s been 30 years of calls to rapidly cut GHG emissions by 2020 or at least by 2030. Nothing has really changed much. Except for the impacts of global warming we were told about 30 years ago.
Where are all the good news stories of successful mitigation to celebrate?
Killian @154 says this about BPL “The irony about of a Christian who consistently engages elementary playground-level taunts…”
Except that NOBODY engages in more playground taunts on this website than Killian. Example from 157 “But your limited little brain…” and 166 “Dude/Dudette, I’ve been saying this for a REALLLLLLLLY long time.” On it goes endlessly. The hypocrisy is off the chart.
@158 ” We can’t pass meaningful legislation in the US to address global warming until the GOP gets alarmed. Hasn’t happened yet. Facts don’t mean much to the GOP these days because they have alternative facts to embrace. The truthiness of the alternative facts is about zero, but that doesn’t really matter to a party that thinks it won the last presidential election. ”
a recent article by Snowdon kind of addresses the same western political issues you are bringing up.
In democracies today, what is important to an increasing many is not what rights and freedoms are recognized, but what beliefs are respected: what history, or story, undergirds their identities as citizens, and as members of religious, racial, and ethnic communities. It’s this replacement-function of false conspiracies — the way they replace unified or majoritarian histories with parochial and partisan stories — that prepares the stage for political upheaval.
Especially pernicious is the way that false conspiracies absolve their followers of engaging with the truth. Citizenship in a conspiracy-society doesn’t require evaluating a statement of proposed fact for its truth-value, and then accepting it or rejecting it accordingly, so much as it requires the complete and total rejection of all truth-value that comes from an enemy source, and the substitution of an alternative plot, narrated from elsewhere.
https://edwardsnowden.substack.com/p/conspiracy-pt1
(best read in context)
I don’t know why or how exactly, but there must be some solid reasons why things keep going in circles (remaining unresolved) or spiraling out of control and all reason. It’s a weird world. I have no solutions either. Only sharing a few thoughts.
Mike @158, this is really simple. Killian said something about scientists breathlessly discovering how much carbon soils can sequester and getting all excited about it. I said I hadn’t really read that sort of reaction, scientists just talk about quantities and the chemistry. Show me an example. Killian quoted Albert Bates. I checked his wikipedia bio. His own bio lists him not aa a scientist, but as a lawyer, teacher and inventor.
Using the scientific method is not sufficient to be a scientist. You can use the scientific method to do all sorts of things. I gave you links on this previously when we were discussing all this. Also read the wikipedia definitions of science and scientist. Its not me trying to defend the indefensible. You two guys do this over and over. WE all see this just read what people say like me and Piotr etc.
Killian: because IF IT WERE A POOR CHOICE IT WOULD NOT BE DONE.
RtW: hi. I’m here to introduce you to a species called ‘homo sapiens’. It has never done diddly that follows your above claim.
Which begs the question: what species do you propose replacing humans with under your plan?
Mike’s link: There is a tension in conservatism between its promise of freedom and abundance, which are wonderful, and its
RtW: actual reality, which is destruction and inequality, where total losers get almost all of the rewards because they happened to be born rich.
Seriously, ask any conservative:
Take three people, all of whom have the same income. One has never done a lick of work their entire life. The second hasn’t done anything for years. And the third works his ass off.
Every GOPper will tell you that the first person (the inheritor) should pay zero tax, the second (the capitalist) should pay a tiny amount, and the third (the worker) should be squeezed.
Because GOPpers actually believe that work is stupid and should be punished. It’s in the damn title: “capitalism”, not “laborism”.
Piotr@ 133 says to Killian “Calling your claim a “fact” and underscoring its factiness with capital letters – does not make it so. The claims live and die by their ability to withstand scrutiny……As for what you try to discredit as “bullshit to score points like a fucking 6th Grade debater” – questioning claims logic and facts is what is done in science. Then again “scientific” may not carry as much weight for you as me ….Calling this argument names (say:” cherry-picking, decontextualizing crap is disgusting“) won’t magically falsify it.”
I told him the same almost word for word about three years ago, twice, maybe before you arrived. Seems not to have percolated through his brain yet.
Killian @155 says “I have always believed in honest expression of emitions”
Interesing how this guy turns vile language like youre an “ignorant lying fool” into something nice sounding like an “honest expression of emotions” as if that somehow makes it ok. Give him a job as a spin artist for a second rate public relations company. It sounds like the sort of excuse Donald Trump would make.
