A bimonthly open thread for discussions related to climate solutions. Note that open discussions of climate science are here. Possible topics of interest are the trial carbon-capture effort in Iceland and the discussions in the lead up to COP26. Please be constructive and substantive.
The economic and climate value of existing nuclear is being recognized in Illinois:
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/illinois-legislature-edges-toward-saving-two-nuclear-power-plants-2021-09-09/
The Islandic “Carbon capture effort” is suggested.
We have a much larger effort and FIASCO here in Norway, namely , the fameous “Jerns Stoltenbergs Moon- landing” at Mongstad.
1 Mong is a monetary unit, after the exeedances at Mongstad, that is the major national and commercial and gas refinery.
The icelandic project is the parallel icelandic national project of geo- thermal energy, how to defend it, how to sell it, and how to waste it and to get rid of it.
We shall return to the problem,…
One Mong “Mon” or “Mgn”, (Mong for Mongstad), .. is a large monetary unit defined as 6.5 billion NKr on 2000 level, or at about one billion US Dalers in those days.
To be adjusted for inflation. and devaluations.
You can develop that Mong- unit further into Kilo- and Mega- Mong, for easier discussion of the US Gov. national depts for instance.
Peter Kalmus, NASA climate scientist releases The Kraken.
There are two fatal flaws with “net zero by 2050.”
One is “net zero.” The other is “by 2050”.
Fixating on ‘net zero’ means betting the future of life on Earth that someone will invent some kind of whiz-bang tech to draw down CO2. Forget plans to lower emissions by 2050 – this is deadly procrastination
As a climate scientist, I am terrified by what I see coming. I want world leaders to stop hiding behind magical thinking and feel the same terror. Then they would finally end fossil fuels.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/10/net-zero-2050-deadly-procrastination-fossil-fuels
The main point of the piece: the only way out of this crisis is for society to shift into climate emergency mode. “Net zero by 2050” makes this impossible.
When people say “there’s no way we can go that fast” it is because they have NOT made the shift into emergency mode yet. They are still prioritizing this business-as-usual status quo over a habitable Earth.
That is the path to civilization collapse.
We need to directly attack the fossil fuel industry, which means an earlier goal, and – critically – binding annual targets for reductions and policy plans for achieving those annual targets.
There is so much more to write. I chose to focus on a rebuttal to “net zero by 2050.” Need more space to write on my theory of change (“we need a billion climate activists”), specific policies (e.g. nationalize the fossil fuel industry), and degrowth.
@ClimateHuman nails it in exposing the dangers of “net zero by 2050.”
“Just presuppose enough hypothetical carbon capture and you can pencil out a plan for meeting any climate goal, even while allowing the fossil fuel industry to keep growing…”
Five years ago, as a very junior climate scientist, I was indeed scared to speak out. Not any longer. It gets easier with practice, and as the culture continues to shift.
https://twitter.com/climatehuman?lang=en
I’m probably in 95% agreement with you. I’d still like some carbon removal R&D as it might be useful eventually, I suspect it won’t scale beyond a few gigatons per year (about a tenth of current emissions), so the case for delaying the transition because of it is non-existent. A major political priority should be ending ALL new R&D on fossil fuels – following the expression “If you find yourself in a hole Stop digging!”
Of course we need to expand the renewables rollout several fold (it used to be threefold, but we have dilly-dallied too long and now have to become much more aggressive.). But, without major abandonment of new fossil investment -not just on production, but also for technology that consumes fossil fuels, there is no way we will reach the needed targets. Saying no to expected profits from fossils seems to be the hangup, even Green states like Norway I finding that politically difficult.
I also fear that environmental interests will oppose large scale renewables projects, including long distance transmission expansion, and the mining of materials essential for modern renewables, and for electrification. We can’t afford, delays, cost overruns, and cancellations that could result. We have “enemies” on both ends of the political spectrum.
He blocked me because I, as always, held him to account for, ironically, *not going far enough* and not listening to experts on regenerative practices. But as climate scientists go, Kalmus gets closer than most to the true emergency level, but falls short significantly on the response.
He’s right, however, about NetZero (NZ): It’s a damned stupid, illogical, extremely dangerous approach for the reasons I have long said:
1. Relies on non-existent tech.
2. Reinforces and keeps in place every aspect of the socio-politico-economic system that got us here. Einstein was right: You can’t solve a problem with the same thinking that created it.
2b. When you build infrastructure, you are stuck with it for its lifetime. You never see systems taken apart before their due dates. This creates momentum that is almost impossible to stop and locks us into where we are. It’s a literal guarantee of collapse/extinction.
3. It doesn’t solve anything. NetZero means locking us into around 430ppm with no plan to reduce consumption while ADDING 2 billion more people. We’d have to reduce per capita consumption by @ 27% due to increased population just to be standing still in 2050 WRT destroying the ecosystem. But very few of the biggest voices, and none of the international policies, are talking about reducing consumption.
4. It’s an economic policy, not systemic or behavioral change which means all the ills we have today, both related to and unrelated to climate, are still with us in 2050.
5. Not to beat a dead horse into a pile of powdered bones, but we don’t have time to get to idling and then spend another half-century getting around to things that are actual solutions. Rapid climate change is scaring the hell out of legit climate scientists. It’s too bad that chorus is only beginning to swell in the last year or two. It’s way behind. Everybody who knows of me knows my stance on this: Long-tail risks, extremes, and sudden climatic shifts should be the core of climate science communication.
That is the great service we need from climate scientists. We do not need them misleading the public outside their wheelhouse on mitigation and adaptation. Not one of them, not even Kevin Anderson, that I am aware of, knows enough about regenerative systems to advise on those things. Michael Mann, in particular, is doing a terribly dangerous impression of the Pied Piper. He gets far too much attention and the Big Green (fake green)/NZ/CCS people love every word he says – which should tell you something.
RE: 3. “It doesn’t solve anything. NetZero means locking us into around 430ppm with no plan to reduce consumption . . . ”
While aggreeing with your overall point of view, your occasional statement of fact sometimes undercut your own argument. In the above comment, your presumption that net-zero, by 2050, would manifest as 430 ppm is unfounded. First, what the Earth System is reponding to now is something over 500 ppm,equivalent. This likely has contributed to 21st century acceleration to heat flux due to radiative forcing and abnormal whether catastrophes. Second, at current 2.5ppm/year or so increases we will see 430 ppm,co2 alone in about six years (2027).
No moved goal posts, please. I am well aware of CO2e and would have said that if I wanted to use that metric. Given everybody and their brother who spends much time advocating for mitigation is well aware of CO2e, there was no need to say it.
Next, I said “locking us into” which could also be stated as “unavoidable” or “the minimum increase” etc. I calculated a what it would take to get the excess, or the +2.5 or 2.6 ppm/yr increase, down to zero using a very simple spreadsheet calc. I used a (unrealistic in reality, but and result average) monotonic 2.5 – (2.5 x 0.195) to get to zero at exactly 2050, or in 31 years. AKA, net zero. That ends us up at 427.8 in 2050.
I then said on top of that we’d have to account for the added billions. But the *best case scenario* with no real change but somehow magically reducing emissions by 2.6 ppm and by the amount 2 billion more people create, is 427.8. That is absolutely locked in less simplification at the scale I have proposed.
So, next time, please don’t call me out for not using the metrics you prefer. I used the ones that made the point I intended to make.
Cheers
Dr. Aaron Thierry Graduate student at @CUSocSci – researching the role of emotional processing in climate communications of social movements. PhD Ecology. Activism. https://twitter.com/ThierryAaron/
See this Long Thread with multiple refs including M Mann, SR15 and more
Is climate change going to be worse than expected?
Have scientists been systematically underestimating the impacts?
And if so how should we as science communicators convey this to the public & policy makers?
In particular the IPCC isn’t a reliable means of conducting a risk assessment of the full range of threats the #climatecrisis poses (it was never intended to!). It’s therefore vital that policy makers must also pay close attention to long tailed risks & worse case scenarios 31/n
As for the public & policy makers going to #COP26, be precautious and assume the worst. Remember: “it is more than plausible that the impacts of climate will be at the high end of these uncertainties rather than the low end” 39/39
https://twitter.com/ThierryAaron/status/1436278805283450881
Reality Check: “In particular the IPCC isn’t a reliable means of conducting a risk assessment of the full range of threats the #climatecrisis poses (it was never intended to!). It’s therefore vital that policy makers must also pay close attention to long tailed risks & worse case scenarios”
Thanks so much for the heads-up, RC. Long tailed risks. Close attention. Oh yeah, I’m on it, much obliged.
All Best,
Policy Maker #537
The race is on to get fusion up and running:
https://apnews.com/article/technology-sports-france-climate-environment-and-nature-029d14f22aaabe1a33030f612d8fc52a
As I reported recently, NIF at LLNL is also in the race:
https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.6.2.20210817a/full/
More from NIF:
https://lasers.llnl.gov/
The race is already won. I see that the NIF has achieved a net energy yield of 1.05 megajoules in the latest effort in that $3.5 billion facility.
I will use updated nomenclature to make our recent effective harvest and use of at least 5 times that amount of energy seem more impressive. My wife and I achieved it at much less expense utilizing our Artisanal Fusion-Powered Linear Clothes Dryer. We affix the clothes to it using clasps composed of specially shaped, microtextured biopolymer. One can choose use either a friction-based clasp or a torsion-based clasp. Both are effective, and they won’t wear out any faster than that $3.5 billion facility.
Hmm, yes. We regularly replicate that result, but for some reason can’t seem to get published… ;-)
But there is this, for context–which, as it’s Canadian, is undoubtedly trustworthy:
https://www.cuug.ab.ca/branderr/nuclear/petajoule.html
A technological milestone in cutting the carbon footprint of agriculture has been recognized by the European Union.
It has approved enzyme inhibitors in animal feed to reduce methane emission by cattle and other ruminant livestock;
https://vvattsupwiththat.blogspot.com/2021/09/coenzyme-inhibitor-takes-bite-out-of.html
@Reality Check:
Quoted for truth.
This is why I promote nuclear energy; there are no significant GHG emissions after construction. You don’t have to be concerned with “net zero”, it IS zero. And it gives us the option to power carbon-removal processes of any kind, making biomass-methanol or ammonia for zero-carbon fuels, and a host of other things.
I hate to be Debbie Downer, but the kind of person who becomes a world leader is far more concerned with achieving and maintaining power than the fate of the Earth.
Psychopaths who’ll be dead before that happens, just don’t care.
I think you’ll find that critical systems start to break down unless you have some ready-made replacement for those fossil fuels. Degrowth isn’t going to cut it if you have starving people raiding the countryside looking for food, and farmers blamed for not having the production to supply a diet that dooesn’t leave them hungry all the time. If farmers leave their farms because of raids, that’s it for billions.
Ladies and Gentlemen
The suggested theme “Carbon capture effort in iceland” is important
But I find it higyhly dubious, as I have stated above. And would suggest better thinjgs to use geo- thermal and hydroelectric energy for.
We can look at the Carnot cycle argtument of efficiency. (Th-Tl )/Th
Given geo- thermal steam and icy water, that efficiency becomes 373-273 through 373 is 0.268.. where we can guarantee that it gets practically lower. A much more healthy way in Island is to heat the city of Reykijavik by geothermal hot water instead of elecricity or frossile fruels.
Island has got a waste lot of hydroelectric power aloso. . Why not produce Aluminium metal instead of letting the emirates and the chineese do that by gas and coal? The same is for Norway, a waste lot of aluminium production was closed down and let over to the arabs and the chineese.
Process industries that necessarily heats should be located where heat is needed in any case.
And if CO2 is to be captured and stored, then avoid by all means to dilute it in air first, because that will cost much more. . Where coal really has to be burnt then take it from there first, take the pollution at its source., avoid spilling and expanding and diluting it first.
I speculated and have described a plausible machine that will produce some electricity from pure cokes and Liquid CDO2 .H2O under high pressure, ice- cold, as byproduct. The absorbging medium, that can be re- cycled, is thought to be max saturated Na2CO3 solution at 32 celsius.
Stoltenbergs Moonlanding, a now very fameous FIASCO at Mongstad, should use amines, a development and variety of Solvays soda process. To “capture” that CO2 one needs a rather strong alkaline solution. by as low temperature and high pressures as possible. That takes icewater and electric pumps does n`t it?
Another radical idea is enzymatic carbonic anhydrase. that interferes with the reaction
CO2 + OH- HCO3- both ways. But the cheapest of that using solar power is probably by common photosynthesis.
So I wonder what the icelanders and the swiss or who was it, are thinking really to take it out of empty air far away from any serious polluter…
========000
Then I found another recent industrial effort in Norway, maybe for recycling and re- using elements from that unsuccessful moonlanding of Stoltenbergs at Mongstad.
The CCShip- project.
Maybge in order to save our very fameous merchant fleet of large ships.
Apparently, they plan to capture and store the ship exhaust on board.
But there are also other plans. Hydrogen or Ammonia for ship fuel.
Mike @ UV page, 13 SEP 2021 AT 12:51 PM
“I think the heat could wreck the global economy and cause a large number of deaths if we let it continue, but it looks like it will create huge deficits to slow the buildup. So far, the “marketplace” approach has not been working. Do you think the global warming has become an emergency? What do you think needs to be done, Nigel? Iand how fast? How will we pay for your plan?”
Yes we are definitely in some sort of climate emergency.
The basic solutions look like a zero emissions energy grid and transport system along with some use of negative emissions technologies (whether high tech. or farming based) If we don’t get that right we will be forced towards risky geoengineering. We also should reduce our energy consumption in a per capita sense but we have to be mindful of what its realistic to expect people to do. I see little point advocating things like massive and rapid degrowth, that look problematic have essentially zero chances of being adopted. I don’t have a novel technical solution because I think we already have all the basic solutions.
Regarding motivating change and funding infrastructure. A carbon tax is a market based solution. Imho the reason its not working very well is not the concept in a technical sense. It’s because it is generally not popular with politicians or with the public or is set at low levels that aren’t very effective. IMHO the problem behind this is most politicians and the public just aren’t that worried about the climate problem because it doesn’t seem as immediate as something like covid 19. It’s basic human psychology. They say they are worried but its mostly window dressing. The politicians and the public mostly don’t actually do anything to change their lifestyles, or support tough government policies. However the worse and more immediate the climate impacts get the more people will wake up.
Those places adverse to taxes might use direct government funding of infrastructure like wind and solar farms through some form of money creation. This might be easier than trying to convince people to embrace carbon taxes. New Zealand did something similar to fund housing infrastructure during the 1930s economic depression. Their reserve bank provided cheap credit for housing. Refer:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_housing#The_Liberal_Government
If you can do this for housing why not wind and solar farms, and electric cars? It would be very cheap loans on easy terms. And it is likely to be more acceptable to the public than carbon taxes because it wouldn’t push up costs of fuel. Or you could combine it with a carbon tax. However finding money is not the main problem. Imho the main problem is psychological, political and motivational as discussed.
Mike, the information on housing and credit is under the section on the first labour government, which follows the section on the liberal government.
13 September, 2021 (0800 BST)
13 September – Over two thousand academics across disciplines and from 81 countries have delivered a letter demanding a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty to manage a global phase out of coal, oil and gas to governments gathering at tomorrow’s UN General Assembly.
https://fossilfueltreaty.org/open-letter-press-release
Carbfix (“the carbon capture effort in Iceland”) is not going away. Thank you for recommending this. It is the only carbon capture of any kind that has ever interested me or made sense to me. From the very first it seemed basically educational (if nothing else) because of how it is related to basic processes of carbon sequestration on this planet in the first place.
The method is sane and foolproof for the future because the endpoint is sequestration of carbon as carbonate rock. Another repository of sanity is the people themselves–skilled as they are at living with geological process, and drilling for geothermal energy.
https://www.carbfix.com/
See menus on all the tabs at the top of the page. They’re all good. But here’s an item from the news tab for an overview.
https://www.bloombergquint.com/technology/bill-gates-investment-in-carbon-removal-tech
WTF does carbonate rock do for anyone? What we need are massive biochar/terrapreta plants.
It holds CO2 in the form of carbonates. Its formation from CO2 water and quartz is actually slightly exothermic, although reaction rates are slow. It is the primary way the planet has maintained a quasi steady state over millions of years. Volcanoes release long buried CO2 and deposit near surface silicates. Over eons, the chemical weathering of silicate rocks absorbs CO2 and forms carbonate rocks. (Eventually this carbonates get subducted into the mantle at oceanic trenches (subduction zones), and the CO2 and water is released by volcanoes. Increasing the rate of this chemical weathering is one way to remove atmospheric CO2.
Omega,
80% of “chemical” weathering is biological. Seems a lot of climate scientists miss this because the term sounds abiotic. That’s a “silo” problem though, much like the slow response to agricultural science and soil science. These fields generally have different jargon and equivocations occur quite frequently. There is even a term for the biology exclusively engaged in this, endolith.
“An endolith is an organism (archaeon, bacterium, fungus, lichen, algae or amoeba) that lives inside rock, coral, animal shells, or in the pores between mineral grains of a rock. Many are extremophiles, living in places long imagined inhospitable to life.”
Also many plants who do not directly have symbiosis with AMF will instead produce enzymes in their roots to weather the soil mineral substrate. Brassicas being a well known group of these.
I tend to agree with Killian here. Rather than try to pretend we could do better than natural systems already evolved over millions of years, we should rather take a more conservative approach and consider biomimicry as a template. Restoring ecosystem function worldwide is the real goal and these simplistic linear mechanistic “solutions” only considered if the main goal of ecosystem function is achieved and yet we still need additional help.
why?
1) too expensive
2) too many risks for unintended negative emergent properties
3) too few proven beneficial “side effects” like producing food fiber or energy
Here is a great example of a risk you may not have considered.
There is more carbon missing from the agricultural soils worldwide than extra in the atmosphere.
Carbon is in fact one of the most important elements because all life on this planet is carbon based!
What happens when a significant % of the carbon is removed from the living systems and buried deep in oceanic trenches?
There is a risk we may have limited the whole biosphere for millions of years by our foolish attempts to remove carbon from the atmosphere without restoring it to where it belongs, the soil!
I would put this particular mitigation proposal right up there with iron fertilization of the oceans and sulfur aerosols, possible maybe, but very high risk for unintended negative side effects.
Indeed. As a non-Permaculture/Regenerative Science participant, the principles involved are not readily understood by Omega, et al., namely any element that has one function is a negative in the system because it adds fragility – most of the time. Taking massive quantities of resources to build out a global industry to do nothing more than make more rock is frighteningly absurd. It shows how dedicated to tech people are and/or how ignorant of the bio-mimicry (which is another way one could think of Permaculture – though my favorite is Ecological Engineering) you mention.
We can restore the world’s soils or… destroy more of the world to create a system that does not solve any but one narrow aspect of the multi-faceted problems we face.
This is truly madness. A non-solution instead of actual solutions because of ignorance and ideology.
