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.
@Reality Check:
Ted Nordhaus demonstrates that great minds think alike, showing just how badly the “Green” policies of Germany and California have failed:
https://archive.is/dxyD4
I know what a 2050 Net Zero world would look like:
1.) Every bit of retired LWR fuel has been turned into chloride salt, the excess uranium extracted for later use and the Pu-rich, fission-product protected remainder used in molten chloride salt fast reactors.
2.) Massive mining of olivine deposits is in progress around the world, for crushing and depositing on well-watered lands and in intertidal zones to release both alkalinity and silica. This increases the growth of both silica and carbonate-shelled phytoplankton and beefs up the base of the food chain while de-acidifying the odeans.
3.) Those natural gas deposits still in use are home to Allam-cycle power plants, which put their condensed CO2 straight back into depleted wells. Some of the gas may be steam-reformed to hydrogen, which is moved out over the legacy NG pipeline network.
4.) There’s no longer any such thing as a “sanitary landfill”. MSW is gasified using e.g. plasma gasifiers and the gas used either for synthesis of liquid fuels or burned in peaking power plants. Methane emissions from landfills fall to near-zero.
5.) People from societies not smart enough to follow the established examples are left to deal with their own problems, not allowed to mooch off of the more advanced. In other words, their solutions are local to THEM and “migration” is off the table. If that means local collapse and misery, at least the problem is localized; allowing “migration” makes things into global problems.
By 2050?
Pure fantasy.
And the gratuitous addition of point #5 makes it sadistic fantasy.
Constantly engaging racists is no more adaptive than constantly engaging denialists. I mean, “Those not smart enough” when the actual issue is “Those we have exploited and whose lands and resources we have badly damaged and whose societies we have driven to ruin” just isn’t anything but racism, gaslighting, etc.
Why do you all not understand this? Rather, since you *do* understand this, what is wrong with *your^ heads that causes you to co-pollute these fora in this way?
Yes, what Killian has said.
:/What shall we do with the drunken sailor/: (3 times)
ørlai inn the mornin“
They were also near to analphabets thinking that they were quite especially smart.
Racists? Yes of course.
Meh. I took all of 15 words.
Killian took to 79 (or so) to admonish me for “co-pollution.”
Personally, I think it’s much worse practice to leave racism unreproved. But brevity is a virtue in any case.
Obviously, YMMV.
Sorry @Kevin nothing personal was intended. The general idea that’s all. Your point was fine. My response reflected my own thinking after a series of unsavory comments by Mr Poet recently …. do I engage or not, post ref quotes or not … wrote some draft replies then deleted them …. I decided it wasn’t worth it, would make no difference, a waste of my time and energy – when a moderator could easily handle it better = what K said. Not my problem sums that up.
PS I should have been clearer, but was only thinking about what I was thinking.
No worries. And you were briefer than I was.
This could a be a good book for people seeking an holistic broader longer term perspective of the climate emergency, the many related crises and how to better cope with the demands and complexity.
Reality Blind
(An online book)
Integrating the Systems Science Underpinning Our Collective Futures Vol. 1
NJ Hagens and DJ White Copyright © 2021
https://read.realityblind.world/view/975731937/
“The big secret of being a successful sapient species is that there IS no big secret. You just
need to sort out physical reality from virtual reality, dealing with the luck that random
chance has dealt you, before the genetic urges which got you this far manage to kill you.
Which, you’d have to admit, is pretty funny.”
SECTION 1 – HOW TO THINK ABOUT REALITY
What If What We Know Just Ain’t So??
“We tend to focus on just a year or two in advance, but the human story is a deep time story and our deep time future deserves a chance.”
“Very few people have a 10- or 30-year view of how systems connect. And far fewer are thinking about what society (and the natural world) might look like beyond the year 2100. In this way the inferecnes in this book are unusual.”
“Reductionism is quite useful but both dangerous and insufficient. A science-based worldview which looks at all the puzzle pieces at once can make sense of things. The important knowledge now resides between the discliplines.”
“These days the very nature of human expertise is highly specialised, but a reasonably intelligent generalist has a better chance of making good decisions about the future.”
[ RC Note: This mirrors Extinction Rebellion’s Third Demand that government must create and be led by the decisions of a Citizens’ Assembly on climate and ecological justice. https://extinctionrebellion.uk/go-beyond-politics/citizens-assembly/ A theme similar to creating a First Nations Voice to Parliament. https://ulurustatement.org/the-statement ]
Other Book Sections are 2 Deep Time, 3 Human Behavior, 4 Energy and Economy.
It’s sad to me that the things Nate has to say aren’t common knowledge. It all seems so obvious…
EP: People from societies not smart enough to follow the established examples are left to deal with their own problems, not allowed to mooch off of the more advanced.
Richard: That makes no sense. Even if the advanced nation’s in Europe, Asia, and Africa do the right thing the destruction wrought by the dumb as dirt because of genetic inferiority right wing ‘mericans can destroy the whole world all by themselves.
:-)
Wrong again. If leftists around the world, including DemonRATs in the USA were to walk their talk and stop using FFs, then the right wing ‘Muricans emissions would be irrelevant. But you will not. You’re hippo critters.
Let us know when:
You’ve gotten rid of your cars
Turned down the T-stat in your house to 40 F in the winter, turned it up to 90 in the summer – (I’ll let you use FFs to heat/cool to achieve survival, but not for comfort)
Started biking to work (no bus, train, etc that uses FF)
Go to bed when it’s dark – no burning FFs to make light, and PV power requires mining with FFs so not allowed
Stopped eating all fish and meat (fishing takes FF to run the boat)
Started growing all of your own food organically
etc.
You’re not going to do it are you? You’d rather whine online about the evil right-wingers and whine about how the groobermint should save us than to get to work doing what would actually stop CO2 emissions. Because doing what would actually work is HARD.
@Kevin McKinney:
We could start building prestressed cast iron reactor vessels by the dozens per year with manufacturing capacity already available.
https://nucleus-new.iaea.org/sites/htgr-kb/HTR2014/Paper%20list/Track7/HTR2014-71392.pdf
A Manhattan project=scale effort could have us a prototype by 2024 and in volume production well before 2030. Forging huge steel pieces requires huge forges; casting and machining cast iron can be done by a great many small shops which can scale up quickly.
Why? I’m told the United States of America is a horrible place, built on structural and institutional racism, implicit bias, sexism and a host of other unsavory things. If poor victim minorities are still clamoring to get in despite all this, we should keep them out for their own good! Better yet, we should pay to relocate the ones already here. It’s the LEAST we can do, isn’t it? Isn’t it?
(We both know the claims are lies. They’re just spouted to guilt-trip actual Americans into giving up their country. It’s not like the practices required to have good roads, clean water and electric power are secret; our universities teach civil and electrical engineering to all comers. There is nothing to prevent e.g. India from press-ganging all of its hereditary beggars into working on water and sewer projects and at least bringing its cities up to the level of 1950 London… except the lack of vision and will to do so. Instead, more than 2000 years after Rome, they still have this. When will you admit that it’s not us, it’s them… and Americans neither want nor deserve them making America into the very hell they want to leave? If things are going to be fixed at their end, THEY have to do it. We can show them how, but the doing is all up to them.)
I’d compare the wealth influx or exit during the transition from “shithole country” to “acceptable”.
The genocide of native Americans gave Europe a population relief valve, and the enslavement of Africans gave them leverage beyond their then-current tech level.
So they did well.
Run your simulation giving Africans the same lush population absorbing “vacant” land along with plenty of slaves. You know, what Europeans got.
You really think Europe wouldn’t have croaked without expanding into America?
There has been quite a bit of healthy scepticism about fusion power in these threads. To add to that, it appears that the popular scientific press has fallen for a number-fudging exercise. (Some of you might already know about this, but it was news to me, so I thought I would share it.)
Gains in fusion are often reported in terms of Q-factors, which is the ratio of energy out vs energy in. It appears that Q-plasma (energy in and out at the level of the plasma) is routinely reported in place of Q-total (energy in and out at the systems level). That is, the power needed to get the plasma experiment up and running and maintain it is ignored, and so is the inefficiency in converting the resulting heat back into electricity.
So they are a lot further off than they are pretending.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ4W1g-6JiY
NOTE: I previously posted this in the wrong thread. I would appreciate it if the mods could delete the errant post.
[ US centric background info }
2021 – Science historian Benjamin Franta on the role economists played in the fossil fuel industry’s decades-long disinformation campaign.
“About four years ago, in 2017, I was doing research for one of my graduate history classes at Stanford about the American Petroleum Institute and its history with regard to climate change. I was downloading large collections of newspaper articles and noticed that it wasn’t just the denial of climate science that the industry was promoting, it was these economic talking points as well. I also noticed that the economic experts or sources that the industry cited tended to be the same few people over many years often Charles River Associates, an economic consulting firm.
As I was doing all this research, then-President Trump announced that the U.S. was going to withdraw from the Paris Agreement. He cited economic statistics that sounded a lot like what I’d been reading from newspaper articles in the 1990s. The study was written by some of the exact same people I had been reading about.
I tried to track all the activities that I could from the economic consulting firm Charles Rivers Associates. Every time a major climate policy was proposed, these economists would be there, writing newspaper articles and giving testimony in front of Congress. From carbon tax conversations in the Clinton administration to [opposing] international treaties, like the Kyoto Protocol and the COP meetings. They also worked to defeat the cap and trade bills that were proposed throughout the 2000s in the U.S. When that was basically defeated, and climate policy became an issue for the states, like in California, they would go to address the California climate policies too.
The model starts off assuming that the economy is already optimal, and is already working the best that it can. When you assume that, then the inevitable outcome of any policy to intervene in the economy is, by definition, going to cost money instead of saving money. And of course, that’s not a logical outcome.
These economists were assuming things like that renewable energy will always cost eight times more than fossil fuels, even 100 years into the future. They ignored all the benefits of avoiding climate change. Without any sort of evidence, they would say things like, “Climate change is not going to hurt the economy until around the year 2100.” These economists weren’t completely alone in their approach. Charles River Associates was simply the preferred source for the industry.
What surprised me most is that I found even more outlandish things said by prestigious professors at unis like Stanford, heads of departments, who themselves were getting funding from the oil & gas industry. They used their academic credentials to launder their bad science.
A lot of the consultants working on climate left Charles River Associates around the same time & ended up at NERA, or National Economic Research Associates. That was actually the firm that produced the report that former Pres Trump cited to justify leaving the Paris Agreement.
So the firms change, and sometimes the people change, there are new people that get involved over time, and others retire. But the basic strategy has stayed largely the same for over 30 years now.
For decades, economists have been inflating the cost of action, and downplaying the cost of inaction. And largely, they’ve been doing that based on an outmoded economic paradigm.”
https://twitter.com/BenFranta
Other refs
How economists helped Big Oil obstruct climate action for decades
https://grist.org/accountability/economists-role-in-big-oil-pr-machine/
Weaponizing economics: Big Oil, economic consultants, and climate policy delay
Benjamin Franta Aug 2021
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09644016.2021.1947636
Such as – The New Climate War
https://michaelmann.net/books/climate-war
Such as – Merchants of Doubt, historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway explain how a loose–knit group of high-level scientists, with extensive political connections, ran effective campaigns to mislead the public and deny well-established scientific knowledge over four decades.
https://www.merchantsofdoubt.org/
Citizens United v. FEC
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse – 05.27.21 – The Scheme
“Powell cloaked the concerns of corporate America as concerns of “individual freedom,” a rhetorical framework for corporate political power that persists to this day.”
https://www.whitehouse.senate.gov/news/speeches/the-scheme-1-the-powell-memo
The Powell Memo
https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/powellmemo/
The manipulation of the American mind: Edward Bernays and the birth of public relations
https://theconversation.com/the-manipulation-of-the-american-mind-edward-bernays-and-the-birth-of-public-relations-44393
A rose by any other name is still a rose … so the above is intertwined in the histories of Milton Friedman and the Chicago Economists, Pinochet’s regime in Chile, Reaganism, as well as Economic Rationalism later better known as Neoliberalism all along; all the same Rent-Seeking Corporatist Ideology (a Belief system), it’s rise to preeminent power and influence in the USA.
—-
Nothing has changed – this is what it looks like when politicians are the mouth pieces for the “Global Corporatist (read Fascist) System” – just another passing tv interview (advertorial) of thousands on constant media repeat.
Prof. Julia says: “Absolutely love how fossil industry funded climate deniers get to rebrand themselves as “energy policy watchdogs” and instantly get huge right-wing media platforms without ever going through “we admit we were totally wrong but still really want to shill for gas & oil”.
Steve Baker MP: ‘Let’s get real, we need to use politically and economically viable methods… and right now that means going for gas’.
The leader of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group disagrees that batteries should be used to store electricity.
https://twitter.com/JKSteinberger/status/1447637969305808904
This corrupt manipulation is all so overt and public yet still no one can stop it. Most cannot even see it for what it is.
Interesting. Not wishing to denigrate the entire economics profession, but those particular “economic experts” need a huge kick in the backside. Just wanted to say that.
Another anecdotal example of why XRs demand for Citizen’s Assemblies to consider and decide Govt Climate Policy are likely to work really well.
The UK public backs a carbon tax on polluting industries, higher levies on flying and grants for heat pumps in order to tackle the climate crisis, according to the biggest analysis of policy preferences ever published.
Almost 22,000 people chose their favoured mix of policies to hit the government’s 2030 target for emissions cuts. A speed limit of 60 mph on motorways and a campaign to reduce meat eating by 10% were also among the most popular measures, all of which had between 77% and 94% public support.
The public went further than the government, choosing to surpass the current carbon target by 3%. Age, location and political leaning made little difference to the policy choices, the researchers found, with an “overwhelming consensus” for strong and fair climate action.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/11/uk-public-backs-carbon-tax-high-flyer-levy-and-heat-pump-grants-study-shows
Encouraging perhaps but remains a poor prognosis overall. With News Corp now backing Net Zero in 2050 that’s surely proof positive now that Net Zero is a greenwashing distraction from real mitigation action and setting real goals that might make a significant difference. Given Rupert Murdoch the narcissistic shill is Edward Bernays on steroids and speed.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/12/news-corps-turnaround-on-climate-is-a-greenwash
FYI The UK climate denial group ‘Global Warming Policy Foundation’ has renamed itself ‘Net Zero Watch’ (now be assured Rupert Murdoch and Lord Lawson are good buddies, cut from the same cloth, so what NewsCorp is doing now with their new Net Zero Mission is not a coincidence but part of a longer term coordinated anti-climate action plan.)
see https://twitter.com/KetanJ0/status/1447508410530947072
the new frontier in the climate denial/delay wars opened today in the UK. My god this is going to be so dumb
https://twitter.com/JKSteinberger/status/1447513818515623939
and of course https://www.netzerowatch.com/who-we-are/
(but when all seems lost the occasional glimmer of sanity and hope arrives; however I must give it a rest, because there is just too much.)
From the UK, report about genuine significant Demand Reduction is viable, affordable and low risk. It highlights the need to rebalance efforts towards more demand side policy. (oh if only, the never-ending economic grow political animals will hate it.) https://low-energy.creds.ac.uk/
Energy demand can be reduced by half in 2050, relative to today’s levels, which is huge. For context, the UK’s energy demand today is at a similar level to that seen in the 1970s – and has remained relatively flat in the intervening period.
