A bi-monthly open thread related to climate solutions. This month will start off with COP-26 and many targets and plans and mechanisms will be proposed and discussed. Look out for the updated impacts of the evolving NDCs such as this one from Climate Resource, suggesting that the world could be on track for just a little less than 2ºC warming (relative to the pre-industrial) (if everyone does what they pledge and we are lucky with respect to climate sensitivity). Please be respectful and constructive.
A handy resource all in one place.
http://doomfordummies.blogspot.com/
Carmen Leiva-Dueñas – “This thread couldn’t have been more pertinent. I have been feeling so frustrated with the inaction and passiveness of so many environmental scientists. We do really need to make an effort to act accordingly to the emergency of our results and get involved in social movements.”
PhD in Ecology | Seagrass paleoecology | Blue carbon ecosystems
Scientist Rebellion – “If you are a climate scientist who sees how models condemn us to a climate apocalypse if we do nothing and remain comfortable in your office while the world burns, people will not believe that the situation is so dire”
Dr. Aaron Thierry – “I must say I find it hard to fault the logic here. Here are some musings as to how scientists avoid this conclusion and why it might be better for all of us if that were to change.”
Recent work by @ProfLesleyHead & @TheresaHarada suggests emotional detachment is common among env. scientists & that researchers may adopt coping strategies which bias the research questions they seek to answer or how they communicate their findings.
They explain that these coping mechanisms include “emphasizing dispassion, suppressing painful emotions, using humour & switching off from work. Emotional denial or suppression of the consequences of climate change worked to enable the scientists to persevere in their work”
Which raises the question; is there a better way for scientists to respond to their findings that benefits society as well as helping scientists overcome unhealthy dissociative states to better align their emotional and intellectual understandings?
https://twitter.com/ThierryAaron/status/1468288149918990338
good thread with more useful refs
Damn straight. The channelling of Star Trek’s Mr. Spock’s dispassionate observation WILL destroy the biosphere.
Yes. It has played a quite literal role… but let me not say… said it all…. so many times…
[cue Brittany] Oops… I said it again…
Paul Hoggett in Eng with Climate Change argues that when it comes to climate it is best to understand the denial (including disavowal) not at the individual but at the cultural group level. Also, Stan Cohen who discusses Hoggett’s chapter, raises implicatory denial.
…. “implicatory disavowal” might be closest, but we are describing as much a collective state as a personal one. I’d highly recommend this book which explores these ideas, as well as the papers I linked to in the thread. Engaging with Climate Change Psychoanalytic and Interdisciplinary Perspectives 2013
what lies beneath the current widespread denial of climate change
how do we manage our feelings about climate change
our great difficulty in acknowledging our true dependence on nature
our conflicting identifications
the effects of living within cultures that have perverse aspects
the need to mourn before we can engage in a positive way with the new conditions we find ourselves in.
https://www.routledge.com/Engaging-with-Climate-Change-Psychoanalytic-and-Interdisciplinary-Perspectives/Weintrobe/p/book/9780415667623
Everything is connected to everything else.
Wadaya know. I survived (so far). I’m sorry, but this will be notes and unpolished, but I figure it is best to keep folks informed:
“A Boy and Whose Dog?” Part 1a
I met Justin3 when he approached my Camry hybrid to bum a cigarette. I don’t smoke, but I had gone to the bank and withdrawn $20 earlier that day so I’d have cash for when my credit card would be inconvenient or disallowed.
So I gave him the twenty and pointed East, towards a convenience store about five blocks away. “Get a pack and bring back the change”.
As he was about to turn the corner of Frank’s building I called out, “That’s all the money I have”, which was true but misleading. More accurately, it was all the cash money I had. I’m not nearly as destitute and powerless as the image and lifestyle I project.
After all, it’s in book 2 of the larger trilogy (as opposed to my third, which is a sub-trilogy), “What one does to the least of you” and all that. Merge the Word with your species’ common knowledge: secret shoppers exist. Kind of a Santa thing.
I went back to pondering and semi-snoozing.
And damn, he came back. Interesting,
As you know, I’m walking in faith. Merge that concept with book 2’s “takes care of the birds” and one gets “be one with the grasshopper”, as the old “Kung Fu” TV series taught.
So I took him in even though his story had a hole big enough to drive all the trucks one would need to solve the deliberately created supply chain issue your species is reveling (at the top) or whining (consumers) about.
You see, Sarpy County had hired someone to go to St Louis to bring Justin3 back on a misdemeanor charge. He spent a weekend in jail here (though technically Frank’s field is not in Bellevue but on Omaha’s side of the border, so Douglas county).
For whatever reason the judge released Justin3 immediately when the case was brought up the following Monday. “Time served”. On a case where the county spent big bucks bringing the perp back from Missouri? WTF, eh?
So Justin3 began walking towards Omaha, planning to beg his sister in Missouri to pay for a bus ticket to St Louis so he could reunite with Nina, his blue nose pitbull, his only friend.
He got stuck at the Sarpy/Douglas county line. He couldn’t tell me why he spent three nights freezing under a trailer. Why a hooker who was, like me, headed to California pointed him to the railroad tracks. Why he followed her advice and ended up at my Camry. It makes no sense. Not to me. Not to Justin3.
But it writes well.
It’s almost 5AM. More later. Weaving takes almost everything I have. I have to eat like a conehead and still lose weight. So now I’m going to rest. For now, know that I’m alive and this weave feels ‘right’. Peace, friends.
Anecdote, spontaneous chat with a diplomat:
“everyone kinda knows about climate. Yet they have no idea what to do about it, as was evident in Glasgow (COP26). Literally no one is responsible for the global perspective; it conflicts too profoundly with all other kinds of interests.”
“The true paradox is that although we know more and more about the world we are becoming less and less able to do anything about what we are learning. ”
RC note … Literally no one is responsible. Understand?
Including the climate scientists, associated academics and their institutions no matter who funds them.
The UNFCCC is operating exactly as it was designed to operate from the beginning …. so that no one is responsible or accountable for anything. These people are not stupid. They know how to plan ahead and set things up.
Who is? The Davos Cluster of course.
https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev-environ-012220-011104
Davos sets the narratives which the expert community simply reinforces in order to maintain their privileges and “prestige”. The expert community is categorised as the “Enabler Cluster”. I’m not kidding, that’s almost sublime. (w’short Kevin Anderson video outtake)
https://twitter.com/MarkCranfield_/status/1461135501457514497
The “Enabler Cluster” are essentially the Useful Idiots Brigade …. dutifully placatingly naively doing what they are told … hey we need a report on 2C vs 1.5C; we need to know what Net Zero would look like and why it would work; we need data and insights on Negative emissions technology like BECCS, CCS, DAC and so on … so how feasible is that, please do multiple reports on this, add it into YOUR IPCC REPORTS …. include this data in your future emissions scenarios and temperature forecasts and on and on and on and on and on it goes for decades being led by the ring in their noses …… all the while volunteering to do all this work for FREE for the richest people on this earth …
Meanwhile the Davos Cluster drink champagne on their private jets flying around the world to the next super important business or banking meeting or exclusive resort or a meeting with the next narcissistic President on a yacht somewhere (ahem). That’s what is truly sublime …… the sheer audacity of it all is breathtaking and how gullible and easily manipulated the really smart supposedly sophisticated PhDs and Professors really are.
The politicians? Well most of them are so below average under par nobodies and totally self-serving ne’r do wells and prostitutes for sale nothing more need be said about what to expect from them.
Of course I could wrong (if that helps to feel better about the present situation) – it’s all the fossil fuel companies fault. Yes that’ll work to ease the cognitive dissonance too. They were just too powerful all those men in suits. What could we do? They were lying and lying plus ‘advertising’ and we couldn’t say or do anything! We worked for the government, so our hands were tied, sniffle. :)
Well you gotta laugh, right? It’s almost as funny as a Gilbert and Sullivan musical.
Literally no one is responsible!
fyi a new review call to action by Dr James Hansen …. predominantly centrist group approach, the old ways of running the world can fix the problems if we follow the “consensus science” ideology and call for “rational” political action; but Hansen is more on the margins with Gates as he promotes nuclear as part of the solution as well… and Hansen’s sense of urgency and “his group’s scientific conclusions” have more extreme implications from the science so it’s more radical and urgent an outlier than conservatives like Mann and the official IPCC cluster say it is publicly.
A Realistic Path to a Bright Future
3 December 2021
James Hansen
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2021/BrightFuture.03December2021.pdf
36 pages eg Conclusion of COP21 in Paris in 2015
I prepared this presentation in the wake of COP26, the Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, held at Glasgow, Scotland, in November 2021. COP meetings are actually Conferences of the Pretenders. Political leaders make statements that they know – or should know – are blatant nonsense. COPs can produce numerous minor accomplishments, which is sufficient reason to continue with the meetings. However, they ignore the two elephants in the room that will determine the future.
I will also criticize three other groups. The fossil fuel industry, for disinformation campaigns and for bribery of “big green” organizations that preserves fossil fuel emissions and locks in consequences for young people; the media for often reporting what they think the public wants to hear, rather than what the public needs to know; and we scientists for letting the politicians, fossil fuel industry, and media get away with doing a poor job of describing reality.
One more introductory comment: the climate story does not need to be gloom and doom. There is a straightforward path to a bright future, but we must be honest about what is needed and follow the science. To achieve the bright future, young people must understand what is needed and affect the political process accordingly.
ps his sophie’s choice book might be out soon. I have read parts and it;s fully of great details and science and political aspects. But is suspect it way to large to have any long term impact. Few are going to read it, but I think it will be a great historical work worth saving. imv which counts for zip.
Kevin Anderson
First major IPCC report:1990
Rio Earth Summit establishing the UNFCCC: 1992
The Kyoto protocol:1997
Paris: 2015
Glasgow: 2021
So why haven’t we bent the emissions curve in 30 years?
We conclude power concentrated in ‘elites’ is a major obstacle to change
https://annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev-environ-012220-011104
[ I’d prefer to say “Obstacle to Progress”]
Why it is what it is, many like Anderson have been trying to explain and offer various reasons for the lack of progress, such as:
Avoiding cultural trauma: climate change and social inertia
Robert J. Brulle & Kari Marie Norgaard (2019):
A sociological approach to understanding climate change
Climate change presents a major challenge to the stability and maintenance
of the symbolic order on which social interactions are based. It creates
a radical disjuncture between taken-for-granted ways of living and gener-
ates responses across the entire society by destabilizing the individual’s
habitus, challenging the viability of institutional and group routines, and
forming threats to the dominant doxa that defines the social order. It also
leads to the formation of alternative narratives advocated by social move-
ments. Thus, it should come as no surprise that climate change advocacy is
met with social inertia. Rather, the failure to respond is based in social
processes that maintain and reproduce social stability.
https://pages.uoregon.edu/norgaard/pdf/Avoiding-Cultural-Trauma-Brulle-Norgaard-2019.pdf
Here’s a neat quote from it reflecting on 11 years ago:
“Some scholars, examining the massive barriers to action, have concluded that collapse is inevitable (Leahy et al. 2010).”
https://pages.uoregon.edu/norgaard/pdf/Avoiding-Cultural-Trauma-Brulle-Norgaard-2019.pdf
So, agree or disagree, collapse has long been a valid academic framing / argument of where the world is headed. Despite all the push back there is something wrong with people who view things this way. 11 years later things do not look any better, far from it. :)
My more simplistic viewpoint is to describe the problem as being the natural result of the creation of global systems over time that are now operating on automatic. Individual actors and groups operating within each of these systems are rational actors, doing what they have been trained to do by virtue of how they see the world in which they live and their role within it.
What fossil fuels execs have done over the decades is therefore natural normal and to be expected. The actors could not have acted any other ways that how they did. Sane, rational actors, doing what they have been educated and friend to to do. No different than anyone else. No more responsible for global warming than anyone else is. And everyone is (more or less) equally responsible no matter how many would like to deny it.
And while some people hold more power than others it is the default systems they were operating in that has afforded them that power. They didn’t achieve the position or the power all on their own cognizance or by conscious choice. It is just how the systems have been created and now operate …. on automatic.
Which is why blaming any individual, or groups of individuals or institutions and so on then demanding that THEY CHANGE THEIR BEHAVIOR & DECISIONS is a totally dysfunctional approach. They are not the problem. The Systems are the problem. It’s the Systems that need to be change and then the individuals within these systems are adjust accordingly.
It’s like after a period of time, once slavery was made illegal, the systems connected with Labour began to change accordingly. The default financials that governed what could be a profitable farm, and how big a loan could be, and how much profit they could expect over time all slowly changed to create a new paradigm to create new Systems of operations.
There’s many ways to say this, one might say something more like what Anderson says in that paper, or something like this instead — refraing the above quote slightly::
Slavery presented a major challenge to the stability and maintenance
of the symbolic order on which social interactions are based. It creates
a radical disjuncture between taken-for-granted ways of living and gener-
ates responses across the entire society by destabilizing the individual’s
habitus, challenging the viability of institutional and group routines, and
forming threats to the dominant doxa that defines the social order. [and so on]
note;
– habitus comprises socially ingrained habits, skills and dispositions. It is the way that individuals perceive the social world around them
– Doxa is a common belief or popular opinion.
Or one could say things are exactly as they because all the global / regional / national social religious business economic financial resource extraction and trading political and scientific academic Systems are all operating on automatic in unison – that they are all interconnected – and therefore they cannot change how they operate because they are all connected at the hip.
iow, that’s where the inertia and resistance really arises from – and not consciously from individuals per se.
One cannot simply recommend that fossil fuel energy be replaced by non-GHG emitting renewable energy supply and all will be fixed – even if it is technologically possible. Doing that one action has always been impossible to do – but that is precisely what the rhetoric and the promise of the last 30+ years has been about, more or less. And it is still essentially the same today at COP26, and the next one.
No. What needs fixing, repairing, adjusting and changing is every aspect of each System associated with Energy. Which means every System needs changing and adjustments in relation to all the other systems as an interconnected integrated whole.
So best of luck avoiding cultural trauma in such a world. Or avoiding taking on the systemic power concentrated in the ‘elites’, ie the Davos Cluster and the second Enabling Cluster of Experts as Anderson describes them!