Return our soils globally to 15-20% SOC and we solve all the world’s problems. (Well, many of them: GHGs, food production, many floods and droughts, some SLR, acquifer depletion, lessening local heat emergencies, etc., etc. )
Omega Centauri: It holds CO2 in the form of carbonates. Its formation from CO2 water and quartz
Quartz? According to what reaction?
Quartz is made of silica SiO2 and if it reacts with water – it creates H4SiO4, not carbonates, and does not take up CO2 in the process.
CO2 uptake and production of carbonates happens, but in reactions of other minierals e.g.:
– dissolution of calcite or aragonite (no silica involved)
– dissolution of other minerals containing components other than silica, e.g.
– feldspar: CaAl2Si2O8 + H2CO3 + ½O2 —-> Al2Si2O5(OH)4 + Ca2+ + CO32-
– olivine: Fe2SiO4+ 4H2CO3 —> 2Fe2+ + 4HCO3– + H4SiO4
Again, in those reactions these are the other components of the mineral that take up CO2, while the “quartz part” (SiO2) is merely a by-stander – it just takes up water hydrating from SiO2 to H4SiO4.
Dr. .KIillian
Here you need to learn more about elementary chemistery, , soil science, physical geography, and general chosmology..
I can advice you on that.
Shush. You have shown little understanding of anything germane to solving our problems.
I shall resign on the rumors of pearls and swines here due to that slosh and “germane”.
They have obviously not done all that is recommended for the case of drunken sailors here, yet!
Just because I cannot sustain your sales propaganda, that seems all to delusionary. Get down to the fogs and the ices and the sands and clays and turfs and the weeds, the piss and the dirts and the approximate distance from pole to equator and barometric pressure at sea level and we can discuss.
Not able to write or articulate what you are stepping on entails unconsciousness also in your hind paws. Leave the liturgical political formulas to me, I know them better.
Did n`t I “slush” anything here to “germane” his tribal political progressive religious racial environmental problems?
A new global survey (under peer review on open access.) illustrates the depth of anxiety many young people are feeling about climate change. Over half of those surveyed said they thought humanity was doomed and that governments were failing to respond adequately
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-58549373
The other half are delusional.
The bill to save Byron and Dresden in Illinois was passed and signed. It contained a lot of cruft to further subsidize “renewables” (more than they already are, I understand) which is a very, very bad thing, but preserving the state’s nuclear capacity for a few more years is a good thing.
Anything that supports and/or maintains the status quo of consumption is a bad thing. You really need to get this through your head. In fact, it’s really not so important which is better, nuclear or others, when *both* are intended to maintain and even increase (2 billion more people with no reduction in per capita consumption = @ 37% increase in all forms of consumption) consumption.
The system must change, so the energy consumption must change. Energy is a direct proxy for growth and consumption. (Decoupling is a fantasy that ignores basic thermodynamics.)
He who dies with the most toys WINS!
:)
No. He/She who dies with the most love wins. The toys are merely a distraction.
Less puerile by a large margin, but I reject the notion that life is some sort of competition in this sense. It’s up to each human to choose the life goals that are meaningful for themself–IMO, of course.
No. He or She who DOESN’T die, wins. Still no winners. [insert winking emoji here]
Yes. That’s how some people do think, that is their values. A similar one is “just forget about if climate change is real or not, let’s get rich!!!”
I recently saw an Oil company CEO was quoted saying something similar to that.
The section of humanity who do not think like that cannot understand it. (Which is why many in the 1930s would not believe the Nazis would dare do what he did.)
Many can’t even believe that it could be true that people can be that callous uncaring self-centred etc. But that’s the way it is. And is a big reason why Pollyanna, Naive, Utopian (even rational logical) attempts to shift the direction of the Titanic climate change ship keep on failing.
Namby Pamby Dogooders have no idea of how their ‘enemies’ actually think or know what they believe is most important. for example:
Lesson #1: Empathize with your enemy
Lesson #7: Belief and seeing are both often wrong.
Lesson #9: In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fog_of_War#The_Fog_of_War
Greta T might be an example of one person who does see what others are really like, recognises how they think, what motivates them, and then she properly labels them publicly. But that is a rare quality.
Greta, only? This overweight, mid-50’s Whitey got there long before Greta. The lesson of Greta is important: If not cute/pretty/sexy/inspiringly damaged in some way/powerful/rich one is unlikely to be heard.
Sorry, RC, I inadvertently misthreaded my reply about “puerile positions”–it was intended WRT KIA’s foolishness, not your post.
@killian
How about you, me and greta? :)
cheers
The most puerile position possible.
@DrJamesEHansen
Gas bag season approaches. Will somebody please ask the politicians in Glasgow who will pay for the gap between their purported goal and reality. Maybe a couple trillion $ per year. It’s all a farce. No plan. Young people’s burden. See August Update: https://twitter.com/DrJamesEHansen/status/1437794768453607434
The bad news: we approach the gas bag season – the next Conference of the Parties (COP26) is scheduled for November 1-12. Gas bag politicians won’t show you the data that matter because that would reveal their miserable performances. Instead, they set climate goals for their children while adopting no polices that would give such goals a chance. Some of them may have been honestly duped about the science and engineering, but many must be blatant hypocrites.
misc from Paul Maidowski @_ppmv https://twitter.com/_ppmv
Sep 12
Always worth repeating: Watson / @JamesGDyke /@w_knorr ‘s article is fantastic because it drove home, to a large audience, that arbitrary flow metrics (zero by X, then somehow negative flows) are attractive in governance to obscure the stock problem (accumulation), hence widely used.
@_ppmv Sep 12
I regret to inform climate twitter that I again tried, and failed, to read @michaelemann’s book. It’s basically a wiener mélange of quotes from the estimeed archives of old Quartz, New York Times, and Inside Climate News articles. How does anyone take him seriously as an analyst?
@kali0x2a
Sep 12
Replying to @kali0x2a @fardos and @_ppmv
so here is my idea: all these “islands of expertise” as Hagens calls it, need to begin talking to each other and begin to understand the limits to their understanding instead of trying to present silver-bullet solutions & explanations that can only be incomplete.
regarding Steve Keen @ProfSteveKeen · Aug 19 Replying to @GernotWagner and @drvolts
What’s truly grim is the pathetic quality of the studies on which this meta-study is based. We wanted to wait till publication before publicising this analysis https://arxiv.org/abs/2108.07847 but your paper quantifying tipping points at a mere “1.4% upon 6°C warming” was just too much
@_ppmv Sep 13
Replying to @_ppmv @ClimateOfGavin and 3 others
How do climate scientists comment on economic questions if they never study economics beyond undergrad level? Honestly, this is the most important question, and we’re not learning, at all, from past decades. It’s even amazingly bad physics!
and Sep 13 –
Dear all, this is not to criticize you – it’s ok not to have answers, as economists make a mockery of climate science. But what is NOT ok, & in fact hugely harmful, is to accept and work with the estimates of climate economics (incl. the IPCC, sorry!) as if they had any validity. [ aka Integrated assessment modelling (IAM) ]
RC – Who was it that came up with the idea in the first place a Net Zero Emissions target was even needed?
It wasn’t the IPCC Climate Scientists – it was the Politicians – and who is behind the most powerful Politicians? While another 6 years has gone down the toilet with no action taken and nothing changing that needed to change. Overall emissions continued to increase to new record highs every year since the idea was floated.
August Temperature Update & Gas Bag Season Approaches
14 September 2021 James Hansen and Makiko Sato
Data that matter are those for the real world. Methane (CH4) amount in the air (Fig. 3) is growing again, thanks to our politicians.
Back to the COPs and the gas bags. At the 2015 COP in Paris the politicians clapped each other on the back and agreed to lower the global warming target from 2°C to 1.5°C. This goal was entirely inconsistent with their policy actions. The organizers rejected at the outset the idea of a carbon fee or carbon tax, despite the certainty that fossil fuel emissions will remain high as long as the atmosphere is a free dumping ground for pollutants. A steadily rising carbon fee is the sine qua non for phasing down global fossil fuel emissions.
https://mailchi.mp/caa/august-temperature-update-gas-bag-season-approaches
The beat goes on. One thing is certain in my view. There is no global political leadership to act on the climate change crisis/emergency. There’s hundreds of thousands even millions of voices but Zero Leadership. None.
India had Ghandi. South Africa had Mandela. China had Mao. England had Churchill.
The climate crisis has nobody.
@_ppmv Sep 14
@JamesGDyke introducing @pkhaff’s idea of the Technosphere (or the human super-organism) and why it’s important for us today. Similar to @NJHagens’ synthesis [ https://twitter.com/NJHagens/status/1421928088787734532?s=20 ] It will be good to see these ideas integrated into a new economics & governance for the 21st C (??)
ALIFE Conference 2021 @ALifeConf
#ALIFE2021 keynote @JamesGDyke
The autonomous Earth: How humans created a planetary civilisation that is beyond their control
https://twitter.com/ALifeConf/status/1437657365638123520
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiyXI6pVzk8
ALIFE 2021: The 2021 Conference on Artificial Life
July 19–23, 2021 – This is an open-access article
To understand you are in a prison, you must first be able to see the bars.
https://direct.mit.edu/isal/proceedings/isal/33/6/102960
Some food for thought?
con’t James G. Dyke: extracts of Q&A
The autonomous Earth: How humans created a planetary civilisation that is beyond their control
Are there any lessons we can take from the covid pandemic?
https://youtu.be/UiyXI6pVzk8?t=3112
A: We had freedom day what was it yesterday
you know fifty thousand forty thousand
new confirmed cases of covid, the uk
government has demonstrated time
and time again it cannot do what’s
required to slow down the outbreak, to
control get a handle on the outbreak
because it’s seen as direct opposition with
economic growth that growth imperative.
You know, if we can’t even do it when
they are literally people dying now,
this isn’t a problem 50 years into the future
Climate Change is sometimes cast as you
know probably over the political horizon
You may be talking next day, next week,
the kind of things that politicians have to do
right now they continually fail to act. They are
motivated by their failure to act in the context
of economic growth
So maybe one important thing we can do
is ask:
Economic growth for who? To what benefit?
It is true that we’ve got more than enough
resources that nobody needs to go hungry.
We’ve got more enough resources to make
sure nobody experiences food poverty.
Obviously the problem is the distribution, but
we tell ourselves a whole bunch of stories [Lies?]
about well this distribution is just an emergent
property of this very fast-growing economy or
something.
So maybe one thing the pandemic can ask us
to do is to push back about notions of progress
and economic growth when they are in direct
opposition to – clear direct opposition to human
well-being and welfare?
I mean if we can’t do it now right, what hope
have we got to deal with distant challenges
maybe decades down the road?
————————————————————
Q- Why the focus on physical technologies?
Human development is guided by a co-evolution
of physical and social technologies, just as physical
technologies agriculture the wheel or computers
are tools for transforming matter energy or
information in pursuit of our goals. Social technologies
are tools for organizing people in pursuit of our goals:
laws moral values and money are social technologies
as are ways of organizing an army a religion a government
or retail business.
So what are the role of the social technologies here?
https://youtu.be/UiyXI6pVzk8?t=2949
A: Yeah that’s good question, I didn’t talk about that
at all. It is obviously crucial so I’ve got some slides where
I talk about the advent of telecommunications and really
that’s just the most visible manifestation of the
information networks which he considered also
could include the cultural evolution. There’s nothing
more powerful than an idea.
plus
A: – I’ll give you a contemporary example: at the
moment there’s a lot of discussion about trying to
limit warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius
right, you know. Don’t tell anyone but that’s not
going to happen, right. It’s not going to happen.
Now I’m not allowed to say we will not limit
warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius.
I scandalize people when I say that.
What I should say is that there are no physical
reasons why we cannot limit warming to no
more than 1.5 degrees Celsius but there needs
to be sufficient political will in order to produce
the changes required, right?
Now if we just look at the Cultural or the
Socio-Economic-Political aspects then it seems
like political will is kind of mythical substance
that we just need to produce more of in order
for us to get to do the De-Carbonization.
So we seem to scrabble around for not really
having an understanding how those cultural
dynamics seem to be working or failing.
And of course a really important component
for our explanation of why it’s proving so hard is
because the tremendous amount of energy
that fossil fuels currently produce.
[Note:- Which amounts to 80% of global energy supply coming from fossil fuels. 110 billion barrels of Oil equivalent per year. When the Energy of one barrel of Oil equals 4.5 Years of Human Work. That’s a lot of very cheap accessible energy. It is the yearly work of 500 Billion Human Beings all up each and every year going forward. Previous Refs provided. ]
I mean that’s the major challenge. So just to
ask for political will is to ask for nothing!!!!
I mean we could say we could end all violent
political violence tomorrow if there was
sufficient political will. Everyone just needs to
lay down their arms, right, and it’s there. So I
absolutely agree they are an important cultural
information substrate to the Technosphere that
we absolutely have to include.
I suppose my initial starting point is to consider
the Energetics and I completely hold my hand
up about that and I’m trying to be open and honest
about it in the book.
[ END QUOTES ]
I do not know about you, but I find these kinds of comments extremely insightful, prescient and critically important to understand. It’s precisely why nothing gets done, and will not change until these matters are more clearly understood collectively.
Instead of energetic, maybe using the word Inertia would be better? There is a built up level of Inertia in the systems dynamics where continuing to use massive amounts of fossil fuel energy is built into the system that nothing can stop it – until something else much more important changes Culturally and Politically (and probably Psychologically.) And doing that is next to impossible in the time that is left to avert major climate crises arriving.
Until people really fully recognise the absolutely massive scale of that energy use system that keeps everything running day after day after day ON AUTOMATIC they will continue to fail to shift the built up Inertia of the entire system …. iow it’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy that is bound to continue on and on and on without end.
Inertia and Mass … This tendency to resist changes in their state of motion is described as inertia.
The massive scale of the energy system founded on fossil fuels is near impossible for anyone to comprehend it fully. The power of the Forces behind this Inertia are also incomprehensible. It is those Forces that make all the fossil fuel companies and their executives look puny and inconsequential bit players being swept along by the System itself.
To blame fossil fuel companies and executives and shareholders is to admit an inability to fundamentally grasp what the nature of problem, and it’s causes, actually is.
Or to use his apt metaphor – To understand you are in a prison, you must first be able to see the bars.
I like what he does there.
Hansen pushes nukes in the August temperature update:
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings
sidd
Too bad for Hansen. It is an example of the Dunning-Kruger condition, where the status of an expert in one field causes them to believe that they fully comprehend an entirely different field of expertise. J. Hansen is NOT versed in the history and principles of Sustainable Energy Policy Planning. This, of course, does not impinge on his deserved reputation as the, or one of the, top climate scientists in world history (perhaps right after Svante Arrhenius). It is too bad that he (and other people of note) appears to be smearing himself with the same type of propaganda (about fission) that the fossil boys use.
@Killian:
The “status quo” includes a great deal of ecosystem damage from GHG emissions and oceanic acidification. Substituting nuclear energy for fossil fuels does not maintain the status quo, it improves it immensely. True, it doesn’t address all the OTHER things we need to change, but it is a very important step in avoiding system collapse while we figure out how to do all the other things we need to do.
So if I substitute 3000 TWh of nuclear electricity for 3000 TWh of fossil-fired electricity, what have I grown and consumed? How about if I use the condenser cooling water from those 3000 TWh as the heat source for district heating, replacing natural gas? Looks like de-growth and de-consumption to me, with no loss of utility.
As one who has studied thermodynamics and done analyses of steam-cycle plants for my own edification, I’ll ask you to support this assertion in detail.
Mods/webmaster: I find that if I dive into “Inspect element” and change your trendy-but-illegible #143150 text color to #000, then go down and change your silly (unreadably small commas!) “Raleway” font to Arial, the page becomes immensely better; don’t get me going about using #666 for blockquotes, as that’s simply sadistic. Readability and usability beat fashion.
E. Poet
One can wonder wether utopic dreams and plans for society are quite healthy. In some cases they are harmless, in other cases they surely are not.
A change of system and change of mentality seems necessary and I have the impression that it is also going on allready and all the time, but not allways to the better. And what more changes to the worse or cannot change at all, often seems driven by utopism
Substituting nuclear energy for fossil fuels does not maintain the status quo, it improves it immensely.
No, it doesn’t. Nuclear addresses one issue and one issue only, a relatively small % of global emissions while creating unsolved and currently unsolvable problems and making other problems worse, such as resource depletion.
Apply the principles, nuclear is a bad idea on multiple fronts. And, there simply is not time for it, so give it up, already.
Most days it is like living in an alternative universe.
In a sobering reality check as the Cop26 meeting approaches, analysis shows world is on track for 3C temperature increase if present trends continue.
Every one of the world’s leading economies, including all the countries that make up the G20, is failing to meet commitments made in the landmark Paris agreement in order to stave off climate catastrophe, a damning new analysis has found.
Less than two months before crucial United Nations climate talks take place in Scotland, none of the largest greenhouse gas emitting countries have made sufficient plans to lower pollution to meet what they agreed to in the 2015 Paris climate accord.
New analysis, by Climate Action Tracker, finds almost every country is falling woefully short of that commitment.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/sep/15/governments-falling-short-paris-climate-pledges-study
It has become like Groundhog Day. The same things are being said over and over and over again and yet nothing ever changes.
14 September 2021
Guest post: How world’s coal-power pipeline has shrunk by three-quarters
In new analysis, published today, we show that the global pipeline of new coal plant projects has already shrunk dramatically since 2015, bringing the world closer to a pathway consistent with international climate goals.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-how-worlds-coal-power-pipeline-has-shrunk-by-three-quarters
Report – No New Coal by 2021
The collapse of the global coal pipeline
https://www.e3g.org/publications/no-new-coal/
After years of puzzling over this extremely perplexing issue I’ve gradually come to the realization that we are on the cusp of a period of world history unlike any other. Indeed, we are entering an era of mind-bending uncanniness fueled by a toxic mix of sheer hysteria and helplessness. Impossible demands will be made that will universally be regarded as necessary, a double-bind worthy of a Derrida essay or a Zen koan. To be blunt, we will be expected to destroy our world in order to save it.
I’m not claiming that the measures frequently recommended as means of mitigating climate change are necessarily futile in themselves. Just about everything that’s been suggested for harnessing natural power sources such as solar, wind, hydroelectric, etc., represents a healthy response to serious environmental, social and economic concerns.
What I AM saying is that the very idea that all the people and all the nations of the world can “roll up their sleeves” and somehow come together in some vaguely utopian sense to “fight climate change” in a manner that could actually make a difference is a huge chimera that could never be achieved, and that the impossibility of achieving it should be obvious to anyone with an ounce of critical thinking ability, not to mention common sense.
” we will be expected to destroy our world in order to save it. ”
That has always been the case throughout history. Saying, destroying YOUR world in order to save the whole world, to create a better world, might ring truer.
It depends on whether your world is that of the slave owner or the slave in 1863, a factory / coal mine owner or a child worker in a Charles Dickens world. A suffragette or an old goat.