This reduction in energy demand does not have to come at a cost to quality of life; in fact these scenarios highlight the many benefits to our lives e.g. lower fuel prices, cleaner air, safer streets, healthier lifestyles.
With lower energy demand we can scale back on all of the technologies we need to deliver energy. We can also de-risk the pathway to net-zero by hugely reducing our reliance on negative emission technologies.
With lower energy demand, there is the possibility to increase target stringency; in our analysis we show this by modelling a smaller carbon budget than implied by current policy, based on @kevinclimate
2020 paper.
The question is how to implement this in the real world. Two things we need – i) Take people with us. Show the benefits of this alternative pathway. Use citizens assemblies to discuss these scenarios and options for demand reduction.
ii) Seek the political will. The demand reduction required in the scenarios needs political backing to provide the choices
There are so many positives from developing an energy demand reduction strategy. A key recommendation is that the government adopt such a strategy so that there is an explicit recognition of the role of and for demand reduction.
https://twitter.com/st_pye/status/1447557207801966593
So, the net-zero corresponds to their IQ?
@RtW:
You mean China, the biggest CO2 emitter in the world by far? How about India, #2 and building more coal-fired power at a blistering pace?
“Right wing ‘mericans” have long been on the right side of the nuclear energy question; it’s been the left standing in the way, with John Kerry casting the deciding vote which shut down EBR-II and killed the Integral Fast Reactor program in 1994. Squish Bill Clinton didn’t have the balls to cast a veto, and he chose Hazel O’Leary as energy secretary. Give blame where blame is due.
If America had been on a “deplorable” (Republican) agenda since 1988, the world as a whole would be on a far better course for the climate than it is now. Take your own responsibility for the consequences. I have no regrets for the side I was on; I regret what you did. If I could have made you one of TWANLMC (those who are no longer my countrymen), I would have.
Hr.E. Poet
To my horizons there are four and only four faculties. One of them is philosophy, that was unluckily divided into Hist.Fil & Mat.Nat. The verbal chat faculty and the screwdriver faculty.
I am matrculated to the latter, but could also score 20 points of “philosophy”, thus inter- facultary.
I divide the climate dispute into those 2 faculties, on one side try and understand and solve it as a complicated problem of physical chemistery, and secondly How do people react and relate to that and why? That together relaqtes under Nature, and Humaniora.
Being an engineering poet or vice versa should give you the same chanses.
I read on the net that China is building up an experimental Thorium reactor now.
The great sin of it seems to be that Thorium was just as promising as Uranium in the beginning but Uranium reactors won because it delivered a waste lot of plutonium for nuclear weapons, thus electricity for consume was subventioned by the arms- race. And Thorum has been lagging behind.
On short terms, I believe that the USA has got more accutely severe problems than climate. Climate is serious enough but tends to work as a red herring or substitute for the really accute things.
Proper poetical engineering will be needed in any case and to be advocated. So do not misuse it.
Yep, the world would be different if it had embraced nukes. So different that there isn’t a way to know for sure whether I was right when I defaced some graffiti back in the late 70s, “Hell NO! We won’t glow!” via prefix: “Is nuclear power dangerous?”
“I have no regrets for the side I was on; I regret what you did. ”
Richard: Don’t paint me with Corporate Democrats or “have no clue (and don’t care) what order of magnitude means” flower children. The folks who steered this ship towards the rocks are dead or dying. It’s our time now. Bickering over which dumbass crowd was actually steering is useless.
I’ve finished the preliminary sketches for version 6. The butter-smooth engine has one each pre-compression, combustion, and re-expansion cylinders, one low pressure fuel injector, two low pressure water injectors, three poppet valves, some passive flaps, a tiny air pump, and two temporal torque transfer devices. The TTTDs turned out wicked cool. I’m confident enough in a TTTD’s ability to smooth a shaft’s torque that I dropped from two trios to one. Want to see some drawings?
I obtained a lot of understanding and learning about the difficulties dealing with the endemic cognitive barriers in rationally addressing and possibly curtailing global heating and climate change from Nate Hagen’s video lecture Earth and Humanity: Myth and Reality (May 2021) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYeZwUVx5MY
“Many of our modern challenges stem from a fundamental mismatch – stone age minds navigating a modern culture.”
and from 23 mins https://youtu.be/qYeZwUVx5MY?t=1398
We (humans) are emotionally blind to long-term issues like climate change or energy
depletion, even though our neocortex can imagine and care about them.
On most of the things that matter we are addicted to the present. The
future isn’t real to us emotionally and because of that it isn’t real in our behaviors.
more from Nate Hagens posted here
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/07/forced-responses-july-2021/comment-page-10/#comment-794052
and
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/07/forced-responses-july-2021/comment-page-10/#comment-793988
and
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/07/forced-responses-july-2021/comment-page-10/#comment-793985
and
“We have arrived at a species level moment where everything is connected but we lack both a vocabulary for the future and a corresponding systemic map. “
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/07/forced-responses-july-2021/comment-page-10/#comment-793930
The above and more has been integrated into Hagens new free online ebook “Reality Blind”
https://read.realityblind.world/view/975731937/
I found it very easy to read and very good. Worth the effort and may help line up some ducks in a row to better understanding.
There’s a map. That he is not following it is a different issue.
I have just been reading something similar namely New Scientist : 33 reasons why we can’t think clearly about climate change, by R Gifford. Unfortunately this is the paper copy and the article online is subscription only but maybe you subscribe or others do. It’s well worth a read.
It looks quite similar as they may be drawing form the same academic science psychology etc sources, ideas.
alt url for the full 33 reasons article is here https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/article/1848858/33-reasons-why-mankind-isnt-acting-stem-global-warming
PS this is what I wanted to emphasise most but it got lost above
Hagens new free online ebook “Reality Blind”
https://read.realityblind.world/view/975731937/
Nate was a former Wall St. guy who had a come-to-Jesus moment WRT Peak Oil. He was, I believe, a graduate student (having left WS) or working on his Ph.D. back in the active days of The Oil Drum (TOD). The overall experience on TOD was a Ph.D. or two’s worth of knowledge over a breathtakingly wide swath of issues. Mind you, there was constant, stiff, disagreement in every realm of discussion, so not everyone came out with a legit Ph.D. Realizing where the synergies were from domain to domain would lead you to a broad and deep understanding of the world around you; not having such discernment would lead you to think we could burn all the coal there is and still not trigger dangerous Climate Change (Dave Rutledge, may he someday live that down) or that Peak Oil (PO) was more dangerous than Climate Change (Aleklett.) Or, closer to home, either we have decades to deal with the issues we face and must act incrementally bc politics or tech will save us with a few other things thrown in to appease the crazy alarmists (almost everybody who posts here.)
Nate’s Big Thing is that issue of “discounting the future,” which is a not-so-clear-to-a-six-year-old way of saying we don’t understand long-term risks. That is largely true, but, then, we buy insurance, so is that really the problem? I would argue the greater problem is people simply not being told in a straightforward manner what the risks are. E.g., it’s been a couple years now since a paper found a 55 chance of human extinction with BAU. Think about that. That’s:
* Dying every 20 times you get in your car, which for many Americans would be about once a week.
* Dying every 20 times you get on a plane. I’d be dead 1.5x by now. Many businessmen would be dead several times a year, world-class/pro athletes at least once a year, I’d guess.
* Dying several times a year in your bathroom.
Etc.
The real problem is, this has not been widely dispersed and discussed in any meaningful way. And I promise you that same research if done today would have a much higher probability. I put the probability of collapse in any scenario not heavy on simplification, or degrowth if one prefers, at 100%. If you have the depth and breadth of knowledge and awareness, that is not an alarmist number, it’s a cold, hard future fact. But how many both understand this conceptually but also have internalized and accepted it? A tiny percentage of humanity.
Nate gets very esoteric and psychological about it all, but it really comes down to simple things: Are the now nearly 8 billion humans (7,899,587,576 and counting as I write this) being told this? No. So, are they discounting the future or uninformed/misinformed? A risk-based analysis eliminates the need (not the usefulness) of analysis like Nate’s, a form which will not and does not resonate with everyone. Risk, however, is universally, intuitively understood once the parameters of the risk are understood. I offer you Squid Game, et al., as evidence of this. Running out of a fire. Buying insurance. Locks on doors.
We “get” risk, we just don’t always choose to believe it.
Risk is not about what will happen, but about what *can* happen. If you choose to support nuclear as a climate response, you are choosing to accept the very real, very likely, end of civilization, if not extinction, to be right. If you support a political/GND/Build Back Better/Economics-based climate response, you are choosing to accept the very real, very likely, end of civilization, if not extinction, to be right. THIS NEEDS TO BE SAID AND UNDERSTOOD. If those risks are openly and honestly accepted by humanity at large, so be it. I support egalitarianism aka true democracy, but if we are going to continue with Pied Pipering humanity into the abyss because of ignorance and denial, that is very not OK with me.
I am not denigrating, dimissing or in any way minimizing Nate’s approach. It’s the wavelength most of humanity seems to be on. I have a degree in psychology, three years of counseling experience and am a classroom counselor in that teaching has a heavy psychological/emotional/behavior management component. But we are in a place now where those considerations must be dealt with at the super-micro level: Be nice to your partner, hug your kids and be gently firm with them, don’t kick your dog, accept others as they are, cry about climate, cry about ecosystem destruction, share, hug, etc.,… in your small times, your personal moments, but in your public ones, deal with the realities directly and with backbone. If one can’t do that, they need to not be on the front lines of this conversation, this bow wave, this movement, this paradigm shift.
responses to Killian ..
thanks for the background info and perspective. it’s interesting how people like Nate (and ourselves) get to where they are.
– “I would argue the greater problem is people simply not being told in a straightforward manner what the risks are.”
I think that’s quite true.
the flip side is the maybe the people (scientists leaders media et al) not doing the “telling” are doing that because they are missing the critical insights presented by a Nate?
They might get the risks aspect but fail to present properly, instead focusing on a public call to shut down the FF companies and blame them for everything, as being the “cause” of the risks – which is not really true.
— “The real problem is, this has not been widely dispersed and discussed in any meaningful way”
Yes again agreed. Being mindful so many wouldn’t (can not) get it anyway. As per the internalized cognitive barriers as explained by Nate and others. But better discussions and explanations and public exposure could only help break down the barriers. A few more cheer leaders would be nice.
— “analysis like Nate’s, a form which will not and does not resonate with everyone.”
Yes I agree. It requires some effort and thinking on the part of the reader to see it all. Many can’t or are unable to do that. And won;t like his approach or style. Still the underlying info he is drawing upon is out there and valid (imo).
— “I offer you Squid Game, et al., as evidence of this.” … We “get” risk, we just don’t always choose to believe it.
99.99% died. :)
Meanwhile there’s the problem of people disagreeing and seeing different activities and solutions and degrees and speed of change as good, ok, or bad and wrong. Happens here and everywhere.
And there’s the power and scope of modern day digitized marketing spin and myth making that’s undermining so much that is good. (again always a value judgement)
Here is another example on the theme fwiw
1) This thread is about how to see the climate and ecological crisis it is, and why it is not been seen as a crisis.
3) Self-evidently the problem with the thinking style our culture has developed is compartmentalization, where we just look at the situation from one perspective, get lost in the detail, and lose sight of the big picture.
8) This is why there is a need to constantly look at the big picture, the summary of everything, not just the limited terms of reference those peddling false narratives want you to look at. You must always look at the actual territory, not the just the map of it being offered.
29) The overall problem and difficulty is this is a latent and dynamic obstacle to the thinking in our modern societies. The clearer some try to highlight the problem and the solution, the more those with power will try to muddy the waters.
30) It’s not just a case of pointing out the thinking error and all will be solved, because the harder we try, the more those who feel entitled to their extravagant lifestyles will prevaricate, equivocate and misdirect. They have the means and the power to misdirect discourse.
https://twitter.com/SteB777/status/1448279059679547398
What we have here imo is fundamentally an absence of good leadership in this day and age.
To be perfectly honest, I really do not know why things are the way they are or why people and groups in society and in different countries think and act the way they do about the climate crisis.
And while I and others, much wiser and knowledgeable than I, might ponder on these questions & offer up various observations, even a James Hansen now and then https://mailchi.mp/caa/september-temperature-update-cop-26 , where this is all heading is anyone’s guess. My honest appraisal is I don’t have a clue. But it sure does feel depressing.
The points you made are all germane, but in the end it comes down to complexity: How th everloving fuck do we get 8 billion people on the same page in this overwhelmingly complex, and thus fragmented, context? That is why I speak so much about what is universal: First Principles, risk assessment.
I see no other way to thread all these elements together.
The “leaders” spent their lives destroying their utility by exchanging the meanings of “real” and “metric”.
“Joe burned down the warehouse but it wasn’t a real loss since we have insurance”
WTF??
Watch your and others’ language. You’ll see how reality is almost dismissed. Who cares about anything real? It takes serious work to move a couple shovels of cheap dirt, but moving $10,000 in metric takes one click of a key. Moving the dirt pays ten cents. Moving the metric pays 10%.
So, you think the most capable folks are working on useful reality for 10¢ or pushing a useless metric for $1000?
“Screw reality, how does this action I’m about to take affect the electrons in some bank’s computer?”
And that’s how “productivity” can go up by a factor of four since the 70s while wages remain flat. “Productivity” is measured in “metrics” and that warehouse fire just increased GDP. Great job, Joe!
That other Nobel prize winner ….
A warning and a political-economic manifesto viewed with the eyes of science and of those who know the “understanding of complex systems” enough to win the Nobel.
That’s what it is the Italian physicist Giorgio Parisi actually delivered to the PreCop26 meeting of parliamentarians. Speaking in the Chamber of Deputies, the Nobel Prize in Physics 2021 has in fact marked: “Allow me to add an economic consideration. The gross domestic product of individual countries is the basis of political decisions, and the mission of governments seems to be to to increase GDP as much as possible, an objective that is in profound contrast with the arrest of climate change “.
Parisi said he wanted to make his own “some of the words that Robert Kennedy spoke on March 18, 1968 at the University of Kansas.: ‘Gross national product includes air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear the carnage on our highways. It includes special locks for our doors and prisons for people who break them. It includes the destruction of the redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder as a result of chaotic development… In short, it measures everything except what makes life worth living.’
“Gross national product is not a good measure of the economy. It captures the quantity but not the quality of growth.”. “Many different indices have been proposed – recalled Parisi – including the human development index and the sustainable economic well-being index”. But, he noted, “if gross national product remains the center of attention, our future will be grim. Politicians, journalists, economists who plan our future and monitor the progress that has been made, must use an index. that considers other aspects besides the gross national product “.
more on https://www.italy24news.com/local/216311.html
I have long appreciated Buhtans GDH, gross domestic happiness as much better yardstick.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_National_Happiness
But it will never catch on in the west, too stoopid selfish sanctimonious and so on.
““Allow me to add an economic consideration. The gross domestic product of individual countries is the basis of political decisions, and the mission of governments seems to be to to increase GDP as much as possible, an objective that is in profound contrast with the arrest of climate change “.”
Yup. You can’t get a sustainable outcome from a system that is completely opposite of sustainable.
Seems someone has said this before….? Can’t seem to remember who…
@Killian:
Oh, nonsense. Do a reailty check of your own.
The only nuclear power plant accident with fatalities off the site (Chernobyl) caused fewer deaths than the normal operation of a coal-fired plant of the same capacity would have. It is literally the safest energy humanity has harnessed, and that’s BEFORE counting the minuscule land-use impact it has. If we want to maintain civilization (which means not causing massive climate disruption), it is an essential part of any action plan.