Within a second cluster of lenses are forms of power that can more appropriately be described as instrumental, whereby ostensibly “objective” analysis operates within—and thereby reinforces—the deeply subjective boundaries decreed by the powers of the Davos cluster. Here, the image is of a legitimizing collaborator, the Enabler cluster, whereby responses to all issues (including climate change) can be addressed within the contemporary socioeconomic paradigm.
Whether it’s the unchallenged dominance of mainstream economics and finance (Section 4.1), the narrow techno-economic rationality underpinning global mitigation models (Section 4.2), or the self-reinforcing technological determinism of centralized and large-scale energy supply (Section 4.3), all see the future as a simple extension of today.
Yet, and despite their existing and tacit allegiance to the Davos cluster, it is within this “expert” realm that the power to both legitimize and undermine the status quo resides. In that regard, it has the potential of being highly influential and a facilitator of rapid change. [end quote]
https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev-environ-012220-011104
To me it’s not so important what the semantics and the framing used to describe the problem. Each person is able to relate to these different approaches and styles imho. What matters more is that they can consciously, with awareness, grasp the scale of the problem, its combined causes and the integrated holistic solutions across multiple systems required long term.
Looking at COP26 and the rest I believe we are far, far away from getting anywhere close to that. It’s why the more likely prognosis in my perspective is that “collapse is inevitable.”
iow nothing much will be happening to drive genuine progress until it becomes an absolute necessity. A global Pearl Harbor moment if you will.
When total denial, self-delusions, BS excuses, rationalizations, the predominant callous disregard of harm upon others, irrationality, and again “kicking the can down the road” will no longer work. After all, “Necessity is the mother of invention!” :)
My GCM, advanced global change modeling, is projecting this is not likely to occur until 2035 +/- 3 years (with 83% confidence). But there is a 50% chance it could happen before 2030. It depends on how bad and how fast things get.
But who is listening to me anyway. No one. For that matter – is anyone listening to the experts? :)
or look at it this way ….
Climate change constitutes a potential cultural trauma. The threat
of cultural trauma is met with resistance and attempts to restore and
maintain the status quo. Thus, efforts to avoid large-scale social changes
associated with climate change constitute an effort to avoid cultural
trauma, and result in social inertia regarding climate change at individual,
institutional, and societal levels. […] Social processes that maintain social
order and thus avoid cultural trauma create social inertia regarding
climate change. (Brulle 2019)
https://pages.uoregon.edu/norgaard/pdf/Avoiding-Cultural-Trauma-Brulle-Norgaard-2019.pdf
AND on page 8
Semantics can both help and hinder.
I’d put it this way … In other words, social systems and sub-systems are internalized as individuals experience them.
You cannot understand what it’s like to be in the academic system until you are. But by then the system itself has begun to influence your way of being and your awareness – IOW that defines appropriate behavior within that social setting. Through the creation and definition of socially appropriate conduct, specific rules of interaction are developed to guide social interactions. In this way, certain patterns of interaction are normalized and stable social institutions are created and maintained”even as new people keep arriving within.
Bankers know what it is like to being inside the banking system, and they act accordingly. Fossil fuel execs the same. If you do not defer to what is the predominant system you will be instantly rejected and overtly ostracized from it – or you will never make it through the door in the first place. Individuals are made to FIT the Mold of the dominant system, be it Davos Cluster or the secondary Enabler Cluster, before they can gain entry.
The inherent power though comes from the system and the institutions within it. The power is not individual power. It’s systemic and institutional power.
And institutions are extremely aggressive using a no holds bar approach when defending them selves. Be they Political parties, Hollywood producers, Corporate Think Tanks and Power-brokers, Gymnastics USA the Catholic Church, Silicon Valley, and Fossil Fuel Corporations. Police Unions, NYPD, Military Veterans, Universities, NFL Football or Academic and Scientific bodies.
Individuals within these different groups (or systems), they might all live in the same world but they do not see nor experience the same world.
Hr Check
This may be your problem.
Having no identity and having no “self”, perhaps not even a legal passport, you feel and believe that you can change your-SELF! and your identity simply by taking on another uniform and have your-SELF another job. Then you can run away from any earlier con-science and responsibility.
But you, your-SELF may not be quite normal due to that tribal racial history of yours, being selected and especially arrested tribal, damned/condemned anonymeous irish and bluddy brittes……
….. who were stripped of anything selfish personal including aloso such as all their guilts and depts and memories,…
then bundled and chained together and shipped over to Australia to begin a quite new and better life there without all those bloody memories and debts and guilts.
They were given Royal Orders to change their very identities, pesonalities, memories and histories to the better. as far away as possible on the opposite side of the globe because we cannot have them here.
I do not have a problem.
Please borehole this self-righteous delusional looney. TY in advance.
No, Dr Check
I was just picking into your idea of commo0n people and any human changing character and personality allways by just changing their occupation, jobs, and labeled uniforms.
A premise for that is also Carl Marx` entfremdung der Arbeit., an old supersticion and delusion. that thrives under lack of ownership, lack of identity, the lack of moral and responsibility.
Which is serious enough.
At a time, moral digging into stalinism and nazism and GULAG Auchwscwiz and WW2 went viral. And it was told for serious that “research has shown that anyone…. can be turned into a terrible and irresponsible torturist and and monstreous sadist” by simply being given the job and some minimal training.
I have heard it told for serious at the institute of philosophy.
And I react deeply spontaneously by having to learn that “people” meaning anyone share that potencial character, having also had to “accept and to “tolerate” sheere and glad sadism in a quite inferiour and helpless situation. It sits in my bone marrow since then, I hate it..
To my wiew and to my spontaneous instinct, those special characters can be identifried and taken out by test, and kept away from, ….Banned from….., leading positions or keye positions in society. They belong in jail or in the monasteries or asylums under strict regime and observation.
Tyranny also selects and takes out by test, isolate, and train their special precident guard Gestapo, and officer corps. Not everyone is found fitted and “worthy” of such “high” positions in society.
It goes through special and isolated military training camps where the majority of aspirands are falling out, and only “the best of the best” succeed and will be “inaugurated”.
Hanna Ahrend wrote about it, “The banality of evil”. They lack identity personal core , empathy and proper soul and self.
They have an all to weak soul with con- science and memory that can be adressed to., and what might be there, is consequently broken down.
They will never feel guilt. “But…. everyone else also did it?”
They never fell into sin. They never ate from that tree of wisdom so they live on in Paradise unable to see up and down right and wrong left and right back and forth on themselves and hardly feel any personal “shame”. and guilt.
It also stics, the same is also a social disease that can spread.
This seems to be a quite real variety of common humans also under convenient camouflage, at any time. .
And not to be our teachers and judges. Civil society here where I live, has also had trials and forms to sort them out and aside.
You appear to be talking about sociopaths and psychopaths. Quite a few of these become chief executives of corporations due to their characteristics. We certainly don’t want them as politicians.
“Houston,… we had a problem..”
That is NASA and the USA on its very best. The sovietts never had such problems
Even that mission could splash down safely in the pacific.
Those who never had and never will have a problem and who only teaches, having all their things in perfect order are not qualified for space.
You seem to have a rather rosy view of what criminal transportation to Australia was like, even though many of those transported eventually ended up with a better life than they would have ever had in the UK.
I’ve never heard of a Royal Order to change the identity of criminals transported to Australia. Most of them got a Ticket of Leave during the term of their sentence, the rough equivalent of modern parole from a prison sentence, and then a Certificate of Freedom when they had completed their original sentence.
They were not permitted to return to the UK for the term of their original sentence,. Those transported for life could never return.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convicts_in_Australia
Thanks for your thoughtfullness.
The intensions and the theories of conviction and punishment with eventual personal improovements is a long history..
I have dug into it and found that if I could only have another passport identity, then a lot of further profitable tricks would become possible. Those passports could be acheived in Hamburg at the Reeperbahn at night costing only 1/2 of a proper study certificate and diploma.
But I have seen in Hull eastern England that I could pass, Whereas a person behind me looking rather like an arab was stopped for the n`th time and shown back to Sweden. They only asked me for how long I would stay in the UK.
And the same in Boston USA. “What the Hell are you doing here?”. I am going to a wedding party and I shall examine The People and the Flowers on the ground, your Botanics! and going back home as soon as possible.. That was OK. They took my fingerprints and that was all.
There was a situation now at the Belarus- Polish boarder. Airplanes of opportunists had paid their airplane tickets to go for wildlife fishing and hunting in White Russia, being told that they could easily walk over from there into the EU and become free, western citizens.
They ended in tents and campfires against EU and NATO soldiers, and with White Russian officers with Kalashnikovs behind them. and some persons froze in Hell also.
Such episodes are rather due to Climate and climate refugees.
It is against the UN declaration of Human Rights, and hardly sustainable.
And yet, there are clearly those who successfully reject assimilation. We are not Borg. We are a tiny minority on this board – and everywhere else.
Yes. And I apologize for dissing you in the past. Much of that was the testosterone-driven locking of horns many mammals are susceptible to.
But I’ve learned, and the Time is now. There is no wiggle room left for dominance.
Indeed.
@killian @ richard
yes and yes, well said both. :)
Sorry, but one more…..
Dr Charlie Gardner
As an earth scientist, I wish I had spent the last 20 years being much more alarmist.
F*** the taboos and social norms that held me back.
You want to do something about it But what? And how? (thoughtful thread)
https://twitter.com/CharlieJGardner/status/1424792447062847497
George Monbiot
If you are middle class, they call you a champagne socialist
If you are working class, they say it’s the politics of envy
If you wear leather shoes, they call you a hypocrite
If you don’t, they call you a hippy
Everyone, apparently, is disqualified from challenging the system
“A Boy and Whose Dog?” part 1b
Justin3 is a nice kid (but then again, I said similar things about Derrells2, and he ripped out a full human’s intestines – is the brutal murder of a child murderer a heinous sin?.
Justin3’s primary concern was reuniting with Nina, “his” blue nose pitbull, so I decided to make that happen by driving him to St Louis.
The trip down was uneventful. But when we got to his sister’s place, in a mid-level trailer park that Justin3 described as the most glorious trailer park imaginable, his stuff was piled in the driveway and there was no welcoming interaction to speak of. We didn’t relax and chat in her living room. We loaded up his stuff and left. More data…
Even at first glance it was obvious that Nina is a magnificent animal. She pays close attention and has the brains required to work/partner with a human, whether full or half. Compared to her, Justin3 is trailer trash.
We stopped at a convenience store and Justin3 showed off by putting Nina through her paces. I suppressed my internal cringing. WTF. Ordering around and barking commands?!? Nina did her best. I felt bad for her and noted to myself that Justin3 needed far more training than Nina. Eh, what is is. I internally signed up for the task.
Justin3 wanted to stop by his old place. His van was still parked there and he wanted to recover whatever was left inside that he considered valuable. Not much. But he did bitch about his family not keeping their paws off and not keeping his stuff safe. Whatever.
Then he directed us around the corner to a friend’s house. I stayed in the car while he did whatever he did. As you’ll find out, it probably was Significant.
And we headed back to Omaha.. Again, the trip was uneventful.
Except that Nina and I started to bond….
And this is relevant to climate mitigation how?
It is about changing society so that we can work towards solutions. Have you ever programmed computers? You can do it directly, so your effort tries to solve a single relatively irrelevant thing, or you can program indirectly, where users input their problems and your code, which has no frigging clue about the user’s issue, can gin up its own code that solves the user’s problem.
So, do you think that programming should be done via incredibly time-consuming One Program Per Issue or indirectly, where One Program can be used to solve a myriad number of problems.
Dude, I can’t type that fast,
RW. No I haven’t programmed computers, apart form some simple stuff in basic. I don’t relate to computers. Its definitely not my thing. I’m not interested, but respectful of the aficionados. So trying to use computing as an analogy doesn’t connect with me.
Society is just fine at coming up with solutions RIGHT NOW. In fact our civilisation excels at solutions. Some of your saner ones even look quite good.
The main problem we have is 1) sorting out the best solutions, which means criticism that is often painful 2) motivating people to recognise the right solutions, and 3) then motivating people to implement solutions . And I cant see anything in what you say that helps that. But I guess that’s not your thing.
Dr Charlie Gardner
As an earth scientist, I wish I had spent the last 20 years being much more alarmist.
F*** the taboos and social norms that held me back.
Yeah, me, too. Sorry, Charlie. We tried, Charlie. But, hey, I get yelled at for saying I tried. There’s no winning except to keep doing what you know to be the right thing to do. And, yeah, fuck the social norms:
I have no MA or MS or PHD, so I say, “Look, I said this a long time ago, so please listen.” And they say, “”Egotist! Arrogant!” And I say, “No, this is the only way to prove my legitimacy because I lack alphabits behind my name.” And they say, “Well, yeah, what the fuck do you know? Prove you belong! Where are your published workds? Where are your alphabits? And I repeat, “WTF, are your ears full of wax? All I have is my record,”
And so on.
It doesn’t matter, Charlie and George, what you have to say; there will always be someone gatekeeping to prevent what you know from becoming known.
The one thing that NEVER happens when I say, Hey, I knew then and still know!” is, “Really? How interesting… How did you/do you know that? ”
There is zero curiosity as to how little ol’ me got so much more right than the vast majority of scientists/analysts.
Still zero curiosity.
Our greatest challenge? Changing the world involves…. people.
Hr Killian
“The one thing that NEVER happens when I say, Hey, I knew then and still know!” is “Really? How interesting How did you / do you know that?”
= quite interesting. There may be many reasons for that. Maybe you are becomjing too old and dizzy It may be the Alzheimer. It may also be because people know you better and better and you allways repeat that same well known rubbish all the time.
But it may also be a social symptom of over- population where close neighbours and relatives more and more avoid each other just to have enough peace.and privacy for themselves Curiosity and observance must be more and more turned off, else ocer- stimulated. That is a big city and urban phaenomena.
And today it is typical and to be exp0ected due to all those new “Social” media calling for peoples attension. Everyone, including you, have a more or less limited capacity of curiosity and attension, that also must be reserved enough.
Yep. And you and I suck at addressing people. I’ve been working at addressing my deficiency, and now it is time for us to work together. Agreed?