” the very idea that all the people and all the nations of the world … can somehow come together … in some vaguely utopian sense”
Yes, a tall order. Fact is “all” is not what’s required. Only needs “most people / nations” taking back their power from the few with power and/aka the small minded, the delusional or psychotic or the irrational, ignorant, greedy and selfish types living in a world of their own!. Still even that is a very tall order to achieve. Currently, that fight is sadly being lost by “the utopian, glass half full, good guys”.
But it has been done many many times before and succeeded .. at least partially. History tells us so. Tyranny and rank stupidity never lasts forever.
I have made this point before and it gets ignored here, there and everywhere, because change scares the SHIT out of people: Most of the world lives pretty close to the bone. Billions live via subsistence gardens, etc., while the huge Agro farms they work on, e.g., export most of their production to… us.
These people do not have far to fall and can scale down to lower levels of subsistence much more easily than any global 1% (all of us could ever hope to. So many don’t have to learn to live with little or no grid power, safe water, non-self-/locally produced food, and on and on.
And though most people have not been aboriginal for some time, it will be far easier and faster for the world’s billions of very poor to revert than it will be for us. It blows my mind the myopia and patronization so deeply embedded in the most industrialized nations.
In an uncontrolled collapse, the last shall be first, mark my words. It may not seem like it in the beginning, but in the end, it shall be so.
“Most of the world lives pretty close to the bone. “
Yes. And in advanced even first world societies we’re still only nine meals (3 days) away nationwide crisis and total breakdown.
Everyone is living on a slippery slope which seems to be getting steeper every year.
“It blows my mind the myopia and patronization so deeply embedded in the most industrialized nations. “
Oh me too. I think most nations/societies’ priorities are unhinged, but whatever. May the sustainable communities thrive.
I think the characteristic thing about the ‘first world’ paradigm–or one of the primary characteristics, anyway–is radically increased reliance on distribution systems (i.e., logistics). One symbol of that would be the current catchphrase of a major supermarket chain who dun into us that their food is (supposedly) “fresher than fresh.”
Well, it’s no doubt impressive that those grapes I buy today in South Carolina were picked 3 days ago in Chile (and not entirely in a good way, either, particularly considering carbon footprint.) But accelerated delivery has as its flipside a certain vulnerability, which has been showing up in Covid times. We all remember the Great Toilet Paper Crisis of 2020. And currently, I find, if I want to reshingle my roof, it’s probably going to take a month or more to obtain the shingles. (Not a good thing in hurricane season, though I suppose it’s partly *due* to hurricane season–Ida removed rather a lot of roofs not so long ago.)
Point is, the just in time system has been emanating some alarming creaks in the last year or two, IMO.
Point is, the just in time system has been emanating some alarming creaks in the last year or two, IMO.
Indeed. It has been for a while, just at a level most don’t notice, or ascribe to systemics. This was the entire point of a report, whose name I cannot remember, about energy descent. Basically, if one started acting on Peak Oil 20 years before peak, it would be difficult, but could be done reasonably well. 10 years before would be rather disruptive and at peak would be way too late. Things don’t fall apart when you reach peak ( or valley), they start falling apart gradually and accelerate over time.
This is exactly what has happened and is happening with climate. The longer we waited, the narrow the options. We now have one.
Simultaneously Victor is also quite right here. One can’t simply things down to a few paragraphs but taking what’s said at face value is essentially correct – (depending on how one chooses to read it.)
Here’s another example, an extract, which says the same kinds of things, truisms, valid observations, as what Victor is pointing out above:
Thinking seriously about climate change forces us to face the fact that nobody’s driving the car, nobody’s in charge, nobody knows how to “fix it.” And even if we had a driver, there’s a bigger problem: no car.
There’s no mechanism for uniting the entire human species to move together in one direction. There are more than seven billion humans, and we divide into almost 200 countries, thousands of smaller sub-national states, territories, counties and municipalities, and an unimaginable multitude of corporations, community organizations, neighborhoods, religious sects, ethnic identities, clans, tribes, gangs, clubs and families, each of which faces its own disunion and strife, all the way down to the individual human soul in conflict with itself, torn between fear and desire, hard sacrifice and easy cruelty, all of us improvising day by day, moment to moment, making decisions based on best guesses, hunches, comforting illusions and too little data.
Anthropocene City. Roy Scranton (2018a). [403 ppm CO2]
from https://carbonlaw.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/210502-Adaptive-Mitigation_note-2.pdf (worth reading in full)
for example:
Climate policy is a symptom rather than cause of unsustainability: Problem-solving institutions like empires or nation states remain structurally dependent on growth.
(1) Complexity is a problem-solving strategy that often succeeds in the short run, but in the long run can prove counterproductive as it accumulates unsustainable structures [ and internalized systems? ] and requires rising energy and resource subsidies.
Civilization’s other two possible future paths are (2) voluntary simplification, or (3) involuntary change: collapse (Tainter 2000).
and
This means that we must reduce CO2 concentrations (pCO2) from 414 parts per million (ppm) below 353 ppm (von Schuckmann et al. 2020). This is near-impossible, equivalent to undoing the past several decades of civilization growth.
Such fantastically improbable change is routinely assumed in IAMs and policy. More robust theory will integrate economics, science, and humanities to reflect inertia in society and Earth’s system.
and
System dynamics: Sustaining civilization requires systems thinking.
Rapid cuts in energy use are needed to avoid extreme climate change; yet energy, most immediately electricity and food, sustains civilization and cannot be cut at planetary scale and for all future, even if doing so were legal or ethical. No historical precedents exist for a structure as large as civilization (20 TW primary energy demand, equivalent to the energy contained in 270 million barrels of oil per day) to overcome the tremendous inertia accumulated over past decades of exponential growth (Garrett et al. 2020). This inertia will propel civilization forward, growing far beyond Earth’s carrying capacity.
This dynamic pattern of behavior follows from three obvious, persistent, and common features of the
global system: erodable limits, incessant pursuit of growth, and delays in society’s responses—in
both science and politics—to approaching limits.
Thus, it is no surprise that we follow the overshoot and collapse scenarios of LTG (Meadows et al. 2004, p. xviii). They follow from cumulative decisions and the normal functioning of a system, not its malfunction; a case of continuity more than change.
https://carbonlaw.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/210502-Adaptive-Mitigation_note-2.pdf
eg as mentioned above the other day: To understand you are in a prison, you must first be able to see the bars.
The autonomous Earth: How humans created a planetary civilisation that is beyond their control
https://youtu.be/UiyXI6pVzk8
It’s like being the Captain of the Titanic, peering through a fog of conflicting complex data points, unable to see clearly, when suddenly dead ahead you see the Iceberg only to instantly realize there is not enough time left to 1) stop the ship nor 2) steer around it. You’re already sunk.
I think the complex (at times conflicting) data points about this climate crisis are much clearer today.
And so are the remaining options of 1) Voluntary simplification, or 2) Involuntary collapse.
Possibly an adhoc mix of both is where we’ll end up. Either way massive systemic changes are guaranteed. Because we are already past the point of no return … “we’re already sunk.”
“Civilization’s other two possible future paths are (2) voluntary simplification, or (3) involuntary change: collapse (Tainter 2000).”
Yes, although Tainter was not optimistic about voluntary simplification:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2095648
“In 1988 Joseph Tainter published his seminal work, The Collapse of Complex Societies, in which he presented an original theory of social complexity that he offered as the best explanation for the collapse of civilisations throughout history. Tainter’s theory, which I outline in more detail below, essentially holds that human societies become more socially complex as they solve the problems they face, and while this complexity initially provides a net benefit to society, eventually the benefits derived from increasing complexity diminish and the relative costs begin to increase. There comes a point, Tainter argues, when all the energy and resources available to a society are required just to maintain the society, at which point further problems that arise cannot be solved and the society then enters a phase of deterioration or even rapid collapse. Not only is Tainter’s theory of historical interest, many believe it has implications for how we understand the world today.”
“One of the most challenging aspects of Tainter’s theory is how it reframes – one might even say revolutionises – sustainability discourse (Tainter, 2011a). Tainter argues that sustainability is about problem solving and that problem solving increases social complexity. But he also argues that social complexity requires energy and resources, and this implies that solving problems, including ecological problems, can actually demand increases in energy and resource consumption, not reductions. Indeed, Tainter (2006: 93) maintains that sustainability is ‘not a passive consequence of having fewer human beings who consume more limited resources,’ as many argue it is; he even goes as far as to suggest that voluntary simplification by way of foregoing consumption may no longer be an option for industrial civilisation, for reasons that will be explained. Instead, Tainter’s conception of sustainability involves subsiding increased complexity with more energy and resources in order to solve ongoing problems.”
Thanks for adding that info about Tainter’s theory.
Kind of begs the question, do we, can we know anything?
anyway, the last part of that abstract went on to say::
While Tainter’s theory of social complexity has much to commend it, in this paper (which is part of a larger work-in-progress) I wish to examine and ultimately challenge Tainter’s conclusion that voluntary simplification is not a viable path to sustainability. In fact, I will argue that it is by far our best bet, even if the odds do not provide grounds for much optimism. Moreover, should sustainability prove too ambitious a goal for industrial civilisation, I contend that simplification remains the most effective means of building ‘resilience’ (i.e. the ability of an individual or community to withstand societal or ecological shocks). While I accept that problem solving generally implies an increase in social complexity, the thesis I present below is that there comes a point when complexity itself becomes a problem, at which point voluntary simplification, not further complexity, is the most appropriate response. Not only does industrial civilisation seem to be at such a point today (Homer-Dixon, 2006), or well beyond it (Gilding, 2011), I hope to show that voluntary simplification presents a viable and desirable option for responding to today’s converging social, economic, and ecological problems. This goes directly against Tainter’s conception of sustainability, while accepting much of his background theoretical framework.
A ‘society’ or ‘other’ institution ‘can’ be ‘destroyed’ by the ‘cost’ of’ sustaining’ itself.’– Joseph Tainter
Generally I always saw global warming and climate change being presented as a distinct ‘problem’ in need of a solution. It may be one problem, too much FF use and GHG sink destruction at the same time, but it was a single cause with a hydra of downstream impacts, other problems from unstable weather, SLR, to coral reef destruction to agriculture constraints, And that was how the debate was always framed and how the science academic papers addressed this singular “cause”.
The naysayers said we can’t afford to address it, iow it’s the economy stupid that matters most to humans thriving and surviving!
After a long break from the topic I am now seeing and increasing body of work and activity by scientists and academics who are framing the “problems” differently, where global warming and climate change (plus their possible solutions) are increasingly being seen as merely SYMPTOMS of another larger all pervading Human Cause.
There’s no real solid agreement what that cause might be, some lay the blame at capitalism, on human greed, psychosis/narcissisms, others on rampant consumption, others on neoliberal ideology of the Market knows best.
But their does seem to be a consensus arising slowly that Climate Change is only one part of a bigger plethora of serious effects and negative impacts of one driving Causation.
This idea about Tainter, pro or con, even though it’s from 1988 and this paper is from 2012, it’s just another example of seeing that AGW/CC is not the singular drama in need to attention and once the science is clear and appropriate expert advice taken to FIX IT it will suddenly be fixed and then everything will be alright again.
Looks to me that there is much bigger going on here than simply “listening to and heeding the science” by dumping fossil fuels then replacing them with renewables and taking better care of the land and forests etc and all will be well.
That’s not me personally saying that either, I’m only saying I am hearing a strong Signal rising above the Noise of BAU climate science outputs and discussions from the past 30 years. This wasn’t so clear 5 or 10 years ago. Anyway, whatever.
Thanks for adding that info about Tainter’s theory.
I have recounted Tainter’s views here more than once here, but nigel tends to talk about things without ever acknowledging he was led to them by others…
I have specifically talked about my conversation with him from 2010 about exactly that pessimism because I asked him specifically that question: How likely is collapse vs controlled collapse in your opinion?
All the reasons why the former is more likely than the latter are **obvious**, or should be. We do not need to keep referring to academics ten years behind those who have been saying this all along. That tendency to think important knowledge only comes from a PhD or a writer is killing us. Had you all, and all the many other people who have read my posts or read my interviews, documents, model, etc., listened these last ten years and acted on that information, how different might things be?
You can write 500 pages on a topic and say nothing new or special, or you can write a few hundred or a few thousand and say everything.
You are all choosing the wrong option, and always have been.
As for Tainter’s claim that problem-solving requires social complexity, he’s wrong. The societies that make the best decisions do so in very simple, egalitarian fashion. Tainter doesn’t seem to consider these decision-makers and seems to assume that high-tech societies are the standard for human behavior. They are not. The kind of complex decision-making we use is a result of complexity, and inequality, not a cause of it.
Effective ecological decisions happen simply, locally, and fractally up the line in simple processes.
There’s no real solid agreement what that cause might be, some lay the blame at capitalism, on human greed, psychosis/narcissisms, others on rampant consumption, others on neoliberal ideology of the Market knows best.
These are (academic) distinctions without a difference in this context. The entire list results from non-communal management of resources. It is irrelevant whether the consumption occurs in a perfectly capitalist context, a hybrid context, or a faux socialist context such as in Russia and China. Where private ownership leads, consumption and destruction follow regardless of the system. First Principles: What is the irreducible common factor? Ownership, i.e. non-communal management of resources.
Looks to me that there is much bigger going on here than simply “listening to and heeding the science” by dumping fossil fuels then replacing them with renewables and taking better care of the land and forests etc and all will be well.
That’s not me personally saying that either, I’m only saying I am hearing a strong Signal rising above the Noise of BAU climate science outputs and discussions from the past 30 years. ****This wasn’t so clear 5 or 10 years ago.*****
Yes, it sure the hell was. I, and others, said so, specifically. LtoG said it in 1972. Catton and others @ 1980 to the present. I, quite specifically, have said so for OVER ten years and, exceptionally specifically, laid out the only pathway left and a way to do it.
That you have not known whom to listen to does not mean it has not been clear. It has been agonizingly clear.
“What I AM saying is that the very idea that all the people and all the nations of the world can “roll up their sleeves” and somehow come together in some vaguely utopian sense to “fight climate change” in a manner that could actually make a difference is a huge chimera that could never be achieved”
Goodness, do you do any research before posting your scientifically ignorance comments? Wow. Clue for you: The reduction of hydro-fluorocarbons to reduce the ozone hole. Just for starters.
As I look around at the planet, I’m wondering if we deserve what we are going to get?
:)
Absolutely yes we deserve what we are going to get.
sad but true – that`s why i claim, that human stupidity is main cause of slr among many other problems due to the same cause. A. Einstein tended to evaluate infinity of stupidity bigger than infinity of the univers.
Mighty forces sacrifice creation and all life on earth on the altars to their infinite arrogance and ignorance. That gives the impression that those are believing they could survive it themselves. how stupid and final is that …?
Mac–Your transfinite math might could use a little work.
Plus…whatever made you so sure that the universe is infinite? That’s just one model and not the consensus one these days at that.
What is at the edge of the consensus universe? What is just beyond that edge?
jgnfld, “might could” has now made it the Rock? I never heard it until I went to Georgia in 1989.
:-)
Grew up in US military going to a total of 10 k-12 schools, college educated North (Minn) and South (Tx) USA. I’ve heard it all.
Weaktor,
Your demonstrated inability to see things that are plainly present and your ability to hallucinate that which is not there make me a bit reluctant to accept your judgment as to what is and is not possible for our species.
Humans have demonstrated repeatedly that they can come together and make dramatic changes. It is why:
1) The Nazis don’t rule in Europe
2) Smallpox is eradicated
3) We have an Internet on which you can repeatedly demonstrate your stupidity
4) We have a global society
5) We have satellites buzzing about not only our own but most of the other planets
6) And on and on
Humans can solve problems–particularly problems of their own creation. However, to do that, they have to accept the evidence (including statistical evidence) and develop evidence-based mitigation. Despair never helped anyone. It is also almost always wrong.
Humans will one day become extinct, but if it is because of climate change or any of the problems we face today, it will be because we gave up.
Now show me an example where humans have made dramatic changes on a global scale that required significant sacrifice to quality of life to defeat a non-visible enemy and avert a crisis that is predicted to occur decades from now, because that is what the global population is expected to do, and after half a century of scientists warning us of climate change and its impacts, I see no evidence we have even slowed emissions and degradation of eco-systems and depletion of natural resources, so why should I believe that humans on a global scale will somehow collectively change their mindsets and re-engineer their lives and systems to a sustainable level within the next 20 years? Humans are dreadful at dealing with invisible threats in the future over the here and now. That is why so many end up with long term health problems in their late years, and not so late years due to poor diet and sendentary lives, which we all know cause health problems, but people still choose to eat heavily processed crap food, drink excessive alcohol, and use over a tonne of machinery to do the equivalent of a 10 minute walk or bike ride. Sorry, but I don’t share your optimism of human intelligence. For all our so-called intelligence, we are still heavily driven by primitive instincts and desires which might have worked well for survival in the hunter-gatherer years, but are horrible at dealing with current day problems, especially super-evil problems like climate change and its consequences.
Most who stood against slavery ate sugar, wore cotton, used tobacco and benefited from the system.
It didn’t stop them demanding that part of the system ended.
You don’t have to live outside a system to see it’s wrong, extremely harmful, and demand it changes.
And when these repeated demands are not met to then take much more serious actions to stop it.
#ClimateAction
Many in our collective past have taken up the banner of lost causes and won the day eventually.
It’s not the winning that matters. It’s being able to live with yourself that really counts.
Yep. Well said, IMHO.
It’s interesting that proponents of nuclear power are almost always anti-renewable energy — in particular they tend to be VERY anti-solar energy.
But it is equally interesting that no large-scale industrial nation believes enough in solar energy to have actually installed a 100% solar or even a 100% solar/wind electrical grid. Why is that?
It takes Time !!!!
No country has 100% auto penetration either. Even after a century of marketing.
KIA: it is equally interesting that no large-scale industrial nation believes enough in solar energy to have actually installed a 100% solar or even a 100% solar/wind electrical grid. Why is that?
BPL: Because they haven’t reached that level yet (actually, I think Costa Rica has). It’s like asking in 1900, “Why hasn’t any country reached 100% automobiles for its personal transportation yet?”
There you go being all sensible again, Barton!
Costa Rica? They get 67% from hydro, 17% from wind, 1% from solar, and they are not a large-scale industrial nation. Not a bad try though. They’re doing FAR better than most:
https://borgenproject.org/10-facts-about-renewable-energy-in-costa-rica/
“Most of Costa Rica’s energy comes from renewable sources. More than 99 percent of the energy in Costa Rica was generated from renewable sources in 2019. According to the country’s National Center for Energy Control, Costa Rica has been running on more than 98 percent renewable energy since 2014. The majority of this energy, 67.5 percent, comes from hydropower. Additionally, wind power generates 17 percent, geothermal sources make up 13.5 percent and biomass and solar panels comprise 0.84 percent. The remaining 1.16 percent is from backup plants.”
Mr. Know It All says: “no large-scale industrial nation believes enough in solar energy to have actually installed a 100% solar or even a 100% solar/wind electrical grid. Why is that?”