Hr Poet
If you go for nuclear power, where I tend to agree on conditions, then you should resign on too many or too much more inventions and dubious or disputed entreprises. There are so many things a good engineer can do even with burchitis. I made a possible, quite dangerous but educative toy for myself and my grandchildren today. I will teach myself and them noiseless and smokeless and costless ballistics.
Dude. Don’t be foolish. I have never once in my entire life said nuclear power is going to cause the extinction of humanity. Now, do think for a fraction of a moment about what I have long talked about extinction in terms of.
Goodness…
Reality Check quotes someone: We (humans) are emotionally blind to long-term issues like
Richard: Long term??! LOL Humans suck at balancing any and all future gains as compared to what is most comfy right now, regardless of the pain our current action will bring in the immediate future. This ain’t non-typical:
“Never again”, says the dude who wakes up with his 3478th hangover in a row..
LOL so true that.
It said was by nate hagens in https://read.realityblind.world/view/975731937/
a big picture Holocene evolutionary time scale pov … unlikely to catch on but may help some people find a better clarity (?) cheers
(things r heating up in more ways than the climate? seems to be so. Much different than 5 years ago around when the SR15 came out. )
short video – activists reclaim the #TEDcountdown stage from Shell’s CEO – tears him a new a………
Kevin Anderson
It has come to this! A complete breakdown of trust. Whilst we may not agree with every word or action of the activists, it is clear where significant responsibility lies – and no expensive suit, polished speech, slick advertising or funding of the arts and academia can hide this.
Prof Julia Steinberger
I agree with every word of the activists here, actually.
Kevin Anderson
I’m sure many do, yet others will feel uncomfortable with the approach/language. Recognising such differences amongst kindred spirits is important. We shouldn’t have a uniform approach, or change our language,but we do need to recognise the value of different forms of engagement.
And for the record I was genuinely moved by Lauren’s strong language, directness & sincerity – it reminded me of just how lax we (the Scientist Academic groups) have been with the pedlars of misinformation & deception.
10:06 AM · Oct 16, 2021
https://twitter.com/KevinClimate/status/1449149817964404737
only fwiw, doesn’t really change anything going forward. Nothing new here except the emotional intensity appears to be rising and becoming more focused.
That video is kind of similar narrative (?) to the heightened commentary observations put out by AR6 lead author Dr Joëlle Gergis in The Guardian etc. and of course many others of late. But they are not the people making the decisions toward COP26 and the next one or the one after. They are apparently in most cases deaf dumb and blind. :)
But something may have shifted, albeit at a glacial pace?
Advert Made for Bolsanaro … crimes against nature are crimes against humanity.
https://twitter.com/ExtinctionR/status/1449174104389607424
I wonder if such a meme will ever catch on globally? Maybe too “extreme” at this point but accepted norms can sometimes change rapidly. For example look at #MeToo about sexual harassment in the workplace.
XR is seeking funders to create an bigger advertising campaign.
A COP must be coming up … the news and commentary is never-ending. Now being mindful that the USA, Canada and Australia are equal top dogs in Per Capita emissions today, with the Middle East and Russia not far behind, and all of these nations being major Fossil Fuel exporters one and all …. comes this latest missive:
Australia’s biggest industry association has called on the Morrison government to set a target of cutting the country’s greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 to join the global “mainstream” on the climate crisis.
Innes Willox, the chief executive of the Australian Industry Group, said the case for strong climate action had strengthened rapidly while the cost of cutting emissions had turned out to be lower than expected. The risks of climate change were becoming increasingly clear and serious, he said.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/oct/16/australias-biggest-industry-group-calls-on-morrison-government-to-halve-emissions-by-2030
see Willox’s call, in a comment piece for Guardian Australia
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/16/for-australia-the-road-to-prosperity-is-paved-with-green-intentions
This does not mean anything of substance has or will be changing. If Australia does sign up to the 2050 Paris 1.5C target that inself doesn;t mean anything chncages as far as Policy and Action.
Anyway, COP26 might make a difference or does it end up being as bad as what went before it? Political spin and prevarication. Thankfully soon it will be over, and it will be back to normal programming again, national economic Growth Growth Growth, tourism/airlines share prices booming again after Covid, I expect.
James Hansen latest fwiw
COP26 approaches. Has Boris Johnson figured out carbon-free electricity? Maybe the UK, after leading us in, can lead us out of the fossil era. September 2021 was the second warmest September, despite the La Nina. See September Update: https://mailchi.mp/caa/september-temperature-update-cop-26
Note Fig. 2. PER CAPITA charts
Left: fossil fuel emissions in 2018. Right: cumulative 1751-2018 emissions.
In both China and India are no where to be seen. That matters about who is most responsible for where we are right now. Going forward all are responsible to varying degrees. I wonder what the politicians and world leaders at COP26 will say and do about that? Same ol’same ol’ :)
Still working through this online book, Reality Blind by Nate Hagens.
part one from pg https://read.realityblind.world/view/975731937/124/
A few extracts for background ….
Cultural evolution generally proceeds without any conscious planning, just
as genetic evolution does, but nothing restricts a culture from evolving in a
rationally determined direction. The fact that the most change you humans
have made in recent times has been cultural, rather than through genome –
shifting, means that, apart from the shrinking-brain thing, you are not yet
physically restricted from successfully existing once more in smaller tribes
in sustainable ways. The Bottom Line: Human genomes have changed little
in the last 50k years, so humans have attained recent changes through
cultural evolution.
Groups don’t get smarter as they get larger; rather the opposite effect
occurs, particularly where there is a requirement for “fairness of
representation,” because the level of mental complexity which may be
parsed by a large group declines rapidly as the group size rises. Past a
certain point, the ability to consider and manipulate complex issues is lost
entirely, and the only thing which all group members can agree on are the
hard-wired feelings generated by their primitive gene agendas, played out in
a simulation of “fair process.”
Like a real amoeba ‘humanity’ engulfs and contains complexity without
understanding that complexity. It is not sentient, sapient, or conscious.
Indeed, unlike an individual human child with fabulously complex behavior,
its function as a simple energy seeking heat engine can be effectively
described using very simple equations. Our collective behavior, so far, is
like that of yeast replicating in a sealed bottle of grape juice, and there
is just only ever one way that ends.
Seen from space, it’s hard not to see the aggregate human amoeba;
it looks exactly like any other bacterial growth pattern. It may seem counter
intuitive that nearly any single member of the human race is more
competent than the species as a whole, but it ’s true.
You all assume that somewhere out of sight there’s a competent pilot
navigating the course of human events, or at least some conspiracy of
billionaires or Machiavellian supervillains with their hands on the wheel.
But the cockpit is empty. The human experiment is careening out of
control, and it’s only a matter of time before it slams into the solid limits
of which physical reality is composed. Even those humans given
high-status executive positions are systemically limited in what they
can do by hundreds of factors, because humans know not to trust one
another very far.
But this isn’t an inevitable feature of a conscious species. It’s possible for a
race to be sapient, and to let the smartest minds make the most important
decisions. Making this happen means learning to trust individuals with
autonomy, and that means being trustworthy yourself. I would trust any
member of my (alien) species to make decisions on behalf of my planet,
because we no longer fear one another, seek relative advantage, or feel
diminished by another’s good fortune. Once that happens, a very different sort
of society can emerge. Despite the human adage to the contrary, absolute
power only corrupts jerks adhering to the gene agenda. Once a species
passes beyond the “ubiquitous jerk” stage, the dynamic that keeps a
population as dumb as an amoeba can be transcended.
The Bottom Line: The human gene agenda, when multiplied by a
large population, creates the emergent property of a mindless
superorganism. We’re all passengers and there’s nobody driving the
bus.
part two @ The Moat Surrounding the Castle of Sustainable Futures
from https://read.realityblind.world/view/975731937/128/
In this Moat rests Denial, Supernormal Stimuli, Fairness, Status, Time Bias, Addiction, Cognitive Dissonance and Social Conformity. Some extracts …. to summarize this summary thus far:
Summary: So, what does this all mean? Why are your authors spending so
much time on the evolutionary origins of our behaviors?
We know we evolved: from simpler organisms to vertebrates, from small
mammals to hominids, from hominids to Homo sapiens. We know the
broad-brush strokes but are lacking many of the details.
And yet “the story is robust” without knowing all the specific details.
We know our ancestors lived in tribes of 50-150 members for tens of
thousands of years, and smaller “bands” for hundreds of thousands of
years before that, on the savannas of Africa. We don’t need “proof” of
which traits, behaviors and suites of genes would have been adaptive in
such a situation – all we need to understand is A) the likely living
arrangements of the bands/tribes, B) the fact that a whole lot of time
elapsed, and C) the mechanism(s) of natural selection. It is blatantly obvious
through this lens why certain behaviors now “shout loudly” in (almost) all
human brains: sexual jealousy, elation when winning some public contest
(physical or mental), high interest in salience/novel objects, intense
jockeying to move up the rungs on the status ladder in numerous
intertwined social groups, the ability to perceive what others believe and
then conforming to the same belief, fear of fast moving spiders and snakes,
etc. x1000.
What’s more, our rational brains, despite being “educated,” have quite a
hard time acknowledging such uncomfortable, but increasingly, obvious
facts. We have a plethora of active biases that make effective action on our
problems very difficult. We care overly much about the present, about what
our peers think, and about conforming to current cultural values and mores,
even if a wiser part of our brain is shouting that we ’re off base.
What’s more, our rational brains, despite being “educated,” have quite a
hard time acknowledging such uncomfortable, but increasingly, obvious
facts. We have a plethora of active biases that make effective action on our
problems very difficult. We care overly much about the present, about what
our peers think, and about conforming to current cultural values and mores,
even if a wiser part of our brain is shouting that we ’re off base.
It’s actually human nature to discount the knowledge and scholarship
of human nature.
For society, knowledge of whence we came informs why we are ill
equipped to recognize and respond to the challenges of exceeding our
limits. Addiction, steep discount rates, myriad cognitive biases,
“delusionality,” social conformity, etc. all combine to form a deep moat
surrounding the castle of sustainable futures.
Knowledge of evolved group and individual behavioral tendencies can
give sound insights into how people, demographics and whole
countries are likely to respond to events in coming years and decades.
Knowing our evolved psychology can help us make good predictions.
If we are to visualize what a sustainable (or more sustainable) society
might be, we need to know what makes us happy, content, miserable,
violent, etc. Sociology and psychology (and economics) must take their
lead from evolution/biology. Only a view informed by evolution can
help construct the demand side of the necessary “biophysical balance
sheet” or, more plainly, a Full Planet Human Constitution.
In the coming sections we will integrate ecology, energy, economy and our
environment. We’ll come back to how human behavior integrates into the
big picture, but this Human Behavior section should have given a clue that
human brains and behavior lie at the core of our modern predicament.
You don’t so much have energy problems, pollution problems, population
problems, inequality problems and ecology problems. Rather, you have a
brain problem from which the others are emergent.
These predilections and tendencies form a daunting moat around the
castle which represents such livable futures.
There’s a comet called the “gene agenda” which is on course to smash
your world and end your societies, but it’s not coming from space. Like most
cosmic disasters, its roots lie in the chance events of deep history. The
Bottom Line: Our brains are pre-programmed with evolutionary bias
and delusion which was formerly helpful and is now destructive.
(….a big call, but apparently solidly grounded in science. While climate science has rapidly advanced the last several decades so too have the cognitive sciences moved forward in leaps and bounds. It is precisely why Google et al, digital marketing and social media have been so successful, irresistible and addictive. Including why climate science denial has been so pernicious refusing to die and able to mutate like a Virus instead. )
From Jason Hickel Economic anthropologist
Most people don’t realize this, but the majority of high-income nations have already significantly exceeded their fair share of the carbon budget for 2 degrees. Their “zero by 2050” targets are therefore wildly inadequate. Here are the biggest overshooters:
#1 USA 7x bigger than #2 UK, then comes Germany, Canada, Russia & Australia, plus 16 others
https://twitter.com/jasonhickel/status/1449343995268714497/photo/1
Here it is in per capita terms, represented as the percentage of the 2C carbon budget that has been used up.
Top 5: Qatar, Luxemborg, UAE, Kuwait, the USA ….
https://twitter.com/jasonhickel/status/1449350646281478147/photo/1
In order to represent any modicum of fairness or justice, rich nations must reach zero as soon as is humanly possible, including by scaling down unnecessary forms of production (aka excess unnecessary consumption) so decarbonization can be accomplished more quickly.
Rich nations’ 2050 targets are tantamount to saying “We’ve already eaten more than our fair share of the pie, but will keep going for another 30 years, eating every one else’s share too, putting all life at risk.” Expecting the global South to go along with this is wild.
( normally that would be delusional and insane thinking, however the global South has no Power at COP meetings of the UNFCCC …. only the rich industrial nations do. )
from thread https://twitter.com/jasonhickel/status/1449343995268714497
—————————
Similar approach to impacts and responsibility using 350ppm as the yardstick
The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) includes the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities”. This principle has been widely used to determine differential national responsibilities for mitigation efforts.
But the principle of differentiated responsibilities can also be applied to allocating responsibility for climate change itself, and damages related to climate change, on the grounds that countries that have contributed more to global emissions are more responsible for related problems than those that have contributed less. The present analysis offers a novel method for doing so, in a manner that is consistent with the principles of planetary boundaries and equal access to atmospheric commons.
Findings
As of 2015, the USA was responsible for 40% of excess global CO2 emissions.
The European Union (EU-28) was responsible for 29%.
The G8 nations (the USA, EU-28, Russia, Japan, and Canada) were together responsible for 85%.
Countries classified by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change as Annex I nations (ie, most industrialised countries) were responsible for 90% of excess emissions.
The Global North was responsible for 92%
By contrast, most countries in the Global South were within their boundary fair shares, including India and China (although China will overshoot soon).
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(20)30196-0/fulltext
It really doesn’t matter how one slices it … the answer of who must be held more accountable for cleaning up their mess and repairing the Ecological Damage done remains the same. They are the global equivalent of Dead-Beat Dads.
Um. yup. The global 1~5% covers it pretty well.
https://youtu.be/iJunxkln578
A Just Have a Think episode on a baseload power supply, with wind, solar, and batteries based in Morocco supplying 8% of England’s(GB’s?) electricity reliably and in a pattern that matches use.
Appears to be 20% more expensive than England’s offshore wind. Ask EP whether 20% extra is a good deal for upgrading from “intermittent and out of sync” to “duck-shaped baseload”.
That’s better performance than nukes using “ruinables”.
Clarification: the Morocco to England thing is not up and running. It’s a megaproject that starts with building factories as opposed to placing orders.
@Reality Check:
To be scrupulously fair, “fair shares” need to be allocated based on population no later than 1950, perhaps as early as 1900. They also need to account for population exported to other countries, with the carbon shares moving with them. By such measures, Nigeria’s “fair share” would be allocated based on less than 38 million bodies, not today’s over 211 million.
Of course, the idea of “fair share” is a crime against the planet. ALL GHG emissions need to be going down, because we are ALREADY past limits for keeping devastating climate change at bay and a ton is a ton is a ton no matter where it gets dumped into the atmosphere. Most of the “under fair share” countries are in warm areas where energy for heating in winter is not a factor. They don’t need space heat just to survive the cold months. This is only one reason why “justice” is a meaningless concept here.