I’ll work with anyone who isn’t intentionally an ass, eh? I don’t care *how* a person presents, right? I only care that it’s not intentionally personal – which we see a lot on this board from certain people.
If you mean to suggest working off these boards, we can pursue that. If you mean on these boards, There are a few of us on this board that perhaps can support each other in not getting sidetracked by the trolls and sideline them by ignoring them, or something like that.
Jury clears Extinction Rebellion activists who targeted commuters
Group of six argued obstruction in London’s financial district was lawful protest against government inaction
“The defendants’ motives chimed with the concerns of 12 citizens representative of the wider public. The jury agreed the climate crisis requires radical action. This reinforces the importance of both civil disobedience and juries in a healthy democracy”
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/dec/10/jury-clears-extinction-rebellion-activists-who-targeted-commuters
Second @XRebellionUK jury trial, second complete acquittal.
It certainly seems that when they have a chance to reflect on what is at stake the public understand that the protesters are in the right!
Time and again the police crack down on activists, the government gun for them and the right-wing press bay for their jailing
Time and again the courts find their actions justified Jury find 6 “not guilty” despite admitting disrupting DLR in 2019
The verdict is in, standing on a train is an appropriate response to #ClimateEmergency. So while MPs think protest can’t be annoying, the people find the #ClimateCrisis far more urgent than a minor delay
Incredibly powerful words from https://twitter.com/DrEmilyGrossman during COP26 on why scientists are being forced to take direct action to be heard. For anyone who still needs persuading that the media and our Government(s) still haven’t grasped the gravity of the climate & nature crisis
w’ short 2 min. video outtake
https://twitter.com/simon_oldridge/status/1460181209796034563
You can watch the full discussion with @DrEmilyGrossman, @GeorgeMonbiot , @ThierryAaron and @JKSteinberger on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhWFE7nWz2A&t=27048s
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin
The appropriate response to an exponentially growing problem will seem
disproportionate to the state of the problem at the moment.
Hr. R. Check
A Swede came up with a very good question at the Climate-Surrealist- Pizza- meetings where I go now and then to find out who they really are.
“Why allways all those apokalypses?”
As he also suggested Climate- surstrømming instead of climate- pizza, I reallized that he was not stupid. Because Surstrømming is the original russian and later Swedish way to keep the flock together and to keep all others at good distance from the ceremony.
He repeated the question after 2 meetings and then I knew the answer. “Oh don`t you know that?, it is in order to keep up the tribal and national morals of course, . like “If you do not behave now and do exactly what I say, you will go to Hell in a large and painful cathastro0phy and it is very urgent, now!””
13 January 2021
Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future
Given the existence of a human “optimism bias” that triggers some to underestimate the severity of a crisis and ignore expert warnings, a good communication strategy must ideally undercut this bias without inducing disproportionate feelings of fear and despair (Pyke, 2017; Van Bavel et al., 2020). It is therefore incumbent on experts in any discipline that deals with the future of the biosphere and human well-being to eschew reticence, avoid sugar-coating the overwhelming challenges ahead and “tell it like it is.” Anything else is misleading at best, or negligent and potentially lethal for the human enterprise at worst.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcosc.2020.615419/full
The Climate Crisis Is Worse Than You Can Imagine.
Peter Kalmus, out of his mind, stumbled back toward the car. It was all happening. All the stuff he’d been trying to get others to see, and failing to get others to see — it was all here.
The overt denialists are easy villains, the monsters who look like monsters. But the rest of us, much of the time, wear pretty green masks over our self-interest and denial, and then go about our days. Then each morning we wake to a new headline like: “The planet is dying faster than we thought.”
https://www.propublica.org/article/the-climate-crisis-is-worse-than-you-can-imagine-heres-what-happens-if-you-try
Climate Action or Imposed Energy Poverty? The Hypocrisy of COP26 Fossil Fuel International Finance Bans
https://blogs.ethz.ch/energy/cop26/
‘2.4C is a death sentence’: Vanessa Nakate’s fight for the forgotten countries of the climate crisis
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/dec/13/24c-is-a-death-sentence-vanessa-nakates-fight-for-the-forgotten-countries-of-the-climate-crisis
Saw a graph recently showing the annual per capita emissions of many African countries is below that of an American refrigerator.
Oh cool, I found it.
Energy Use per person in Africa versus a Typical American Refrigerator.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FGKkVXuXwAM3-ca?format=jpg&name=large
Isn’t it strange how out of touch people are with reality? Even those who know about climate science and climate change and support action to stop it.
Such as the odd one here and there who might believe that 50% of global emissions come from the poorer nations of the world, the global south, such as those in Africa. Luckily their cognitive dissonance let’s them include China in that select group because it makes up at least half of that number. :)
People are strange alright. Especially the weirdos on this forum who imagine I keep telling them what to think and what to do. Right whackos are they.
RC,
Yet you still haven’t contacted me at richardtheweaver@gmail.com.
Why?
Dr Charlie Gardner – Conservationist, activist, writer, researcher. Rebelling against extinction
You’ve seen the fires
You seen the floods
You’ve read the news reports
You’re scared
And now you want to do something about it
But what? And how?
…. there are five main things we could and should all be getting on with
1 communicating
2 influencing
3 activism
4 building better alternatives, and
5 looking after ourselves
https://twitter.com/CharlieJGardner/status/1424792447062847497
Hang on, let me check that list again…
communicating, check
influencing, check
activism, check
building better alternatives check, and
looking after ourselves, check
OK right. No, there is no being a nasty abusive judgemental self-righteous ass hat on RC on that list. I didn’t think there was, but wanted to be sure. Good to know. Thanks for listening. :)
“We have now reached the final decade of our opportunity to land safely at 1.5C. And 1.5 is a real planetary boundary.” Climate scientist @jrockstrom at #COP26 (video)
https://twitter.com/UNFCCC/status/1466718453704835072
I’m missing COP26 like it was a long lost lover. Aren’t you? It’s like there’s no one and no thing left to talk about or insult now. :)
James has another article out, same stuff, about movies, plus US politics and a bit of science and fee and dividend and so on. Americans, they are so US centric I don”t know how they can stand up without getting dizzy and falling down in a heap. Oh well.
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2021/DontLookUp.14December2021.pdf
Have a look at Fig. 47.6. on page 8
Cumulative 1751-2020 fossil fuel carbon emissions (tons C/person; 2020 populations).
Horizontal lines are multiples of the global mean.
In ranking order:
USA
UK
Germany
Canada
Russia
Australia
Rest of Europe
Japan …..
everyone else, and I mean every other nation on this planet, is below the global mean.
The US, UK & Germany are all more than 4 times the global mean. It is crystal clear which countries are more accountable than most for causing today’s current level of global heating and the current climate emergency now unfolding today. And they are all need to be brought to account for the Loss and Damages caused by paying hundreds of Billions in Reparations and releasing patent restrictions for clean energy technology.
Colonialism comes with a price tag today. It’s time to foot the Bill.
Hansen url ?
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2021/DontLookUp.14December2021.pdf
Gathering storm aka What collective cumulative karma looks like irl.
Thousands may die from the initial burst of wind and water, but the real terror begins when the storm surge squeezes into the Houston Ship Channel. The surge, he said, will break ships off their moorings, cleave oil pipelines, and pummel thousands of storage tanks holding the raw material for everything from paint thinners to jet fuel. This toxic stew of oil, chemicals, and debris will flood urban bayous, spill into neighborhoods, and eventually wash back into the bay.
Blackburn’s bleak prediction, developed with computer modeling by Rice’s Severe Storm Prediction, Education and Evacuation from Disaster (SSPEED) Center, loses doubters with each passing storm.
https://thebulletin.org/2021/12/gathering-storm-the-industrial-infrastructure-catastrophe-looming-over-americas-gulf-coast/
Meanwhile in other anecdotes Caterpillars are still alive merrily eating vegetables outdoors in the middle of December in Missouri US. If you’ve ever been in St Louis in mid-December you’ll realize that too must be straight out of a sci-fi horror movie.
From totally upended dysfunctional natural life cycles to national state of emergencies it is going to be one Hell of a ride. “But why weren’t we told?”
Noam Chomsky says we have no right to gamble with the lives of climate-vulnerable people: Video
Prof. Chomsky has long argued that the roots of the climate emergency, and of our failure to deal with it, reach deep into the capitalist economic system. He noted in 2016 that technology can be only one part of any climate solution—that humanity is hurtling toward global calamity because “the entire socioeconomic system is based on production for profit and a growth imperative that cannot be sustained.” In the interview, we discussed, among other topics, the ethical implications of making profit and growth the very foundation of our society.
As I saw the Glasgow conference grind on toward its inevitable, infuriating conclusion, that October 1 interview kept replaying in my head. I heard Prof. Chomsky’s quiet moral outrage as he discussed the extraordinary ecological devastation and human suffering that will result from our political leaders’ willful negligence.
When, for example, I asked him about climate models that seek to balance the amount of money rich countries should spend now on climate mitigation with how much economic damage they can expect if they don’t mitigate—a kind of cost-benefit analysis—he directed his answer at the world’s economists and decisionmakers.
“We have no right to gamble with the lives of the people in South Asia, in Africa, or people in vulnerable communities in the United States,” he said. “You want to do analyses like that in your academic seminar? OK, go ahead. But don’t dare translate it into policy. Don’t you dare to do that.”
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2021-12-10/noam-chomsky-says-we-have-no-right-to-gamble-with-the-lives-of-climate-vulnerable-people-video/
Chomsky Cox 2021 10 01
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv18HU4CfXQ
Hrrrump what would he know about such important stuff like socioeconomic systems. bar humbug, yeah? :)
Noam Chomsky: The initiators of the Paris Agreement intended to have a binding treaty, not voluntary agreements, but there was an impediment. It’s called the Republican Party. It was clear that the Republican Party would never accept any binding commitments. The Republican organization, which has lost any pretense of being a normal political party, is almost solely dedicated to the welfare of the super-rich and the corporate sector, and cares absolutely nothing about the population or the future of the world. The Republican organization would never have accepted a treaty. In response, the organizers reduced their goal to a voluntary agreement, which has all the difficulties that you mentioned.
[…] The economic system of the last 40 years has been particularly destructive. It’s inflicted a major assault on most of the population, resulting in a huge growth in inequality and attacks on democracy and the environment.
[…] But there are serious barriers — the fossil-fuel industries, the banks, the other major institutions, which are designed to maximize profit and not care about anything else. After all, that was the announced slogan of the neoliberal period — the economic guru Milton Friedman’s pronouncement that corporations have no responsibility to the public or to the workforce, that their total responsibility is to maximize profit for the few.
SC: Where do you see hope?
NC: Young people. In September, there was an international climate strike; hundreds of thousands of young people came out to demand an end to environmental destruction. Greta Thunberg recently stood up at the Davos meeting of the great and powerful and gave them a sober talk on what they’re doing. “How dare you,” she said, “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words.” You have betrayed us.
Those are words that should be seared into everyone’s consciousness, particularly people of my generation who have betrayed them and continue to betray the youth of the world and the countries of the world.
https://tomdispatch.com/the-path-to-a-livable-future/
New research: carbon fee and dividend would reduce poverty and inequality while strengthening the economy
By Dana Nuccitelli
On November 29, the prominent journal Nature Climate Change published two studies very relevant to CCL’s efforts. The title of the first paper nicely summarizes its key findings: Climate action with revenue recycling has benefits for poverty, inequality and well-being.
Carbon fee and dividend alleviates poverty and income inequality
The study considered a revenue-neutral carbon fee and dividend structure consistent with achieving the Paris agreement target of limiting global warming to less than 2°C hotter than pre-industrial temperatures. The carbon pricing structure in the paper is similar to that in the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act (EICDA), with a few distinctions:….
https://citizensclimatelobby.org/blog/policy/new-research-carbon-fee-and-dividend-would-reduce-poverty-and-inequality-while-strengthening-the-economy/
It’s all been said before, many times in many ways, and still it will be ignored / dismissed as nothing changes in how things are done continues on unabated. It’s a good review article of a key issue of the climate crisis. I don’t expect anyone here to read it in full. In fact I be surprised if anyone did. There are many readers here I know for certain couldn’t even understand it. Nevertheless :)
Vulnerability does not just fall from the sky: Toward multi-scale pro-poor climate policy
January 2013 – original 2010
Jesse Ribot – American University Washington D.C.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/304346171_Vulnerability_does_not_just_fall_from_the_sky_Toward_multi-scale_pro-poor_climate_policy
I’ll read it, but based on the title, I probably do not need to. Pretty much everyone else here does.
But we’ll see. Maybe there’s something unique in it.
Yup, as expected: Risk, the causes of risk and the outcomes are a key to sane decision-making.
Here come our loca trolls…. 3, 2, 1….
Madagascar’s Misery and the Vulnerability Crisis Hiding Behind Climate Crisis Headlines
December 9, 2021
DESCRIPTION: The top driver of losses and risk from extreme weather is more often poverty, dislocation and other factors on the ground than changes in the climate. Yet media coverage and messaging from aid agencies has often focused on parsing and highlighting the role of human-driven climate change. Explore why this matters, and what to do to clarify solutions with Andy Revkin of Columbia’s Climate School and a batch of great guests. We’ll focus on the emerging crisis in southern Madagascar.
https://www.earth.columbia.edu/videos/view/madagascar-s-misery-and-the-vulnerability-crisis-hiding-behind-climate-crisis-headlines
Politics of attributing extreme events and disasters to climate change
Myanna Lahsen, Jesse Ribot Accepted: 25 October 2021
1. Attributing crises only to climate is inadequate from a mechanical, moral,and strategic policy points of view.
Security on the ground—conditions and policies in place—mediate damages that follow climate events. Further,these conditions have causes, which must be understood if we are to improve prevention of crises. Thus, the effects of these anthropogenic elements of climate remain contingent on conditions on the ground and the chains of causality that produce them
https://wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/wcc.750
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2021-10-22/the-global-north-caused-the-climate-crisis-now-is-the-time-to-pay-its-dues/
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/oct/29/we-know-who-caused-the-climate-crisis-but-they-dont-want-to-pay-for-it
Factors other than climate change are the main drivers of recent food insecurity in Southern Madagascar – 01 December, 2021
https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/factors-other-than-climate-change-are-the-main-drivers-of-recent-food-insecurity-in-southern-madagascar/
Download the full study: Attribution of severe low rainfall in southern Madagascar, 2019-21, pdf
https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/wp-content/uploads/ScientificReport_Madagascar.pdf
Severe food insecurity is the clearest impact of the ongoing drought in Madagascar. While precipitation deficits have been widespread across the southern half of the country, we chose to focus on the region in the very south-west of the country (the Grand Sud region) ……….