Mike @158, you label me a centrist and luke warmer in various comments or insinuate I am. I admit I’m a centrist politically and proud of it. This doesn’t mean I don’t embrace radical change if its the best solution.
However I’m NOT a lukewarmer or climate centrist whatever that is. A luke warmer accepts humans are changing the climate by either only a degree or two by end of this century or it wont cause significant trouble. I do not subscribe to this. I dont see why you think I do. I have always stated the opposite view on this website that warming will be in line with IPCC predictions probably towards the upper 4 degrees and the effects will be very serious. The things I have been dismissive of are 1) crazy claims climate change will cause extinction (literally) of the human race or 2) things like 10 degrees c by end of this century. Perhaps you have a difficulty reading things or are very stubborn.
You and Killian aren’t alarmists. You mean well, but you are in your own little category of ultra hard left extreme catastrophists. You judge people from this position.
I contribute to many websites and I’m labelled a climate alarmist by 99% of people. I post comments over at http://www.skepticalscience.com ( a warmists website) and I know some of the people that run the website. Ask them if I’m a lukewarmer and they will laugh at you.
I think you just probably misinterpret stuff I say for some reason. I dont know why because I deliberately use simple language. I will try saying it more clearly. I think Americas best shot at the climate problem is rapid deployment of renewables perhaps with money creation.This is better than adding to the deficit, and you will never get a carbon tax past the Republicans. Well you might, but its a long shot given their ideologival position on taxes, and you might be better putting your efforts into lobbying for money creation.
However this doesn’t mean you should embrace MMT in a wider sense. I have some doubts about MMT, but a short term limited version of money printing aimed just at renewables sounds acceptable. By analogy morphine has its uses, but not as a full time way of feeling good. I’m mystified why you and Killian dont get this point of view. It’s simple stuff. Disagree if you want with it as a solution, but its obviously not contradictory.
Something different?
An international consortium wants to build what would be the world’s biggest renewable energy hub in Australia’s south-west to convert wind and solar power into green fuels like hydrogen.
The group of energy companies announced the proposal over a 15,000 sq km area that could have a 50 gigawatt capacity and cost $100bn.
An area bigger than the size of greater Sydney has been identified in the south-east of Western Australia with “consistently high levels of wind and solar energy”.
Guardian Australia understands the Western Green Energy Hub (WGEH) could cost about $100bn.
The project’s 50GW capacity compares to the 54GW of generation capacity of all the coal, gas and renewables plants currently in the national energy market, which includes all states except WA and the Northern Territory. Australia’s biggest coal plant is just 2.9GW.
InterContinental Energy, CWP Global and Mirning Green Energy Limited announced plans for the mega project on Tuesday, saying it wants to build the scheme in three phases to produce up to 3.5m tonnes of green hydrogen or 20m tonnes of green ammonia each year.
Guardian Australia understands the consortium is looking to produce the first fuels from the project by 2030, and will look to construct an offshore facility to transfer fuels onto ships.
The consortium – which includes an Indigenous-owned energy company – said it wanted to tap into a global market for green hydrogen it expects will be worth US$50tn by 2050. About 30GW of the hub would focus on wind, with the rest coming from solar power.
Hydrogen and ammonia produced at the hub would be destined for use in power stations, shipping, heavy industry and aviation.
The hub would be larger than a 45GW renewables project announced by German company Svevind Energy and planned for Kazakhstan, reported to be the world’s biggest renewables project proposed so far.
Last month, Australia’s environment minister Sussan Ley rejected a plan for a 26GW hub in the north of WA for “clearly unacceptable” impacts on threatened migratory species and internationally recognised wetlands.
In a statement, Trevor Naley, chairman of the Mirning Traditional Lands Aboriginal Corporation and a board member on the consortium, said: “As First Nations land owners, the Mirning people are excited to hold such an integral and defining stake in this historical partnership with WGEH. This partnership, through robust governance and a seat at the table for Mirning people, will provide opportunities never before available to Indigenous corporations.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/13/plan-to-build-worlds-biggest-renewable-energy-hub-in-western-australia
KIA 134: The term [science] didn’t even exist until 1833
BPL: science (n.)
mid-14c., “what is known, knowledge (of something) acquired by study; information;” also “assurance of knowledge, certitude, certainty,” from Old French science “knowledge, learning, application; corpus of human knowledge” (12c.), from Latin scientia “knowledge, a knowing; expertness,” from sciens (genitive scientis) “intelligent, skilled,” present participle of scire “to know,” probably originally “to separate one thing from another, to distinguish,” related to scindere “to cut, divide” (from PIE root *skei- “to cut, split;” source also of Greek skhizein “to split, rend, cleave,” Gothic skaidan, Old English sceadan “to divide, separate”).