1. Solar, wind and battery technologies required for a fully renewable grid are relatively new, and while today’s technologies are powerful and mature (and improving rapidly while costs plummet), they are still in their infancy in terms of growth. They are nonetheless growing rapidly, with solar and wind already constituting the majority of new generating capacity added to the US grid, and already cheaper than building new fossil fuel or nuclear generating capacity.
2. The fossil fuel industry has completely dominated the electric grid for a century, and obviously has a huge installed base and a grid that was designed to match the needs of fossil fueled generators as much or more than it was designed to match the needs of consumers. That creates a certain inertia and technological barriers to change. And of course the fossil fuel industry has abused its entrenched wealth and power to discourage, obstruct and delay the entry and growth of renewables in the grid.
Secular Animist: not that I can notice. Nuclear power is for baseload while solar PV is for the daytime peak. These fit well together.
From years of reading comments, it is clear that about 95% of what you are observing is simply concern trolling, poison pill, owning-the-liberals recitation of the talking points they have memorized from Fox News. It’s an excuse to say negative things about renewables so we will keep using fossil fuels.
I always ask them the simple question:
Why would any rational investor put money in nuclear when they could get an almost certain good and rapid ROI from a standard natural gas plant?
Then they either run away or say “but it’s safe”; again, something they have been told to repeat endlessly, even if I am not disagreeing with that.
(Sometimes they bring up France, but when you point out that it involved that dreaded Pure Socialism Central Government Nationalization And Control, they say, you guessed it….. “but it’s safe”.)
zebra says “Sometimes they bring up France”
When nuclear proponents bring up France, I remind them that the USA (not France) operates the most nuclear reactors and generates the most electricity from nuclear power of any nation on Earth. The USA has almost twice as many nuclear reactors as France.
Moreover, France is now in the process of downsizing its nuclear fleet and is moving aggressively to deploy renewable energy.
Regarding UV – Secular Animist says 17 Sep 2021 at 1:23 PM
New report from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change:
“Nationally determined contributions under the Paris Agreement”
CNN coverage:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/17/us/catastrophic-climate-change-un-report/index.html
Another example: Reality Check says 15 Sep 2021 at 11:20 PM
Most days it is like living in an alternative universe.
In a sobering reality check as the Cop26 meeting approaches, analysis shows world is on track for 3C temperature increase if present trends continue. New analysis, by Climate Action Tracker, finds almost every country is falling woefully short of that commitment. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/sep/15/governments-falling-short-paris-climate-pledges-study
It has become like Groundhog Day. The same things are being said over and over and over again and yet nothing ever changes.
Ref https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/09/forced-responses-sep-2021/#comment-795719
This +2.7 to 3 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels before 2100 is not new news.
These kinds of factoids are being generally ignored, dismissed, minimized by those who should know better – they have been mislabeled as Nihilism, Doomism, Defeatism, Disengagement and Despair – instead of being what it actually is: Speaking the Truth of where this is really headed.
Unfortunately people such as Mike Mann (and I am only using him as an example here for many others) latch onto these issues only to distort them beyond all reason: Mann- ” that plays right into the hands of the fossil fuel industry and the forces of inaction the inactivists as they call them in the book…”
Mann seems to wrongly believe that people fall into climate doomism, depression and despair due to some nefarious cunning campaign tactics by the fossil fuel industry – when what it really is is the result of long term inaction by govts and a lack of speaking the whole truth clearly by climate scientists like himself for decades.
Seriously, Mann gets lost in the weeds in his latest i’view with Thom – Is Climate Change On a Crash Course? ref https://youtu.be/jVa8eDqu3Pc?t=740
Purview the comments section – the audience response is not good:
1) Why do people just keep saying “act on climate” when it’s NEVER identified WHAT EXACTLY that means? (they clearly didn’t wait for the end of the interview – and Mann left it far too late to address – instead he got bogged down in his favorite topics AMOC and West Antarctic Ice Shelf — totally out of touch with everyday people’s lives and the issues that matter to them personally. Dismissing SLR as Mann does, is too esoteric and too far in the future. )
At the end Thom asks: ” How we get out of this where where are the where where where where are the low hanging fruit where are the pressure points that that we can you know quickly make progress in moving in the right direction… “
M Mann replies with these items: it’s now 2021, right.
– politicians our elected representatives to act on our behalf rather than continuing to be enablers of the fossil fuel industry
– we cannot allow any additional fossil fuel infrastructure
– there can be no new fossil fuel infrastructure
– demand that our politicians do not green green light additional pipeline projects
– do not continue to provide subsidies and other incentives to the fossil fuel industry
– provide those subsidies and incentives to renewable energy
– put a price on carbon
– block new fossil fuel infrastructure
– we can’t do them ourselves we need our politicians to do it
– we need to elect politicians who will do it
IOW Mann’s solution to get out of this, the low hanging fruit of the key pressure points is To Elect Better Politicians not beholden to the fossil fuel industry and by default not beholden to endless Economic growth too).
He’s written a books on the issue, and this is the best solutions he can offer today. Well blow me down with a feather. Who would have thought of that the last 30 years? I believe it is precisely comments like this from Mann is one of the biggest reasons there is so much climate doomism, depression and despair!!!
People do not expect any better from the fossil fuel companies than what they have been doing!!! It’s the politicians and climate scientists like Mann (and the soft shoe contradictory double-speak they do) who keep letting people down all the time.
Mann is ignoring the fact that ‘we the people’ cannot do anything ourselves about what is being done or not done! We are individually powerless to change anything. Especially when not being told the whole truth by anyone! The only thing individuals can do is 1) Vote if they are lucky or 2) Opt Out of the system if they are already Rich.
We cannot stop walking before the edge, because everything Significant in the System is totally out of our control and already in place. Therefore 99% of people get their energy from wherever is available to them. They do NOT (or rarely if ever) have a choice!
RC. I gather you are saying politicians haven’t told the public specifically and clearly what to do about the climate issue and have also been unclear about what government polices are intended to do. This is true enough in New Zealand. Its unfortunate.
We do currently have a political leader Jacinda Adern who has been very specific and effective in telling everyone what to do regarding covid 19. She has a degree in communications skills or something similar. She keeps the messages simple, clear and repetitive. I cant help but think this is part of the reason we have had such low covid infection rates.
Unfortunately she hasn’t taken the same approach with the climate issue, but probably because hospitals aren’t being inundated. There’s not the same sense of urgency around climate change with either politicians or the public. Its human psychology. and we are mostly trapped within this.
I’ll bet that big blue pond surrounding NZ helps with your low COVID numbers. ;)
On RC’s comment about what are people supposed to do, EVERYONE KNOWS what to do. Environmentalists have been telling us what to do at least since Jimmy Carter was in office: turn down the t-stat in winter, turn it up in summer, drive a gas sipping car only when needed – the rest of the time ride a bike, walk, or take the bus, eat low on the food chain, add insulation to your home, buy energy star appliances, put PV panels on your roof, etc.
The big blue pond hasn’t stopped Fiji having huge covid numbers. or kept it out of the UK. Keeping covid numbers low is mostly about government policies especially at the border.. We are all linked now by tourism and trade. And of course lockdowns and mask wearing are important, along with leaders that have a brain in their head, and set a good example.
Australia has a “big blue pond” around it, too, but that hasn’t meant that we’ve done as good a job of containing COVID as the New Zealanders.
Still a much better job than the USA, though.
Cases/million:
USA: 129,675
Australia: 3,431
New Zealand: 819
prl,
I agree, USA lacks that big blue pond moat for sure.
Our open border doesn’t help. Appx. 2 million undocumented, zero testing, all unvaccinated have come in since Jan 20, 2021 and they are shipping them to towns across our once-great nation.
nigelj,
You are correct. Leaders with brains in their head do help – the USA is lacking that right now BIG LEAGUE.
And here’s Mr. KIA with the moronic Faux News talking points again.
Fact: The COVID surge is being driven by unvaccinated American citizens who have bought into Faux News anti-vax talking points.
Fact: Our economy is going to rely on an influx of immigrants if we are to grow in the future.
Fact: If you want to decrease undocumented immigration, reform the broken immigration system so that it serves the needs of both immigrants and the US economy, AND increase aid to countries that are currently driving the immigrant surge. If people can feel safe and make a living in their own countries, they won’t be driven to risk everything to come here.
Don’t be afraid of everyone whose skin pigmentation is darker than your own.
The problem with this alleged logic is that for most of the pandemic, and certainly at present, case loads are generally higher in the US–and especially the red-state US–than in the countries of origin.
For example, yesterday saw ~133k new cases in the US, which is about 0.04% of the population.
Guatemala saw 4,243 cases, or 0.02%. For Mexico, it was 12,521, or 0.01%.
True, it’s *detected* cases, so testing is an issue, and Mexico is known to have an inadequate regime, with Guatemala presumably no better. Then again, incomprehensibly our testing is also known to be less than adequate.
In any case, there’s no solid evidence that immigrants are more likely than citizens to be infected, and some evidence that they’re *less* likely.
Ray says: “Fact: The COVID surge is being driven by unvaccinated American citizens who have bought into Faux News anti-vax talking points.”
Really? Maybe not. Source: https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/latest-data-on-covid-19-vaccinations-race-ethnicity/
“Overall, across these 43 states, the percent of White people who have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose (53%) was 1.2 times higher than the rate for Black people (45%) and 1.1 times higher than the rate for Hispanic people (49%) as of September 20, 2021. White people had a higher vaccination rate compared to Hispanic people in most reporting states, except Missouri, Vermont, Tennessee, DC, Louisiana, Virginia, Nevada, New York and South Carolina. White people also had a higher rate than Black people in every reporting state, except Oregon, Alaska, Idaho, Mississippi, Washington, and Louisiana.”
And then there’s this one::
https://thefederalist.com/2021/09/22/black-lives-matter-is-threatening-an-uprising-against-racist-vaccine-mandates/
Kevin M: “In any case, there’s no solid evidence that immigrants are more likely than citizens to be infected, and some evidence that they’re *less* likely.”
Really? Cite some of that evidence.
Mr. KIA regurgitates the other racist Faux News talking point. Much of the lower rate of vaccination in black and brown communities can be explained by lack of access. Employers aren’t giving workers time off to get the vaccine. The same forces behind the Faux News talking points are also flooding Spanish language media with the same dezinformatsia.
With Trump and Trump supporters, all roads leads back to Putin.
Already did cite specific numbers. Perhaps try reading for comprehension.
Source? World listers tracker.
Worldometers.”
%$#@ autocorrect.
@nigelj, ” I cant help but think this is part of the reason we have had such low covid infection rates.”
yes, what you say shows it’s possible. Both straight communication and decent leadership.
Still we are trapped all the same. Not enough good leadership for sure. History has shown many intransigent tough social/political human problems can be resolved improved. These do take a breakthrough moment .. eg civil rights in the usa, womens rights, safer motor cars as per Nader etc
So whatever leadership guided and started the ozone treaty, and Rio group to address agw has been lost to the world. This is what I find most depressing …. after 30 years of “voting for better politicians” but them not being elected and if they did not being able to change much at all anyway, this is where things are at. Sad. It’s already time already for another very long sabbatical (or permanent break) from this topic.
Just. Absolute. Bull. Shit.
I cannot believe you have bought into the GOV’T IS ALL!! GOV’T IS OUR SUPERMAN crap.
Ugh…
Sustainability is *only* possible with the local level as core, so how does that equal Gov’t as Superman?
Genosse:
Macrochosmos in microchosmos & microchosmos in macrochosmos.
Despicio suspiciendum / Suspicio despiciendum
Chosmology, Genosse, Chosmkology., Not that inferiour ” sustainability” of yours. You must look up for timeless wisdom you see, if you whish to have it sustainable.
Barking words.
Nein, Genosse. I do not bark, there you are wrong again.
The first sentence is related to Hermes Trismagistos in Alexandria, and the next from Tycho Brahe Who had himself pictures looking up and out the window holding a compasses dow to a globe in his OBSERVAQTORIVM. “Looking up, I look down!”
and secondly holding a chemical glass and looking into0 it, pointing with his other hand up to the stars. “Looking down, I look up!”
Chosmology, Genosse, Chsmology,.. that idea of whole-ness and beinjg inauguratet able and trained to look both ways at the same time and to keep it all in mind and to do the better out of that…..
………..is something that you hardly learn in the Party..
There, you just learn to wear blinkers, to bark, and to badger.
Carbomontanus. You appear to be arguing sustainability is both central government and local, all at the same time. If so I agree totally. Its kind of obvious.
Mann’s bottom line advice? Elect better Politicians – I believe that is useless advice, It’s a huge Cop Out
Other classic comments by the public listening to Michael Mann on ‘Is Climate Change On a Crash Course?’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVa8eDqu3Pc (only as an example of the effects happening today) went like this:
Mann’s walking towards a cliff so stop before the edge – is a very poor analogy. A walker can stop walking.. but we are more like in a Canoe on a River heading downstream towards a massive waterfall … we are now at a point at which No Power on Earth can get you to the shore and safety … you waited too long … bye bye….the current will carry on to your doom….there’s no way out.
Soon Micheal Mann will be taking interviews from his underground bunker. I can hear him now, “We can still avoid the worst to come……”
My despair is over the lack of political will to do what needs to be done. Some of us have been screaming with our hair on fire for half a century.
… there is no hope until that system changes.
I’ve disengaged simply because I believe (the poor et al are going to suffer most, while) … the people whose greed allowed the situation to get to this point will continue living comfortably off of the profits they earned.
Some of the despair is driven by a realistic assessment of how (un)likely change (is) to occur even with our best efforts.
Did the fossil fuel executives get their bonuses, they did oh thank god, because that is all the powers that be care about
Well, sure, it’s not too late, (in theory), to do everything we can to avert the worst case scenarios, but we won’t do those things, because they would require a massive, IMMEDIATE, undertaking, which would mean gargantuan sacrifice on the part of nearly 8 billion people, on a permanent basis.
We’re like the dinosaurs, just before the asteroid hit.
Prof Mann is a soft touch for the fossil fuel industry. He is good at theorizing, pontificating & wringing his hands, but no good at using his brain or voice to inspire the rapid shrinkage in global economic growth necessary to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. He is as much use as a chocolate hockey stick.
What does a world with “no new fossil fuel projects” look like ? If our politicians even started down that path, we would vote them out. Kind of leaves us dangling off a cliff, huh?
Too many are simply trapped in survival mode, living check to check, or those with a paying job are finding demanding hours and at home work. This has to change or yes, not much will get done.
It’s already too late. As a species, we will do far too little to stop or reverse the mess we have made. There are too many people and we are collectively too stupid.
I thought I was alone in this life decision too. We decided not to have kids because we didn’t want them to witness the death of the planet. People thought we were crazy at the time. We were right in our decision.
Mann needs to get outside, half a day of direct sunlight now makes (a) much stronger argument than he does.
I have to admit that I don’t see despair around me concerning global climate disruption. What I see is that few people care about the issue and certainly are not going to make any sacrifices to change the trajectory of where we are going. This will not end well.
Michael Mann is good talking about his knowledge of climate, but will never come across the solution.
False hope. Petroleum runs the economy. We are already locked in
Politically, we get less done than ever before. Why should anyone have hope while the establishment won’t/ can’t take any action at all?
Come on folks, we all know that we have reached the point of no return…. This horrendous debacle has been two centuries in the making…. Global warming passed the tipping point about two decades ago…. Hell, we passed the tipping points in 2020…. the tipping point was in the 70s, now sit back and enjoy the ride!!!
[end quotes]
Why does this matter, to me, so much? Because I see it relating to other important issues that are being neglected in my opinion. OK, well if I can repeat part of recent Ref above :-
James G. Dyke: extracts of Q&A – The autonomous Earth: How humans created a planetary civilisation that is beyond their control
A: – I’ll give you a contemporary example: at the
moment there’s a lot of discussion about trying to
limit warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius
right, you know. Don’t tell anyone but that’s not
going to happen, right. It’s not going to happen.
Now I’m not allowed to say we will not limit
warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius.
I scandalize people when I say that.
What I should say is that there are no physical
reasons why we cannot limit warming to no
more than 1.5 degrees Celsius but there needs
to be sufficient political will in order to produce
the changes required, right?
Now if we just look at the Cultural or the
Socio-Economic-Political aspects then it seems
like political will is kind of mythical substance
that we just need to produce more of in order
for us to get to do the De-Carbonization.
So we seem to scrabble around for not really
having an understanding how those cultural
dynamics seem to be working or failing.
And of course a really important component
for our explanation of why it’s proving so hard is
because the tremendous amount of energy
that fossil fuels currently produce (being 80%).
I mean that’s the major challenge. So just to
ask for political will is to ask for nothing!!!!
https://youtu.be/UiyXI6pVzk8?t=2949
REF whole comment here –
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/09/forced-responses-sep-2021/#comment-795701
Voluntary Simplicity or Involuntary Collapse.
Of course there is another way – Mandated Involuntary Simplicity – that might come to pass too.
The same as Taxation works. It’s Mandated and Enforced by Governments on behalf of the People of a State as a whole. Little different than Slavery, Murder, Theft, Fraud and Environmental damage is Illegal because it is seen as Immoral and therefore it’s Socially Unacceptable.
Then there is this thing called Political Will? If anything is certain, it is that change is certain. The world we are planning for today will not exist in this form tomorrow.
“For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.” – John F. Kennedy
Mann’s bottom line advice? Elect better Politicians – I believe that is useless advice, It’s a huge Cop Out
As I have said over and over, he should not be speaking on mitigation and adaptation outside of continued climate science research.
RC says: “And of course a really important component
for our explanation of why it’s proving so hard is
because the tremendous amount of energy
that fossil fuels currently produce (being 80%).”
80% is not quite right. The actual number is 100%. Nothing on this planet today was built without using FFs. Not nukes, not solar, not wind, not geothermal, not hydro – every bit of concrete, metal, or plastic created involved the use of FFs. THAT is why replacing them is so difficult.
KIA: The actual number is 100%. Nothing on this planet today was built without using FFs. Not nukes, not solar, not wind, not geothermal, not hydro – every bit of concrete, metal, or plastic created involved the use of FFs. THAT is why replacing them is so difficult.
BPL: That’s right, folks. The contribution from nuclear, hydroelectric, and renewables has been zero from 1900 until now. Peasants erecting their own huts from forest materials in the Third World somehow used fossil fuels to do so. It’s ALL fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are… well… the creator of everything! THE CREATOR! It’s BLASPHEMY to try doing without fossil fuels!
BPL,
Apparently I wasn’t clear. What I meant is that no power generation that we use today was built without using FFs. All wind, solar, hydro, nuclear, geothermal, etc was produced using FFs in the mining of materials required, transporting them to the processing plant, moving the final product to the site of the power plant, transporting the men who do all of those jobs, etc, etc.
KIA “Apparently I wasn’t clear.” re https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/09/forced-responses-sep-2021/#comment-795936
RC: No, you were quite clear with what you said and meant. No typos either. I understood it.
KIA: What I meant is that no power generation that we use today was built without using FFs.