This lack of rain over the 24 months from July 2019 to June 2021 was estimated as a 1-in-135 year dry event, an event only surpassed in severity by the devastating drought of 1990-92.
So there is a twice in 30 years event, only expected once in 135 years so there is nothing to see here.
Besides … the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report concluding that any perceptible changes in drought would only emerge in this region if global mean temperatures exceed 2°C above pre-industrial levels.
Like the IPCC has never been wrong? Never been required to revise it’s previous conservative conclusions about the impact of temperature on climate weather conditions? Well it is possible this is merely unconscious racism as opposed to conscious privileged biases against the global south and Africa.
The “scientists” have spoken and decreed Reality. This is epic good news for the people of southern Madagascar … you are not the victims of severe climate change impacts. You lucky people you.
Do details matter at all?
Randriamarolaza et al. (2021) examined observed trends from 28 weather stations across the country ….. no station data were available over the Grand Sud region most affected by the ongoing food security crises.
Our analysis of data from the nearest available weather stations in GHCN-D (see Appendix 2)
found large data gaps which prevented any complementary analysis of observed rainfall trends.
So based on no station data and large data gaps final conclusions are made and publicized anyway.
The drought in Madagascar is across the entire island. It is no restricted to the very southern tip.
This disgraceful report is not credible.
I’d certainly agree that “unconscious racism” is a “thing”–a horrible one, actually–if by “this” you are referring to AR6, I’d say that it’s also very possibly just an honest scientific error–if, that is, we even postulate that it *is* an error.
You might, however, intend the drought report instead. I’m agnostic on that, never having heard of it before. So ty for bringing it to my attention.
The thing is that we have to get past the idea of complex phenomena having a single cause–and the situation confronting Madagascar is certainly very complex. I’ve traveled to Madagascar twice–in 2006 and 2017, mainly in the country’s south and west. Madagascar has experienced significant environmental degradation for decades. Erosion is so severe that you can see the loss of elevation in the country by satellite! In addition to the loss of topsoil, the resulting sediment burden in the rivers is choking out native fish populations, causing further environmental degradation and at the same time depriving the population of much-needed protein.
While the current drought may not be directly attributable to climate change, it is beyond doubt that the intermittent droughts and impulsive droughts characteristic of climate change make all of the environmental degradation in the country worse and have prevented small farmers from accumulating any stockpiles of food that could have blunted the effects of the famine..
@kevin only referring to this attribution report. unconscious being unintended. there’s been a 2 year long severe drought all over most of madagasca. it’s in dire straits for a long time. why only focus on the far south? why even ask the question of attribution?
@ray yes, complex problems with single causes is a problem all over. But that’s what academics tend to do … isolate narrow frames of reference is the default approach. Never / rarely an holistic multidisciplinary approach. The effects of colonialism persist long after independence.
My main concern being producing a report when there is no rainfall data to rely upon. seems dubious at best. I am very skeptical of this paper, I think it is dismissive shallow and extremely cavalier denying attribution to climate change forces.
and per Lahsen above
“Attributing crises only to climate is inadequate from a mechanical, moral,and strategic policy points of view.”
Thus, the effects of these anthropogenic elements of climate remain contingent on conditions on the ground and the chains of causality that produce them.
wrt to Madagascar…
“Severe food insecurity is the clearest impact of the ongoing drought in Madagascar. While precipitation deficits have been widespread across the southern half of the country, we chose to focus on the region in the very south-west of the country (the Grand Sud region) ……….
This lack of rain over the 24 months from July 2019 to June 2021 was estimated as a 1-in-135 year dry event, an event only surpassed in severity by the devastating drought of 1990-92.”
I think of the current M situation as the most current example of global response to a regional disaster. How and why do we let people starve? We can do better than that.
We need to practice doing better at responding to regional disasters because global warming is likely to create many regional disasters. An adequate global response to a regional disaster is an example of the extension of the commons as a global “good.” It is a function we should embrace in a whole-hearted manner.
Cheers
Mike
new paper on #MitigationDeterrence effect of Greenhouse Gas Removal #GGR #CDR and how to minimize it is out.
We considered calling the paper ‘the half-life of bullshit’, from a stakeholder discussion on how long false promises, discrediting of expertise, vested interests and downright lies could sustain a policy stance … Sadly the jury is still out on the answer to that question.
Our findings suggest that there are good reasons to worry about #MitigationDeterrence, and that concerns about deterrence effects are widely shared amongst climate/GGR stakeholders. Yet the failure so far to achieve adequate mitigation makes delivering #GGR (CDR) important too.
https://twitter.com/mclaren_erc/status/1471111019204386816
Attractions of delay: Using deliberative engagement to investigate the political and strategic impacts of greenhouse gas removal technologies
Given the urgent need for climate action, any delay in emissions reduction would be worrying. We convened nine deliberative workshops to expose stakeholders to futures scenarios involving mitigation deterrence. The workshops examined ways in which deterrence might arise, and how it could be minimized. The deliberation exposed social and cultural interactions that might otherwise remain hidden.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/25148486211066238
The machine keeps pushing out new papers one after another, day after day, dozens per day on Climate issues.
Reality Check.
Regarding “new paper on #MitigationDeterrence effect of Greenhouse Gas Removal #GGR #CDR and how to minimize it is out.” I tracked down the paper here:
https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/74e4c4b6-49d9-30e6-b4b8-2f0cb5351224/
The idea of net zero emissions and the use of carbon sequestering technologies because some parts of the economy are very hard to decarbonise has always seemed logical to me. However the paper and your previous comments do highlight the problem that its being abused to defer making emissions cuts at source and its encouraging politicians to kick the can down the road, and we don’t know if it would work as well as hoped. Its a nightmare sort of situation because its useful to remove CO2 from the air, but its being highjacked.
Regarding your statement “The machine keeps pushing out new papers one after another, day after day, dozens per day on Climate issues.”
It sure does. Skepticalscience.com does a useful weekly list of new papers on the climate issue, for peoples information. It has become almost a self perpetuating industry. Some of the social science stuff looks like it has very limited use and states the obvious. However amongst all the dross there are a few good studies, especially on the physical science of climate change, and I suppose that makes it all worthwhile. But its all become a bit surreal to me.
Thanks for that effort and the comments. i’m aware of the sks list, it’s pretty good.
The second part of my comment above included the Duncan McLaren “new paper” with url.
full access https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/25148486211066238
yours was an older one.
about But its all become a bit surreal to me.
#Metoo
and take care
Uh, yes. If it isn’t surreal it isn’t broad enough to make a difference. Take a deep breath and expand your mind.
In September 2019, the requirement
for a citizens’ assembly on climate
change to be held in Scotland was
included in the Climate Change
(Emissions Reduction Targets)
(Scotland) Act 2019. Building on the
work of the Citizens’ Assembly of
Scotland, Scotland’s Climate Assembly
was the second national citizens’
assembly to take place in Scotland,
and the first to focus specifically on
the climate emergency.
How should Scotland change
to tackle the climate
emergency in an effective
and fair way?
Scotland’s Climate Assembly is made up of over 100 citizens from all walks of life tasked with examining expert evidence and agreeing recommendations for tackling the climate emergency in a fair and effective way.
Scotland’s Climate Assembly Full
Report (Recommendations for Action)
was published on 23rd June 2021 and
included 81 recommendations for the
Scottish Government to consider in
response to the Assembly question.
https://www.climateassembly.scot/full-report
Recommendations for Action, sets out 81 recommendations agreed by consensus, and calls for bold and urgent action now.
In October 2021, the Assembly
launched a Civic Charter, a note of
support signed by more than 100
organisations and individuals, ranging
from academic institutions, private
and third sector organisations.
The Assembly’s recommendations
give the Scottish Government a
unique perspective on what people in
Scotland want and the changes they
would like to see.
This response from the Scottish
Government sets out the existing and
proposed actions that government
will take in order to address each of
the Assembly’s recommendations.
Government Response to Scotland’s Climate Assembly |
https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-government-response-scotlands-climate-assembly-recommendations-action/
Imagine living in a society where the economic surplus was democratically managed and democratically allocated, rather than controlled by and for a self-appointed cabal of profiteers and plutocrats. Now imagine the existential and systemic problems that could be solved instead.
Traditional “Social democracy” is a flawed compromise between Capitalism and progressive Social Policy aka humane expectations for fair wages and essential public goods and workers human rights. The latter presents a problem for capital: fair wages aka a living wage, and progressive social policy solutions increases the supply price and limits the possibility for increasing and excessive capital accumulation to a powerful few aka the cabal, the 1% and their gang of hoodlums aka the Enabler Cluster of corporate execs, politicians and academic experts.
In advanced first world economies to maintain the conditions for excessive accumulation (aka non-stop growth), capital must compensate for the costs of even minimal “social policy outcomes” by depressing the supply prices of a third party, namely, suppliers in the global South and even advanced developing nations like China. E.g., by leveraging monopoly/monopsony power in global supply chains, or by imposing structural adjustment programs (via World Bank, IMF etc.)
Globalization was no accident but an essential component to satisfy the lifestyle demands of the middle classes in the global North. Remember the calls for Economic Rationalism (aka Neoliberalism today) and Law and Order campaigns by Clinton and Blair et al? It didn’t work out that well for the Middle Classes though, because instead eventually post-2000 the changes gutted the middle class completely.
There is an alternative, however. You can have fair wages and progressive social policy *without* having to resort to imperialism and colonialism (aka the humane PR face of Slavery), but it requires that you abandon capital accumulation as the primary objective and shift to a post-capitalist economy and society.
In other words, it’s not the progressive social policy that’s the problem. Progressive social policy and high human welfare does *not* require imperialism nor the oppression and intentional impoverishment of other people. It’s the constant pressure for capital accumulation that’s the problem. That’s what drives imperialism, colonialism, slavery and pestilence.
note: Monopsony; an Economic system with only one buyer from many possible sellers; contrasted with monopoly
Imagine even effectively and speedily solving the existential and systemic problems like the climate crisis?
Preaching to the choir. But you can expect Nigel et al to be on your ass for basically saying Captialism sucks.
Quote: “Imagine living in a society where the economic surplus was democratically managed and democratically allocated, rather than controlled by and for a self-appointed cabal of profiteers and plutocrats. Now imagine the existential and systemic problems that could be solved instead.”
Please provide a list of nations that are sufficiently advanced that they are capable of helping solve existential and social problems AND which have an economic surplus large enough to do diddly squat toward solving ANYTHING.
We’ll wait.
XRRC. I’m not a big fan of capitalism, but your ideas of democratic control over management of company profits have more or less been tried in Venezuela and its been a disaster of epic proportions with shortages of basic goods, huge corruption and crime, particularly bad for the very poor people it was supposed to help. The mistake is to think the plutocrats and profiteers are all evil, and the poor people and politicians are all good and competent.
Not sure there’s a perfect solution to the problem, but the Scandinavian countries blend together capitalism and socialism quite well and get good results.
Yep. The problem is in definitions. “Capitalism” is a form of slavery based on the law of the jungle, all wrapped up in “freedom” gift wrap.
We need to expand the vocabulary. The vast majority of Capitalists in name only are actually Laborist who believe that hard work should be rewarded, as opposed to Capitalists, who believe that leeches who let their capital work for them should be rewarded.
Until we wrest the la guage from the leeches there is zero hope.
RW: “Capitalism” is a form of slavery based on the law of the jungle, all wrapped up in “freedom” gift wrap.
BPL: No, “capitalism” is private ownership of the means of production, as opposed to social or state ownership. It comes in all forms. Contrary to you or to Killian, it is not intrinsically about endless growth or about oppression. The only economic system that has ever resulted in widespread distribution of a high standard of living has been welfare-state capitalism, as is present in much of Europe, the commonwealth countries, and Japan. Oligarchic capitalism, fascism, and communism have been human rights disasters.
Actually RtW definition is broadly accurate and correct. Capitalism is based on systematic theft of the commons. Capitalism is a grab bag of myths. Myths almost everyone wholeheartedly and religiously believe in and engage in apparently. Sad but true.
It does not have to be this way. No one owns the land, No one. Humans became successful because of their intelligence to share cooperate and live in egalitarian communities with minimal possessions and overcome their selfishness and avarice. Long before agriculture arose. Long before patriarchy. Whereas Capitalism rewards theft abuse violence inequality waste lies and avarice. Why would anyone freely choose such an alternative? Beats me.
RC: “Capitalism is based on systematic theft of the commons.”
BPL: Only in Marxist terms, or those of Proudhon.
To quote one of the few great Republicans:
“Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.” — Abraham Lincoln.
Party of Lincoln, huh?
No, BPL. Wrong. Just. Wrong.
And you said, ” Contrary to you or to Killian, it is not intrinsically about endless growth or about oppression.”
Capitalism has no prescriptive requirement for profit, but an intelligent, discerning, non-ideologically biased person who has studied Economics, particularly heterodox Econ, understands that the holding of capital and the control of capital by individuals and groups will lead, inherently to growth.
You know this, I think. We’d all appreciate a more intellectually honest conversation with you.
Continuing from my comment:
The problem with the concept of “the commons” is that in the real world, it only exists as the result of warfare; if you have a Kumbaya-sharing-the-land-indigenous-island-community, it still requires preventing others from coming in those winged ships and taking over.
That’s why the only condition that allows for all the good stuff like “freedom” and “free enterprise” and “equality” and “equity” and “sustainability” is one where there is a small, stable population relative to the resource base.
That makes the value of the resource not worth the cost of the labor (warfare labor) to achieve ownership. So you can have an actual “commons” where extraction is rewarded as labor alone, but one can still accumulate the other forms of capital that can then be used to support long-term activities like science and engineering.