From late 14c. in English as “book-learning,” also “a particular branch of knowledge or of learning;” also “skillfulness, cleverness; craftiness.” From c. 1400 as “experiential knowledge;” also “a skill, handicraft; a trade.” From late 14c. as “collective human knowledge” (especially that gained by systematic observation, experiment, and reasoning). Modern (restricted) sense of “body of regular or methodical observations or propositions concerning a particular subject or speculation” is attested from 1725; in 17c.-18c. this concept commonly was called philosophy. Sense of “non-arts studies” is attested from 1670s.
–https://www.etymonline.com/word/science
Nigelj: No. He’s not a scientist.
RtW: Says you. But why? Go ahead. Give us a definition and some data.
Nigelj: No. He’s not a scientist.
RtW 149: Says you. But why? Go ahead. Give us a definition and some data.
BPL: That last one posted before I was ready. This forum is not very user friendly in some ways.
I know nothing about the man in question. Let’s try a simple test: has he published any articles in peer reviewed journals? I don’t know one way or the other. We could look in Google Scholar.
Scott E Strough (114) “Ok I have had about enough of this again Piotr. Converting cornfields to grasslands does not increase cultivated land. It reduces it.”
Maybe we differ in the definition of what “cultivated land” means (where is a zebra when you need one…).
For me, land is “cultivated”, when we work on it to obtain crops. Under such definition – in YOUR example:
– when the farm was abandoned – it was taken OUT of cultivation (and the rewilding process of the secondary succession started, on its way toward the local climax ecosystem).
– and conversely – when your regenerative farmer moved in AND STARTED doing things on the land and extracting from it crops (at 50% of the average yield), it went from “no-longer cultivated” to the “again cultivated land”. Under SUCH definition, the regenerative farmer “increased” the total cultivated land, not “reduced it”, as you so emphatically claim.
Your other points – I’ll answer in the next post.
cont.:
Scott (114): “ any mitigation strategy that includes regenerative farming sequestering carbon in the soil has multiple beneficial side effects There is no trade off. It’s a true win/win ”
My point was that “no trade-off” is obvious ONLY if you apply ZERO for your control. This is a frequent fallacy in the area of policy and politics, where proponents oversell their ideas, making them look better by ignoring the potential benefits of the alternatives that would have to be forgone if their idea is chosen. Their idea MIGHT be still better that the alternative, but we don’t know if, and if “yes” – by how much.
Here you advocated regenaritive by implicitly assuming that the “zero benefits” control IN TWO separate parts of your argument
1. when comparing ag use with industrial farming, AND
2. when comparing ag use with benefits of leaving the farm to nature.
In BOTH cases you implicitly assumed a ZERO value for the alternatives. And it is this which I called you on:
Piotr(106) You use a WRONG CONTROL – your reference yield should NOT be “zero”, but instead the yield that did not break even for the OLD owners – which is the most likely reason for the abandoning of the farm.
So, if 50% lower yield was more than break-even point for the NEW owners, then the OLD owner, having been burdened by SEVERAL times higher costs per ha in the industrial ag., could have well produced, say, 70%, AND WOULD STILL go under. In such a case your CONTROL would be 70%, INSTEAD of the 0% you used in your argument.
And if you extend your ag to take over NON_ABNADONED industrial farming (which as I understand is the goal) – then you potentially replace HIGHER yield industrial ag with lower yield reg ag. Let’s see it on example of Mike’s paper that deals with the non-abandoned farms – the difference in yields was 29% – which means that ag farm was 71% as productive as the ind. Farm. So at least for now – converting a non-abandoned industry. farm to reg. ag – results in 29% “reduction” in the crops, not “71%” Increases as comparing things to zero implicit in your argument would suggest. So there IS a trade-off at least for now. Things may change in the future – for some reasons in the future – but the question is can we feed all the people with LESS food IN THE MEANTIME.