BPL: Less and less the later it was built, since more and more manufacturing is powered by renewables. And soon it will even be fired by renewables, as we now know how to use hydrogen for many formerly fossil-fueled processes. Electric arc furnaces for steel have been available since the 1960s.
Well, now, that was helpful.
/sarc
RC: Mann’s bottom line advice? Elect better Politicians – I believe that is useless advice, It’s a huge Cop Out . . . Mann’s walking towards a cliff so stop before the edge – is a very poor analogy. A walker can stop walking.. but we are more like in a Canoe on a River heading downstream towards a massive waterfall … we are now at a point at which No Power on Earth can get you to the shore and safety … you waited too long … bye bye….the current will carry on to your doom….there’s no way out. … there is no hope until that system changes. . . . Well, sure, it’s not too late, (in theory), to do everything we can to avert the worst case scenarios, but we won’t do those things, because they would require a massive, IMMEDIATE, undertaking, which would mean gargantuan sacrifice on the part of nearly 8 billion people, on a permanent basis. . . . Prof Mann is a soft touch for the fossil fuel industry. He is good at theorizing, pontificating & wringing his hands, but no good at using his brain or voice to inspire the rapid shrinkage in global economic growth necessary to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. He is as much use as a chocolate hockey stick. . . . It’s already too late. As a species, we will do far too little to stop or reverse the mess we have made. There are too many people and we are collectively too stupid.
BPL: Michael Mann (not “Micheal”) is also one of the moderators of this blog, stupid.
RC’s advice appears to be “give up.” That or, “we need to make massive changes, and we can somehow do that without involving politicians or legislators.”
He might as well be a denier.
RC in fact copied and pasted responses by folks on youtube to M Mann’s commentary.
That was clear when I said above:
Other classic comments by the public listening to Michael Mann on ‘Is Climate Change On a Crash Course?’ (only as an example of the effects happening today) went like this:….
I thought it would give readers here a moment to empathize with where most people are at — maybe even realise it is probably exactly how YOU also feel most of the time too — eg frustrated, fed up, depressed, despairing, despondent, angry, grieving, and scared for the future….
Of course no one can please all the people all the time …. and it would have been better had I said I think Mann missed an opportunity here to be inspiring and practically helpful to others.
Next time M Mann is asked: ” How we get out of this … where are the low hanging fruit, where are the pressure points that we can quickly make progress in moving in the right direction… “
He might respond more like Kevin Anderson does with a POLICY Outline that puts the UK – USA – the OECD G20 on Track for 1.5C
https://twitter.com/KevinClimate/status/1440977910370816000/photo/1
attached is a headline list of action LEADERS could initiate. Still more to do, particularly on food/land-use, but it would represent a shift from current weak mitigation policies.
I think such an approach is far superior to calling people names and creating even more polarization and arguments than already exists.
Eh, it’s simple. Make a vow of middle class or lower life a prerequisite for running for office.
@Secular Animist:
Proponents of nuclear power tend to be thinkers and opposed to false solutions (the “fake fire brigade”). Solar and wind are touted as ways to decarbonize electric grids, despite there being NO examples of them doing this anywhere in the world. Nuclear France emits far less carbon per kWh than “renewable” Denmark, which cheats by claiming biomass is carbon-neutral.
Hr. E. Poet
Don`t be so pessimistic.
We have no nuclear power here because we exel in hydroelectric, and the 2 “experimental” uranium reactors, especially one of them, were scandaleus after all. But I have seen clearly that France has got a quite more bluish sky than Germany in the past.
What, interests me a bit is Thorium.
Rumors tell that Thorium reactors were just as promising as Uranium in the beginning, But it did not deliver bomb- plutonium, that seems to have “paid” a lot for Uranium- based nuclear energy. A bi- product of the same has been 20 times overkill capacity called “defence”,….
……..which is obviously mad, and no serious engineering.!
Thorium reactors is told to have been running both in the US and in India, but were resigned on. Norway has got quite a lot of Thorium and less of Uranium. So I do look up for possible Thorium reactors, that are told to consume also exess plutonium by the same process.
As for solar and wind, the Danes are quite clever on wind and it does deliver and contribute..
But no- one shall tell us that it goes without CO2- emissions and chemical pollution, both for plastics, for concrete, and for exotic “rare earths” that must be dug and highly refined.
But, I had it now that due to extreemly high electricity prices, northern Norwayn is better off along with northern Sweden partly due to windmills. Whereas the bluddy brittes are suffering severely and have to heat up again with coaL
Putin does relax apparently having his Empire under control again and the finishing of Nordstream 2 that is to deliver CH4 to Germany and to the EU now in November.
Russia thrives by oil prices above 70 Usd per barrel, and suffer at lower than that.
Afganistan is under control again., after they tried to flatten it.
The very area, Kasakstan Usbekistan Tadshikistan Turkmenistan Kirgisistan,… youn name it,… is told to be a very oil- field.
They were delivering the worlds production of Opium for a while just like Vietnam, under “allied” regulation and occupation.
A brilliant well researched insightful review paper …
Negative emissions and the long history of carbon removal
Wim Carton et al
5 NEGATIVE EMISSIONS: WE HAVE BEEN HERE BEFORE
Crucially though, self-reflexivity also needs to extend to the hidden politics of the negative emissions conversation. Recognition of the irreducibly political character of carbon removal requires that researchers are attentive to whose interests are served and whose are marginalized in the pursuit (or indeed rejection) of negative emissions and specific NETs. They articulate a choice that scientists have: to not (just) speak for, and to those in power with their research, but (also) to and for those most marginalized and most likely to bear the brunt of climate change; to refuse to uphold an unsustainable and exploitative status-quo, by envisaging scenarios, policy tools and regulatory arrangements that actively “close down” opportunities for business-as-usual. The critical social sciences have much to offer here in terms of tools and theories for understanding and questioning the actor-specific interests, ideologies and worldviews that underpin proposed climate solutions. A wealth of concrete proposals already exist that may help open up the political imagination: calls for degrowth (Kallis et al., 2018), a transformative Green New Deal (Aronoff, Battistoni, Cohen, & Riofrancos, 2019), supply-side policies such as fossil fuel bans and moratoria (Newell & Simms, 2019), restrictions on excessive consumption by global elites (Wiedmann, Lenzen, Keyßer, & Steinberger, 2020), or a rights-based approach to mitigation research (Dooley, Stabinsky, et al., 2018), to name just a few. Giving more voice to these alternatives in climate change research and assessments puts calls for large-scale NETs in context, by pointing out that the future of social, economic and political systems can always be different.
https://wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/wcc.671
Prof Julia ClimateAction FightFascism @JKSteinberger
No reasonable climate scientists believe more fossil fuel extraction & combustion are possible(*). The IEA and multiple publications say as much. But because the IPCC won’t say it (too “policy prescriptive”), the world’s governments continue to do it unchecked.
https://twitter.com/JKSteinberger/status/1439471429569978369
The brutal logic of a cumulative problem: After 30 years of failure, global CO2 emissions must now get to Zero within 20 years (for global warming of 1.5°C).
Visual Graph https://twitter.com/ReiSteurer/status/1439263184741937154/photo/1
BECCS DAC and Entropy 38.30 mins
Are being proposed because these
solutions have to work. They have to work
because if they don’t work we’re going to
be in serious trouble. That doesn’t seem
to be very robust basis in which to
propose these kind of climate solutions.
The idea that DAC as it stands right now,
or any foreseeable future certainly
within a 1.5 timeline, is going to have
any kind of significant impact on limiting
warming to 1.5C I think is a dangerous
fantasy.
https://youtu.be/VSp3Kl3LXxQ?t=2296
Ways Forward; separate fact, theory and wishful thinking
1) Separate Mitigation and Removal Targets
2) Level with the Public 1.5C has been lost (anything else is disingenuous/dishonest)
3) Back to Reality – Base removals on robust science
4) Step over the line – Empower academics to produce change
5) Faculty for a Future
https://youtu.be/VSp3Kl3LXxQ?t=2376
COP26 is not looking good.
But 2030 is looking even worse.
Maybe facts do matter in the climate wars. Commentary on a new research study:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/09/fact-checking-works-to-undercut-misinformation-in-many-countries/
“Fact-checking works to undercut misinformation in many countries. From Argentina to Nigeria, fact-checks limited false beliefs. In the wake of the flood of misinformation that’s drowning the US, lots of organizations have turned to fact-checks. Many newsrooms set up dedicated fact-check groups, and some independent organizations were formed to provide the service. We get live fact-checking of political debates, and Facebook will now tag material it deems misinformation with links to a fact-check.”
“Obviously, given how many people are still afraid of COVID-19 vaccines, there are limits to how much fact-checking can accomplish. But might it be effective outside the overheated misinformation environment in the US? A new study tests out the efficacy of fact-checking in a set of countries that are both geographically and culturally diverse, and it finds that fact-checking is generally more effective at shaping public understanding than misinformation is.”
Thx, I didn’t know it was that effective.
fyi
Ep 02 Climate Australia. Climate Communication:
Figuring out what works for the Australia of today
1 Sept 2021 with John Cook (he’s still at it) etc …
my research is focused on understanding
where misinformation is at,
getting a read on the landscape and what
what’s out there and how is it changing
and then developing solutions to it.
And how it’s changing is really
interesting. We’ve used machine learning
to build a 20-year history of misinformation
and we find that over that 20 years there’s
been a gradual transition from climate
science misinformation towards
misinformation targeting climate solutions.
So it’s almost like a strategic retreat
as science denial becomes more and more
untenable, there’s more misinformation
casting down on the solutions to climate
change, whether it’s attacking climate
policy or attacking renewable energy. But
the point of all this misinformation
whether it’s science misinformation or
solutions misinformation is to delay
climate solutions and so coming up with
solutions to ‘solutions misinformation’
is important.
https://youtu.be/EUPwefigKp0?t=721
Yes, my informal observations would be consistent with that statement, FWIW. It used to be everybody like solar power. Now, RW/denialati types have convinced themselves that it necessarily involves ‘pouring acid’ on vast swathes of terrain, or that lithium pollution is the coming environmental ‘nightmare’, and the like.
Of course they do. I have always said the?stories vs facts dichotomy was false. It blatantly ignores basic individual differences, for one. Basically, any approach is the right one for *somebody* but no approach is right for everybody.
However, you *can’t* solve problems without understanding them and their solutions. At the end of the day, it comes back to the knowledge and as the liars and sociopathic, criminal denialists fade away the facts become steadily more powerful.
“What I AM saying is that the very idea that all the people and all the nations of the world can “roll up their sleeves” and somehow come together in some vaguely utopian sense to “fight climate change” in a manner that could actually make a difference is a huge chimera that could never be achieved”
No. The world has already achieved these things. According to an article on this website a year or so ago we have most probably ALREADY stopped warming getting to 5 degrees c, the worst case this century, because of efforts to curb the use of coal with building solar and wind power. Of course it will obviously be very difficult stopping warming getting above 2 degrees.
Thanks, nigel. This is true, and a point I’ve made from time to time. The hard work of activists, scientists, and citizens hasn’t gone for nothing. We’re still far from where we need to be–there’s absolutely no doubt about that.
Yet absent those efforts, the proverbial soup we’re swimming in would be quite a bit deeper and hotter than it actually is.
Still all going anywhere from South (EVs) to West Northwest (renewables) to North Northeast (semi-regenerative farming)…. almost none going in the right direction. Without that, all the movement will be moot in the long run.
@Reality Check:
Quoted for truth, and “The Most Important Graph In The World” shows that the current trajectory is for this to get MUCH worse.
Cut off food aid to the superfertile masses and sink their boats if they try to emigrate, and it will stop. But we won’t. “Compassion” is too profitable for the ruling class, when we need to be practicing lifeboat ethics. Would-be immigrants, fix your OWN countries or live with the mess you’ve created. We owe you nothing save our best effort to not make things worse.
Ouch, that’s heavy. It appears you may be suffering from excessive compassion / empathy fatigue. I can understand that. Take some time out, might help?
ps I want to emphasize the quote above was not by me personally. It was taken from the comments section of a youtube video, see – https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/09/forced-responses-sep-2021/#comment-795782 as an example of what people (in general) are thinking saying. Those comments should not be assigned to me personally. Thanks.
“It appears you may be suffering from excessive compassion / empathy fatigue.”
FWIW, and not criticizing you, but it appears to me that you’re extending rather more of the charity E-P despises than is objectively required to be attributed.
Nobody gonna call out the racism inherent in blaming immigrants for the failures of their nations caused by the predation of the “1st world?”
Mess they’ve created? HA! Those are what Dems call Socialist Utopias! They have no electricity therefore very little GHG emissions, people drive bicycles not gas guzzlers, live in huts not McMansions, have no guns to scare the politicians with or to defend themselves with, eat only enough to barely sustain life – no binging on food like we decadent infidels, only the military and ruling class fly in airplanes, and on and on. Utopia! See, they’ve “built back better”! It’s a better system, right Dems?
:)
KIA: Those are what Dems call Socialist Utopias!
BPL: Except that no actual Democrat in real life has ever used that term. Google “straw man argument.”
It’s also a very strange description, if you think about it. Most of the physical details seem more apt to, say, Somalia than to China or even Vietnam–let alone the “socialist utopias” of the Nordic countries.
It’s almost like KIA mostly thinks in ideological cliches rather than concrete realities. Puzzling.
Dr. K.McKinney
So you believe that the Nordic Countries are “socialist utopias”?
allow me to enlight everyone on that.
Way back in time, what I call the prosperous days of the one- party state when all of them were ruled by their respective “socialm democratic” parties, we were bold enough to say for fun that Stalin and Comrade Krustsjovs system and empire was hardly socialism. Because there was a great difference, and we were probably the deeper and more true autentc socialists.
Today I tend to say that the USA is actually the more opressed and worn down DDR and Eastern block Warsawa- treaty- like system and society. in comparision.
I was there for 3 days and was instructed before I went how to behave, and that I should not discuss politics. (just like in the old east block) but politics is what we discuss at any time in any case, is n`t it?
An found that they struggled quite hard for life. Things inclusive cars houses and dressing was quite weary, and they began discussing politics with me as soon as nobody could hear them. Just like in the old east- block. .
They were damned mad forv 3 things:
1, the war in Irak
2, that they had no national or federal helth care and insurance system and
3, Damned mad at the system and politicians in the west, (in Washinjgton DC and Pentagon.)
How can it be?
Yes, I can explain that:
You were so fed up for more than 200 years by democracy and constitution and american way of lifev and all that so you did rather elect a very typical autentic autocratic King or Czar for “Chairman” of The Party on behalf of The People. A man rather of The People. to own and to rule over you.
Namely King Donald Grozny.
Who said “make america great again!” and who immediately built an iron curtain at the boarders.
Itb is predicdted by Johan Galtung, who claim to be an expert on empires and who predicted the fall of theb wall in Berlin as the only one in time, that the US will become a fascist tyranny about 2020 before its dissolution, its breakdown and fall. .
From over there in the states I have it from cunning and experienced side that “Maybe the US like The Soviet Union is too large? Here in New England the dems are the good guys and the republicans are the bad guys, but in the midwest it is opposite. And that crashes in the congress. And there are furter different etnicities and nations like deep south and southwest that hardly belong under the same federal nation!”.
I saw official stars and stripes and “Feds” everywhere on common weekdays just like in the old DDR where the brand new textiles were all waving in the flagpoles along all of the mainstreets, celebrating 4th of july all the year around for some very anxious reason, and the weary people walking in lumps under that. People struggling and working and saving for nothing.
That very syndrom does betray opression, exploitation, paracitism, and obvious Kleptocracy by “the ruling class”
Which is not socialism or social democracy per definition. but typical imperialism, feudalism and pre- revolutionary, pre- constitutional autocracy , oligarchy, exploitation and opressed misery under their Utopia…
“Socialist utopia” was KIA’s term–not mine.
But yes, Trump was/is a wannabe Fascist dictator. And we here in the US have been functioning much more as oligarchy than democracy for some time now.
TBF, that’s more reversion to the historical norm than it is unaccountable anomaly–heard an historian say the other day that in the early days of this Republic about 4% of the population were franchised to vote. Clearly, that number couldn’t have reached 50% prior to 1919/20, when women were first able to vote in Federal elections, and one wonders whether the impact of Jim Crow wasn’t sufficient to hold the attainment of that threshold back until the passage of effective Federal voting reforms in ’65-66.
But I’m an optimist and quite skeptical about grand historical predictions. I think the arc of history does tend to bend toward justice, as Dr. King said. It’s not inevitable, though–rather, it’s highly contingent on sufficient numbers of people working toward it with persistence, energy, and wisdom.
All of which, if you think about it, is not as OT as it might seem at first blush.
E-P: Cut off food aid to the superfertile masses and sink their boats if they try to emigrate, and it will stop.
BPL: And fatten Irish babies for English tables. Same logic.
What the hell is wrong with you?
I think the compassion / empathy part of EP’s brain forgot to grow. Or he may just be trolling.
“We owe you nothing save our best effort to not make things worse.”
Well, that would be a change for the better, to be sure.
But it’s certainly telling to see E-P overtly embrace genocide.
New Risk-opportunity analysis for transformative policy design and appraisal
Highlights
Mitigating climate change requires deep dynamic transformational change globally.
Standard cost-benefit analysis is inadequate for assessing transformational change.
Risk-Opportunity Analysis can assess policy for dynamic economic transformation.
Risk-Opportunity Analysis offers holistic systems thinking for climate policy.
Take for example technology choice in climate policy. Recent debate focused on the need for substantial negative emissions later this century to compensate for near-term emissions, a result from scenarios developed on the basis of systems optimisation, ultimately strongly influenced by discounting procedures (IPCC, 2018). This may be a risky and false narrative underplaying real systemic risk, where emissions today contribute to the accumulation of risk of possible future climate tipping points being triggered, a risk not fully mitigated by assuming future negative emissions.
When society faces great challenges, economic analysis that assumes away the most important considerations can lead to unease and distrust of economics and economists on the part of policy-makers and the public (Haldane and Turrell, 2018). A stronger science-based decision framework may be an important part of the solution.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378021001382?via%3Dihub
Summary news article
Rethink ‘cost-benefit analysis’ to tackle climate crisis
.. they offer improved principles for policymaking during times of dynamic and transformational change.
“Policymaking on issues such as climate change involves fundamental uncertainty, widely differing interests and the potential for structural change in the economy. We make better decisions when these factors are the focus of our analysis, not assumed away or left on the sidelines.”
https://phys.org/news/2021-09-rethink-cost-benefit-analysis-tackle-climate.html
I want to know when they read my comments, and where, and why they are turning them into useless mush.
@killian, write your book, find a good editor, get it published, sell it. Forget about everyone else. Just do it.
I’ve actually tried to find an editor/publisher…
@BPL:
Oh, get real. THINK about what all our “help” has accomplished there.
– It has enabled a population explosion.
– It has enabled dysfunctional and destructive government policies.
– It has rendered many of the world’s unique species either endangered or extinct.