Agree. IMHO the scandinavian countries get the formula most right.
Hr Levenson
Capitalism is hardly the primary cause and the magic formula.
If you are an ape able to make and adjust your own tools, you will harly like it if anyone else comes and grab yout tools your production methods, for theit own. Or come and forbid you to use such tools.
The snow- apes in Japan are shown to own privately what they can keep in their hands and run away with on 2 legs. If any orange or melon falls down, it is not your own anymore and free to be taken by others.
A minimum of ideas of privacy, private sphaere and ownership heritage of that and social consesnus of respect for that seems to be decisive. Namely the private sphaere and the Aura.
It has also been tried defined as your univfersal human rights.
To confuse that with money capital and capitaism is inferiour and politically religiously scientifically perverted. It rules frirst of all for your personal melons, oranges, grinding stones and fishing rods and finely knit baskets.And the presumably comfortable place where you are aquainted to sit, that “should not be stolen from you”
Social habits law and order and social consensus of mine and thine and ours is somthing that exists above money and capitalism in the grades and shall rule and decide over capitalism that is to obey under such elementary basic human rights.
Capitalism hardly serves tghe welfareb and health of society and is no0t ba premise for mit. But ordeer in the budgets,… that helps a lot and what is characteristically lacking elsewhere.
C: Capitalism is hardly the primary cause and the magic formula.
BPL: I didn’t say it was either.
I see we have a real consensus here… everyone agrees to having a definition debate instead of discussing actual phenomena in any detail/depth.
Ray, Lincoln was talking about a particular form of capital; that which is produced by labor, either as accepted currency or a constructed artifact.
But he found himself involved in the other kind, where we would have to include warfare as a form of labor which results in the ‘ownership’ of resources. Ownership of resources (the rest of the continent in that case) means the ability to deny use to others, and so one is able to exchange that usage for the other kinds of capital.
I may get back to this but the real world is calling for my attention.
Continuing from my comment:
The problem with the concept of “the commons” is that in the real world, it only exists as the result of warfare; if you have a Kumbaya-sharing-the-land-indigenous-island-community, it still requires preventing others from coming in those winged ships and taking over.
That’s why the only condition that allows for all the good stuff like “freedom” and “free enterprise” and “equality” and “equity” and “sustainability” is one where there is a small, stable population relative to the resource base.
That makes the value of the resource not worth the cost of the labor (warfare labor) to achieve ownership. So you can have an actual “commons” where extraction is rewarded as labor alone, but one can still accumulate the other forms of capital that can then be used to support long-term activities like science and engineering.
Funny, I didn’t notice Lincoln equivocating or qualifying his statement in any way. There is no capital without labor. Raw materials require the work of the miner, the lumberjack, the farmer, the carder…. Finished good require skilled labor. Intellectual capital requires human thought and creativity. Even theft requires human agency. Labor is prior–always.
Ray,
“even theft requires human agency”
As I said, the discussion so far is mostly rhetorical (definition debate), where everyone uses the words without establishing a common meaning.
So why do you say “human agency” instead of “labor”? Sounds like you are trying to evade the point of my comment.
Thievery, like ‘ownership’ of resources, only requires denial of use to others; there is no act of creation:
Say there is an oasis along a trail in the desert, and I control access to it through the threat of force. The water from the spring flows with no effort on my part, but I clearly have something of value, since I can exchange that access for labor, or artifacts created through labor, or currency.
Now, if you want to say your definition of capital is “something created through human agency that did not have a prior existence”, that’s fine. There was no log before the lumberjack cut the tree.
But then you are excluding, for example, the right granted by the sovereign entity (government) to explore for oil, or to graze cattle, or to harvest lumber, or to farm some land exclusively. (In the case of the oasis, I am the sovereign entity.)
I suppose I am now obliged to apply my usual mechanism; to avoid further definition debate, I guess we can call control of natural resources “zcapital” . And when Lincoln employed warfare to maintain control of the continental zcapital, the soldiers were engaging in “zlabor”.
Which doesn’t change my analysis. If you have a stable abundance of resources relative to population, such that the zapital has little value, and cannot be exchanged for labor or capital, all these issues of concern resolve themselves.
zebra: The problem with the concept of “the commons” is that in the real world, it only exists as the result of warfare; if you have a Kumbaya-sharing-the-land-indigenous-island-community, it still requires preventing others from coming in those winged ships and taking over.
Every Commons has a carrying capacity. If you are already at that level it is suicidal to invite others to share it, so your analogy is, at best, far too simplistic.
That’s why the only condition that allows for all the good stuff like “freedom” and “free enterprise” and “equality” and “equity” and “sustainability” is one where there is a small, stable population relative to the resource base.
Well, ain’t it just great that that’s exactly what is suggested by those only regenerative communities? “Small, walkable communities” in the current “sustainability” nomenclature. Isn’t it amazing how the correct way to do things is… the correct way to do things?
So, what, exactly, is there to argue here other than the choice to behave suicidally instead?
Rhetorical.
Yup. But let the ideologues believe what they want.
“It’s the constant pressure for capital accumulation that’s the problem. That’s what drives imperialism, colonialism, slavery and pestilence.”
Social scientists have also referred to this violent destructive dynamic as the “imperialist-white supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy”, representing the entrenched centuries old interlocking global systems that need to be combatted directly in order to adequately address and solve the biodiversity climate crisis long term.
aka psychologically as Grandiose Malignant Narcissism. Several examples of which appear regularly on these pages.
@nigelj I recommend more historical research on Venezuela. It’s a poor choice for a template example of what you believe happens in the wild. Why not choose China and the CCP as an example of lifting 600 million out of poverty using democratic social principles instead? I recommend moving past entrenched biases and the medias political disinformation campaigns.
Every nation on earth that taxes business profits follows “democratic control over management of company profits” Surely that is obvious enough. The question is how is that done and who does it serve?
The comment called for people to “imagine” not to go find real world historical examples of proven successes. The failures are everywhere.
and a big Yes to @killian and @richard
There are big problems with definitions, semantics, jargon and historical literacy too. But the biggest problems are Bias and Cultural Beliefs, and plain old Ignorance. It’s very distracting and a drain.
XRRC
“Every nation on earth that taxes business profits follows “democratic control over management of company profits”
I agree, and that is a good thing that they do this. I thought you were meaning governments should go much further than that and tax the profits at 100% and decide what do do with them, or something like that. I think that might be problematic and couldlead to distortions. Put is this way – Im not sure who I trust less corporate executives or politicians :).
I dont mean to be overly critical of your point of view as such. I used to have exactly the same point of view I think. Venezuela has made me loose faith in it.
But yes China is a good example. It has a logical balance of central planning and free market and private sector forces.
Its like almost every country gets some aspect right, but few have the whole package.
XRRC: Why not choose China and the CCP as an example of lifting 600 million out of poverty using democratic social principles instead?
BPL: Because China is not democratic in any meaningful sense of the world. It’s a one-party dictatorship. Did you not know that?
That’s for the Chinese to decide. Not you. The system they run is considered democratic by them. They have elections and votes. They follow the rule of law. They elect their leaders in Government. They seem most content in their lot and are doing well as a nation. Unlike some others.
The collective word of 1.4 billion is far more convincing than your singular very biased voice. I do not see millions of desperate Chinese refugees flooding across the Pacific to freedom.
As opposed to those escaping the undemocratic military dictatorships setup by the US et al in Central South America, SE Asia, Africa, and the Middle East all these years ongoing.
The Chinese overall seem a lot happier safe and secure than most Americans do these days. But you could say that about almost every other nation as well. I think the yardstick is broken.
People rarely recognize or admit that they have been brainwashed. Perhaps the term brainwashed is too extreme, in which case manipulated or fooled may be substituted.
An insightful quote from Mark Twain says: It is easier to fool people than it is to convince them that they have been fooled.
People believe all kinds of things are true which aren’t.
Rarely, I must agree with BPL here. That is no solution. Egalitarian or bust.
New: “Dynamic modelling shows substantial contribution of ecosystem restoration to climate change mitigation”
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac3c6c
Huh. Imagine that. Who’d’a thunk it?
Killian’s classic trolling: Inflammatory, egotistical, nasty statement.
Huh? That’s a non-sequitur.
@nigelj
– It seems that you don’t really know – what you know.
This can only damage the efficiency and productivity of CO² sequestration, which are in capitalist competition.
nigelj says
28 NOV 2021 AT 9:28 PM
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/11/net-zero-not-zero/#comment-798284
” Growing trees to sequester carbon is not looking as viable as it once did. Plenty of studies on this if you get out of your confirmation bias bubble. “
So, Trump’s commitment to the Trillion Tree Initiative was a good thing, right?
https://www.doi.gov/pressreleases/trump-administration-furthers-commitment-one-trillion-trees-initiative
I think it probably is a good thing. As you drive around in your CO2 belching personal transportation device here in the Great PNW, it is common to see large clear-cuts with few trees growing. I think (something a lot of you should try) that planting trees in those locations would be a good idea.
KIA. Can you please provide proof that anything trump did actually lead to significant numbers of actual trees being planted. Please provide a link and copy and paste of relevant text. I say this because anyone can sign pledges and set up advisory bodies. I want to see actual results.
Trump was the executive. It is the job of those on the production floor to get the job done.
(paywall)
Behaviour change to address climate change – Abstract
Addressing climate change requires profound behaviour change, not only in consumer action, but also in action as members of communities and organisations, and as citizens who can influence policies.
However, while many behavioural models exist to explain and predict mitigation and adaptation behaviours, we argue that their utility in establishing meaningful change is limited due to their being too reductive, individualistic, linear, deliberative and blind to environmental impact.
This has led to a focus on suboptimal intervention strategies, particularly informational approaches.
Addressing the climate crisis requires 1) a focus on high-impact behaviours and high-emitting groups;
2) interdisciplinary interventions that address the multiple drivers, barriers and contexts of behaviour;
and 3) timing to ensure interventions are targeted to moments of change when habits are weaker.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352250X21000427
…….. round and round it goes; where it stops nobody knows!
#1 in the similar articles list … Suicidal Ideation https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33351435/
#2 Building a Social Mandate for Climate Action: Lessons from COVID-19
We discuss how COVID-19 has demonstrated that behaviours can change abruptly, that these changes come at a cost, that we need a ‘social mandate’ to ensure these changes remain in the long-term, and that science plays an important role in informing this process. We suggest that deliberative engagement mechanisms, such as citizens’ assemblies and juries, could be a powerful way to build a social mandate for climate action post-COVID-19. This would enable behaviour changes to become more accepted, embedded and bearable in the long-term and provide the basis for future climate action.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32836829/
XR has three core demands
#3 is- Go beyond politics.
Governments must create and be led by the decisions of a Citizens’ Assembly on climate and ecological justice. https://rebellion.global/about-us/
see Scotland’s Climate Assembly info above as an example.
What is your US Government doing to mitigate CO2 emissions? Not a lot, but the house has passed the Build Back Broke bill, and now it is in the Senate. This link provides an outline of what is in the House bill:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/5376?__cf_chl_jschl_tk__=iONcDYGTWkfCPe1GOeI_gbgalYm5rArna81wuej0skc-1639731859-0-gaNycGzNCL0
Here is the outline copied from that link:
“This bill provides funding, establishes programs, and otherwise modifies provisions relating to a broad array of areas, including education, labor, child care, health care, taxes, immigration, and the environment. (The bill is commonly referred to as the Build Back Better Act.)
For example, the bill provides funding for
>management of the National Forest System;
>job placement and career services;
>safe drinking water, energy-efficiency, and weatherization projects;
>electric vehicles and zero-emission, heavy-duty vehicles;
>public health infrastructure and supply chain resiliency;
>housing, rental, and homeowner assistance programs;
>cybersecurity programs;
>tribal infrastructure, housing, environmental, and health programs;
>wildfire prevention, drought relief, conservation efforts, and climate change research;
>small business assistance and development;
>transit services and clean energy projects in low-income communities; and
>infrastructure and administration of the Department of Veterans Affairs.
>
Additionally, the bill establishes programs to provide
>up to six semesters of free community college,
>free child care for children under the age of six,
>free universal preschool services, and
>health benefits for eligible individuals who reside in states that have not expanded Medicaid.
The bill also includes provisions that
>establish a methane fee for certain petroleum and natural gas facilities;
>expand Medicare to cover dental, hearing, and vision care;
>provide certain aliens with a path to permanent resident status (e.g., those who entered the United States as minors);
>provide up to 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave;
>restructure and increase the tax rates for certain corporations and high-income individuals (e.g., individuals with income over $400,000); and
>require the Department of Health and Human Services to negotiate maximum prices for certain brand-name drugs under Medicare.”
Ask yourself this: IF Climate Change is the number one threat to the survival of the world, is the above list of utter bullshit what you want your tax dollars to be spent on? Everything on that list other than maybe 3 or 4 lines are just SJW garbage that will benefit no one. Now I’m going to yell VERY LOUDLY for a minute at all of you who claim that CC is an existential threat to the earth:
IF YOU GIVE A SHIT ABOUT THE CLIMATE OF THE EARTH; IF YOU THINK IT IS TIME TO START FORCING GOVERNMENT TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE; THEN YOU HAVE AN OBLIGATION TO CALL THE DEMOCRATS PUSHING THE ABOVE SJW IDIOCY, AND BUST THEIR ASSES OVER THE ABOVE WASTE OF MONEY AND DEMAND THAT THEY SCRAP ALL OF IT EXCEPT THAT WHICH DIRECTLY RELATES TO REDUCING CO2 EMISSIONS. IF YOU FAIL TO CALL THEM AND FAIL TO MAKE NOISE SHUTTING THIS PILE OF SHIT DOWN, THEN YOU ARE COMPLICIT IN THE DESTRUCTION OF THE PLANET FOR THOSE THAT WILL LIVE IN THE FUTURE.
YOU HAVE BEEN CHALLENGED. WILL YOU MAKE ENOUGH NOISE TO GET THE ATTENTION OF THE DO-NOTHING LEFTISTS IN CONGRESS AND REPLACE THE ABOVE PILE OF SHIT WITH THINGS THAT WILL MAKE A REAL DIFFERENCE TO CLIMATE CHANGE? WE WILL SEE. I’M BETTING YOU WILL NOT. PROVE ME WRONG!