An analogous argument was against you using ZERO as the control in setting to zero the non-crop benefits of allowing the abandoned farm to rewild:
Scott(94): “ [This is also a massive] increase in soil carbon, increase in biodiversity, increase in wildlife, restoration of hydrological and nutrient cycles etc etc etc. with regenerative ag.”
Piotr (106): Again, WITHOUT control, you don’t know if it is massive, OR EVEN IF IT IS an INCREASE: you have set your control again to ZERO – when in reality abandoned farms left to themselves and their secondary succession – would have “massive increases biodiversity, increase in wildlife, restoration of hydrological and nutrient cycle, all in the ABSENCE of ANY agriculture. Again, I have ALREADY explained it to you in my previous post:
Piotr(63): “So your “additional” food production comes at the price of forgoing the rewilding/reforestation and the associated ecological and carbon capture benefits that would have happened, if we left the land alone. And the newly growing forest would have been more effective in carbon capture than the already existing forests which are close to zero or a net source (so we need them not for capture, but for preventing the return of the already captured to the atmosphere).”
Scott “ I am sure in your field you have a brilliant mind. I would likely be just as ignorant trying to discuss your silo as you are discussing mine. It’s just that your field is not regenerative farming nor soil science, and thus you have no idea how silly what you are saying sounds ”
My questioning:
– of your claim that using abandoned farm for reg ag cultivation, thus preventing it from rewilding, “dose not increase but decreases” …. the (total cultivated) area;
– my questioning the validity of your setting the controls (= the benefits of the alternatives) to zero,
are questions of elementary logic, and such: universal, hence apply to ANY field of study. Not understanding what I was asking, and instead paternalistic lecturing me: “ you have no idea how silly what you are saying sounds ” – proves nothing, at least about me.
I am sorry, Killian. I was drunk and projecting.
And boy did I pay for it. Couldn’t keep water down all day today.
Killian: There is no correlation between efficiency gains and taxation.
RtW: In the future they might be closely coupled. Tax rates can be variable, say exactly where gas taxes are today, but automatically adjusted each year to consume all efficiency gains as average mpg goes up. Efficiency doubles? So does the price at the pump.
#158 mike, this quote is more telling and more widely held long term… NIMBY thinking.
(from carbon brief summary page) The Times view of Boris Johnson’s green agenda: No hot air – Editorial, The Times
David Smith, the economics editor of the Sunday Times, looks at the the recent report by Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR): “The biggest increases in emissions in recent years, unsurprisingly, have been in China and India. This creates a political problem, rooted in the economics of net-zero. As the OBR puts it, the physical risks from global warming are “largely exogenous” – in other words, coming from outside this country – while the costs and risks are “endogenous”, to be borne at home. That is what makes it a challenge. It is one thing for the government to take on its share of the cost of decarbonisation, it is another to persuade the public to do so without very large incentives.”
https://www.carbonbrief.org/daily-brief/g20-ministers-endorse-carbon-pricing-to-help-tackle-climate-change OR
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-times-view-of-boris-johnsons-green-agenda-no-hot-air-6z5dnhmtg
Another constant problem barrier to action is there are already major dramas confronting nations and regions already that are much more critical to address today. from civil unrest, to wars, to covid, to crime, to housing affordability, homelessness, heath challenges, mental heath car ( or lack thereof) and of course the usual nations state conflicts and lack of trust cooperation and or trade wars. Trumpsters think the world is coming to the end unless the evil left is destroyed. Others argue about nuclear energy and hundred other things. There’s not much room left to ponder about solving very long term global warming .. especially if it’s china and india causing all the problems today …. easy for the West to forget 200+ years of being 100% responsible for what got us to today’s high temps, ice loss and extreme weather.
The reality of inaction continuing is most likely with a high degree of confidence. There are 30 years of accumulated evidence (and human history) supporting such a prognosis.
Like the UK hypothetical plans, the Paris Agreement is barely even a plan, it’s not an action. This is the reality today.
Another not so encouraging (fear based, doom n gloom, reality based) opinion piece about climate …
Our climate change turning point is right here, right now
Rebecca Solnit
People are dying. Aquatic animals are baking in their shells. Fruit is being cooked on the tree. It’s time to act.