Allowing “underdeveloped” countries to increase their emissions under some distorted notion of “fairness and justice” is the path to planetary ecocide.
Ditto the notion of “redistribution”. To the extent that “redistributed” wealth gets used for consumption and consequent GHG emissions, the idea is a crime. Capital needs to be allocated to the fastest possible means of replacing GHG-emitting products and processes with those which do not emit GHGs. For instance, steam-reforming methane to hydrogen and CO2 using nuclear heat near the point of production and pumping the CO2 underground comes with a net increase in useful energy and would eliminate methane leaks along the rest of the pipeline system. This would be a climate trifecta win even though it would not be strictly “renewable”.
Excellent points, EP: Nice to see some logic and science on display.
Maybe you and E-Poet are simply naive and can’t help it.
The Economic Strategy of American Empire https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uiz934HVZjY
Northern powers realized that the shift toward economic sovereignty in the South threatened access to the cheap labour, raw materials and captive markets they had enjoyed during the colonial era. So they intervened, using the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to impose structural adjustment programmes across the region (with the exception of China and a few East Asian countries), forcing governments to dismantle tariffs and subsidies, cut wages, and privatize public assets.
https://newint.org/features/2021/08/09/money-ultimate-decolonizer-fjf
(winners write the history, create the memes, and the myths unfortunately)
You cannot separate the Growth imperative from the energy system from the financial system nor from the neo-colonialism. It’s foolish to believe all those poor people are poor because they’re all simply dumb and stupid or lazy and can’t work and cannot think straight or add up. Da Vinci himself said everything is connected. :)
Reality Check. It’s a bit of both. The western powers exploited the third world without mercy, not something to be proud of. (Read “confessions of an economic hit man” for an insight of just how little mercy there was).
But many third world countries have mentally lazy and corrupt leaders and populations. Religion and tribalism is part of the problem.
We should help these countries, but just handing over all our wealth to them would be STUPID.
“But many third world countries have mentally lazy and corrupt leaders and populations.”
Hardly a unique feature of the third world.
“Religion and tribalism is part of the problem.”
Ditto.
“We should help these countries, but just handing over all our wealth to them would be STUPID.”
AFAICT, that’s a pure strawman; I’ve never seen a proposal that came within orders of magnitude of doing such.
E-Poet — devastating climate change caused by a ton is a ton is a ton of CO2 is a first world problem and always has been, it is not caused by 50% of the less well off people who only consume 10% of total FF energy producing GHGs etc etc. It’s not caused by the miserable humans crossing the Mediterranean to Europe. It’s caused by the capitalist system itself and it’s insatiable demand for cheap energy.
‘History has given us tools for upending dominant narratives’
Colonial warfare was therefore a critical factor in Britain’s industrialization…. (so was Slavery and Jim Crow for the US, the East India Company and the Opium Wars – all those horrors built today’s capitalist over consuming world on steroids. Physically and Ideologically and Socially. ) “Modern imperialism promised progress,” writes Satia. “It was grounded in a vision of history understood as necessarily progress-oriented.”
https://scroll.in/article/998495/amitav-ghosh-on-priya-satias-books-history-has-given-us-tools-for-upending-dominant-narratives
It’s really hard to shake off dead beliefs. Even harder to be a square peg in a round hole.
for example: We refer to these
effects, in aggregate, as the consensus trance. We use it here to refer
to the near-hypnotic power of conforming with the behaviors and
beliefs of those around you. Because it is a trance, most people, most
of the time, are unaware that they are in a trance. And if you do
become aware, it is still very difficult to resist.
https://read.realityblind.world/view/975731937/92/
and https://read.realityblind.world/view/975731937/90/
Just something useful and vaguely related to what RTW was saying:
“Faster transitions to clean energy are also cheaper”
https://citizensclimatelobby.org/faster-transitions-to-clean-energy-are-also-cheaper/
I wont copy parts of the article. I’m so lazy. at times.
Only problem is that there are very few actual transitions to clean energy. There are essentially no transitions using renewables. When it’s cold out and the sun and wind aren’t working, you’re burning something for heat and power. Geothermal is not an option for most of the world. Gotta have that backup FF plant idling on standby, or that fish-killing hydro dam making that heat and power for you. According to Pacific Northwest environmental history, hydro isn’t “clean”, but is an ecosystem-destroying monster. They are busy today getting rid of as many dams as possible. Nukes could be a cleaner transition, but environmental wackos don’t want them.
Give it a rest KIA. I get tired of reading stupid stuff like that. All the renewables challenges can be fixed with storage, overbuilds and smart grids, and it wont bankrupt the place. Personally I have nothing against nuclear power, its clean and low carbon, but it takes too long to build and the accidents have scared the bejesus out of the public. You want nuclear power you have to somehow fix those things.
Yes, as you say all we need is storage, etc. Problem is, the amount required is impossible (no, pumped hydro isn’t going to giterdone) because it costs too much.
Trump reduced unnecessary gubmint regulations so a vaccine was created in 8 months, that under a DemonRAT would have taken 5-20 years. The same can be done with nukes. With safer designs available today, it shouldn’t take a whole lot longer than to build a wafer fab. Won’t happen under DemonRATs though.
“The public” that you mentioned believe that a man who says he is a woman IS a woman. You can’t fix that level of stupid.
Nonsense.
Ignoring the purely ranty bits:
1) Economic learning curve (the current price tag is not forever, and is rapidly falling now)
2) Price the alternative (technologically, in terms of economic impact, political acceptability, and human welfare)
I also think research papers like this and Dana Nuccitelli are way too pollyannish as a result of the very narrow framing of what they choose to look at and talk about.
When they talk about the exponential rate of LCOE for renewables they are are failing to plug in and highlight than renewables have not even been able to plug the gap of Economic growth the last 30 years. That FF energy use has continued to grow every year for the last 30 years bar 2020’s covid shutdown. Again it is growing rapidly, faster then renewables energy deployment use is increasing at this minute.
an example they say things like this instead —
Most energy-economy models have historically underestimated deployment rates for renewable energy technologies and overestimated their costs
Yes let’s discuss and argue about Models and past theoretical Projections being wrong instead of actually highlighting and discussing what was actually happening in the real world the last 30 years with renewable deployment shares and associated constraints limiting that expansion, and the systemic drivers against fundamental economic and energy use changes.
These things leave me really cold and even more depressed/distressed because they actually convince me of the impossibility of the mission they and others claim is definitely possible – faster and cheaper – at least theoretically, right? :(
“They”? The cherry picking narrow casting and pollyannish “glass is all but 90% full”, no matter what happens or has happened historically and what is realistically possible right now, tomorrow and coming years in the short term.
Forget what might be possible in 2050, what’s possible today is close to absolutely nothing at all relative to what is required to avert the guaranteed global destabilization, the extreme disasters, the long winded crises, and the many catastrophes already plugged in over the short term in the 2030s.
COP26 will most likely be a great celebration and back-slapping event … it’s what they do best. After that, it’s back to BAU getting airlines back in the air and boosting economic growth asap, while dragging one’s feet for as long as they can get away with it. An article by Dana and papers like this will disappear into the mists of time like the thousands of others going to the same cemetery.
My Kind regards,
Ms Debbie Downer
RC. Points well made. I’m optimistic about the technology and what it’s capable of, but somewhat pessimistic about speed of implementation because there’s no sense of real urgency and because of all the political and psychological roadblocks. Overall I aim for realistic optimism just to stay sane.. If I start sounding too much like polyannah let me know.
barriers, roadblocks and groundhog day. that’s it. My bad hair day, sorry. Even the resident clowns have been annoying.
What’s possible is < 300ppm within 20 years. That is *possible.* So long as we pretend that is not the case to please our preconceptions (nigel) then we are limiting ourselves to the "willing to do" and no emergency ever was solved solely by what was initially thought "willing to do."
WWII, if based on what people thought could or were willing to do would have been lost in 1941. But companies completely revamped to make things they had never made, people saved and recycled and did without on a scale only challenged by the Great Depression and grew 40% of their daily food in their gardens so the farmed stuff could feed the Allies at war.
What matters is what is *possible* and what is *necessary*, not what is politically palatable.
It is unintelligent and foolish to keep saying we must be "realistic" and worry about what is "politically OK" when it means a much higher risk of collapse and extinction. As SO MANY are now saying, we have this decade to set in motion not hitting over 2C (and, frankly, if the science says 2C is workable, then it almost certainly is way too hot given 1.2 is currently already changing everything.) But, hey, nigel will keep saying "Follow the Middle Way! Nothing else can be done! Can't be done, I tell you!" till he's the last one screaming it to the charred remains of society.
20 years from now the citizens climate lobby will still be calling for a Price on carbon in the USA and globally. :)
The DemoRats will still be calling out GOP Fake news and their climate science denialism, plus will be complaining about Facebook & Twitter and the Russians hijacking elections.
And someone far worse than Trump will be President and the GOP will still be bitching wildly about Evil Leftists, Cancel Culture, their hands all over women’s cervices, and repealing democrat laws that let post-op transexuals into ladies bathrooms …. and that’s if they’re lucky! :)
These are the geniuses in the room, the leaders of the free world, and the freedom loving voters who are going to solve Climate change and simultaneously change the entire global energy system?
Far out man, groovy. Not going to happen. No way.
Groundhog Day. (The movie)
Genosse Knowitall
Fishkilling hydrodams is not allways the truth. Much can be done with it , but not allways and everywhere.
For instance, we had Electric forelle from a very large Hydrodam uphill in Aurland because they must use strainers both from above and from below for the forellers and salmons not to go into and clog the turbines. That method can give a lot of electric forelle, really very good.
But they must breed and set out “Smolt”, that is fish breed up to a certain size, and set it out maybe both upstream and downstream to have that kind of forelle and other freshwater fishes.
Hydroelectric power is really some of the very best wherever that is possible, and the alternatives all rather ugly and scaring.
It’s hard to argue their basic premise and ideas (theoretically). I skimmed the working paper. One thing they don’t review is resource limits constraints (rare earths etc., dysfunctional destabilized world being increasingly impacted by extreme weather events or worse in 3rd world nations, and building trade wars) for the new kinds of technology they are saying are being deployed at scale to replace said FF energy systems. So there are many examples of where assuming ongoing cost decreases vs past rapid decline when only less than 10% of energy comes via renewables, is not necessarily viable. Because they are talking about the first world reducing FF energy by half by 2030 … meaning renewables has to expand by something like 500% in the next 9 years. That’s a lot of new mining and new manufacturing to do.
Let’s assume that’s doable by 2030 and FF energy consumption drops from 80% down to 60% overall, and then say China and India starts cutting their net emissions too.. The next step on this theoretical economic scenario is to globally cut the FF energy share from ~60% in 2030 down to close to 10% (or maybe 20% if there actually are via CCS CDR options then) in the following 15 to 25 years. That is a shit ton of fossil fuel energy to shut down and replace.
Now maybe things like Iron flow batteries could be a game changer and make batteries far easier and cheaper and faster to build with little resource constraints. Or other unexpected breakthroughs occur. However we don’t really know yet. Until it happens.
It is ALL based on Theory so far. That’s it. In the meantime nothing is being done regarding Economic Demand reduction at all. That paper also assumed that something major gets fixed in Agriculture and it becomes a net negative GHG emitter industry at the same time. It’s all quite insidious imv and dangerous (and doomed too fail).
Far far more dubious and dangerous than building hundreds of new nuclear reactors in the next 30 years.
But there is not many options than small groups of scientists and researchers here and there independently pushing out these narrowly framed research papers that never ever capture the whole bigger picture of everything at once.
It’s exactly how we got here from the 1980s when Sagan and Manabe (and the LtG people) were already saying the exact same things as are still being said today. It’s as if not one thing has changed except the dire urgency of the present is far worse now.
RC. Those are indeed all very real problems and challenges. Big ones. Although Mark Jacobsen has published studies finding there are enough resources based on known reserves. And sea water also contains trillions of tons of dissolved minerals. I think it’s going to have to be a combination of a new energy grid and reductions in consumption, but something more realistic than 90% numbers that get talked about. But even that will be hard because of all the political and psychological roadblocks in the way.
too right n. lets hope for some positive surprises along the way. at least its finally being treated universally as a genuine imminent issue of some consequence now .. bar the cuckoo nest brigade (god help us).
The real issue here is degrowth is unavoidable. The degrees of degrowth being talked about more and more are what I BOE’d ten years or more ago. That will become more true as we go forward. So, then, we have the issue of how much RE is needed in countries that already can afford to, and have, built out significant RE? That answer is, we already have enough. All additional RE should be built out in lesser-developed countries, and particularly those communities that have none or nearly none.
That is, the GND is idiocy given our context.
If human-caused warming wasn’t a concern what environmental disasters would leftists be howling about that were so severe that the entire world economy needed to be dismantled? I’m sure they’d think of some. They were howling about FFs long before AGW was a concern: FF production destroys the wilderness, causes oil spills, causes air pollution, disrupts the caribou migration, and were trying to shut down FF production over those issues.
Just recently leftists DID dismantle the entire world economy over a common cold virus. Now they can’t understand why the “vaccine” isn’t preventing that cold virus from spreading when scientists have failed for decades to create a common cold vaccine. You can’t make this stuff up!
Their goal seems to be “shut down the world economy” using any and all means necessary. Am I wrong? Is all of this just more Malthusianism?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism
More of THEM Evil “Leftists” howling in action https://twitter.com/patschi1896/status/1449657788934787074
Be afraid, be very very afraid……
Emma Goldman would be proud.
Let’s see now…let’s relive some previous shills’ statements…
Acid rain? Well dealing with acid rain will “kill the economy”, or well at least our present business model. So there is nothing to be done.
Water pollution? Dealing with water pollution will “kill the economy”, or well at least our present business model. So there is nothing to be done. Burning rivers is a cheap price for a good economy.
HFCs? Well dealing with HFCs will destroy all refrigeration in the world and will “kill the economy”, or well at least our present business model.
Cigarettes? Well dealing with tobacco will destroy all those jobs in the south. Agriculture will be wiped out. Or at least our present business models based on tobacco.
Heard it all before, killer. And it’s just as valid this time as all the others.
Are you wrong?
Yes, of course you are. It’s kind of what you do.
More stupid, ignorant stuff. Vaccinated people who are exposed to covid and other viruses sometimes still catch the virus, and sometimes pass it on, but the vaccinations stop people getting serious symptoms. The vast majority of people in hospital and dying from covid are unvaccinated MORONS. Most of them seem to vote republican. Why am I not remotely surprised?
Yes. And “breakthrough” infections are 5000 times less likely. So yeah, take 5000 vaccinated people and expose them. ONE ancient lady or lazy couch potato or immunodifferent person will get sniffles and might pass the virus on…
The Horror, eh?
Note that adding a booster or a second vaccine type (I did both, been jabbed 5 times) will almost assuredly drop that one in 5000 to “lottery ticket” odds.
Mr. KIA: “Just recently leftists DID dismantle the entire world economy over a common cold virus.”
Last I saw, the common cold does not normally kill half a million people a year. Jesus wept! You are stupid.
Asterisk: ‘half a million people a year’ would be just in the US.
For the entire pandemic, the reported global total as of this morning is, per Worldometers, 4,931,717 dead.
Jesus indeed wept.
We can add virology to those sciences killed is clueless about.
FYI, killed, coronaviruses are a different viral order entirely. Also one is an enveloped virus while the other is nonenveloped. I’ll leave you to learn which is which.