– It has multiplied the scale of human misery which will come when things finally DO collapse.
First rule of holes: when you’re in one, stop digging. Reversing course 40 years ago was the smart thing to do. Reversing course NOW is the smartest thing we can still do.
I’m not cynical enough, obviously.
E-P: THINK about what all our “help” has accomplished there.
– It has enabled a population explosion.
BPL: Providing contraception and raising the status of women has DECREASED population growth in the third world. Not INCREASED it. DECREASED it. Fertility in Bangladesh, to cite just one example, has dropped from five children per women to three in just a couple of decades.
And providing health care aid and food aid has decreased infant mortality, which means couples need to have FEWER children, not MORE children.
And when immigrants come to the United States, their fertility DECLINES.
And as a direct result of all these effects, the population growth rate per year is DECLINING. Not INCREASING. It was 2.2% per year in 1960, it is now 1.1% per year.
In short, everything you’re saying is factually incorrect. You don’t appear to know anything about either the countries you’re criticizing, or the aid programs which attempt to help them.
Over and over, on literally a daily basis, we find, from just about every media source, from the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian, etc. to Facebook and youtube, all the way down to Twitter and all those Ted Talks, websites, blogs, etc. (including this one, natch), exhortations relentlessly proclaiming essentially the same set of dire warnings, backed up by the same highly disturbing “scientific” assessments, of the overwhelmingly disastrous threat to the future of the human race, posed by climate change — already evident in the “unprecedented” extreme weather events the world has been experiencing in recent years. Indeed, if the “science” is to be taken seriously, it does seem to be “happening now.”
In just about every case, however, after the urgent insistence, repeated year after year for the last 20 years at least, that “we” must act “now” or it will be too late, we find the invariable invocation of: hope. Hope for what, one may ask — only a few actually spell out exactly what they are hoping for. And when they do get specific, their plans range from the naively Utopian, to the unrealistically technological, to what sounds to me very much like an outright insistence on some form of totalitarian world government, complete with the formation of a quasi-gestapo manned by cadres of Extinction Rebellion type fanatics.
In most cases, however, regardless of the varying levels of “hope,” we see, at bottom, resignation to what looks very much like, literally, an “end of the world” scenario straight out of a science fiction movie, only in this case taken literally. While there is always room for hope, the situation does in fact seem depressingly hopeless.
What I find especially interesting, however, is the absence in literally every single one of these jeremiads, of any reference to the one source of hope that instantly and painlessly resolves all such problems — the hope that there might possibly be something wrong with “the science” supporting the climate change paradigm — the hope that those of us questioning the prevailing dogma might be right after all and there is little to be feared if we literally “sit back and do nothing.”
What strikes me especially is the unwillingness of just about everyone so fearful of the future of our climate and its effects to even consider the possibility that “the science” so widely accepted could be leading us “up the garden path,” in the memorable words of Einstein. Indeed, a great many of us, including some of our most respected thinkers, would seem more willing to accept the prevailing “end of days” scenario, as bizarre as it sounds, then even consider the possibility that those ignorant “deniers” could have been right all along, that the “existential threat” posed by the most powerful engines of the world economy could have been an illusion after all.
The fact that so many refuse to accept even the possibility they could be wrong, rejecting any possible hope of relief from their deepest darkest fears, tells us something profound about the psychology of the human heart. Better to face the “inevitable” destruction of our entire world on the grandest scale then admit even the possibility that one’s deepest certainty could in fact be wrong.
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” Mark Twain.
Victor, uncertainty goes both ways. We could be UNDERestimating the impact of increasing CO2. In fact, if you look at distributions of estimates of ECS, the tail is longer on that side. Your suggestion is just magical thinking.
V: What I find especially interesting, however, is the absence in literally every single one of these jeremiads, of any reference to the one source of hope that instantly and painlessly resolves all such problems — the hope that there might possibly be something wrong with “the science” supporting the climate change paradigm — the hope that those of us questioning the prevailing dogma might be right after all and there is little to be feared if we literally “sit back and do nothing.”
BPL: And that’s absent because it’s just not a realistic possibility any more, and those who understand the science know that. It’s like hoping that the Earth will be habitable forever because we might be wrong about stellar evolution. Maybe the Sun isn’t gradually brightening and maybe it won’t turn into a red giant some day.
Sure.
Victor claims to have heard calls for “what sounds to me very much like an outright insistence on some form of totalitarian world government, complete with the formation of a quasi-gestapo manned by cadres of Extinction Rebellion type fanatics.”
Gotta say, I interact with a whole bunch of climate activist types, and I’ve literally never heard even a single proposal that sounds remotely like that.
I *have* heard right-wing types waxing fearful about such a possibility and attributing a (to me, completely inscrutable) desire for such to their political opponents.
IOW, seems like a straw man to me, possibly rooted in cultural paranoia.
Weaktor: ‘What I find especially interesting, however, is the absence in literally every single one of these jeremiads, of any reference to the one source of hope that instantly and painlessly resolves all such problems — the hope that there might possibly be something wrong with “the science” supporting the climate change paradigm — the hope that those of us questioning the prevailing dogma might be right after all and there is little to be feared if we literally “sit back and do nothing.”’
Are you fucking kidding me? That has LITERALLY been the go-to response of denialists, conservative media (which is most of it) and nearly the entire political class for over 40 years. The reason we don’t assume that “a miracle will occur and we’ll find the science is wrong” iis because people have been trying to prove the basic physics wrong for nearly 2 centuries and the certainty that the science is correct has only become stronger. Thanks to fucking morons like you, we’ve wasted 50 years debating the science with idiots who are too dumb to understand the science. And now–thanks to you–it really is a fucking emergency.
people have been trying to prove the basic physics wrong for nearly 2 centuries and the certainty that the science is correct has only become stronger.
poor victor and friends, best ignored even better if banned. It’s a psychological issue, not one do to with science or facts or dogma nor opinions. :)
Karl Popper – Theory of Falsification https://www.simplypsychology.org/Karl-Popper.html
To R.Check and R.Ladbury
I would not give Victor that tribute of having beel in charge and delayed things now for 50 years.
He looks to me only as a special type who thinks walks and performs in step with a larger and huge, formless foggy and ugly tendency or fameous Troll, that suddenly seems to be everywhere around , called “Bøygen” which means the quite bent all around you, quite untoucheable, moist and slimy, “crooked” one.
It is the foggy darkness all around when you loose courage and orientation., Telling you to withdraw, give in, and rather go back and around it instwead of right through it. .It is also quite a nightgmare.
From Ibsen Peer Gynt and earlier myths., “Bøygen ” is a fameous troll.
What works is sunrise and enlightment, light over it. Then those trolls of darkness vanish like dews and fogs and show to0 be just quite common and natural things.
Thus representing an archetypic Delusion,
But Victor is not at all that crooked foggy dark slimy Bøygen himself. That would be to give him all to much fame and credit. He has only aspired and submitted to and got employed by, and works for “Bøygen”.
Find who owns him and employs him and pays for him and on what conditions. . That would be the real troll.
Wikipedia gives a comprehensible article on “Bøyg” also in English. . The great slimy serpent- like monster all around that stops the travellers in the foggy mountains, heathers, and wilderness.
“It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” —epitaph on Vic’s tombstone.
jgnfld: “It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” —epitaph on Vic’s tombstone.
V: Sorry but I don’t know anything for sure and I’ve never claimed I did. I’ve simply noted aspects of the prevailing dogma that make no sense, and expressed my resulting skepticism. It’s the true believers like yourself that claim to know for sure that we are doomed. It’s those like yourself who are unwilling to accept even the possibility they could be wrong who “know for sure.” As for my tombstone: I refuse to die until the world either comes to an end or does not. Can’t wait to find out.
Victor
All things are not equally sure or equally uncertain. In reality we have very certain things and very uncertain things, and all in between.. So you hardly gain or win very much by not knowing anything for sure and reduce it all to be of the same grade of uncertainty.
Practically we all are doomed to live in that very wide spectrum of certainty and uncertainty.
And in that universe there are also categories of cognition like faith hope and love for instance, and hate. And there is sym- and em-pathy and responsibility and irresponsibility. Gust- and dis- gust. And all in between.
So I cannot see how you solve any problem setting on sheere and neutral ignorance.
Karl Popper – Theory of Falsification https://www.simplypsychology.org/Karl-Popper.html
Too funny. About as intelligent as a tombstone. That’s a better analogy. :)
“It’s the true believers like yourself that claim to know for sure that we are doomed.”
Er, no. Leaving that silly “true believers” meme aside, most here do not think that “we are doomed.”
OTOH, I am certain that we have a serious climate problem on our hands–and equally certain that the biggest key to addressing it is to face it honestly.
ROFLMAO! Perfect! I’m reminded of Andy Samberg in “Brooklyn 9 9” repeatedly telling people, “Title of your sex tape” when they say anything that could be interpreted that way.
Special Report: BP gambles big on fast transition from oil to renewables
https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/bp-gambles-big-fast-transition-oil-renewables-2021-09-20/
detailed read – note the CEOs surname. Some think he is.
BP Chief Executive Bernard Looney, who took office in February 2020, is gambling that BP can make the clean-energy transition much faster than its peers. Last year, he became the first major oil CEO to announce that he would purposely cut future production. He aims to slash BP’s output by 40%, or about 1 million barrels per day, an amount equal to the UK’s entire daily output in 2019.
I’ve said it before. The climate problem will only be solved if people think they can make money out of solving it, or get some advantage from solving it. I don’t LIKE this, but it seems a fair observation of the reality of our civilisation.
Yes you’re right there, within the current paradigm/system as it is.
The problem I see nowadays is that paradigm/system is existentially threatened by global warming climate change plus a slew of other LTG type of constraints and biosphere degradation eg first off humans running out of food (and water) due to a long cascade of extreme weather events across the globe. Then there’s the fractured financial/economics house of cards we live in.
All I’m saying is the agw/cc graphs direction is only going one way no matter the subject/issue. In a La Nina period the arctic sea ice loss is lower this nth summer as usual, the growth of CO2 ppm yoy is small as well. That’s the pattern. Still the weather impacts overall are off the scale.
Wait another year or so, and the next super el nino event/s, as ghg continue to rise higher despite COP26 gasbags and massive fires continue to add to that ghg massively … la shit will truly hit the fan.
Eventually all the stars will align everywhere at once. Next year, 3 years ahead, 5 years, who knows when. But eventually they will align to wreak havoc and all the global systems will be strained until they Pop — and possibly simultaneously on every continent at once .
That is what all the combined climate science, and all their Data, and all the other related academic papers know how and LOGIC (meteorology, politics, communications, economics, agriculture, fisheries, plastics, EVs, renewable energy tech, SOC/CCUS tech, AR, FF use, Risk Management, Systems Dynamics, the Media issues etc) are saying to me.
I do not think what Mr Looney is doing will make much of a difference long term. Most if not all these huge globalist companies are doomed in my view, especially those into “energy” – they’ll all be going broke, including Apple, Google, and Tesla and so on. Another way to look at it is an even bigger GFC occurring the next decade at some point, this time triggered by social disruption plus nefarious financial games like before. iow I think all the equity markets of today are more or less worthless.
Don’t worry, I suspect NZ and Tasmania and the Pacific islanders will do OK overall. Down to earth and resilient and self-sufficient. peoples, salt of the earth, somewhat disconnected from the rest of the world surrounded by water will help. And hope Jacinda is still the PM and in control. (smile)
more info regarding “….and massive fires continue to add to that ghg massively … Eventually all the stars will align everywhere at once.”
for example this year, a La Nina year: 2021-09-22
In July , wildfires emitted nearly 1.3 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide, a record that was topped by August’s 1.4 gigatons. Between the two months, forest fires emitted an amount of carbon dioxide greater than all of India’s carbon emissions in a year.
The majority of those emissions came from wildfires two regions, western North America and Siberia. Blazes in both regions were fueled by heat waves, drought conditions, and low soil moisture levels—three hallmarks of the climate crisis.
https://gizmodo.com/summer-wildfires-emitted-more-carbon-dioxide-than-india-1847718710
The intense fires led to new records in the CAMS dataset with the months of July and August seeing their highest global carbon emissions respectively.
https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/copernicus-summer-wildfires-saw-devastation-and-record-emissions-around-northern-hemisphere
Even without fires biosphere CO2 emissions can go off the scale. for example:
NASA Pinpoints Cause of Earth’s Recent Record Carbon Dioxide Spike
The last El Nino in 2015-16 impacted the amount of carbon dioxide that Earth’s tropical regions released into the atmosphere, leading to Earth’s recent record spike in atmospheric carbon dioxide.
So far unprecedented and extreme climate driven impacts have been sporadic. People soon forget them. for example the NASA update:
“These three tropical regions released 2.5 gigatons more carbon into the atmosphere than they did in 2011, […] In 2015 and 2016, OCO-2 recorded atmospheric carbon dioxide increases that were 50 percent larger than the average increase seen in recent years preceding these observations. These measurements are consistent with those made by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). That increase was about 3 parts per million of carbon dioxide per year — or 6.3 gigatons of carbon.” (and that was Carbon, not Gt of CO2! ) https:// http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-pinpoints-cause-of-earth-s-recent-record-carbon-dioxide-spike
This is back when anthropogenic emissions were only ~45 Gt CO2/yr- now they are heading towards 56 Gt CO2 eq per year in 2030. Where an extra 1.4 GtCO2 here, and another 1.3Gt CO2 there, plus a 2.5 GtC from this rainforest, or an extra 6.3 GtC from the tropics, plus even more SOC being lost from higher temps and droughts even while other regions flood will make extraordinary differences.
With these very destabilizing extra emissions on top of a base anthropogenic level it could send total CO2e PPM quickly higher than average of +2.5ppm/yr, with continued climate disasters spiraling out of control far sooner than the conservative pronouncements of the IPCC reports are letting on.
The UNFCCC is even saying +2.7C is possible before 2100 even if all the nations actually meet their current 2030 Net Emissions NDC Reduction targets …. iow +1.5C is already lost circa 2030 or before.
Wildfires like we’ve had in 2021 only make everything much worse and brings crisis and disasters forward much faster. Doesn’t it? These very real, almost certain, extra GHG contributions are no where to be seen in the IPCC or UNFCCC reports or Carbon Budgets.
There is a lot of disconnects (by not including known observations from the real world) and conservative minimizing going on in sterile climate science papers and reports. Many likely known positive feedbacks, those already seen occurring regularly, rarely get a look in.
That being said, on the flip side there is also a marked shift away from building new coal fired power stations now. They’ve become nonviable financially, new capital is drying up, eg news out of China today. (Whereas Governments could just as easily banned new generators and coal mines long ago but have not done so even now.)
However, that doesn’t mean coal fired stations get shut down any quicker, while new Gas fired powers stations are still being built hand over fist. New oil and gas wells being drilled. Policy to drive economic growth higher and higher remains the norm. That requires more energy each year, more transportation, more coal, more gas, more oil, more more flights, more fertilizers, and more cement.
While additional biosphere driven positive GHG feedbacks will keep increasing as maximum temps keep on rising to new record levels and these extreme weather impacts are becoming more common as each year goes by. As this year and basic logic surely attests to.
But it will not be getting plugged into the climate science datasets or reports nor discussed at the COP26. And folks like M Mann will keep on telling the whole world we still have a chance of saving the Paris agreement and holding temps to under 1.5C despite reality telling us we clearly cannot.
Oh well, it is what it is. Only time will tell how fast and how bad it will get. But the very imaginative Targets for the Paris Agreement by 2030 and 2050 now appear exaggerated beyond all reason and definitely are unachievable with the present political approach (in my view, from what I have seen and heard.)
Meanwhile. George Monbiot, in the UK context of the climate crisis, says:
“So if we are to make any progress we need a massive change. Political change. A cultural change. And that is only going to come from protest.”
https://twitter.com/cameraZoe/status/1440591650250657793
Repetition helps, so let’s repeat:
It helps more to address the causes of a problem (Unrestrained Economic Growth) rather than its major symptoms (Rising GHG emissions and global warming impacts).
Another REF:
Another concern around tipping points is the potential for one to trigger a “cascade” effect on others. A Nature commentary from November 2019, for example, argues that “cascading effects might be common” in the Earth system, warning that this would be “an existential threat to civilization”.
It references a 2018 Science paper that assessed how 30 different potential social-ecological “regime shifts” could interact with one another through “domino effects” or “hidden feedbacks”. The researchers found that, while some regime shifts are more interconnected than others, 45% of these links were possible. It explains:
“Domino effects occur when the feedback processes of one regime shifts affect the drivers of another, creating a one-way dependency. Hidden feedbacks rise when two regime shifts combined generate new (not previously identified) feedbacks; and if strong enough, they could amplify or dampen the coupled dynamics.”
Examples of these links “are starting to be observed”…
https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-nine-tipping-points-that-could-be-triggered-by-climate-change
( near bottom of page)
PS THAT’S “social disruption ” caused triggered by climate / weather meltdowns triggering food shortages, pricing hikes, energy shortages/breakdowns (eg Texas) and coupled economic disasters.
Think the images of the Arab Spring on steroids in the west, in china, india, and the global south all at once. I’ve been a bit like Hansel leaving a trail of white pebbles as I went along in the form of refs and published papers and anecdotes. They’re only guideposts though. Nothing is etched in stone these days.
in the meantime, unfortunately, the hand wavers in politics and the media and in climate science / activists etc tend to attract all the attention. Popularity is addictive.cheers. I think I’m done. :)
Nigelj
Who invented the copper wire?
Yes, that was two scots who found a penny on the road.
And Adam Smith was surely scotsch.
I often heard the argument, but I am not so sure at all that humanitys highest and dominant, instinctive desire and driving force is money. It may have looked that way over there in the states now for a while and look how it goes.
But at the same time I am rather sure that there has also been other interests for many people, higher than money.
Truly, I rather believe that Mammon is just an old rumor and old supersticion that was disqualified by science quite long ago and that there are just a few quite old and blind and blunt believers remaininjg of that conviction.
Absolutely true, else I never would have spent months and 2 grand or so in making this:
https://open.spotify.com/album/2JPT5aOJk2D1cviW8U7d5h
OTOH, you’re certainly welcome to stream a play or two and earn me maybe a tenth of a cent.
Carbomontanus, ok I agree humans have higher instinctive desires and driving forces than just making money. Humans clearly have many different values and motives.
However the issue with the climate problem is our response has been inadequate. I think this is partly because our brains are hardwired to prioritise immediate and massive threats like for example covid 19, more than insidious long term problems like climate change.
Given this reality, the climate mitigation strategies with the most promise are likely to be those with a wide set of benefits and ones people can make money out of. Of course some people will help mitigate the climate problem for more noble reasons as well, but I suspect they might be in the minority.
the climate mitigation strategies with the most promise are likely to be those with a wide set of benefits and ones people can make money out of.
What prevents you from understanding “making a lot of money” and “mitigation” are diametrically opposed ideas?
Of course some people will help mitigate the climate problem for more noble reasons as well, but I suspect they might be in the minority.