Climate catastrophe is a slow shattering of the stable patterns that governed the weather, the seasons, the species and migrations, all the beautifully orchestrated systems of the holocene era we exited when we manufactured the anthropocene through a couple of centuries of increasingly wanton greenhouse gas emissions and forest destruction.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/12/our-climate-change-turning-point-is-right-here-right-now
includes a nod to the IPCC data…
Summarizing the leaked contents of a forthcoming IPCC report, the Agence France-Presse reports: “Climate change will fundamentally reshape life on Earth in the coming decades, even if humans can tame planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions […]
Species extinction, more widespread disease, unliveable heat, ecosystem collapse, cities menaced by rising seas — these and other devastating climate impacts are accelerating and bound to become painfully obvious before a child born today turns 30.
The choices societies make now will determine whether our species thrives or simply survives as the 21st century unfolds, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) says in a draft report seen exclusively by AFP.
But dangerous thresholds are closer than once thought, and dire consequences stemming from decades of unbridled carbon pollution are unavoidable in the short term.
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20210623-crushing-climate-impacts-to-hit-sooner-than-feared-draft-un-report
Sounds grim. Where is the good news?
Fools criticize and critique what they have no knowledge of. Listen to fools at your peril.
Listen to those who know because they do:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2018-07-13/syntropic-farming-food-forests-take-root-in-australia/9986016
The most effective solution might be found in the judicial system. Nothing else has worked so far, timely and effectively, at global scale.
The definition of ecocide has been drawn and is under consideration at the International Criminal Court. “The draft law, unveiled on Tuesday, defines ecocide as “unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts”.”
Along with many successful or ongoing lawsuits against governments and the fossil industry, this law might save us and the biosphere, just in time.
Ref: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/22/legal-experts-worldwide-draw-up-historic-definition-of-ecocide
New proposals: “EU unveils sweeping new legislation to combat climate change”
https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/climate-news/300357702/eu-unveils-sweeping-new-legislation-to-combat-climate-change
The great lumbering ship of the EU does seem to be gradually turning away from the giant iceberg of climate disaster. Whether it turns fast enough and others do the same remains to be seen of course.
13th July
Siberia wildfires: Russia army planes and thousands of firefighters battle blazes
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/14/siberia-wildfires-russia-army-planes-and-thousands-of-firefighters-battle-blazes
About 800,000 hectares of forest destroyed so far in region enveloped by smoke as Russia suffers through ‘abnormal heatwave’
Russia has seen its annual fire season become more ferocious in recent years, as climate change has driven unusually high temperatures across the northern Siberian tundra. This year, temperatures have already hit new record highs.
“The fire risk has seriously flared up across practically the entire country because of the abnormal heatwave,” defence minister Sergei Shoigu said on Tuesday.
The country has struggled under a heatwave that has broken several temperature records in western Russia. In Siberia, the city of Yakutsk hit 35C at one point; and the region’s city of Verkhoyansk – seen as one of the coldest places on Earth – saw temperatures of over 30C, the state weather forecast agency said.
“The temperature is really high, 8-10 degrees higher than the norm. It’s really unusual for the temperature to be over 30 degrees towards the north,” the agency’s head of science, Roman Vilfand, said at a briefing.
— I note the EU is upping their action plans and rules. Will that be enough, will other nations go that hard? Seems unlikely given past history so far.
@185 & 184 Piotr,
OK Piotr. I will try again since at least this time you asked pertinent questions and did not take my response out of context too badly. As Killian stated, I might be giving you more respect than deserved, but I will take a stab at it. (albeit mostly for others who might read this)
Yes studies on yields and regenerative and various organic ag methods have used controls. That particular study I mentioned had a discussion on yields much as an after thought, because in general the topic of the study was observing carbon sequestration rate, not optimizing yields. Pretending I did not notice that was what got me annoyed in the first place. I said it myself in that particular post! There are also plenty of yield studies that do not have rigid controls on carbon sequestration, but excellent controls on yields! Neither makes any sense unless the whole system changes.
However, other studies have specifically tested various regenerative ag methods against both total rest and alternative methods. Yes regenerative ag has shown to restore the carbon cycle much faster than just letting it “rewild”, as as farmers call it, go fallow. Restores the hydrological cycles and function faster too. Restores wildlife and biodiversity much faster too.