Most common virus for colds:
Realm: Riboviria
Kingdom: Orthornavirae
Phylum: Pisuviricota
Class: Pisoniviricetes
Order: Picornavirales
Family: Picornaviridae
COVID virus:
Realm: Riboviria
Kingdom: Orthornavirae
Phylum: Pisuviricota
Class: Pisoniviricetes
Order: Nidovirales
Family: Coronaviridae
Subfamily: Orthocoronavirinae
That would make the common cold and COVID viruses every bit as closely related taxonomically as, say, Order Cetacea (whales and purpoises) and Order Chiroptera (bats) in mammals.
Hr. Ladbury (& Mr KIA)
I am in the high risk group for 3 reasons allready, and my doctor was very eager to have me vaccinated, so I have had many reasons to think it over.
What seems to be special and true is that the Coronavirus Covid 19 is a special variety of what is known as “common cold” allthough not a quite common cold.
As for mortality I have also tried to see it proportionally to other epidemic cold and flue diseases that come and go. What seems to be special is that it kills the elderlies and take the young and youngsters rather in a very mild way. So a factor may be that there are too many old people in the world today. And what really seem to cause alarm is that today, they also go to hospitals that are being clogged.
With a “normal” life expectance of hardly over 50-60 as it was until recently, it might not have been even mentioned in the historybooks of Pests.
KIing Donald Grozny did think so and was sent to intensive care for it.
Tuberculosis was also a severe mankiller of a lounge- disease, and what I could ask around, the Corona is hardly the killer. What kills is the secondary bacterial infections, pnevmonias and sepsis, Streptococcs, my doctor said.
But the good thing of it, as far as I can see, is that so many people have prayed to God on their knees that he shall set a stop to Kapitalism, consumerism and mass- tourism.
Thus God heard our prayers and sent Covid 19.
Another quite good thing, but not everywhere, is that some nations and societies could show quite high diciplin when told so by qualified authorities, whict is a positive signal also to the treatment of AGW. I have prepared for it all my life and could thrive quite well under the quarantaine- restrictions. Cooperation on social level and between the generations could be tried out, shown, and trained.
It showed us also who can and may orientate and adapt, and who deny and fight the cures. And that denialism suffered more. It did betray populism and the Republican war on science.
All in all, I liked it.
I think you have a few misconceptions about the novel coronavirus. First, it is nothing like a cold or flu virus. Second, while the early waves of coronavirus showed much higher mortality among the elderly, the young did not avoid serious consequences. Long Covid and permanent damage damage to kidneys, lungs and the brain are quite real, and they will have consequences long after the pandemic recedes. And the delta variant, while still tougher on us old farts, has killed off a lot of young people as well. While delta is the dominant variant now and probably for the foreseeable future, the virus could easily have much more severe variants to come. That is why vaccination is so important–every person who gets sick is a Petri dish breeding new variants.
And while the development of safe, effective vaccines in record time is surely a huge accomplishment, the crisis has revealed that about 20-30% of humans are batshit crazy. It appears that these 20-30% are utterly incapable of understanding the concept of a common good or that not all games are zero-sum. That is sufficient to derail any mitigation efforts–and indeed the past 40 years of climate wars have shown that. What the COVID crisis shows is that even if the solutions are available and free, there will be a substantial minority who will reject them out of sheer bloodymindedness. Our species is fucked.
If not quite yet, it is certainly on the brink.
@ R.Ladbury
You end up and conclude with you presumption I think. “Our species is fucked!”
I go through it with other analytical methods learni9ngs and facultary ancher points. That means, I have other premises to go out from and to see it, not that I am misconsceived or that this is misconsceived.-
Your statement : “Nothing like as cold or flu virus” does entail that you cannot or will not see virological similarities that are rather obvious to me, and that I am going out from in my discussi9on of it, that may be more autentic and fruitful.
Zoonoses and microbes that mutate in a given substrate or reservoir and thus swuddenly can cross the species barriers is not new at all.
And the learnings of Louis Pasteur, Robert Koch, and Friedrich Löffler are not obsolete at all on how to deal with patogene microbes.
Political and social differencier between the nations seems to play a major difference to how fast it spreads and how successfully it also could be fought, That means, systems and nations and people in the world are quite far from being equally “fucked” in your sense..
If you got the Trump shot (I did) why do you care if someone else didn’t get it? Counting those who got COVID plus those who got the shot, we are way over what they told us we’d need for herd immunity. Why the hysteria over the few who didn’t get the shot?
https://brandnewtube.com/watch/ted-nugent-talks-to-the-jabbed-sheep-in-their-native-language_WemXR1zJKUyiEDO.html
Who would trust this guy:
https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/fauci-funded-cruel-puppy-experiments-where-sand-flies-eat-them-alive-vocal-cords-severed
If human-caused warming wasn’t a concern what environmental disasters would leftists be howling about that were so severe that the entire world economy needed to be dismantled?
Well, let me see what your Straw Man/Red Herring deserves: Nonsense.
You see, before the last few years, the vast majority of people were not calling for any significant change. Even now, only a tiny minority of us are asking for systemic change, even among scientists and activists. Most think greenwashed electric boogaloo Capitalism will solve everything. So, the correct answer is, nothing is what they would be howling about and we know this because… they haven’t been and the vast majority continue not to.
“If human-caused warming wasn’t a concern what environmental disasters would leftists be howling about”
Oh, like that leftist Pentagon and Department of Defense who have made it clear they consider it a security risk and have taken action at our naval ports to raise piers to address sea level rise. Yeah, busted again junior. Run along to your trumpie rally now. Don’t forget your white sheet.
From Zero Hour UK
Four world-leading scientists on why we must tackle the climate and nature emergencies together:
clear short 2 min video https://twitter.com/CEEbill_NOW/status/1450159337410908164
and
Leading climate scientist @KevinClimate on committing to the carbon budget for 1.5°C. and breaking them down to individual countries. Reducing emissions by 15% every year per year, or 80% by 2030. That’s what’s required by big emitters to meet the 1.5C Paris commitments.
Short clear video https://twitter.com/CEEbill_NOW/status/1450404567309602818
Only 8 years left before the global Carbon Budget is blown. The UK example means on current emission levels it has only 2.5 to 4 years left in their Carbon Budget. Clearly if this does not happen, and that’s always been unlikely, remaining under +1.5C goal is unachievable. making the other goal of Net Zero emissions by 2050 irrelevant and meaningless.
OK well that’s what I figured a while ago and confirmed when this was written up in August. https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/08/a-deep-dive-into-the-ipccs-updated-carbon-budget-numbers/ So no surprises really. The song remains the same. Cheers and all the best
Four world-leading scientists on why we must tackle the climate and nature emergencies together:
clear short 2 min video
So nice for them to (finally) notice. Maybe someone will listen to them – even though even they don’t quite “get it.”
fyi Kevin Anderson’s latest paper now available on open access
Three Decades of Climate Mitigation: Why Haven’t We Bent the Global Emissions Curve?
Isak Stoddard, Kevin Anderson et al
Annual Review of Environment and Resources
Abstract
Despite three decades of political efforts and a wealth of research on the causes and catastrophic impacts of climate change, global carbon dioxide emissions have continued to rise and are 60% higher today than they were in 1990. Exploring this rise through nine thematic lenses—covering issues of climate governance, the fossil fuel industry, geopolitics, economics, mitigation modeling, energy systems, inequity, lifestyles, and social imaginaries—draws out multifaceted reasons for our collective failure to bend the global emissions curve. However, a common thread that emerges across the reviewed literature is the central role of power, manifest in many forms, from a dogmatic political-economic hegemony and influential vested interests to narrow techno-economic mindsets and ideologies of control.
and 7. CONCLUSION
This article has demonstrated that, while the reasons for 30 years of failure to bend the global emissions curve are multifaceted, a common and strong thread is woven through them all. In various guises and to differing degrees, the centralization of power and the privileges that accompany it have coalesced around a particular worldview. Through recent decades, the central tenets of this worldview have evolved into a wider global Zeitgeist whereby development and progress are reduced to economic growth and defined by increasingly narrow financial metrics and indices. Coincident with this financial reductionism and economic characterization of nations and societies has been a growing recognition that the “system” externalities are set to undermine the very tenets of the system. Thus far, however, the power and inertia of the existing system have been sufficient to give the impression of ongoing control. The challenges are “recognized” and “internalized,” and through promised technical futures that are carefully costed in elaborate models, the existing power structures remain unchallenged.
However, even if people can, at least temporarily, be steered to ignore physical reality, the same is not true of the natural systems on which human societies ultimately depend. In 2021, there are early signs that elements within society are beginning to ask fundamental questions about the appropriateness of the dominant development paradigm, including its response to the climate crisis.
https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev-environ-012220-011104
The review and findings sound more like an Obituary or a Coroners report me.
As I said, the rich and powerful are not going to go quietly into that dark night. Their principles and patterns are diametrically opposed to a sustainable aka regenerative society.
Ipso facto: Stop waiting for Superman.
PS KA conclusion includes:
” In a real sense, a critical tipping point has emerged. Whatever direction is chosen, the future will be a radical departure from the present. Societies may decide to instigate rapid and radical changes in their emissions at rates and in ways incompatible with the Zeitgeist, or climate change will impose sufficiently chaotic impacts that are also beyond the stability of the Zeitgeist. Within both of these futures, the existing power structures and paradigm associated with the Davos cluster are simply unfit for purpose.”
More simply, complexity is a problem. Complexity + Chaos is much bigger problem.
Go ahead, build more shit….
The “leaders” spent their lives destroying their utility by exchanging the meanings of “real” and “metric”.
“Joe burned down the warehouse but it wasn’t a real loss since we have insurance”
WTF??
Watch your and others’ language. You’ll see how reality is almost dismissed. Who cares about anything real? It takes serious work to move a couple shovels of cheap dirt, but moving $10,000 in metric takes one click of a key. Moving the dirt pays ten cents. Moving the metric pays 10%.
So, you think the most capable folks are working on useful reality for 10¢ or pushing a useless metric for $1000?
“Screw reality, how does this action I’m about to take affect the electrons in some bank’s computer?”
And that’s how “productivity” can go up by a factor of four since the 70s while wages remain flat. “Productivity” is measured in “metrics” and that warehouse fire just increased GDP. Great job, Joe!
Yep. I think there is a huge underestimation of the massive build-outs necessary to create the Electric Boogaloo Future so many are dead set on having.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/10/13/electric-vehicles-grid-upgrade/?fbclid=IwAR1fk23GvEhGaW0NitTVFo4D1uwJA3cP2DlvKf6LyvzUbXq_MofKq2eIdS8
Plug-in cars are the future. The grid isn’t ready.
…America’s electric grid will be sorely challenged by the need to deliver clean power to those cars. Today, though, it barely functions in times of ordinary stress, and fails altogether too often for comfort, as widespread blackouts in California, Texas, Louisiana and elsewhere have shown.
“We got to talk about the grid,” said Gil Quiniones, head of a state agency called the New York Power Authority. “Otherwise we’ll be caught flat-footed.”
By 2030, according to one study, the nation will need to invest as much as $125 billion in the grid to allow it to handle electric vehicles. The current infrastructure bill before Congress puts about $5 billion toward transmission line construction and upgrades.
By 2050, the state projects, electric cars, trucks and buses will use 14 percent of New York’s total output. That’s equivalent to half of all the electricity used in New York City in 2019 — so it’s like powering a new city of four million people. Overall demand could grow by as much as 50 percent.
extra info on
Three Decades of Climate Mitigation: Why Haven’t We Bent the Global Emissions Curve?
https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev-environ-012220-011104
The researchers look at the past three decades of climate inaction and planetary destruction through nine “thematic lenses”: each chapter, each lens, written by experts in the respective field invited by the lead authors. They don’t only look at infrastructures, path dependencies, vested interests, the economic system or ideologies, psychological barriers, lifestyles or politics, science and economics – they looked at it all together.
Summary thread “probably the most comprehensive analysis of why we are not making progress on the climate crisis. Read it.” https://twitter.com/ManuelGrebe/status/1450566236761374721
Professor Kevin Anderson: “To hell in a hand cart” interview about the paper audio video
“Most climate scenarios rely on non-existing technologies on a planetary scale”
https://genn.cc/blog/professor-kevin-anderson-to-hell-in-a-hand-cart/
And on the just released UK Policy paper 19 October 2021
Net Zero Strategy: Build Back Greener
This strategy sets out policies and proposals for decarbonising all sectors of the UK economy to meet our net zero target by 2050.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/net-zero-strategy
Guardian – UK’s net zero plan falls short on ambition and funding, say critics
The Treasury also warned, separately, that taxes might need to rise to support the move, as the £30bn a year in tax revenues from fossil fuel duty would decline rapidly.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/19/uk-government-reveals-net-zero-plan-create-jobs
KA – “The climate, will see through this, responding as it always does to emissions rather than slick presentations, accountancy scams and half-baked strategies.”
Examples of the growing incongruity over Net Zero keep on coming
Incongruous – actions that were inconsistent with their professed principles.
UNEP 2021 Production Gap Report
20 October 2021
The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) today published its annual Production Gap Report, which warned that despite increased climate ambitions and net-zero commitments from a growing number of leading economies, governments still plan to produce more than double the amount of fossil fuels in 2030 than what would be consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5C.
The Production Gap Report — first launched in 2019 — tracks the discrepancy between governments’ planned fossil fuel production and global production levels consistent with limiting warming to 1.5°C or 2°C. The third edition of the report concludes that despite the impact of the coronavirus pandemic the fossil fuel ‘production gap’ remains largely unchanged.
UNEP said that governments are collectively projecting an increase in global oil and gas production over the next 20 years, and only a modest decrease in coal production. “Taken together, their plans and projections see global, total fossil fuel production increasing out to at least 2040, creating an ever-widening production gap,” UNEP said.
The report also tracks how governments worldwide are supporting fossil fuel production through their policies, investments, and other measures, as well as how some are beginning to discuss and enact policies towards a managed and equitable transition away from fossil fuel production.
This year’s report features individual country profiles for 15 major fossil fuel-producing countries and a special chapter on the role of transparency in helping to address the production gap.
https://www.unep.org/resources/report/2021-production-gap-report
Report Summary of Key Findings
https://productiongap.org/2021report/
Jump to Global Fossil Fuel Production Gap visual graph
https://i0.wp.com/productiongap.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Figure-ES-1_and_2-1-1.jpg?w=935&ssl=1
New open access research paper … highlights the urgent need to increase ambition contained in nationally determined contributions (NDCs) for 2030, to get the world on track to deliver 1.5°C and to hedge against an uncertain future CDR potential.
The policy implications of an uncertain carbon dioxide removal potential
Neil Grant et al 2021.09
Experts are surveyed on the feasible CDR potential from BECCS, DACCS, and afforestation
Results highlight a potentially large but highly uncertain CDR potential
Reducing reliance on uncertain CDR requires, in modeled scenarios, an additional 10 GtCO2e of emissions reductions by 2030. This considerable increase in global ambition is not captured by deterministic scenarios, which fail to account for uncertainty in the feasible CDR potential. Conventional estimates of the emissions gap between current NDCs and Paris-compliant scenarios in 2030 may therefore need to be revised upward, with the benchmark for Paris-compliant NDCs correspondingly higher. The gulf between current NDC targets for 2030 and robust climate policy may be even larger than currently thought. This further emphasizes the need for rapid and transformative action to cut emissions in the 2020s.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2542435121004323?dgcid=author
The policy implications of an uncertain carbon dioxide removal potential
Author thread https://twitter.com/_neil_grant/status/1450841881378762756
and in 28 June 2021 – Guest post: Emissions should fall ‘twice as fast’ in case negative emissions fail
https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-emissions-should-fall-twice-as-fast-in-case-negative-emissions-fail
(rhetorically) Wondering are the many new papers like this confirming my own prior thinking caution/fears and conclusions about the Net Zero project, output of AR6 and ‘flaky’ Carbon Budgets, plus CCS were likely reasonable & correct, OR are these many papers/reports selectively confirming my own ideological opinionated Bias? As in it’s hard for a fish to tell how wet the water is.