So were anti-racists, anti-suffragists, Capitalists, Christians, etc. Where we are is not nearly as important as where we are heading and where we end up. You are making a moot point. Again. And again. And again.
Nigelj
I am aline4 wityh your 2 first paragraphs here, But I do not believe that Mammon or making money out of it will make the difference. That will be done or not done in any case, simply because money is most of all an illusion delusion or hallusination for people to worship and to believe in.
Money, Mammon, is simply no vital component. People could count on their fingers and decide by their fingers better than they can count their money ande keep elementary economy and budget in our days.
Nigelj
I can frollow you in your first andec seconde paragraph.
But I do dislike §3.
“Make money,…” what about save money” save or make material and save or make- give time?
Or improove or make security or health?
I must say, such categories, values, and horizons are for me often just as or even more important than to earn or to “make” money. And that attitude and knowledge is surely also quite an importanht factor for me so wealthy and so happy and feeling son wealthy and rich.
And I believe it is also not quite uncommon.
Money- Mammonj is surely a very old invention. But it was hardly marketed until quite recently. So that even I have got with me quite a lot of learning and experience of how to live in a rather moneyless society and in moneyless relations.
That I regard as a very valuable ” style” and aspect of my cultural heritage , that also can sustain my learnt, typically swollen and condescending scepsis vis a vis Karl Marx, Adam Smith, and capitalism and their obviously strained, worshipful, obedient and quite poor diciples. Obviously rather blind and blunt believers.
William Nordhaus might have a lot of mistakes worth regretting. But I doubt he’ll care much if at all.
Some say the economic costs of fighting climate change are too high, but a new study shows the economic cost of doing nothing could be 15 times higher than current estimates.
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/09/can-the-economy-afford-not-to-fight-climate-change/
Economic cost of climate change could be six times higher than previously thought
https://phys.org/news/2021-09-economic-climate-higher-previously-thought.html
New Paper study Published 6 September 2021
The social cost of carbon dioxide under climate-economy feedbacks and temperature variability
Jarmo S Kikstra et al
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac1d0b
Cost-benefit integrated assessment models that estimate the SCCO2 lack robust representations of climate feedbacks, economy feedbacks, and climate extremes.
Our results highlight the large impacts of climate change if future adaptation does not exceed historical trends. Robust quantification of climate-economy feedbacks and climate extremes are demonstrated to be essential for estimating the SCCO2 and its uncertainty.
Reporting? One says x15 the other says x6 higher. Frustrating isn’t it. One paper, two different takeaways. :)
But in my book the egregious acts was that of Nordhaus et al and the IAMs. Mindlessness writ large imho. Then comes the UNFCCC and the IPCC ‘system’, Paris and Net Zero …. but it’s all water under the bridge now.
Yale economist Nordhaus and his DICE model (rather dicey integrated assessment model), resulting in a “Nobel” economic prize, was about half right yet on the wrong track. His estimated degradation of GDP “global domestic product” by century’s end would have been better represented by annual asset destruction. After your assets are seriously impaired or they no longer exist then any “domestic product” is unlikely (perhaps for years or forever). Thus, the real “social cost of carbon” is indeterminable, existential, and is minimally addressed by the philosophic logic of “neoclassical economics.”
And that’s my two cents.
So true. Thanks for contributing, now and always. Cheers
There will be zero economic cost of solving climate, once we get serious about it. See Steve Keen’s essays on modern Jubilee as a starting point for understanding how we can transition from current economics to non-economics.
Commentary Thread by author Dana Nuccitelli My new article in @CC_Yale is on new climate-economics research investigating the question, what if economies can’t fully recover from climate damages and it slows economic growth? https://twitter.com/dana1981/status/1439971166177742852
“What if…?” As if there is any question about this? Good christ, I get tired of ignorance of the obvious. There will be no “economy” as we currently think of it if we get to a regenerative state.
This asinine economics-first approach to our problems – please remember the caution and logic of A. Einstein, that you can’t solve problems with the same thinking that created them – is suicidal.
New info keeps on coming. This time some good news about transitions to renewable energy and costs. I do not know if this projection methodology is credible, or the results sustainable, but here is the info fwiw.
thread info summary – In the past, energy-economic models have almost uniformly underestimated the rate of deployment of renewable energy and overestimated its costs. A team at Oxford has tried to correct for that. Fascinating results. https://twitter.com/drvolts/status/1440053274560790529
Paper in full
Empirically grounded technology forecasts and the energy transition
Rupert Way et al September 14, 2021
Here we take a new approach based on probabilistic cost fore-
casting methods that made reliable predictions when they were empirically tested on
more than 50 technologies17,18. We use these methods to estimate future energy system
costs and find that, compared to continuing with a fossil-fuel-based system, a rapid green
energy transition will likely result in overall net savings of many trillions of dollars –
even without accounting for climate damages or co-benefits of climate policy. We show
that if solar photovoltaics, wind, batteries and hydrogen electrolyzers continue to follow
their current exponentially increasing deployment trends for another decade, we achieve
a near-net-zero emissions energy system within twenty-five years.
If non-energy sources of carbon emissions such as agriculture are brought under
control, our analysis indicates that a rapid green energy transition would likely generate
considerable economic savings while also meeting the 1.5 degrees Paris Agreement target.
Our approach is based on two key design principles: 1) include only the minimal set of
variables necessary to represent most of the global energy system, and the most important
cost and production dynamics, and 2) ensure all assumptions and dynamics are technically
realistic and closely tied to empirical evidence (SN1.1). This means that we focus on energy
technologies that have been in commercial use for sufficient time to develop a reliable
historical record.
https://www.inet.ox.ac.uk/files/energy_transition_paper-INET-working-paper.pdf
Too much is happening. Time for a break. I’m too old for this.
re “our analysis indicates that a rapid green energy transition would likely generate considerable economic savings ”
Yes but there’s a massive hole in this theory expectation.
A rapid green energy transition is not going to happen.
All the most powerful forces of the world are reigned against that occurring.
So it cannot happen now, or anytime during the next decade and a some in my view.
After 2030 well it’s going to be a bit too late then. Simplification will be the only viable option.
Multinational and nation responses won’t be possible or practical.
Overall, it will be the only choice available by then.
Self-sufficiency and cooperation in survival mode.
Bar a few exceptions.
RC. I agree overall, but I suspect voluntary simplification faces even more obstacles than a green energy grid, which is why I tend to mainly promote a green energy grid. Of course simplification could be forced onto us eventually by materials shortages, or possibly collapse of civilisation you mentioned, but probably this will not be soon enough to help mitigate the climate problem.
collapse of civilization is probably our last resort mitigation of the climate problem. It is a default outcome that is likely to happen if sensible mitigation paths are not taken to an extent that prevents collapse. When you think through possible collapse of civilization, don’t you conclude that collapse is likely to be a pretty effective means of mitigation?
I am not sure what you are thinking about when you talk about something being “soon enough.” Soon enough for what?
Cheers
Mike
Collapse of civilization is not going to be a pretty process. It would be accompanied by a lot of violence and panic. We’ll see forests and cities burn. Carbon emitted in the process could provide a last big impulse that will take years to even out.
If we have collapsed, there will not be the means to rapidly shift all of humanity to regenerative processes. Also, if we’ve collapsed, then we’ve likely also pushed past tipping points. The result might be extinction.
The only sane response is an intentional collapse aka simplification.
Mike. I did say simplification forced on us, or the collapse of civilisation would “not be soon enough to mitigate the climate problem”. But in more detail, it seems to me that simplification forced on us at scale would require massive shortages of materials and information I’ve seen suggests this won’t happen for a century or so at least. This would be too late to push down our emissions enough to stop warming getting above 2 degrees or maybe even 4 degrees.
The timing of a general collapse of civilisation is really hard to predict. And it could in theory be relatively sudden or long and drawn out. In some ways our civilisation is quite fragile due to its complexity, yet we got through the global financial collapse in one piece, and are getting through this covid disaster without global supply chains breaking down too badly. So although I’m not by nature a huge optimist, our civilisation has shown some degree of resilience to those sorts of shocks. But climate change is attacking us on multiple levels.
I would just suggest it looks like climate change would cause a “gradual” collapse of civilisation spanning decades as food shortages and rising temperatures and infrastructure costs slowly take hold,. Given this, by the time the collapse starts to cause our emissions to actually reduce significantly, it may be too late to stop warming get above 2 degrees, or even 4 degrees, which would be a terrible irony.
simplification forced on us at scale
The Strawmen will never end with this (ethicless) one.
A straw man is a form of argument and an informal fallacy of having the impression of refuting an argument, whereas the real subject of the argument was not addressed or refuted, but instead replaced with a false one.
I don’t recall a single person here, there, or anywhere, ever talking about forced simplicity. Sure Deep Green Resistance talks about forcing the shutdown of industrialization, but these are two very different animals.
But you, nigel, are as dishonest about solutions as ever. Solutions denial is a terribly immoral thing to do.
Killian, you seem to think that by forced simplicity that I meant at the point of a gun or as directed by some government or other authority, even when I said: .”But in more detail, it seems to me that simplification FORCED on us at scale would require massive shortages of materials…” You simply don’t understand or read things, and you also personalise the issue about my ethics.. This is one reason or many that I mostly no longer bother to respond to your posts. I suspect I’m not alone in this.
a closing side-bar – The more things change, the more they remain the same.
What follows is I think an useful analogy between Extinction Rebellion climate change activists and protest groups with the 1960s US Civil Rights Movement and the disconnected Myths about that period which exist today.
eg Rosa Parks … everyone mostly only see her as brave wise heroine, and yet was it really like that?
Key to the work of many civil rights organizations, was mass civil disobedience because they understood that injustice would not be changed without disrupting civic and commercial life.
She noted how those who challenged the racial order as she did were labeled “radicals, soreheads, agitators, troublemakers.”
“Such a good job of brainwashing was done on the Negro,” Parks observed, “that a militant Negro was almost a freak of nature to them, many times ridiculed by others of his own group.”
She struggled with feeling isolated and crazy, writing how she felt “completely alone and desolate, as if I was descending in a black and bottomless chasm.”
The civil rights movement made most Americans uncomfortable. From presidents to ordinary citizens, many regarded it as “extremism.” People regularly called MLK and Rosa Parks communists and traitors, not just in the South but also in the “liberal” North, for their critiques of police brutality and their support of housing and school desegregation.
As King wrote from a Birmingham jail in 1963, “I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens’ Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice […] who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action.’”
MLK Would Never Shut Down a Freeway, and 6 Other Myths About the Civil Rights Movement
from https://www.theroot.com/mlk-would-never-shut-down-a-freeway-and-6-other-myths-1790856033
The following ties back into those comments about Mike Mann’s youtube interview I posted … and some related anecdotes about ‘doomers’ and ‘despair’ …. because people are, well, so much like people. :)
quoting —
Therefore, here is a more accurate definition of a climate doomist: anyone who gives voice to a perspective that is slightly bleaker than the currently acceptable level of bleakness in climate discourse. To express anger is acceptable, to express grief is acceptable, to mourn is acceptable, but to express despair is unacceptable.
To say that marches aren’t enough is acceptable, to say that personal lifestyle alterations won’t cut it is acceptable, to say that we’re running out of time is acceptable, but to suggest that we aren’t going to act in time is unacceptable.
And all of these shift as the tenor of the main body of the climate movement lurch between optimism and pessimism. Thus, climate doomists exist not so much as a coherent group of thinkers and activists, but as a strawman.
What doomists allow activists to do is say things such as “yes, I think that things are really bad…but I’m not one of those weirdos who think all is lost!” Or, “yes, I think that it is imperative that we enact a Green New Deal, because I’m not one of those people who has lost faith in the political process.” If “climate doomists” did not exist, the *moderate* climate movement would have to invent them. :)
https://librarianshipwreck.wordpress.com/2019/08/16/be-afraid-but-not-that-afraid-on-climate-doom/
and The Climate of Despair – Climate Change, COVID-19, and the Feeling of Impending Doom
quoting —
Anger and frustration with those who claim to be (or are accused of being) “doomers” is nothing new. And yet, in the latest round of doom-mongering and attacks on the prophets of doom, one can sense that something has really changed. That something significant has shifted. Thus, any attempt to make sense of the gloomier responses to the latest IPCC report—whether you call them climate despair, or climate grief, or doomerism, or [insert your own neologism here!]—needs to consider and confront what it is that has altered the tonality of despair in this moment.
To put it plainly: if you want to understand the latest spike in doomerism, you need to talk about the pandemic.
Those who accuse others of being doomers tend to believe, that given the scientific evidence on climate change, there will be a suitable social/political response. Those who self-describe as doomers tend to believe, that given the scientific evidence on climate change, there will not be a suitable social/political response.
What is at issue here is not so much a debate over scientific facts, but a thornier debate over how societies will respond to those scientific facts.
It is easy to tell people to call their elected officials, but many of them have been calling their elected officials for years to depressingly little effect. To restate the point: the developments in climate change are certainly feeding into doomerism, but the refusal of elected officials to rise to the challenge feeds into this even more.
And thus, people have been able to retain a stubborn hope that when faced with a worldwide existential threat, people will come together, governments will step up, and in the moment of our greatest need we will prove ourselves up to the task.
If climate change provided people with an occasion to puzzle over how the world might respond to a major all-encompassing challenge, the pandemic has provided them with an answer.
And it has not been an answer that people have liked.
https://librarianshipwreck.wordpress.com/2021/09/02/the-climate-of-despair-climate-change-covid-19-and-the-feeling-of-impending-doom/
And the beat goes on … Sonny and Cher https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS3O5zg290k
The great problem is none of that. The great problem is almost none of them on either side understand what to do, so they spin in place calling on Superman (gov’s and that elusive, now fictional, “public good”-focused Inc.) to save them all while ignoring the solution in their mirror and the hands of those just outside their doors.
Malaise sets in when people have no idea how to save themselves. Technofantasy sets in when people have no idea how to save themselves and have no idea they have no idea.
Here is History teaching and speaking, telling us what “we” already knew over 34 years ago, even before Hansen showed up at Congress the first time.
Carl Sagan at MIT – Management in the Year 2000: Sloan School Symposium 1987
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLOZsTMuars
These multiple extracts start from about 4:45 mins https://youtu.be/gLOZsTMuars?t=286
What I’d like to stress is that human beings have spent something like 99% of their history in an extremely different kind of social situation, an extremely different kind of economic situation, but a very familiar kind of technological situation to what we have today. And to the extent that we have emotional predispositions that are hereditary a lot of them must be geared to those hunter-gatherer times and find very little expression in modern industrial economies.
Now the technology has been monotonically developing always for short-term advantage. It’s extremely rare that a technological development is forsworn because a hundred years from now we can see that there will be some serious negative consequences, even though ten years from now we can see that there will be some significant advantage. We never think on those timescales. A 100 years from now we’ll be dead, someone else is watching, let them look out for that.
Well this passion for the short term over the long term coupled with extraordinary technological prowess as I maintain produced an extremely dangerous and critical circumstance at the present time. The technology now permits us to affect the entire planet and so apart from the evident economic interdependence of the planet there is an enormous technological interdependence and I’d like to give a few examples.
The innocent act of burning fossil fuels, coal peat wood natural gas petroleum products, has consequences. It seems the most natural thing in the world, the global economy is geared mainly on the fossil fuels, but every time you burn a lump of coal let’s say you combine the carbon in it with the oxygen in the air that’s what the energy comes from and you produce carbon dioxide CO2.
Now what determines the temperature of the earth? Visible light comes from the Sun hits the surface of the Earth. Some of its reflected back to space the rest of it’s absorbed by the ground. That goes into heating the Earth and what we have is a kind of equilibrium. The Earth radiates to space just the same amount as what it absorbs from space (the Sunlight) and that equilibrium determines the temperature of the Earth. But that is only part of the story. The other part has to do with the greenhouse effect so-called because of an ‘imagined analogy’ to a florist’s greenhouse.
It is now entirely clear that the earth’s temperature is increasing as well globally. At estimated rates of industrial and domestic use of fossil fuels you can make some predictions. And there’s of course some uncertainty but a typical prediction is that at the projected rates of fossil fuel use by the middle to late 21st century that is roughly a century from now (2050-2080) the global temperature will have increased sufficiently to make massive climatic change on the planet.
A typical prognostication is the conversion of the Ukraine and the American Midwest into something a little different from scrub deserts. That will have significant economic consequences but on a timescale that nobody worries about because it’s not our watch. It’s our children and grandchildren let them worry about it.
So this raises an important question: what are our responsibilities to two three and four generations from now? Bearing in mind that it is extremely unlikely that there will be a technical fix to this problem.
Well this is a kind of prototype of a generic set of problems that worldwide technology now brings before us. A set of problems which involve unanticipated negative consequences of apparently benign technology. Consequences very severe, consequences that are global in nature and therefore that cannot be solved even by one or two of the most powerful industrial nations by themselves. It requires the entire industrial world to deal with.
from here @16:25 mins Sagan goes on to discuss the problem of the Ozone layer.
https://youtu.be/gLOZsTMuars?t=986
It’s a really good talk. Cheers
I’ll see your 34 years and raise you to 40:
(The below is freely available and not subject to copyright.)
THE TERRIBLE TIME OF DAY
by Bill Mollison, 1981
I don’t think anybody has summarized what is happening on the face of the Earth. In order to change our ways, we seem to need to terrify ourselves, anticipating tidal waves and catastrophes. Now those
things may come off, and the San Andreas fault may shift. But we can’t do much about that. What is really happening is something for which we, as human beings, are personally responsible. It is very general. Almost everything we say applies everywhere.
The real systems that are beginning to fail are the soils, forests, the atmosphere, and nutrient cycles. It is we who are responsible for that. We haven’t evolved anywhere in the west (and I doubt very much elsewhere except in tribal areas) any sustainable systems in agriculture or forestry. We don’t have
a system. Let’s look at what is happening.
Forests
…Of the forests, some are critically important, like the evergreen forests, of which there are two extensive systems. One is equatorial, multispecies; and the other, cool evergreen forests of the Russian tundra and the southern evergreen forests.
Rain forests are critically important in the oxygen cycle, and in atmospheric stability…
The forests also provide a very large amount of our precipitation. When you cut the forest from ridges, you can observe the rainfall itself fall between 10% and 30%, which you could probably tolerate. What you dont see happen is that precipitation may fall over 86%, the rainfall being only a small fraction of the total precipitation…
…But in fact, what we observe throughout Southwest Asia and in South America, and throughout the Third World, and wherever multinationals can obtain ownership of forests in the Western world, is about 100% loss. It is a “cut and run” system.
There are trees in Tasmania much taller than your redwoods. These are being cut and shipped out as chips. So, for the most part, we are degrading the primeval forests to the lowest possible use. That has effects at the other end of the system. Waste products from forests are killing large areas of the sea…
Climate
The effects of this on world climate are becoming apparent both in the composition of the atmosphere and in the inability of the atmosphere to buffer changes. In any month now, we will break the world weather records in some way. In my home town, we are very isolated and buffered by ocean and forest.