Please explain why this idiot climate science denier troll is yelling at people reading real climate?
No one here is responsible for the BBB legislation.
No one here is responsible for the US Government or the US Congress.
Not the Americans but especially not those who are not Americans and who do not even have a vote.
Can anyone please explain why this above “PILE OF SHIT” comment was published instead of being permanently deleted?
Not doing so turns this place into a toxic sewer not worth visiting. No decent sane human being would ever recommend such a website.
I would. Jesus died at half my age, yet I have little chance to get half as much good done.
Read “The art of war”. Then meld it with Jesus’ Words.
Engaging the enemy (who, underneath, are good folks) on favorable ground is a reasonable path to victory, for both sides.
You all win. Or you all die.
Hr Check
For serious, I have seen many websites going to hell because of committing Censorhip, what they call “moderator”. I am getting consequently thrown out there long before they go to Hell. And I have studied it. I could identify the quite general sovi- ett syndrom with no right of appeal.
SENSOR behind the iron curtain is mad and drunk, wherefore he shall only hav rat-poison sent to him in a cheapest paper, by express registered mail. Then he dies slowly and painfully. It works each time.
He mass- produces industrially , especially intelligent and creative enemies against himself and cuts off his own possibilities of knowing who and what he is digging into and dealing with.
Racketeers and professionals and members will never understand this, but it is the sole reason why the Soviett- union went proke. They suffocated and astingated themselves in their own lack of communication and officiality and legality. Nothing could be had without a letter to the central comittee in Moskva and back, where they are further mad and drunk.
it develops Cleptoracy. Underground Private networks flourish. One knows one who knows one who knows one who can steal 1/4 sack of Cement from the state factory or 1/2 box of paint, because that is not for everyone. And Moskva has no telephone- book, you must be inaugurated.
But I have also seen websited doing less of “Moderation” and sensorship. People meet each other, perhaps know each other fainty elsewhere and start very interesing and discussions off- topic. An in a much more friendly tone They moderate themselves if allowed to and by not having to psychoanalyze SENSOR who lack highschool and who has got an Agenda and who is mad and drunk.
You stepm on, you tease and you are at class or industrial corporative warfare against peoples culture and learnings who are rather brought up to The UN declaration of Human Rights articles 26 and 27. and who take that for granted LEX SUPERIOR. Doing that, you make a sewer and soviett union.
C. I have seen many websites going to hell because of committing Censorship,
This site has been under Censorship by Moderators since day one, or at least a decade and a year.
Obviously you too do not comprehend a single thing have I pointed out about this. Nor to you really know how this website operates and why it is like it is.
So every thing you said and believe above is misguided and irrelevant. Including that the Soviet Union has anything to do with this website MO or censorship, or that censorship is the only reason the USSR went broke. You do not know much about RC, about world history, the world or how it operates. You only believe you do. You still have the opportunity to learn better. Until you don’t.
KIA: Everything on that list other than maybe 3 or 4 lines are just SJW garbage that will benefit no one.
BPL: In your bizarrely right-wing opinion. The rest of us disagree.
Thank you BPL and Reality Check for confirming your postition that the top priority of the US Government at this point in history is NOT CC, but is instead, SJW nonsense.
Perhaps AOC was full of it when she said we only had 12 years left to solve CC. And perhaps Greta was full of it when she said: “HOW DARE YOU!” I thought believers took CC seriously.
Anyone else want to confirm that CC is NOT the top priority of the US Government at this point in history? I DARE YOU!
Yes, Reality Check, for those here who are US Citizens, they are responsible for what is done by the US Government/Congress. Citizens can MELT the phone lines and DEMAND that all expenditures go toward reducing CO2 emissions instead of SJW nonsense.
KIA: Thank you BPL and Reality Check for confirming your postition that the top priority of the US Government at this point in history is NOT CC, but is instead, SJW nonsense.
BPL: KIA, like the rest of the right, hates “social justice warriors” (SJWs). Perhaps he is for social injustice.
Yes, KIA, the top priority of the US government at this point in history is not CC. But perhaps a miracle will occur and we can get a Democratic majority in the senate next year.
And thank you for unwittingly (as usual) pointing out the real problem: We have to solve the climate crisis while at the same time keeping the world livable for the nearly 8 billion people currently shuffling around on this mortal coil. This means we have to help people prepare themselves for a rapidly changing economy, address environmental issues, make the economy more fair so that people don’t simply say “Fuck it,” and drop out. The fact that people want the world to be fairer and less harsh in no way diminishes the threat of climate change. That you are unable to understand that says far more about you than about the situation in which we find ourselves.
Yep. Vaguely analogous to a surgical team’s mandate, the system must be kept in operation during maintenance & repair, with only very brief exceptions allowed. And collateral damage minimized, too.
KIA. Most of the policies in that list are just fine. Intereresting that you criticise democrats for not aiming to have more climate legislation, but you cheer on the republicans for trying to stop practically all climate legislation. Youre either perverted or totally confused. Be careful that your head doesn’t explode. And all that shouting. Watch your blood pressure.
Related important topic about sourcing information versus being fed propaganda or biased slants of it. aka learning about the world as it might be. Especially what’s true about say climate change and the science and the politics of it.
So an interview with libertarian Larry Sanger. one of the founders of wikipedia. It’s a good informative thought provoking discussion imo,
Wikipedia co-founder: I no longer trust the website I created
here’s an example starts from 11:40 mins @here https://youtu.be/l0P4Cf0UCwU?t=701
LS: ” If you go to Wikipedia, and you will
get a typical progressive libertarian think tank view on
drug legalisation like, it’s a brief for for what they call
drug liberalisation. “
Q: So you feel like what it’s it’s gives too
much weight to the positives of drug legalisation?
LS: “It’s not just that it’s too much weight.
The problem is that, that when
you look at an article about a topic like that, you are looking
for the means of of deciding what you think about the topic.
Right? You want the tools. So there is a reason why we want
neutrality out of three different kinds of content out
of journalism, reference content, and textbooks, all
three of them, we naturally expect them to be neutral, I
claim.
And the reason for that is, when we are getting the
news, when we are learning, or when we are just trying to get
some basic information at for background in understanding a
topic. In those sorts of situations, we do not want to be
led by the nose, right?
We being free individuals want to make up our own minds.
And if we don’t, then there’s something wrong
with us. I think I’m just gonna say that. I think that!
Basically, if you if you’re the sort of person who just wants to
be told what your religion believes on the topic, he just
wants to be told what your party thinks, what the dictator
thinks, then you’re kind of in a bad situation, you’re not fully
human in that case. In fact, in situations in which that
happens. Well, the word for it is propaganda when it’s
systematic. And that’s really what we’re dealing with on
Wikipedia. “
Q: You now feel that Wikipedia represents propaganda?
LS: “Well I think all the media does, but yes I do.”
Comment:
I have long wondered why “genuine” scientists, academics and institutions choose to solely rely upon the news media to do their talking for them and then bitch and moan when they get it repeatedly so wrong. When they have proven they are unreliable doing the job badly for 30 years. Still little to nothing has changed in that regard. Expect for the plethora of new books written by scientists on the climate topic today. Books are not a mass market penetration maker. Rarely do books do not change minds or global politics and economics.
From Ecophany to Burnout? An Anthropologist’s Reflections on Two Years of Participating in Council-Citizen Climate Governance in Eastbourne
by Pauline von Hellermann
In July 2019, Eastbourne Borough Council declared a climate emergency and committed to making Eastbourne carbon neutral by 2030. In order to achieve this, citizens together with Council created a unique model of council-citizen collaborative climate governance, the Eastbourne Eco Action Network (EAN). EAN’s main strategy has been the setting up of targeted working groups, each bringing together Councillors, engaged citizens and providers, and each tackling a specific area of climate action through a combination of infrastructure, institutional and behavioural changes.
As an environmental anthropologist living in Eastbourne, I was involved in this process right from the beginning, having had my own ‘ecophany’—the realisation that the climate emergency required urgent action—in February 2019. Two years and one pandemic later, in this paper I reflect on the overall experiences and challenges of EAN’s and Eastbourne Borough Council’s work towards town-wide carbon neutrality to date, discussing possible factors (structural and other) determining varying successes and failures. […]
Overall—because it is still ongoing, because I am so involved, emotionally, practically and intellectually, and because the climate crisis as a whole is overwhelming and we are all still just muddling through—the paper’s analysis of what we have achieved here in Eastbourne ‘veers’ somewhat between different optimistic and pessimistic ‘takes’; an accurate reflection of my overall state of mind. However, it does all add up to an emerging overall theory of change, which I end the paper with by way of a conclusion.
https://www.mdpi.com/2673-4060/2/4/32/htm
Nothing unique or new, but glad to see it happening there,
Nothing makes societies go sideways faster than famine.
Jeff Masters Jan 2021 – This worst-case scenario year — though unlikely to occur exactly this way — illustrates one of the greatest threats of climate change: extreme droughts and floods hitting multiple major grain-producing “breadbaskets” simultaneously.
https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/570284-how-easily-the-climate-crisis-can-become-global-chaos
2016 Climate risks pose a threat to the function of the global food system and therefore also a hazard to the global financial sector, the stability of governments, and the food security and health of the world’s population. full access
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212096316300080?via%3Dihub
2021 Climate impacts on global agriculture emerge earlier in new generation of climate and crop models
using CMIP6 – full access
The ‘emergence’ of climate impacts consistently occurs earlier in the new projections—before 2040 for several main producing regions. While future yield estimates remain uncertain, these results suggest that major breadbasket regions will face distinct anthropogenic climatic risks sooner than previously anticipated.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-021-00400-y.epdf?sharing_token=hLIKe83NrQqYbvJIFFIeJ9RgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0OCUnaCG5VFyucYp_m7bHKA7ynGLqKe2lM4Joeu1wCuOI2ZkrFZucD24lqU3fnBRYGQwwcFNUpKoM_isDX87AoVYFonTgt56YMeHg6rmJPQdVOzq6wYwzPtbUKBghTxK4Osd43QpIaO0Ga9EJZIAMhflMy6O0hBsCPhOyDb2EONUprupJcUuYKXM28TuXKRFTrQn3v_pCexBqJBsO7SmyUtrmWWsGEorHKbkxezBbWad4izIB_WbOdsxUjSj9QxOOZqcZUN2ac4XBXZbGeWuNbg&tracking_referrer=news.mongabay.com
I keep asking myself at what point do I stop saying, “Well, duh!” I mean, if one breadbasket tends to get hit every year or so, and everything is escalating, how is that *not* going to happen? I remember having this conversation in 2011 with a friend in Detroit in my living room, pointing out it’s the extremes that cause sudden breaks in systems, not averages, thus everything being predicted with the justification of average changes *had* to be far too conservative – particularly in terms of effects.
The scientists have gotten broad strokes right with regard to temps and CO2 levels and such, but, lordy, has the sensitivity been badly understated. I have stated here many times why that *must* be the case.
“keep asking myself at what point do I stop saying, “Well, duh!” ”
RtW: at the point where you get tired of folks raising their arm and saying, “Talk to my hand”
We need all hands on deck, not folks getting in the way by exclaiming how they knew this moment would arrive years ago.
You show me how you ge people to believe you without a PhD without citing your record.
A witty blogger who cuts through the magical thinking pervading the world at large.
Smart Enough to Get Rich, Not Smart Enough to Keep It
an extract
Recall that actions have consequences (first-order effects) and consequences have their own consequences (second-order effects.) We’re smart enough to exploit first-order effects (drill an oil well and get rich, print money and get rich without even bothering to drill the well) but not smart enough to anticipate all the second-order effects or change course before our heavily loaded galleon of riches has crashed onto the razor-sharp rocks and been smashed to bits.
It turns out there wasn’t much selective advantage 200,000 years ago to converting intelligence into wisdom. The key advantage was cooperating with other humans to strip all the low-hanging fruit from the tree and then move on to the next exploitable resource.
In the modern analogy, we stripped all the low-hanging hydrocarbon energy and exploited the magic of money-printing and its sibling, debt, and now we’re ready to print another couple hundred trillion magical dollars and buy a replacement global energy system.
All these newly conjured trillions have boosted the market value of assets. This first-order effect is simply marvelous: just buy the asset with borrowed money and sit back and get rich by doing absolutely nothing and creating zero value. (If necessary, borrow more money to buy back your company’s shares, reducing the float–this drives up share prices like magic. Hey, magic! Why not use this magic to get richer?)
But this conjuring trick has consequences which then generate their own consequences, one of which is all the phantom wealth suddenly evaporates. It can evaporate in various ways, but the result is the same, and doing more of what worked so wonderfully in the past (creating trillions out of thin air and speculating on asset bubbles) stops working, to general astonishment and anguish.
One consequence is extreme wealth inequality as this money-conjuring / asset bubble trick works extremely well for those at the top, who end up owning most of the wealth and virtually all the income derived from that wealth. But it works very poorly for the bottom 90% who don’t own enough wealth to benefit and are too far from the central bank money spigot to get much of the free money. (Here’s a $250 per child tax credit–enjoy your riches!)
As I describe in my new book, inequality and scarcity bring down nations and empires. The past 50 years of cheap, abundant goodies (now mostly made overseas) and money-conjuring have generated a compelling illusion that conjuring more money via printing and debt solves all supply issues and keeps asset bubbles expanding forever.
http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2021/12/smart-enough-to-get-rich-not-smart.html
You may add value, but Killian’s point is more salient: producing a good specifically to increase profit (aka ‘landfill’) is, like, gonna result in the conversion of the biosphere to “metric”, aka “money”.
New data from the Solomon Islands and Bangladesh shows that communities with low levels of monetization enjoy subjective well-being that matches or exceeds that of high-income nations, confounding all established correlations.
“Contrary to expectations, all three measures of subjective well-being were very high in the least-monetized sites and comparable to those found among citizens of wealthy nations.”