Whatever the case is I hope at least some of the material shared the last few months has been helpful and useful now and then to some visitors here.
@Reality Check:
Do you realize that I was Nate’s co-blogger for years, and that I’ve been bucking the “consensus trance” for roughly 4 decades? (I’m only up to page 61 in “Reality Blind” at the moment, I’m not up to that part yet.)
I’m bucking the “environmentalist” consensus trance as much as the denialist one. I was an ecomodernist decades before anyone coined the term. I have run the numbers on human energy consumption and demands. I realize that realpolitik comes before the environment in most (if not all) political decisions; humans will never sacrifice present survival needs to save the future. “Environmentalist” Germany is burning lignite to save itself from its insane decision to eliminate fission power, for Christ’s sake.
The ONLY way to save humanity AND the environment is to supply huge amounts of energy on demand WITHOUT greenhouse gas emissions. The ONLY way.
There is exactly ONE proven way to do that, and that is nuclear fission. Fusion is 20 years away… and has been since the 1950’s. It is decades past time to act on the imperative (32 years since the formation of the IPCC) and we need to get moving NOW. We really needed to get moving in (or before) 1989, but that’s water under the bridge. Regardless, we have no time to waste.
Doing this on a firm timeline requires out-of-the-box thinking. I happen to be good at this, as I am not constrained by the consensus trance. When I learned about pre-stressed cast iron pressure vessels, I realized that they could be a key element in a breakout technology development which could enable a rapid shift away from fossil-fired energy. They could be the enabler of reduction of GHG emissions by over 10% per year. I have tried to explain this to you dogmatists. You are still resisting.
Stop emoting. Start thinking… if you can. If you can’t, STFU.
If you are frustrated that’s understandable but that’s no justification to strike out at me or blame me because of it.
Kevin Anderson @KevinClimate Oct 20
The @bbcr4today discussion on climate change with @amolrajan & @BBCJustinR misses the key issue of the imbalance in responsibility for emissions. 50% of CO2 arises from the activities for just 10% of the population. Worse still the top 1% (drive double the CO2 emissions) of the bottom 50% of the population!
For most of the population major cuts in CO2 will be via structural change across the energy system ( like big picture shifts from FF to Renewable supply options). For us high emitters it will also require profound changes in our (higher consumption) lifestyles – hence our reluctance to even mention this in the discussions.
If the top 10% of emitters were required to cut their carbon footprint to the same level as the EU average, that alone would deliver around a 1/3 cut in global CO2. In a climate emergency policies could be driving such cuts almost overnight.
https://twitter.com/KevinClimate/status/1450726147734528000
I agree with him that looking at addressing the Demand side for very high emitters is a good idea, in theory. A problem here is implementing Regulations and Laws that do not apply universally. I can’t see how they would be implemented on a specific group of people versus all others. Except using a high punitive tax rates to make high end activities and purchases extremely expensive. So I can’t see how this would fly.,. or be implemented.
The other problem here is that KA doesn’t mention nor quantify the social impacts of a carbon footprint cut to the same level as the EU average – especially the businesses (hospitality, tourism, aviation, retail, construction, landscaping, and so on) that could go bankrupt, and the jobs that would be lost right across society. The flow-on effect upon Govt budgets of this, and the added loss of FF mining taxes/royalties, and the loss of business / personal income taxes as well.
I’ve not heard how Govts and businesses are supposed to manage such “emergency” policies being implemented. But at least in this exercise KA pinpoints the primary drivers of higher GHG emissions and who is most responsible for generating them. One could call this the “low hanging fruit” part of the equation. But right now is not part of any solution to drive down emissions in the real world.
————————
Transition to Nowhere
California’s switch to a primarily solar and wind-powered grid is a dead end.
https://www.city-journal.org/california-switch-to-primarily-solar-and-wind-powered-grid-is-dead-end
I do not agree with the details/statements/costings being made in this ‘biased’ article with all the emotive trigger words deployed. But I do agree with the overall thrust of what it is questioning regarding electrical grid systems under high renewable shares at scale and the question of the scale of battery storage required and the related total costs and resource limits.
I do accept possible leaps in tech, eg maybe via iron flow batteries, more powerful and much cheaper in theory; and H2 vehicles would be a game changer in battery needs longer term. … but such possibilities can’t erase the rational questioning of how to make all this Grid supply happen at a reasonable cost from today onward and remain stable/reliable. I get most renewables are cheaper per kwh in many situations but I still seriously doubt the bigger grid scale picture of next to zero coal/gas fired back up generation, the need for overbuilding supply plus storage backup in the next 30 years… while all indicators are that energy demand continues to rise out to 2050.
Has anyone done a thorough national scale analysis of actually building and operating a fully renewable non-ghg electricity grid with sufficient back storage to match today’s supply performance? And what that would cost and is the mineral resources available to building such a things? I realize technology will keep shifting in the future but what is the scale of the goal needing to filled?
————————————-
New working Paper out
Flatten-the-curve: Why total carbon emissions matter much more than ‘date of zero’
September 21, 2021 Centre for Social and Economic Progress India
A number of countries have announced plans to reach “net-zero” by 2050 or thereabouts. There are several problems with these announcements.
https://csep.org/working-paper/flatten-the-curve-why-total-carbon-emissions-matter-much-more-than-date-of-zero/
report https://csep.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Flatten-the-curve_F.pdf
see Figure 1: Global 2019 fossil CO2 emissions and population stacked by country and ordered by declining per capita emissions
see A simplified framework for climate change boils down to five fundamental issues:
1. Carbon space – What is the remaining global budget for carbon (or CO2 equivalent if we consider
all greenhouse gases)?
2. Apportionment – What is a ‘fair’ apportionment of the budget across countries?
3. Action plans – What should each country be doing? Can targets be aspirational, or must they only
be binding obligations?
4. Support mechanisms – Do some countries need support (technical, financial, etc.) to achieve their
plans? Should the obligation to support be linked to historical over-emission or gross domestic
product (GDP) measures? Can action plans be conditional on support?
5. Implications/enforcement – What happens if a country fails to meet its targets? What happens if a
country’s action plans don’t align with apportionment? What happens if support doesn’t materialize?
I think this is good report because it asks questions about and focuses on things I have thought most relevant.
I tend to see the three things shared here are very much interrelated to each other. That Paris is really only an ambition and that no one really knows how to achieve the end result. Even the best positioned nations have no chance of meeting their 2030 goals to be inline with net zero 2050 remaining under 1.5C or even 2C.
Comprehending the complexities and nuances of climate change for the average person is fairly hard. But the world and all it’s experts trying to solve the problem seems so much more complex and difficult it’s next to impossible. I need to find a better hobby. I am of no help at all.
Reality Check.
Mark Jacobson has done published research on the feasibility and costs of a totally renewable electricity system based on wind, solar, hydro and geothermal mainly, with some storage, but a big reliance on over building and smart grids. Here is one of his key studies:
https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/CountriesWWS.pdf
Its a rather long highly detailed study. His wikipedia page gives a brief introduction and might be worth scanning first. . I’ve only read parts of the study, and I’m not saying I agree with all aspects of his conclusions but its a very useful, detailed and comprehensive study. Its been criticised, he’s responded with other studies etc, etc easily enough googled.
I think Jacobson is right in principle. A totally wind and solar power grid with storage (and no gas backup etc) is obviously feasible and it comes down to costs. That is where it gets very contentious because you need either a big overbuild or tons of storage or some combination.
It appears you can get to an 80% renewables grid at reasonably acceptable costs but getting rid of all gas fired backup starts to add costs. However an 80% renewables grid would be better than what we are currently doing regarding emissions.
Nuclear power would be a useful option with known costs because its been done at reasonable scale but it faces big hurdles in places like America.
Thank you.
(sidebar nuke climate news)
IAEA takes the case for nuclear to COP26
The Nuclear Energy for a Net Zero World report is IAEA’s attempt to make the case for the investment and policy that would enable nuclear to make a full contribution to global clean energy. It is supported by national statements from Canada, China, Finland, France, Japan, Poland, Russia, the UK and the USA.
The report first underlines the contribution of nuclear energy to date before expanding on how nuclear can replace fossil fuels, and in particular coal, for power generation as well as heating. One chapter is focused on nuclear energy’s ability to support further achievements by fast-growing renewables like wind and solar and how they can work together to add hydrogen as a clean liquid fuel.
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/IAEA-takes-the-case-for-nuclear-to-COP26
report https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/21/10/nuclear-energy-for-a-net-zero-world.pdf
China’s first of a kind demonstration HTR-PM reactor achieves first criticality
GenIV meltdown proof safe, the world’s first commercial pebble-bed modular high-temperature gas-cooled reactor. The HTR-PM has the advantages of inherent safety, a high equipment localisation rate, modular design and adaptation to small and medium-sized power grids. It also has broad range of potential commercial applications, including power generation, cogeneration of heat and power, and high-temperature process heat applications. A further 18 such HTR-PM units are proposed for the Shidaowan site.
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Chinas-HTR-PM-reactor-achieves-first-criticality
HTR-PM process heat applications include industrial uses, H2 production from water, and nuclear waste reprocessing; to be grid-connected power generation in late 2021; it’s 3-4 years overdue construction began in 2012. The first two 250-MWt High-Temperature Reactor-Pebble-bed Modules (HTR-PM) together drive a steam turbine generating 200 MWe. An updated larger power plant, HTR-PM600, is planned with a capacity of 600 MWe using six HTR-PM reactor units.
France makes nuclear offer to Poland
France’s EDF has made an offer to the Polish government to build as many as six EPR units. A project of that size would decarbonise 40% of the country’s electricity and avoid up to 55 million tons of CO2 per year, EDF said. The “non-binding preliminary offer” represents a range of options for Poland. It details the engineering, procurement and construction that would be needed for four to six EPR units, at either two or three sites. The EPR units would produce 1650 MWe each.
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/France-makes-nuclear-offer-to-Poland
by Greta Thunberg
There are no real climate leaders yet – who will step up at Cop26?
Like other rich nations, the UK is more talk than action on the climate crisis. Something needs to change in Glasgow; no more “decades of blah, blah, blah”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/21/climate-leaders-cop26-uk-climate-crisis-glasgow
Greta Thunberg accuses world leaders of being in denial over climate crisis
Activist says countries such as UK, US and China use ‘creative carbon accounting’ to augment green credentials
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/21/greta-thunberg-accuses-world-leaders-of-being-in-denial-over-climate-crisis
Greta Thunberg –
There are no real climate leaders yet
Yes, there are. She hasn’t met them. She’s another of those that thinks Waiting for Superperson, and yelling at gov’ts for not being that, is the best use of their time.
New research study: “Combined solar power and storage as cost-competitive and grid-compatible supply for China’s future carbon-neutral electricity system.”
https://www.pnas.org/content/118/42/e2103471118
I’m not suggesting solar power is a get out of jail free card, or without problems. It’s just an interesting study that is free to access, and seems well grounded without too much hype.
That’s encouraging. if i understand it correctly, hypothetically using their models PV solar with lithium battery storage in 2060 can supply about 50% of china’s electricity demand at a kwh price equiv to coal power generators.
The (very) likely end of civilization is encouraging?
Just an interesting factoid or two. There are many types of common cold and apparently about 30% are coronaviruses, although not the same type as covid. Read some commentary and cant find it now, but it suggested the common cold started off as a virus that moved from birds to humans, and was originally quite a deadly coronavirus, that lost its potency slowly over time.
Energy shortages and high energy costs (caused by the failure of renewables to deliver needed energy and by failed Biden natural gas policies) expected to cause big problems around the world this winter:
https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-lifestyle-business-russia-health-70b97e36da53f62eba588b44f2b394bc
KIAs summary of the link is dishonest.. I would call it lies by omission. Like Piotr said on the UV thread KIA has no ethics. For example there is nothing in the link about Bidens gas policies. The link discusses MANY reasons for the energy shortages and consequent high energy costs, including lack of wind but also supplies coming out of Russia, a cold winter, a surge in demand post pandemic. These are conveniently omitted from Kia’s account.
In a way its a perfect storm of circumstances. The article also suggests the solution is a renewables grid that doesn’t rely on gas. Obviously it would need sufficient storage or overbuild to deal with lack of wind. Fossil fuels will run out anyway. A new energy system is unavoidable. We are just being forced into the transition ahead of time.
Incorrect. The nat gas problem in Europe is caused, at least in part, because Bidet allowed the Rooskies to take over supplying Europe with NG instead of the USA. They will price gouge them, if not cut them off completely. Thus, Bidet’s policies have at least made the NG problem worse if not created it entirely.
Mr.Knowitall:
I live here and we deliver hydroelectric and gas the best we can. The USA could hardly deliver LNG to Europe, not even near to the quanta that are needed.
The “renewables” grow the very best they can, but what rather explains more is that coal- heated power and nuclear is built down faster than renewables can replace it. Biden has hardly any responsibility for this at all. It is not in his power.
I has allways meantb that the best that can happebn botyh to western Europe and to Russia is that the arms race stops, the walol is taken down, and Russia delivers the gas. The Germans, Angela Merkel, has been leading on this.
It is in the more reasonable plans that gas and nuclear takes over for coal ande oil, and solar & wind built up as fast as possible.
The other half of the plan is better efficiency and proper resign on unnecessary consumption.
Law and order and world solidarity is further an essencial and vital element.
Trolls belong in museum or maybe in the Zoo.
KIA, your claim is complete rubbish.. Biden has removed sanctions on some sort of gas pipeline from Russia to Europe. Its not even supplying gas yet so how can it be responsible for current gas shortages, genius?
Whether it proves to be a problem in the future is pure speculation. Nobody knows what will happen. And if gas supplies come from America who is to say they wont price gouge Europe?
The solution to all such problems is to reduce dependency on gas and other fossil fuels.
@nigelj: KIA is spot-on about the “renewables”. FTA:
The “renewables” advocates are claiming a need for no storage or minimal storage, but this article admits to an energy deficit lasting an entire season.
Mr Rational. I did not suggest KIA was wrong about lack of wind being a factor. I ACKNOWLEDGED a lack of wind was a factor.
And I’m a renewables advocate and I DON’T claim there is no need for storage. So who are these renewables advocates that claim there is no need for storage? Please provide details with a link..
And if you think renewables aren’t the solution, what is your alternative energy system?
MR: The “renewables” advocates are claiming a need for no storage or minimal storage
BPL: No, they’re not.
In other AGW news:
Bomb Cyclone, attributed to AGW of course, to wash poop and needles from SF streets:
https://www.zerohedge.com/weather/northern-california-swamped-historic-rain-amid-rare-atmospheric-river-event
Always good comments on ZH. :)
Leftist sheep-like behavior to assist in achieving CO2 reduction goals:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/deleted-uk-government-report-celebrates-how-public-loves-conform
:)
Idiot.