It is impossible to take one study and try to extrapolate everything from it. Context is key. Systems science and synthesis are required. For example, Rodale did a properly controlled long term ongoing study started in 1981. Soil organic matter started increasing immediately. Within 5 years yields for the organic systems surpassed conventional, even with industrial ag’s added chemical fertilizers and pesticide inputs. Their are many other quality benefits too like nutrient density in those yields. https://rodaleinstitute.org/science/farming-systems-trial/
(note: SOM is not SOC but is closely related, nor was the labile fraction to stable fraction calculated by Rodale)
But even as good as this study proves yields will go up, not down, and even as good as the controls are run, it does not address at all the failings in the commodity crop system that grows too much non food commodity crops in the first place! All it shows is that the land we ultimately do use to grow those crops will have higher yields, and be more resilient to things like floods and droughts.
There is a systemic problem with agriculture that is even more important. Why are we growing commodity crops we don’t even need? For example, only a tiny fraction of corn grown in the U.S. directly feeds the people, and much of that is from high-fructose corn syrup. Hardly a nutritious food. The insanity of growing it for cars is ridiculous. The system is inefficient at feeding people. Increasing yields for a certain crop is not always a good thing, if imbedded in an inefficient system. Change the system and you can get an immediate improvement, even before waiting the ~3-5 years for enough carbon to be sequestered to offset industrialized agriculture’s high inputs.
Regenerative ag does indeed improve yields for almost all crops, but more importantly, uses far more efficient systems that often would not grow that particular crop in the first place! The last thing we need is higher yields of corn and soy, when we already grow too much to begin with!
Rewilding as you call it is very very naïve. That actually takes effort in most cases of abandoned farms, since most have undergone total ecosystem cascade effect collapse. Sure eventually some might recover some, but many just continue to get even worse and might take hundreds, or thousands of years or even more to recover “naturally” since many many keystone species are simply gone, either extinct or extirpated. Untold numbers of symbiotic interactions are broken. It takes an active input to “regenerate” this land in most cases. The idea that simply a hands off approach might work has been proven to fail over and over again. Latest failure, the ignorant “hands off” approach California (and Australia) has taken, resulting in massive failure, down in flames.
But a regenerative farmer actually can manage the recovery to the benefit of both man and wildlife. That’s our function as the planets premier engineer species. Yes humans can cause great harm, but we are equally capable of great healing too. Both far in excess of any “natural” capacity of the land to recover.
Watch this just for fun. Its not science, just an example of why you cant even begin to talk about “yields” and “controls” in the way that you have suggested.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRPP4Ilpxso
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-008-9534-6
“Here, we explored the potential impact of dietary changes on achieving ambitious climate stabilization levels. By using an integrated assessment model, we found a global food transition to less meat, or even a complete switch to plant-based protein food to have a dramatic effect on land use. Up to 2,700 Mha of pasture and 100 Mha of cropland could be abandoned, resulting in a large carbon uptake from regrowing vegetation. Additionally, methane and nitrous oxide emission would be reduced substantially. A global transition to a low meat-diet as recommended for health reasons would reduce the mitigation costs to achieve a 450 ppm CO2-eq. stabilisation target by about 50% in 2050 compared to the reference case.”
link from Ben McM in discussion at andthentheresphysics
Cheers
Mike
#198, Mike–
And an anecdotal data point, FWIW–
We went “default vegan”, by which I mean our meals at home are, by default vegan–with exceptions only for a) restaurant leftovers, and b) my addiction to good cheese (yeah, I know.)
Result: return of Connie’s cholesterol levels to normal, and avoidance of statin drugs to manage them.
OK, we had to learn some new recipes & ingredients. But the sky didn’t fall. In fact, it was kind of fun.
@170:
If you can’t afford to use an electric vehicle because electric power costs more than running on gasoline, your standard of living is most certainly lowered. And so is everyone else’s, because they’ll still be exposed to vehicle exhaust.
Efficiency costs money. Further, you can only get so efficient; LED lamps are pushing the limits already, and it’s going to take the same amount of energy to boil a pot of water no matter what it costs. If energy gets too expensive, people have to start sacrificing benefits they’d otherwise enjoy, and even cut back on essentials. We’ve seen people cut off from electricity entirely in Germany because they can’t pay the inflated bills; what does THAT do for standard of living? (Rhetorical question.)
@182:
Doing the math:
3.5 million metric tons = 3.5 billion kg. At 50 kWh/kg ballpark, this requires 175 billion kWh of electricity. Dividing this quantity by 8760 hours/yr, I get almost exactly 20 GW average electric consumption.
The expectation is that the “renewables” will function at an average of about 40% capacity factor. An interesting admission against interest.