Happy without money: Minimally monetized societies can exhibit high subjective well-being
open access Sara Miñarro et al
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0244569
In barely related news, but in time it might be right on target ….
new President elect Gabriel Boric is the driving force behind Chile’s abrupt changing of the guard. He belongs to a radical generation of student leaders who are grimly determined to bury dictator Augusto Pinochet’s bitter legacy once and for all.
“Chile was the birthplace of neoliberalism, and it shall also be its grave!” he shouted from a stage the night of his primary win, his forearm tattoo peaking out from beneath a rolled-up sleeve.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/20/who-is-gabriel-boric-the-radical-student-leader-who-will-be-chiles-next-president
Will the USA government pull another anti-democratic military coup and have him killed as well? We’ll have to wait and see.
Thanks to XRRC for an interesting post at 20 Dec 2021 1:25 am
I assume the carbon footprint of the somewhat happy folks in the Solomons and Bangladesh is small. But I don’t know if it anything close to net zero. Maybe I will find time to research that.
SWB mentioned below is subjective well being (happiness)
From the Plos article: “However, there are reasons to question a fundamental role of monetary income in determining SWB. A large body of literature has explored the observation that many countries do not appear to become happier as they grow richer, a finding known as the Easterlin Paradox [21]. The Easterlin Paradox throws doubt on the strength of the causal relationship between income and SWB. In addition, most of the work on driving factors of SWB has its origins in Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic (WEIRD) societies [22], which may not be representative of SWB drivers in other contexts. Furthermore, because income is quantified with money-denominated market exchange values, studies of the income-SWB relationship necessarily exclude non-monetized, subsistence-based societies.
Probably a good idea to mention that SWB in WEIRD countries may not be the whole story.
Cheers
Mike
Thanks for your comments. The WEIRD, is very funny. It is a good thoughtful paper.
In related news, Costa Rica named the most sustainable country.
Costa Rica is currently the most sustainable country in the world and will be the first carbon-neutral country by 2020
Costa Rica has received a 2019 Champions of the Earth award, the UN’s highest environmental honour
Costa Rica: The Greenest and Happiest Country In The World ·
Few areas of the planet offer the amount of biodiversity found in Costa Rica. The small Central American nation is one of the top 20 most biodiversity rich places in the world, and one of the top 10 most biodiversity rich rainforest ecosystems.
https://www.horizontes.com/blog/why-is-costa-rica-a-green-destination
But I still wonder what it might be like in 2050 and by 2100 given the trajectory at present blowing past +2C global avg increase long before 2050.
@Kevin McKinney 17 Dec 2021 at 11:58 AM
Thanks for your comment. While it’s really disheartening to hear I’m not that surprised. No doubt your cohorts feel the same. Enjoy the trolls, the wackos and the abusers. Have at it!
Nigel,
I really appreciate your function on this site. You provide an intelligent Everyman’s perspective, skepticism (in the original/good way), and probing.
So, climate science sites, especially this one, must join forces with, well, everyone and everything either under the sun or beyond the non-edge of this universe.
Or. You’re. Fucked.
Me? I already gave up immortality by, as the Book says, to be born is to not regain your immortality..
What? You think the Book only Speaks to your species?
Jesus isn’t coming back. Read the damn book with a scientist’s mind. Figure out what political operatives would insert, would adjust, would Demand.
Use current “skeptics” and their owners as templates.
Those parts of the Book that such kinds would add, move over to the “highly questionable” column that needs significant additional data to confirm:
No knowledge
No changes.
No questions
Omniscient
All-seeing
Perfect
All-powerful
Where’s the damn Story in that?
And what’s in it for a higher power with Rules like that?
Let’s play Monopoly. I get $10,000 to start. You get $5.
Not. Much. Fun.
So, your question.
I just watched a current YouTube on Thwaites(?). In the Q&A a reporter asked about the probability of large changes over the course of an election cycle.
Yep. The time is now.
And without an entity like me to scare the living crap…
To finish A Boy and Whose Dog quickly:
Nina (the dog) chose me. Learned and obeyed ‘git’ immediately, but insisted on laying full-body pressing in me, if I allowed it
Her ex master? Chopped liver. (Though that’s probably not the best example when speaking of a dog’s palate.)
The kid tried to kill me for stealing his dog. Drugged me and just as I was passing out he gloated.
So I melted his mind with Weaver’s Song.
I don’t know if he survived.
I am about to reveal myself to two way-locally powerful and respected and way good MAGA men
This little sub-Story is my bridge.
And if the kid survived A Boy and Whose Dog isn’t over. I’m going to recover MY dog.
So, it is All hands on deck time. Yeah, my hands are strange. So what, my friend?
I got more info today. My car was involved in an accident in Kansas City. The driver disappeared. The System fucked up by not bothering to list the theft nationally, but only in Omaha, so it took this long for the info to meander back to me.
I have no clue how bad the accident was. I don’t know diddly, except that my car is scheduled to be auctioned tomorrow. I called to try to stop it….
And left a friggin message. The System doesn’t give a crap about non-millionaires.
But I am pissed/hopeful. I want to save Nina.
RTW. Then become a millionaire. But even if you do, millionaires still get lousy customer service!
But seriously, nobody need that shit at xmas time especially. I hope things work out for you.
He doesn’t act as a skeptic, he specifically minimizes that which is beyond his sight until he gets around to suddenly spouting it as if he’d thought of it himself.
He’s not an everyman skeptic, he’s being dragged toward sense and only doing it when he no longer has any other option by weight of the evidence.
Six years of the same pattern.
You might see it differently if you were the one dragging him all these years.
Killian.
You are wrong about literally all of that.
Some of your statements are literally non sequiturs. For example there is no connection between scepticism and what you falsely allege about me claiming ideas as ones own.
At no stage have I claimed other peoples ideas as my own. You provide not one iota of proof. You do what you always do: insult and abuse people with your false unsupported allegations.
You appear to confuse supporting an idea with claiming its my own idea. I have no idea why you do that. I have no interest in taking credit for peoples ideas. For example I’ve several times reinforced the idea of smaller global population, but I’ve never said or implied its my idea. Ive generally quoted studies and Ive several times mentioned in passing that Zebra has done the most to raise awareness of this issue on these pages.
I work in a creatve design field and have plenty of my own work to be proud of. I neither need or want more.
You’re paranoid about the issue and obsessed about ownership of ideas.
At no stage have I been dragged kicking and screaming towards anthing. My views on simplification have been pretty much the same for the last 30 plus years. Ive always thought some elements are sensible like passive solar buildings, the recycing economy, and organic farming (although not your doctrinaire version of farming). Ive always thought some elements are crazy like this common ownership socialism thing and some huge and rapid degrowth agenda.
So what specifically have I been dragged towards? Nothing. You provide no evidence. You appear to mistake SCEPTICISM about some ASPECT of something for total rejection of that thing, and that later I discuss the same thing in a generally positive light and perhaps you then assume I’ve changed my mind when I haven’t. Thats the only thing I can think of that would explain your misinderstanding. But I dont understand how you could even do that. Your allegations are nonsensical and evidence free.
The Trump flag literally flies over this section of Railroad Avenue. Jack’s business has lots of American flags, but his tallest pole proudly proclaims, “Trump 2024”.
“A boy and Whose Dog” was enough to not get me immediately ejected when I was summoned to Jack’s place after I took a broadside shot at Gus. I accused him (in a letter) of many things, including selling me an SUV that he had modified instead of replacing its stolen cat. A federal crime, and Gus works under Jack’s name. Literally “Gardner Auto and Trailer”.
Where I found the next Weave.
Jack’s doormat says, “Pets welcome. Humans tolerated”. And one of his cats, Dot (he has a dot on his nose) just got hit by a car. He lived, but his rear legs are in bad shape.
This is a healing weave. It’s going to write wonderfully. The leg, the name (I’m giving him the nickname “Department of Transportation”).
Now I have to heal a cat and keep Gus (and me) from getting tossed out.
Send good vibes.
And share. I bet the mods would appreciate it if their servers can’t take the traffic and crash.
Should I continue to save bandwidth by reporting notes, or should I go back to a fuller account, like I started with?
To emphasize, Jack is the straightest shooter on the planet. If he determines that Gus did it…
But maybe the modification was done before Gus got it. I doubt it because the mod was done poorly and the SUV is loud as fuck. Could Gus be so blind as to miss it? Dunno. That’s for Jack to judge.
Anyway, I can’t say enough good about Jack and if you need a trailer in Omaha, Jack will bend over backwards before and after the sale to ensure he’s done you right.
And if you know anyone in Omaha who needs a Christmas tree, Jack is selling them for the Shriners hospitals for children. I’d consider it a huge personal favor (I’m a crippled kid – we don’t age out of the club) if folks found homes for the ones he has left. Right now, his prices were so low that he’s not quite covered his cost.
RtW: Jesus isn’t coming back.
BPL: I say he is. Prove me wrong.
Richard The Weaver. I deliberately take an everymans perspective on these pages. This is because we have to understand how ordinary people think and behave, what the majority think, and what the limits are, or we just waste a lot of energy pushing fantasy ideas that will never be implemented.
Richard was incorrect and so are you. I take an everyman approach: Please, people, speak in a way any human can understand; design is local; we must design to save *humanity*, not rich White assholes, etc.
What you do is minimize risk – even flatly ignore risk in favor of what is “likely” or “possible” or “economically feasible” no matter how horrible the risk. What you do is illogical, biased by your beliefs and, as you well know, your dislike of me. You respond negatively to things merely because it is I who said it. this is shown also by your defense of Piotr no matter how clearly wrong or trolling and your attempts to label my actions as trolling regardless of how inaccurate that is.
You are not addressing the everyman view, you are expressing denial of conditions in order to continue to hold a delusional future as still possible. I remind you of your pejorative phrasing of regenerative systems and the transition to them.
Killian
You are wrong about literally all of that.
“What you do is minimize risk – even flatly ignore risk in favor of what is “likely” or “possible” or “economically feasible” no matter how horrible the risk. ”
Wrong. I’ve probably posted more links on this website over the last five years on the considerable risks of climate change than any other single person. Quite how you conclude I minimise risk is bizarre and all in your own mind. Just because I don’t buy into some exaggerated BS where everyone goes extinct doesn’t mean I dont think climate change poses severe risks.
Your comment is also a non sequiter. Discussing what is possible in terms of solutions has no bearing on the level of risk. They are independent things. By analogy, covid is serious problem, some things are possible in terms of solutions, some things are pie in the sky fantasies (for examples lockdowns that literally last forever, 100% vaccination rates).
And finally please understand it is not me arguing do nothing because it will hurt economically. I’m happy to pay more for power, within reason and fly much less for example. My point is the vast majority of people clearly arent motivated to do much about the climate problem, probably because of the way human psychology works as various people have explained before. You just aren’t listening.
I prefer to spend my time promoting solutions that have at least some small chance of being implemented ( and that includes some things you have promoted) not pie in the sky fantasies.
“You respond negatively to things merely because it is I who said it. ”
No. Your comments just seem to have a lot of points that are debatable, probably partly because you post so many things, so inevitably there will be some disagreement. Dont take it so personally. Some of the material is quite good.
“this is shown also by your defense of Piotr no matter how clearly wrong or trolling and your attempts to label my actions as trolling regardless of how inaccurate that is.”
Wrong. I defended Piotr because his comments weren’t trolling. Annoying maybe but not trolling. They were merely criticism of your views on some research paper. You seem to think criticism of your commentary is trolling. The only colourful thing he said was about the noble savage myth. Well thats a well known talking point. Its not trolling.
Carbomontanus has been critical of you (although not without good cause at times) and HIS comments are sometimes closer to trolling. KIA is clearly trolling. Maybe also Victor. So as you can see I’m not one sided and only being critical of you.
“I remind you of your pejorative phrasing of regenerative systems and the transition to them.”
I remind you of my previous responses on that. I disagree with some of the associated ideas, but not all of them. I would not call that contempt. It’s just disagreement.
Killian,
Actually in hindsight promoting a minimal response to the climate change problem does undermine perceptions of the severity of the problem. But you are wrong to suggest I do this. I’ve always promoted a robust response, for example a complete transition to a new energy grid before 2050, substantial negative emissions technologies, reduce carbon footprints etc. Its amazing the completely unsubstantiated BS you post about me and other people. Is it a hobby of yours?
I note that moving real material is subject to Newton and Einstein, but moving metric ($) has no limits or physical work involved.
So what sort of moron would choose a career that involves real work? Real production?
A fool.
OK, so technically, while you are correct, the question of the thermodynamics of information is in fact an interesting diversion. It turns out that most of the actions one can undertake wrt information (including $$) do not result in an increase of entropy. You can input information. You can manipulate information. The only classic action that is required in computing that increases entropy is erasure.
In conclusion: Claude Shannon was fricking brilliant. That is all.
I would. Jesus died at half my age, yet I have little chance to get half as much good done.
Read “The art of war”. Then meld it with Jesus’ Words.
Engaging the enemy (who, underneath, are good folks) on favorable ground is a reasonable path to victory, for both sides.
You all win. Or you all die.
@XRRC quotes Charles Hugh Smith, who seems eminently quotable:
One can print infinite amounts of “money”. One cannot print roads, power plants, bridges, water treatment plants, sewage treatment plants, schools… the basic goods of civilization. Nor can you print the underlying natural resources for any of those.
In short, money is the wrong metric for those, for which the discount rate should be zero.
Perhaps the discount rate for human capital SHOULD be several percent per generation. One needs to select against the dysfunctions which produce “progressive” attitudes, or everything goes to hell… just as we’re observing today. Only conservative mindsets and people can conserve anything.
Gaining “wealth” while producing nothing… that should be a clue.
Need I quote The Gods of The Copybook Headings yet again?
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch.
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch.
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings.
So we worshiped the Gods of the Market Who promiced these beautiful things.
Rudyard Kipling
Everything man made today came into existence because of the copious application of cheap fossil fuel energy. From fossil fuel extraction to building hydro dams and nuclear reactors to new renewable energy equipment. All the mining on earth is underpinned by fossil fuels. As is transportation, even electric trains have been built and powered using fossil fuels. Fossil fuels built and maintain thousands of massive steel ships, thousands of ports, billions of miles of railroads and locomotives, jet airliners and airports, draining of swamps to build new airports used fossil fuels not solar panels to do the work.