1) New analysis in PNAS today confirms extreme bias in Police who continue to conform to uniform regulations. http://www.pnas.research.pubs.doi.457.904
2) Latest Survey results shows how mindless most Americans are because 93.76% of all adults 16-65 M and F all conform to speaking English or Spanish at home and in the workplace.
ref https://www.pewresearch.org/u-s-surveys/2021/we-are-all-idiots-now
3) New shocking research paper out of West Point, proves with 95% certainty that a significant majority of the US Armed Forces (78.34% =/- 2%) cannot think for themselves or make their own decisions.
Ref https://www.westpoint.edu/centers-and-research/academic-research-division/mindless-conforming-morons-research-overview
“I was totally surprised by these findings,” said Lt Gen Ima Phucker, “as it proves that Conformity is rife in the armed services and this is a critical danger to our national security and freedom. These men, women and transsexuals and Q folk behave like mindless slaves doing whatever their masters tell them to think and do.” the General said.
4) (The Future)
9/11/2025 Reuters Breaking News: In a last desperate attempt by the newly elected Melania Trump Administration, the Attorney General Donald Trump Jr., today issued Arrest Warrants for 297 million mindless American citizens, perm. residents and illegal immigrants for breaching the new Make Americans Not Conform Act (MANCA) because they are all idiot Facebook Users.
data stats ref https://www.statista.com/statistics/408971/number-of-us-facebook-users/
Where Stuff Comes From
(extract) Modern society is awash in stuff. There’s stuff at the grocery store. At the hardware store. At Amazon and eBay. We eat stuff, wear stuff, buy stuff, and store stuff. Click some buttons, swipe a card, tap a phone – and presto! Stuff appears, like magic. At least for now.
We are a carbon-based species. Carbon forms the foundation of our bodies and the external world we experience. Almost everything we touch is carbon-based.
So, where does stuff come from? As you can probably guess by now, it mostly comes from unwanted byproducts of the oil and gas industry (high up the ladder!).
As the opening quote of this piece captures so well, we live in a time where few understand how things get made. It is fine to not know where stuff comes from, but it isn’t fine to not know where stuff comes from while dictating to the rest of us how the economy should be run. In some small way, maybe this piece will educate a few influential minds to participate in a better-informed debate.
https://doomberg.substack.com/p/where-stuff-comes-from
(disclaimer) Doomberg is generally a critic of climate science/action net zero however some critical aspects raised about transforming society and systems are best not ignored – following are some similar reflections from Reality Blind – replacing fossil carbon, the products, services & cheap energy they provide are not simple steps to be plugged nor to be taken for granted.
The Bottom Line: In one hour, a barrel of crude oil can do the same
work as over 2,500 human laborers. At $60 currently, that’s quite a
bargain.
When Ancient Sunlight Meets Modern Machines — But this wasn’t a concern
because it was exosomatic energy and nearly free: coal was easy to mine and
plentiful. This energy transformation would make Britain the wealthiest nation on
Earth and ruler of the largest empire in history.
https://read.realityblind.world/view/975731937/188/
The “Trade” – Replacing Human Labor with Fossil Energy (and Milking a Cow)
However, while less and less human labor is required per cow, the
mechanized process consumes more and more energy per gallon of milk:
hand milking requires about 14 kWh of electric work per cow per year – the
AMS uses about 400-600 kWh of electricity per cow per year, and counting
the energy embedded in the system itself (manufacturing the machines and
so on), this increases to a whopping 5000 kWh per cow per year.
https://read.realityblind.world/view/975731937/192/
Energy and Stuff!
Summary: Of course, we mostly don’t use energy directly – we use it to
convert other minerals and materials into products we then move around
and use. – Today the average human on the planet uses 13 tons
of materials per year – a rate that has doubled since 2013.
The Bottom line: Abundant cheap energy allows us an abundance
of almost all other materials. In fact, usable net energy is, ultimately,
almost the entire story.
https://read.realityblind.world/view/975731937/202/
Supply Chains, Chains,…. The Embodied Energy of Corn Flakes
Corn flakes are from growth to delivery mostly a manifestation
of fossil energy, with the photosynthetic solar energy input
amounting to a rounding error. Nor are most of your other foods
any different; the energy and carbon footprint of hamburger makes
cornflakes look like a low-energy bargain.
https://read.realityblind.world/view/975731937/304/
(comment) These issues are touching on how the system operates now. It is not simply a matter of replacing a KWh of coal/gas generated electricity with a KWh of solar/wind generated electricity 1 for 1 at a competitive price. It far more complex than that. Because really cheap Fossil carbon (even at todays spot prices it’s cheap) is embedded everywhere in almost everything we do and want today….. especially in the booming north.
Good post. Hints at why changing from a FF-run economy to something else is so hard.
MR KIA “Good Post.”
Yes, it was. You should try it one day.
While the material the post points to is even Gooder.
Try reading it and understanding it. Now there’s a difficult challenge for you.
Because Posting flippant biased irrational opinionated crap on RC is shit easy for a troll.
@ All and everyone
That “stuff” conscept is vulgar.
Commonly it means gasoline or dope or QVINTA ESSENSIA. ….AQVA VITA. whyis- key in Kauderwelsh, and further central stimulants also in the form of white powders on the free market.
I am a chemist with knowledge also on Pharmacology and can tell you of this. .
Their probem is that they thrive for gold in the sands in order to repair and recover from their heritage and backgrounds and be able to take revenge, Thus burnt their forests and lands to have those pure sands and began to burn and to smoke on their bedrocks furter, in order to get “high” and in charge and able to pay their tickets for participance.
“It akes one to know one” Putin said.
They called themselves “Labours” and were religiously fanatically against any kind of labour, that they were only able to describe in terms of watts joules, and horswepowers. owned and chased punished slave animals and apes as they were..
The Story of Stuff
There’s a context for the use of “stuff” in this context.
Read rather than blather.
Call for expressions of interest
Last modified 27 Sep 2021
Designation of the members of the European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change
The European Climate Law also provides for the establishment of a European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change (the ‘Advisory Board’), through an amendment of the founding regulation of the European Environment Agency (EEA).
The Advisory Board will provide independent scientific advice and produce reports on EU measures, climate targets and indicative greenhouse gas budgets and their coherence with the European climate law and the EU’s international commitments under the Paris Agreement.
The EEA is issuing this call for expressions of interest with the aim of designating the members of the Advisory Board. Persons who are interested in becoming a member of the Advisory Board are invited to express their interest in accordance with the rules set out below.
https://www.eea.europa.eu/about-us/climate-advisory-board/call-for-expressions-of-interest
Won’t be any of the people who are treally needed on that board. Too few understand what, thus who, is needed. Blind leading the blind.
If you don’t start with Nature, she will end with you.
“Is cost-benefit analysis the right tool for federal climate policy? Cost-benefit analyses of federal rulemakings can have huge consequences on climate and other matters. Is cost effectiveness analysis an option? (Part 1)”
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/10/is-cost-benefit-analysis-the-right-tool-for-federal-climate-policy/
That was a well put together review of the state of play (I think).
I also think this might be a good example where the “system” as it is, manifests operates on automatic and resists needed change. I also read part 2. I suspect institutional bodies (bureaucracy) created by the political process/system such as –
… The executive branch has an extensive and largely bipartisan history of running cost-benefit analysis across all major federal proposed rulemakings through the Office of Management and Budget’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). ….
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2021/10/obstacles-biden-could-face-in-changing-approach-to-climate-cost-benefit-analysis/
.. have an outsized influence and may easily restrict the freedoms political leaders have in acting rationally with climate policy even at UNFCCC levels. iow there is a minefield of barriers to sensible action on climate everywhere and they’re different in each country, and international institutions impact different countries differently. eg IMF, trade rules etc.
PS $50 USD per ton as a social cost of carbon seems ludicrous at face value. I far from convinced such a SCC yardstick, a CBA or cost-effectiveness are suitable measures to start with. But I get how that’s what and how the “system” defaults to thinking. Stern and Stiglitz are still Neoliberal Lite. Whereas Nordhaus seems to be in another universe entirely. :)
other economic related refs fyi
https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/118/34/e2103081118.full.pdf
Upon closer examination, this papers fails to consider tipping points in any credible way,
https://www.patreon.com/posts/from-economic-to-57752646
Economics for the future – Beyond the superorganism – Author N.J.Hagens
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800919310067
and online book https://read.realityblind.world/view/975731937/
and Earth and Humanity: Myth and Reality – Below is a summary from my recent talk on 33 core beliefs prevalent in modern culture contrasted with our underlying biophysical realities.
https://twitter.com/NJHagens/status/1421928088787734532
The appallingly bad neoclassical economics of climate change by Steve Keen
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14747731.2020.1807856
and https://www.patreon.com/posts/appallingly-bad-38048063
Economic failures of the IPCC process
https://profstevekeen.medium.com/economic-failures-of-the-ipcc-process-e1fd6060092e
https://cassandralegacy.blogspot.com/2018/10/why-economists-cant-understand-complex.html
Rethink ‘cost-benefit analysis’ to tackle climate crisis
https://phys.org/news/2021-09-rethink-cost-benefit-analysis-tackle-climate.html
Nordhaus 1992: 1400 ppm CO2 by 2100 is his “optimal” policy
https://twitter.com/_ppmv/status/1447996702976364552
The social cost of carbon dioxide under climate-economy feedbacks and temperature variability
Yet, even if current persistence is only 20% and decreases by an annual 0.5%, more than 5% of Monte Carlo reach PAGE-ICE’s damage cap and the SCCO2 exceeds $5000. For our empirical persistence distribution, we find that a reduction by at minimum 3% per year would be needed to see a SCCO2 of less than $600 (appendix B.6). In other words, this would require lowering the persistence of temperature-related economic impacts by half within less than 25 years.
Mmmmmmm, interesting.
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac1d0b
Past world economic production constrains current energy demands: Persistent scaling with implications for economic growth and climate change mitigation
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0237672
Risk-opportunity analysis for transformative policy design and appraisal
Standard cost-benefit analysis is inadequate for assessing transformational change.
Risk-Opportunity Analysis offers holistic systems thinking for climate policy.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378021001382?via%3Dihub
and somewhat related refs:
Most people don’t realize this, but the majority of high-income nations have already significantly exceeded their fair share of the carbon budget for 2 degrees.
https://twitter.com/jasonhickel/status/1449343995268714497
Quantifying national responsibility for climate breakdown
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(20)30196-0/fulltext
I wish to examine and ultimately challenge Tainter’s conclusion that voluntary simplification is not a viable path to sustainability
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2095648
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
2018 The Neoliberal Optimism Industry
https://citationsneeded.medium.com/episode-58-the-neoliberal-optimism-industry-and-development-shaming-the-global-south-cf399e88510e
Net zero policies are ’emperor’s new clothes,’ academics warn
https://phys.org/news/2021-10-net-policies-emperor-academics.html
The Global North caused the climate crisis
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2021-10-22/the-global-north-caused-the-climate-crisis-now-is-the-time-to-pay-its-dues/
“Weaponizing Economics: Big Oil & Climate Policy”
https://environmentalpoliticsjournal.net/interviews/interview-with-ben-franta-author-of-weaponizing-economics-big-oil-climate-policy/
and https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09644016.2021.1947636
The Koch brothers scandal at George Mason University, Neoliberalism by whatever name, and more
https://www.ineteconomics.org/research/experts/pmirowski
The role of high-socioeconomic-status people in locking in or rapidly reducing energy-driven greenhouse gas emissions
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-021-00900-y
Socio-economic conditions for satisfying human needs at low energy use: An international analysis of social provisioning
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378021000662
Through the Eye of a Needle: An Eco-Heterodox Perspective on the Renewable Energy Transition
This analysis makes clear that the pat notion of “affordable clean energy” views the world through a narrow keyhole that is blind to innumerable economic, ecological, and social costs.
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/15/4508/htm
Golly, that was a lot of refs.
and PS more from The Neoliberal Optimism Industry
Can you tell us about some of the things you’re working on maybe with The Rules or in some other capacity that we can be paying attention to and that will hopefully, you know, win the day eventually?
Jason Hickel:
Yeah. So in terms of justice for the South, I’m going to think that some of them are probably obvious to some of your listeners and maybe others are more interesting and new, but the first place I would start is with quite widespread debt cancellation. And the reason I say that is because it’s the debt relationship between the North and the South, that not only, you know, siphons a good deal of Global South countries budgets to bags from the West, but also more importantly constraints their policy space because creditors basically get to determine economic policy. Right? And so, which is deeply undemocratic. So instead of policy decisions being made by parliaments in the Global South they are effectively dictated from on high by creditors. Um, so that’s one crucial intervention towards democratizing the international economy. And the other would be, as I mentioned before, democratizing the World Bank and the IMF. The WTO is technically a one country, one vote system, but in reality countries that have the biggest bargaining power, I mean the biggest economies have the most marketing power. And so what that does effectively is it inscribes old colonial inequalities into the existing contemporary international economic system. So that countries that grew rich during colonialism have much more power than those that were plundered during it. And that perpetuates inequality today. I think that, you know, another crucial intervention would be to focus on tax justice. I mean, right now the international tax haven system siphons around $1 trillion US dollars out of the South each year in illicit financial flows and tax evasion, which is, you know, I mean, that outstrips the international aid budget by a factor of ten. It’s a huge detriment to the possibility of development in the South. It can be fixed easily by rendering secrecy jurisdictions transparent, by closing down tax havens or by doing something like introducing a universal minimum corporate tax that would eliminate the incentive for corporations to kind of seek low tax jurisdictions for where to claim their profits. But we might also talk about something like a global minimum wage. Right? And this is something that Global South scholars have been arguing for for a long time. As long as we have an international economy where capital is globalized and where workers are contributing to an export system that is international, then we should be receiving equal pay for equal work and some calculations suggest that the Global South would be receiving on the order of $2.5, $2.6 trillion more per year in export revenues if their workers were paid fair wages on the global stage. One easy step towards that would be to introduce a global minimum wage where there would be pegged to sort of each country’s median wage. So 50% of the median, for example. So it would fluctuate up and down. There would be no loss of comparative advantage at the introduction of such a system, and so on. But I think we also have to talk about climate reparations, right? We know that Global North countries have contributed, you know, something like 70 plus percent of all historical emissions that are driving climate change right now. And the Global South of course is where the vast majority of the negative effects happen. Like we’re aware of the storms that hit the Eastern coast of the US and so on but the South loses in the region of $500 billion dollars per year in costs associated with climate change, which again, outstrips the aid budget. The aid budget, you know, is paltry in comparison and it’s just, it’s fundamentally unjust for, for poor countries to suffer those losses without some kind of reparations or compensation from the people who are, who are effectively from the countries that are effectively causing it. And of course you’re going to say like, right, you know, China is a major contributor to global emissions. And that’s definitely true. But on a per capita basis China actually contributes relatively little compared to say the US or Germany or the UK, which, you know, on a per capita basis are vastly worse offenders in terms of carbon emissions than any country in the South.
https://citationsneeded.medium.com/episode-58-the-neoliberal-optimism-industry-and-development-shaming-the-global-south-cf399e88510e
the whole thing is worth listening to, because there many good pov and info he provides, especially the levels of control over the south from the ongoing hangover of Colonialist mindsets and structures; and Hickle is someone worth following imho. https://twitter.com/jasonhickel/
Not that anything he has to say would ever be implemented or changed anytime, now or the distant future. That’s not how the world works. And precisely why the problem of climate will not be solved, and why a creeping collapse is in all our futures.