But we had in succession the windiest, the driest, and the wettest month in history, in two hundred years of recording. So really what’s happening in the world climate is not that it is tending toward the greenhouse effect; it is not that it is tending toward the ice age; it is starting now to fluctuate so wildly
that it is totally unpredictable as to which heat barrier you will crack. But when you crack it, you will crack it at an extreme and you will crack it very suddenly. It will be a sudden change. Until then, we will experience immense variability in climate.
That is what is happening. We can just go cutting along, and in maybe twelve more years we won’t have any forests. There is still another factor. It would be bad enough if it were just our cutting that is killing forests. But since the 1920’s, and with increasing frequency, we have been losing species from
forest to a whole succession of pathogens. It started with things like chestnut blight. Chestnuts were 80% of the forests that they occupied. So a single species dropping out may represent enormous biomass, enormous biological reserve, and a very important tree. Richard St. Barbe Baker pointed out that the trees that are going are those with the greatest leaf area per unit. First chestnuts, with maybe sixty acres of leaf area per tree. Then the elms, running at about forty. Now the beeches are going, and the oaks, the eucalypts in Australia and Tasmania.
Even the needle leaf trees in Japan are failing. The Japanese coniferous forests are going at a fantastic rate. So are the Canadian shield forests and the Russian forests….
great quotes.
I have long felt the destruction of forests, especially the amazon the last decade, should be treated for what it is, a crime against humanity, where the punishment should fit the crime Unfortunately people in power see it very differently.
Dr.R.Check
I have also long felt……
Those rain forests, Amazonas and Borneo were very fameous, but I came to think allready long ago that they are used like the fameous 2 southern island for psychological political argument. On the one island there are strict burgeois rules on sexuality, and there we find only wars and headhunting, cannibalism, torture, bloodshed, cruelty, capitalism, and opression. But on the other island quite next by there is free sex, and there we find only waving palms and hula hula guitars and hibiscus flowers, ananas, and paradise.
But both islands are so far away that no one can ever go there for control. In other words, it is a theory that cannot be falsified and thus not scientifric, according to Carl Popper.
In the same way we have learnt that way over in Moskva it is so and so, wherefore we must do so and so here in our socity and situation.. While no- one could ever go to Moskva and see for themselves how it actually is in Moskva. It is a typical theory and argument that cxannot be set on trial and possibly falsified.
Wherefore I got very suspicious to that Amazonas argument long ago allready, , and have told people to get home and get down to earth, and see our own situation and normal environment, the northern tempered mixed, leave falling woods that really needs accute defence, and especially the northern Taiga, that is the largest of all forests on earth.
Rather the Taiga is our own responsibility, thus I invented and suggested the defence of the Taiga before anybody else.
And now you see that I was quite pioneering also there . Over there in the states and especially in Canada they have discovered the Taiga instead of HulaHula, Even Putin is standing up to the defence of the Taiga now., and says he preferres wild russian raspberries with cream rather than Ananas.
By those means we can also punish and badger Killian, who is quite a Hula Hula and remote southern island believer and natural romantic utopist.
His Terra- preta- hype will not be appliciable neither to the northern tempered forests nor to the very Taiga and the tundras. He also ignores 4/5 of the global environments, the very oceans. This is really not the planet earth, it is quite obviously rather the planet Sea!
Thus get down to it.
C: But on the other island quite next by there is free sex, and there we find only waving palms and hula hula guitars and hibiscus flowers, ananas, and paradise.
BPL: And everybody gets a pony.
Dr R.Check
But for serious:
I have red that the quite ugly deforetation of Amazonas is because of Soya beans, therefore, “eat more Soya!”. Because way more than 90 % of that soya goes for swinery and poultry in rich countries.. Soya is also a major component of modern fish- farming- food.
I discuss regularly with a vegetarian and learnt Homøopat. We compare and discuss dinners and our favourite Prophets, learnings, beliefs, and foods. He had “soya- burgers” for dinner yesterday.
Good greef what about peasoup and stewed tomato- beans? Both are my favourites, and we both take slightly salted and seasoned, possibly wild fish to it, that is a high privilege to us as long as it lasts.
My experience of soya- beans is that it is hardly edible without a lot of salt and vinegar. I tried to make soya bean- soup the peasoup way. It was hardly edible.. Thus I told him that Soya is obviously a US- american war- surplus ware from WW1, that had to be marketed here in order to get rid of it. But the chineese, who invented it, rather mill it salt it and ferment it to soya sauce or maybe they “Malt” it to be taken with rice and fish or sliced, salted, hanged and smoked Python??
Malting is to grow it for halway digestion by its own growth- enzymes before it is eaten or processed further.
Malting is a very valuable stone- age method for all sorts of grains and seeds. Chicken and pigs shall also have their “bread” malted and slightly “fermented” with some salt and spices. .
It had to be rather malted, crushed rather than grinded, and fermented everywhere until quite recently, because the milling capacity was much too low.
So what about Soya? It is a general question for humanity to get lower down on the nutrician pyramid and eat that soya and that barley oats and rhye directly wirhout sending it through the stomacs of pigs poultry and farmed salmons. .
Amazonas is burnt and rhoded for money due to luxury meat and fish- consumption elsewhere.
Soya itself is mistreated refined processed and marketed further in a very ugly way. Just think of how convincingly good rather traditional pea and beans recepies can be compared to “soya”
EP,
My rule of holes:
When you have force somebody to dig a hole at gunpoint so as to enrich yourself (banana republic), then forcing them to die in said hole, then covering said ‘incident’ with dirt and distance….
Eh, I’ll let each reader ponder how accurate the metaphor…
…including you, EP, why do we owe the Banana Republics nada as they bake?
@RTW:
Precisely what have the PEOPLE (not elites) of the USA done to make Angola, Niger, Mali, Chad, Uganda, Zambia, Burundi, Malawi, Somalia and Liberia grow their populations at unsustainable rates rather than improving their standard of living? It’s not like we haven’t given them an example. They seem to WANT what we have. Why haven’t they applied our aid to reproducing it in their own countries?
The obvious conclusion: they cannot understand how, so they fail.
The USA didn’t produce the conditions of the starving twig-limbed, swollen-bellied children of the 1970’s famine TV ads. That was on them. Their mis-allocation of our food aid was also on them. It’s time to stop wasting effort on them, and especially not allow them to bring their pathologies to our countries.
You can’t lump a whole of people together like that (or you can, but it’s not valid). The people of those nations are not a single entity who get what they deserve because of the decisions they have made. As usual, the decisions made by a few affected many. The swollen-bellied children did nothing to deserve their lot in life. Our great grandchildren won’t deserve the mess we are leaving them, either.
EP,
Interesting. I’m talking Central America and you are solidly focused on Africa.
There’s no convoys of invading women and children coming to the USA from Africa. Let’s discuss reality from a USA perspective.
And as long as one strips the percentage of wealth attributable to those who raped Central America and the planet’s climate from all USA citizens, then you’d be right about our lilly white innocence.
“You can’t blame me for my dad’s bank robbing career. And it would be wrong to deprive me of my inheritance”
Rather a self-serving load of garbage, eh?
Today is the deadline for the engine patent. Of course, the examiner is on vacation and the supervisor’s promise to return calls quickly and always within 24 hours was laughable. I’d have bet $100 against your dime that she would blow that goal.
Hopefully I’ll reach her today. Regardless, I faxed in my response to the examiner yesterday so I should be fine.
Fax companies are total rip offs. UPS charges $3 for the first page and $2 for each additional. And the patent office likes double spacing.
Spoke with the patent examiner’s supervisor. Things look good.
The claims:
I claim the use of a single pre-compression cylinder to feed one and only one combustion cylinder that operates at precisely twice the RPMs of said pre-compression cylinder in internal combustion engines.
I claim the use of a single re-expansion cylinder that is fed by one and only one combustion cylinder that operates at precisely twice the RPMs of said single re-expansion cylinder in internal combustion engines.
I claim above the rings side ports for PCs and RCs in internal combustion engines. (These free up the entire cylinder head above the PC to be used for intake and above the RC for exhaust – and since both operate at 1/2 RPMs pumping losses plummet)
I claim the use of one or more gaskets within a piston’s structure so as to help provide shock absorption for bearings and/or to help thermally isolate the sections of said piston that are primarily exposed to flames from those that are primarily exposed to oil in…
I claim the use of a ceramic insulating coating (that becomes internal to a piston’s structure when coated parts are assembled) to help thermally isolate.. more appropriate alloys..
The more recent stuff, including how to smooth power delivery in an engine with a single combustion cylinder to straight-six level (or better) is in the next batch, which is currently a jumble of provisional filings.
Next I’ll send a copy of the patent to a professor or three. The guy at Stanford for sure. Any suggestions?
Hey, what’s new?
Is the EU emissions target for 2030 (or any other existing target from an industrialized country) compatible with the Paris Agreement? You should be doubtful about that. Let me explain… in this short thread with Refs
https://twitter.com/LasseClimate/status/1441070626555502603
https://www.cicero.oslo.no/no/posts/ciceroblogs/balancing-fairness-and-ambition
Kevin Anderson offers a headline list of mitigation action any first world nation could initiate today to put them on track for 1.5C. https://twitter.com/KevinClimate/status/1440977910370816000
List – https://twitter.com/KevinClimate/status/1440977910370816000/photo/1
Kevin Anderson On the (old recommended) 45% cut (on 2010 emissions) by 2030, even for just a 33% chance of 1.5°C, I now see the cut for wealthy nations as nearer 80% (compared with 2019 emissions)
With video of Dr. Leah Stokes opening remarks on why Congress finds itself at a pivotal moment in history. We must act on the climate crisis now! https://twitter.com/KevinClimate/status/1441084051939475464
Dr. Sandra Steingraber to US scientist friends! Dr Peter Kalmus and I are the drafters of a letter from US scientists to @POTUS calling on him to stop new #fossilfuel projects, declare a climate emergency and reject industry delay tactics. https://twitter.com/ssteingraber1/status/1441071712808939523
Scientists to Biden: Stop Fossil Fuels – https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdb9CDr98NDs87GBXjyJ6A4yyECceofpUakoNTd2v0s6qc4Dw/viewform
Overall, the reduction in cars traveling in Paris has been dramatic, dropping by 44%. “Out of 100 cars circulating in Paris in 2002, 56 remain.” Paris isn’t magic. City leadership decided to do this, they pushed through the doubt & resistance, & now they’ve cut cars almost in half & everyone loves Paris all over again. Any US city (any city in the world) could decide to follow suit.
https://twitter.com/drvolts/status/1441099076611698698
Dr Peter Kalmus – NASA Climate Scientist Thread
Folks, we all need to become climate activists now. I know that’s a strong statement because there are so many critical causes, but I stand by it. This will increasingly become life-or-death for an increasing number of people. In fact, there are so many critical causes that the elites are utterly failing to address, that I am not sure what to do.
I do know that only the left holds the vision now. The right has entirely parted from reality, and the (moderate) center thinks little tweaks are enough. They are not. But the left is uniquely bad at building coalitions and building power.
Meanwhile, the entire planetary system is careening irreversibly toward a physical state that will be irreconcilable with civilization at its current scale. Of this, I am certain. I’m not sure what else to say right now. I’m breathing smoky air and I don’t feel well.
I guess, I will add, that I am sorry. I’m sorry we’re at this point, and I’m sorry for this dark thread. Also that I can’t tell anyone how to be an activist. I am getting less polite, and more direct.
But for now here are some suggestions that might help:
1 Use your voice
2 Join together
3 Walk the talk
4 Engage politically
5 Take care of yourself
6 Get courageously creative
All “individual” action helps w “collective” action, and all “collective” action comes from people.
https://twitter.com/ClimateHuman/status/1441158172085874689
Kevin Anderson: I now see the cut for wealthy nations as nearer 80% (compared with 2019 emissions)
So, I was right again…? And ten years before Anderson?
But what the bloody eff do I know, eh?
Killian, you’re comparing differing standards of proof. You need provide zip. That takes, hmm, zero years. He needs to provide that which stands up to peer review. That would take you, hmm, 100,000 years.
You are wrong… and getting shittier by the week, it seems. I can, and do, back all my comments with math and/or reasoning and logic that is completely sound. You think everything needs a paper to be understood? That is a fallacy, which you certainly know. That you seem to be like everyone else here and not understand what I say and so malign it as you do above means only that you don’t have the background to assess what I say.
So stop trying till you do.
FACT is, I start from core concepts that are inviolable. Those facts when compared against what is know across a wide range of information and concepts give us patterns of agreement or divergence, and this tells us something.
You can’t do what I do because you don’t know what I know. But the same is true in reverse in some way(s), no doubt. Same with Kevin Killian. The difference? I don’t give a fuck if you know something I don’t, but you get your undies in a bunch that I know things you all don’t.
That’s the problem.
Sociology and the Climate Crisis: An Introduction
Dr Ben Cushing
One thing that sociologists have to offer is a certain perspective
on thinking about social problems or thinking about problems
a sociologist by the name of c wright mills gave this the name
of the sociological imagination, it’s a way of looking at the world
that emphasizes systems, and how all of us live our lives
embedded in social systems.
Systems that are quite a lot bigger than us that and sometimes
sort of push us around and shape our experiences. so c wright
mills said that to understand our own lives we need to
understand how our lives are contextualized within various
social systems and shaped by various historical forces.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03hVC9_tHW0 (34 mins)
DR. AARON THIERRY – COURAGE IN THE CLIMATE CRISIS
This is how I try and discuss it with my classes & public talks, describing the brutal reality but then making room for emotional response and finally using our imagination to explore sustainable paths forward and how we each can be involved
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvL-edK7SW0 (1h20m)
Dr. Aaron Thierry received his PhD in Ecology from the University of Sheffield. He subsequently researched the impacts of global warming on the carbon cycle in Arctic ecosystems at Edinburgh University.
Ray Ladbury: “Thanks to fucking morons like you, we’ve wasted 50 years debating the science with idiots who are too dumb to understand the science. And now–thanks to you–it really is a fucking emergency.”
V: And thanks to fucking true believers like yourself, millions of children are having serious psychological problems, convinced that “the end of days” is near, while world leaders wring their hands with angst, hoping against hope that their half-assed efforts will be perceived as meaningful while knowing in their hearts that nothing short of a revolution leading to total worldwide socio-economic collapse could possibly avert the disaster they’ve been pressured into lip-serving.
Thanks to zealots like yourself, thousands of self-appointed “rebels” are taking to the streets, gluing themselves to lamp posts, getting arrested, and preventing honest working people from getting to their jobs, so they can feel good about themselves despite the fact that NOTHING they do or say will make the slightest difference.
As anyone with half a brain should know, there never was any hope of averting the “disaster” you’ve convinced yourself to fear, not even fifty years ago. Did you actually believe world leaders were going, at any time, to shut off the fossil fuel spigot, destroying millions of businesses and jobs, bringing their economies to their knees, leading to mass starvation and worse, because some high brow academics convinced themselves that only the most draconian measures could “save the planet”? Look what happened when Macron decided to implement a relatively mild “price on carbon.” The Yellow Vests rioted for months, noting that “Macron is worried about the end of the world, we are worried about the end of the month.” That says it all.
I don’t know whether or not “climate change” is real or just an instance of mass delusion, as I strongly suspect. What I do know is this: if “the science” is in fact as reliable as you’ve managed to convince yourself, then there IS — and always was — no hope..
In all the many years on RealClimate, your post is without question the most ignorant of all. And that says a lot. It shows you have no clue about science and how it is conducted. Yet you flaunt your ignorance on a science site, too coward to admit to being wrong about basic thermodynamics.
“Anyone with half a brain” is textbook projection. And here is a clue for you: Science is not a “belief”. You ought to have learned that in elementary school.
Your post is hall of fame of scientific ignorance. And cowardice. Not even close.
Nice piece of (empty) rhetoric, Dan. Without a shred of either sense or honesty. And yes, science is not a belief, but uncritical acceptance of questionable “scientific” claims is.
Then show him better!
V: I don’t know whether or not “climate change” is real or just an instance of mass delusion, as I strongly suspect.
BPL: The rest of us know. That’s why we feel we can ignore your posts.
Actually, the feeling one gets while reading a Victopost travels the same pathways for us as a pleasurably resonating racist diatribe does for them.
You were always wilfully ignorant. Congratulations on graduating to full-fledged assholery.
Victors doomy, defeatist take on the climate issue is understandable up to a point. Mitigating the climate problem is obviously difficult for all sorts of practical, psychological and political reasons, however mitigating the climate problem is NOT impossible, because politicians have solved huge problems previously like the ozone hole and they got us out of the global financial crash, and we have many technology based options that work like wind and solar power and even nuclear power. If the worst came to the worst, geoengineering will be used and is low cost (although I pray we don’t have to resort to this risky thing).
Plenty of properly conducted research studies show mitigation using the safest options doesn’t have to lead to the collapse of the economy or society. Victor has nothing but colourful and empty rhetoric. I don’t want to see children upset by the whole thing, but that is not a very good reason to ignore the climate problem, and their distorted fears are often driven by media hype, and could be easily solved by talking intelligently to children about the issue to help them understand the true nature of the problem.
And here we see Weaktor unwittingly reveal his real problem: cowardice. For Weaktor there is no emotional space between concern and panic. The mere possibility of a threat triggers terror and despair. That one could take responsibility and actually address the threat–even improve things would never occur to him. He’s too busy hiding from reality under the covers.
I can understand why denialists might pivot from denying it’s happening to saying it’s too late to act. Odd to see both lines pushed concurrently by the same troll, like an each-way bet.
Much of what you post here amounts to Kettle Logic
.https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Kettle-Logic
The rest is rhetorical blather.
Well, it kinda makes sense as it translates to, “If my fantasy is right then your science is wrong and we should ignore climate, and if your science is right then we should ignore climate because I’ve successfully delayed action until it is too late. In either case we should party on.”
With all due respect, Victor, you have been posting the same crude, clumsy, clownish falsehoods and nonsense on RealClimate for years and it is just as boring as ever.
It could be Azheimer.
Alzheimer’s is a progressive disease. The Victoblather just seems to keep getting closer to brain dead because reruns get old.
Boring? Are you sure? He gets more responses and interaction than any other poster, by far. I think quite a few here are deeply in love with rolling in the muck with him. As you say, it’s been years and he and responses to him fill up a good 50% of this site, I’d guess.
Wish I were half as boring.
“Boring” is attractive. I’ve heard that the primary goal of thinking is to allow thinking to stop because maybe 25% of calories go to thinking. Like television. Sit, watch, munch. And you’ll live long enough to raise a few kids if you start early.
Victor allows one to turn one’s mind, not off, but go the biological equivalent of “superconducting maglev” . You get to cruise heavily mylenated mental routes on autopilot. In a sense you are still just a spectator or a passenger, like when you “wake up” as you near home. Energy efficient, you were being.
But unlike TV you get to feel like you accomplished something. Not much, but you deflected some Victoblather.
OK. Whatever. This (the comments) is TV.