Jubilee. You’d have to run the numbers if you want to get cute with it, but I’d say all of the national/state/municipal debt of all but the richest 20 to 30 countries/states/cities (within whatever boundaries or groups) – and maybe fewer – and all of the personal debt for all people below, say, the top 10~20%.
The increase in creativity and freedom of action would be available to start solving problems, localizing, etc.
The best thing, though, would be to declare a global Commons and, well…, that’s a bit of a discussion.
Jubilee, maybe one day. I doubt a more insidious inhumane global system (the world’s Rules-Based Order as they call it) could have been intentionally designed than the one now in existence. GHGs and extreme climate change are only some of the symptoms but not the cause. They subtlety insert these Rules everywhere, unnoticed, ignored and always forgotten.
UNFCCC Treaty ARTICLE 4
COMMITMENTS
https://treaties.un.org/doc/Treaties/1994/03/19940321%2004-56%20AM/Ch_XXVII_07p.pdf
You’d imagine all the climate scientists, IPCC players, Science institutes, the WMO, and related academics would be up in arms in unison over the abuse of the UNFCCC system by corrupted (possibly ignorant) most powerful Politicians pushing the fake goals, plans and solutions like the Paris agreement 1.5C – 2C and the Net Zero by 2050 fantasies.
Maybe that can only happen in some Alternative Universe.
Same answer I’ve given to all previous “Can’t be done!” arguments: There’s no choice, so the choice is jubilee or collapse/extinction.
Choose.
@ R Check
I cannor read through it all, but I see that you are suggesting formulas that I know from before,
Leveling of incomes and living standard in a closed society or national economical system by progressive taxes and subventions for the poor. It is what was called “The wellfare- state”. That dissolved when control at the boarders fell away and trade came more on international level.
It is banned and ridiculed as “socialism”, it is called “social democracy”. And I tend to believe that the model may be relevant again due to limits to growth, globalization, and the size of that. So again, there must be limits and solidarity and “leveling”.
Then civil dicipline law and order and solidarity different from tyranny and dictatorship is needed.
They were not so good at it allways and everywhere in the late soviet union. Exploitation and demonstrative luxury and greedyness and even powrity and misery was obvious here and there.
I shall not mention Franklin D Roosewelts “new deal” but that was appreciated and seems to be forgotten. They suffer and they are damned mad over there in the states in a way not unsimilar to what I have visited and seen in Eastern Europe in the good old days.
But Australia cannot plan for the world and neither can Norway. We must hope that they will think all this over in Glasgow next week.
Gas is now “streaming” from Russia, further peace and fish is settled in the Barents sea, That contributes quite a bit to health, humor and better thoughts. . We are having the worlds largest fisheries together with the russians it seems, because we could cooperate on sustainable fisheries. The situation nin the west atloantic is said to be much worse.
No.
1. Nature’s value is…?
2, The value of healthy people is,,,?
3. The value of healthy non-human biota is…?
4. The value of an ecosystem is…?
5. The value of all ecosystems, i.e. the ecological functions of the planet, are…?
Viewing The Perfect Storm via the lens of Economics is a guaranteed pathway to sui-genocide.
Priceless to all five. This highlights one of the worst aspects of capitalism, that things that are essential to life often have little monetary value. A bottle of clean water costs (monetarily) very little in the Western world, but try living without clean water for any length of time. On the other hand, professional footballers get paid massive salaries but how essential is football to human life?
I have heard a suggestion that the cost of products and services should be proportional to their ecological footprint. Anything that benefits the ecology has a low price, anything that is destructive has a high price. This is like bringing the consequences of environmental destruction onto the balance sheet as a cost in a capitalist system, with the idea that preserving the health of ecosystems and the environment will (because it has a lower financial cost) end up taking priority.
I have heard a suggestion that the cost of products and services should be proportional to their ecological footprint.
A fine idea… if you could accurately and effectively cost that footprint, but… as I pointed out in the post you responded to, we can’t.
The implications? In permaculture design/decision-making processes we say, “The problem is the solution.” That is, in the nature of the problem is the solution revealed. More prosaically
– Doc, it hurts when I do this.
– Don’t do that.
So, since we cannot accurately measure or cost Nature/Ecosystem Services/Ecological Footprints, we need to shift to a system that doesn’t require any of those things.
France and now Spain seriously (?) considering banning short haul flights to reduce emissions.
UK study out of Uni Manchester, that’s Kevin Anderson territory.
https://spanishnewstoday.com/spain_plans_to_abolish_short_haul_flights_1668367-a.html
That is a reasonable idea (I say, although I committed the sin of flying from Gatwick to Glasgow earlier this year), maybe they should try that in the UK, although I’m not sure how many domestic air routes could be done within two and a half hours by train (our trains are quite a bit slower than on the continent). It might reduce the demand for airport expansion if some of these domestic routes could be switched to ground transport. It would help that there has been a new low cost rail service introduced between London and Edinburgh.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/new-london-edinburgh-rail-service-tickets-lumo-b954051.html
Common sense really. Constantly bypassed. ty
PS @Kevin, https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/10/unforced-variations-oct-2021/comment-page-2/#comment-797235 switching this to FR thread.
While the wording in James Hansen’s latest commentary is different I think the intent / meaning is essentially the same as mine. My simplistic pov was expressed as – I believe/opine that COP26 is one giant fraud, a fantasy land epic.
Hansen writes: 26 October 2021
Ref https://mailchi.mp/caa/president-bidens-silk-purse-young-people-will-sit-in-judgment
noting I generally avoid – Appeals to authority but in this case seems to be reasonable.
plus this part too:
https://mailchi.mp/caa/president-bidens-silk-purse-young-people-will-sit-in-judgment
Of course, in theory at least, it ‘didn’t have to be this way.’
However, expressions of disgust with the inadequacy of the status quo don’t move the ball. Ironically, the more heartfelt, well-founded, and eloquent, the better the chances they have precisely the opposite effect instead. IMO, what’s needed is focus on what *will* or at least can work.
There’s an anecdote about Gen. Grant. One of his staff members was waxing at length about the destructive options that Gen. Lee had available, and agonizing about which might be exercised. Grant reportedly said, “You need to think less about what General Lee will do to us, and more about what we will do to him.”
Not saying it’s easy… or that that’s not what you’re already trying to do with your reality checking… but perhaps there’s a salutary reminder to us all there?
Kevin “However, expressions of disgust with the inadequacy of the status quo don’t move the ball.”
Maybe, maybe not. It could easily be argued Greta has not moved that ball a millimeter. While the same could be said about the UNFCCC (ie politicians making choices) having not shown any decrease in CO2 ppm the last 30 years. But at least Greta is popular. And she is scathing. :)
While during the same period of this growing popularity (and the Fridays for Future demos) the survey data has shifted considerably and is back to a 2006-2007 post-An Inconvenient Truth level again:
Two in three adults (of 700,000 surveyed) across G20 believe climate change is a global emergency. Their children are even more alarmed. ….. shows public demand for climate action https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-10-25-g20-peoples-climate-vote-large-majority-back-action
iow ” A clear majority of citizens across the G20 believe we’re in a global emergency. Support for bold climate action is already widespread, and this data shows it will only strengthen in the years ahead, as young people exercise their voices and their votes to reward bold climate action. “
I accept it is difficult to assign causality. Masybe Greta’s and others disgust hasn’t moved the needle at all. Though history may provide a signal occasionally of what needs to be said and how to say it … leaving the outcomes to ‘the lap of the gods’ and due course. .
“King was far from universally revered during his lifetime.” They noted that in 1966, 63 percent of Americans held a negative view of the civil rights leader, … King’s slide in popularity coincided with his activism taking a turn from what Americans largely know him for — his campaign for civil rights in the American South — to a much more radical one aimed at the war in Vietnam and poverty.
https://theintercept.com/2018/01/15/martin-luther-king-jr-mlk-day-2018/
If King were alive today, his words would threaten most of those who now sing his praises
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/04/martin-luther-king-cornel-west-legacy
“Letter From a Birmingham Jail” He wrote how he was “gravely disappointed with the white moderate … who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom.”
King devastatingly targeted white moderates willing to settle for “order” over justice.
https://theconversation.com/martin-luther-king-jr-had-a-much-more-radical-message-than-a-dream-of-racial-brotherhood-92795
Martin Luther King Jr.’s Challenge to his Liberal Allies
https://www.aaihs.org/martin-luther-king-jr-s-challenge-to-his-liberal-allies/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/01/17/martin-luther-king-polite-racism-white-liberals/
and there was loads of disgust unloaded here: Because imho Kissing Ass is far less effective at driving “systemic change” than the unsavory truth.
The CEOs of Exxon, BP, Shell and Chevron testified on climate change before the House Oversight and Reform Committee. https://www.c-span.org/video/?515534-1/exxon-bp-shell-chevron-executives-testify-climate-change
Tís all good …. in love and war. It is a war,
cheers :)
Ladies and gentlemen
I just saw it on National TV that they are obviously warming up for the Glasgow conference now.
The minister of environment, quite relaxed and certai9n of his case, spoke of net zero CO2 by 2050 and that CCS also out of empty air then will be necessary. That we seem good on our way for that.
I shall not mention Science fiction or fake science fake news here. But this should give you also a general impression of mentalities and competition of our new government and climate minister..
I love formulas that can make it easier at least for myself and a few others to understand what we should take for serious. better sooner than later..
A very early formula of mine in the climate dispute is that we will have to “skru ned blusset” (screw down the flush?) which is to turn down the kerosene- lamp or gas flame or gaslight, and in general meaning, to calm down pleace.. Calm down by by 50- 80% within rather short, foreseable future.
If that is first understood, we can begin to look and to judge around us all things that will rather change radically By the analytic question What are we heating or burning fossile fuels for, where and why?
That has been an essencial part of my vision of it ever since 2005 at least, and can be recommended.
In any case, those 50-80% of mine now in rather urgent foreseable future, is what they seem to be going to discuss now in Glasgow.
And for us all, mitigation to that, and the importance of solar and wind and hydro and….. nuclear?….
and whether there are any reasonable alternatives in hydrogen and ammonia… that is probably necessay for airplanes and shipping.
But very much can and should be thought over and re.-designed and reduced to a minimum also on private level because of this and to our own advantage., I feel.
Killian hardly has got any good rational formulas for this system. The world and its circumstances should not be changed in un-necessary and impossible ways during urgencies..
“in un-necessary and impossible ways” is a value judgement opinion that does not apply universally. Opinions vary greatly. As a stand alone statement of “fact” unsupported by any evidence or context it should be treated with skepticism.
Acknowledging that the world is not listening to either Killian or Carbomontanus’ ideas; (nor mine) but it is to the politicians at COP26 (unfortunately for us all.)
The COP system is like a house of cards being held together with tape and gum.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/glasgows-cop-26-is-crunch-time-to-save-the-world-from-disaster
Peter Kalmus NASA
In my opinion we must rise up, in great numbers. I’m not sure how, but I know that we must. It’s not even that world leaders *won’t* act, it’s worse. I think they *can’t.* Their systems are too corrupted by fossil fuel interests and money, and addicted to economic growth.
https://twitter.com/ClimateHuman/status/1453407624720834562
and just for one, why not.
Greta Thunberg Has Given Up on Politicians – October 27, 2021
“All political and economic systems have failed, but humanity has not yet failed.”
https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000008010161/greta-thunberg-climate-crisis.html
Kind of really odd how the majority of the experienced most knowledgeable climate scientists in the world can’t work this out and/or say something about it. Some do. most do not. While some that do speak up publicly, and even write books on the topic, are making it worse and much harder to promote and implement effective solutions not easier (imo).
What I found really “ironic” was when Greta says all she wants is for the Politicians to listen to the science. No offense intended to anyone here, but I find there are quite a number of climate scientists and related academics (some well known) who are not listening the science either.
Given what some of them say they can’t be. :)
Another PhD that blocked me for TELLING HIM THINGS LIKE THIS LONG AGO.
The irony….
Just for fun, why not?
We would expect politicians and tame advisors to take carbon budgets and create palatable fictions of 30 year pathways, but where are the academics who, by their silence, collude with this nonsense and enable the gov’t to say they are following the science?
https://twitter.com/misterp55/status/1453446545089703936
I think I heard an echo. :)
Bravo @ChiefExecCCC for leading by example …
“[Net zero and Real Zero] cannot be achieved solely through technology change. And this is a very technology focused strategy from the government.” – “If you’re not willing to talk about demand reduction on flying or diet then you’re making it harder to achieve net zero overall.”
https://twitter.com/steviedubyu/status/1452011057308971015
@JoeriRogelj (recent RC/IPCC author on AR6 carbon budgets asks)
Hi #climatetwitter, looking for key literature on geopolitical implications of #climate change impacts and of mitigation and low carbon transitions. Which papers/books/scholars should I not miss?
https://twitter.com/JoeriRogelj/status/1451967674003623941
@JamesGDyke
The more I work within the climate-energy-policy area, the more depressed I become. It’s full of the wildest fantasies about promises of future technology. Constant appeasement to growth-based policies. Any new thinking throttled out of existence.
@ProfCMitchell (Energy policy and politics; working on IPCC WG3 Final Draft )
Its depressing how successive governments, Ministers, PMs wilfully choose sub-optimal private interests over public interests. It is simple to understand why different stakeholders say what they do: follow the money. Cynicism is a key requirement for an energy policy academic.
https://twitter.com/ProfCMitchell/status/1453331932327075848
Oh, lest we forget, the GHG emissions from Shipping and Aviation are not counted in national emissions data nor in their COP26 NDCs — amounts to ~3.8% of CO2 globally. The countries cooperate by agreeing to disagree so they can ignore it and the implications of it …… poor people do not fly first class.
New video from the Juice Media
The Australien Government has made an ad about the policies it’s taking to the #COP26 UN Climate Summit in Glasgow, and it’s surprisingly honest and informative.
https://twitter.com/thejuicemedia/status/1453571193848537097
(News reports)
With just days ahead of #COP26 – #Australia finally committing to #NetZero emissions by 2050.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/27/hollow-how-the-morrison-governments-2050-net-zero-pledge-was-reported-internationally
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/oct/27/scott-morrison-refuses-to-release-net-zero-2050-modelling-amid-condemnation-of-climate-policy
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/27/the-coalitions-net-zero-policy-is-merely-a-plan-to-freeload-off-the-rest-of-the-world
It’s a scam.
But they will probably get away with it and be re-elected again.
Marvelous. Exactly what I’ve been saying to friends and family.
All I would add ot this advertisement is to expand on the concept that, with the magic of negative emissions, and a focus on 2050, any policy at all for the next two decades could be said to be on track to Net Zero by 2050. They implied it, but I think it needs to be spelled out in more detail. Once you have a magic variable, like negative emissions, anything can be made to sum to zero.
A detail from one of Reality Check’s links:
“The document which Joyce [Nationals leader and Deputy PM] quoted from was not modelling but part of the plan which stated that Australian fossil fuel production is projected to fall over the period to 2050 and will be 35% lower than 2020.
It suggests that coal production will “remain flat or decline slightly” by about 6% by 2030.”
If the govt did nothing at all, or even promoted coal, coal production would probably fall that much because of the uptake of renewables anyway, which is happening despite the govt’s efforts. This is not merely an unambitious target, with respect to policy movement in the right direction, it is ambitious in the wrong direction.