Heavy Mining equipment diggers and trucks and drilling wells were all built using fossil fuels from fossil powered mining the raw metals materials to making steel alloys in foundries and then fabricating that equipment to go build more mining camps to extract even more raw metals and materials for more manufacturing.
Everything “mining or oil/gas extraction related” is being transported on fossil fuel made roads and railways being transported by billions of fossil fuel made trucks and locomotives and specialty parts on air cargo from across the other side of the world…. and by helicopter too. Helicopters are built sing fossil fuel along the entire supply chain.
These truth permeate all of society. All of it. Our hospitals and everything medical exists because of fossil fuels. Not solar panels and wind turbines but fossil fuels. The conditioning in hospitals exists because of fossil fuels. Sure switch the electricity to operate them to wind and solar and they will still run, but without fossil fuels air conditioning in hospitals and skyscrapers would not exist. In fact take away fossil fuels and skyscrapers do not exits and cannot be maintained or refurbished.
All of this accumulated built infrastructure, plant and equipment and entrenched economic / energy / technological systems requires even more fossil fuel energy and GHG emitting processes for regular repairs, maintain and replacement when it’s practical life comes to an end to be rebuilt from scratch all over again.
Plus anything new required to meet a growing population, or a new technology or as an adaption to extreme climate impacts going forward or because that infrastructure has been totally destroyed will require even more fossil fuel energy and GHG emitting processes.
Wind solar hydro and nuclear electricity is incapable of providing this level of energy and built resources into the future at any price.
Without fossil fuels and the other GHG emitting processes and land use impacts of the past that has caused all global warming to this point the railroads, the locomotives, the roads, the highways, the bridges, the canals, the shipping ports, the ships, the jet airliners and the airports, the farms, the silos, fertiliser and agriculture, food manufacturers, shopping centers, cities and towns, the housing, water reservoirs, everything built by humans as it is now will eventually be run down and cease to exist.
See – Renewable Energy Point #1: The Invisible Triangle
https://read.realityblind.world/view/975731937/318/
excerpt –
That big red triangle on the left (figure) represents all the energy that has
gone into past infrastructure and systems. We don’t think about it,
but it’s a huge consideration: the embodied energy in past-built
infrastructure is the “invisible triangle” which we tend to ignore. […]
But, using a wider lens, (including the part to the left of the dotted line
labeled B), new investments in solar, wind, (and nuclear, coal and oil) all
depend on previous high-energy-gain investments in modern infrastructure.
This larger red triangle of sunk-cost investments will always be necessary to
maintain complex supply chains, roads, mineral extraction, health insurance,
helicopters and ambulances, and the thousands of aspects of our global
extractive and distributive economy. This means our future energy mix
must simultaneously be able to maintain and rebuild that large red triangle
of infrastructure to be the base for the next generation of fuel, heat,
technology, and products. Right now, this current infrastructure is ~85%
maintained with coal, oil, and natural gas.
It is true that advances in solar technology may electrify many/some mining and
manufacturing processes, but the past-built infrastructure that makes
everything we do possible is easy to overlook.
Renewables use existing societal roads and infrastructure that required
fossil energy to create, maintain, and one day rebuild.
We will be back to where it all began – ‘The Axis is Arrogance.’ Building giant pyramids by hand using slave labour but this time in a desert not an irrigated garden of eden.
BPL,
I reject the common definition/usage of the word “Capitalism”. The word has been broadened so much that it has become an umbrella for diametrically opposite philosophies.
A Capitalist’s goal is to retire from the workforce as soon as possible (preferably at birth). It is explicit in the motto: “I let my money work for me”.
Jack Gardner calls himself a Capitalist. Right wing, hard-working (at 79, I think). He’s done well, but he lives way modestly. Small house, drives a ’95(?), nothing fancy anywhere in Jack’s lifestyle. He’s here to work.
I think he’s a CINO. I’d say he’s a Laborist.
RTW. You will probbaly find that most people who believe in capitalism go on working to retirement age or even a little bit PASSED retirement age. You are making fundamental errors. Generalising and cherry picking. You cannot judge an entire system on a few lazy sods who essentially abuse the system.
Capital is not inherently bad. It’s what builds industry. Its what people retire on. Its only a bad thing if its abused in some way. This is basic.
But laborism is quite interesting.
Ladies and gentlemen
Today is winter solstice, St.Thomas. I allways remember and celebrate it in the climate by going out and look up mto the skies and see the ligtht, that remains a reference point and measure for the rest of the year.
People from other latitudes cultures and learnings- provinces out there in the worlde seem not aware of this, but it is traditional. The winter solstice is observed and remarked and celebrated especially.
Jul- Ylir may mean Wheel, the annual wheel, but it may also mean Øl- Ale Beers.
In Roma, it waqs the annual Dionyswiosw and Bacchus festivals relaqted also to Sol invictus. Never forget that either.. We celebrate the Sun and the true and real light on the darkest point of the year on the northern hemisphere..
But we also really do remember and celebrate St.Jonn at summer solstice, Don`t we?
Then we have Jesus, a son of a Bitch. Give a thought also to good St.Josef who found that in order and saved that situation.
Thus merry Christmaas, Cheers, and I)N DULCI JUBILO.
Always happy to see the winter solstice. That means days will now get longer, and soon it will be spring, then summer. When you live in the far north, this is good news!
C: Then we have Jesus, a son of a Bitch.
BPL: Not as much as you.
One of the challenges for transitioning to renewable energy is currently being experienced in the UK. The site Gridwatch.co.uk shows the fuel type power generation for GB. When I last looked: Demand = 43.34 GW, Renewables 5.12 GW (12%), Carbon neutral 8.35 GW (19%). The current poor performance of renewables is because a large part of the UK has been stuck under persistent cloud cover and very calm conditions (aka anticyclonic gloom) for the last week and a half. An unfortunate side effect is that it has been so gloomy during the day that everyone is driving around with their headlights on at all times of day, and people need their lights on indoors during the day if they are doing anything that requires decent light. The UK Met Office is forecasting my town to be under heavy grey skies for another week at least. Could be close to a record dull December (post clean air act at least) at this rate.
When we get periods of weather like this, and not knowing the capability of current electricity storage methods on the scale of a country, it is difficult to visualise how renewables can completely replace fossil fuels for electricity generation at present. I can’t see it happening without population level action to significantly reduce energy consumption, combined with some sort of international co-operation to enable the UK to tap into Iceland’s geothermal energy, or solar energy from the Mediterranean/N Africa.
Solar and wind have become economical to add to the grid – at a limited
percentage – without subsidies. But as these intermittent and variable
sources become a larger and larger part of the total system, they require
increasing “overhead complexity”, as output from other dispatchable
sources becomes essential to provide backup on cloudy or non-windy days.
Once you add the costs of batteries or storage, the per-kWh cost of
solar/wind power almost triples. And we learned earlier that benefits
decline sharply (or disappear entirely) under such cost increases.
see https://read.realityblind.world/view/975731937/320/
Adam.
A study I read some time ago discussed America being reliant entirely on solar panels with a five times overbuild to deal with long periods of anomalosly cloudy weather. It might need a bigger overbuild in the UK! It all comes down to money. Right now such a system in America would cost about three times the cost of building everything with coal fired power (Lazard energy analysis) and in a decade or so it might reach cost parity. I’m too lazy to do the detailed maths but it all looks instinctively doable without bankrupting society, but human beings can get very annoyed about even slight cost increases. So I do share your pessimism.
I think you are right to the extent that energy reductions would certainly help keep costs down. The trouble is most people arent reducing their use of energy significantly. No government to my knowledge is saying try to reduce your energy maybe by 20% even just as a voluntary thing. Without something explicit like that I can’t see anything changing. Such approaches have worked to some extent dealing with the covid issue.
I don’t think solar is a great choice for the UK except as a supplement e.g. putting panels on buildings. Wind would be a better solution, the UK (to be more specific Scotland) is the windiest country in Europe. The main issue is the best places on land to put wind farms are also areas of outstanding natural beauty (a misnomer, because none of the UK’s landscape is “natural”), so wind farms on the uplands would cause outrage. The best compromise is to put the wind farms out at sea, although this increases the cost.
For solar and wind to power and heat your home, without HUGE costs in generation and storage (or electrical transmission from some other location), you first need to insulate it to prevent most heat gain and loss. Then, all of the appliances must be efficient – usually that means they were designed with off-grid power in mind. You can buy some of those appliances at places like backwoods solar. Check ’em out. They cost more because they have more insulation, etc, but they do use a lot less energy.
To power our society as it is today with wind and solar probably isn’t going to happen. Everything must be modified to be more energy efficient.
Europe apparently has several nuclear power plants out right now due to possible safety problems- that isn’t helping:
https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/frances-edf-shutters-two-nuclear-power-plants-after-cracks-found
And there may have been a strike to make things worse – good comments below this article:
https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/another-french-nuclear-reactor-cuts-output-due-strike
Is their natural gas supply being manipulated?
https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/european-gas-and-power-prices-jump-supply-shortage-fears-erupt
Adam, in the worst of conditions you are still getting 31%… not quite a half-full glass, but still.
And yes, load management (efficiencies plus smart grid) would maybe double that.
So if such conditions exist for a relatively small percentage of the year, you’ve made some real progress.
And French nuclear output down, too:
https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Europes-Energy-Crisis-Just-Got-Worse.html
Just to let you know, my car was totalled. The kid used my credit card to buy enough alcohol to sooth the dagger I thrust into his mind. (Verified by credit card records)
He lived. At least long enough to flee the scene.
I don’t know how guilty I should feel. I don’t know what I should do with his stuff (I have it all; he’s on foot with a pit bull)
I don’t know what I wrought. I clung to the gossamer thread that continued my existence on your plane.
I didn’t check for ramifications. I didn’t want to fail by dying.
So whatever happens, it’s my fault.
Merry Christmas.
Whatever happens…
Micro, macro, or universal, that is.
I may not know what I wrought, but that has nothing to do with what I must do.
The cat. I need to heal Dot, who I now call “department of transportation”..
I need to drill down to the micro and let it blossom to the universal.
After all, that thread, that possibility I myelinated so as to override all probabilities was micro. So micro.
I need good vibes. Please send them. Weaving is hard and it takes you to Work.
The kid’s name is Justin Butler. Forgive his actions. Wish him well with every fiber of your being.
Meditate, pray, whatever Works for you. But send him good vibes.
Please. I know this makes no sense. But it Is.
RTW, condolences on the troubles. Hopefully 2022 will be better for both you and for Justin. People lose their way. Some never find it.. The only guideposts are our fellow humans and the pain we cause ourselves.
Merry Christmas to you too, R–though the situation sounds anything but.
Maybe this will have some use for you:
https://soundcloud.com/doc-snow/at-night
Best…
Parenting is an art. My only answer is to be honest, make them make choices so they learn to. Then, you have to let them. Daggers, I think, come from trying to hold on too tight and protect them from the world and themselves.
If he’s on foot, he’s still going. His stuff? He’ll be back. Patience.
There is no perfection, so stop demanding it of yourself and be better at it next time.
My 2c.
Cheers
Power, State and Capital: The Axis is Arrogance By Victor M. Toledo Jane K. Brundage
We need to build a postmodern world that identifies arrogance as the evil to be overcome and replaces it with an ethic of humility and compassion.
excerpt – Domesticating implies knowing, exploring, questioning and dialoguing with what is domesticated. It carries delicacy. In contrast, the one who dominates imposes, crushes, suppresses, overwhelms and exploits. Of the 300,000 years, the time of existence of the human species, it wasn’t until about 4,000 years ago that the domesticating impulse prevailed. Then it began to be replaced by an unprecedented desire to dominate.
Hierarchical societies appeared and the dominance of some over others and over nature became normal. Parasitic and predatory elites appeared that exploited the labor of humans and of nature. Today we have reached the pinnacle of that situation with the arrival of industry, science, technology, capitalism and fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas, uranium). Today we suffer the results.
As noted above, the progressive domestication of nature also domesticated the human species, that is, civilizing the species in social terms: humanizing it. As the scale and power of domestication increased, human groups learned to work collectively through cooperation, consensus and agreements, tolerance and solidarity, knowledge and memory.
This culture has been annulled by industrial modernity and its cognitive, economic and technological devices. Sickened with amnesia, the modern era has ended up imposing the mandate of its worldview: the dominance of the human over the natural and the masculine over the feminine.
https://www.esperanzaproject.com/2021/esperanza-project/power-state-and-capital-the-axis-is-arrogance/
Ladies and gentlemen
It i9f fot thode on the prduction floor to gert the job done..”
This tells me a lot of who Mr. Knowitall is.
A flat- earther, a classical vulgar marxist leninist, a dia- lectical materialist rather of the racketeer- unions- faculty and highschool.
A typical Nationasl Socialist and Stalinist. where the earth is must be flattened into aq floor first, in order for any work to be done
It is their very deep and typical dream of jaij and the military camp exercise ground where they can simply walk in step as stiff as lubber and become the worlds leaders again.
Ladies and genthemen
my wife has scrolled over this website, having a tendency of allways picking into my things, and said, “there must be another carbomontanus also, because what he had written there was reasonable!”
Can you believe that?
Nope, I don’t believe it. Bet she had her fingers crossed behind her back. Once, I saw a twitter comment that said Carbomontanus was a CC denier. Is it true?
The corruption of science and academia, and politics too of course, by corporates is happening everywhere to varying degrees. In case anyone hadn’t noticed, or believe it’s limited to funding of the science museum by Adani, this is an example from Mexico.
The general atmosphere of commercialization that prevailed during the neoliberal period in Mexico added a fourth factor to the scientific imaginary that facilitated corruption. In the heat of what was happening throughout society, many researchers bought into the idea of becoming “researchers for innovation”, for commercial rather than for social good. Official speeches had already introduced the idea of innovation. This new attribute was, without exception, understood as contributions to national and international private companies. Hence the absurd idea of measuring progress by the number of patents.
Similarly, politicians believed themselves entrepreneurs (and vice versa), and many colleagues became entrepreneurial scientists with Darwin heads, Rockefeller bodies, and Bill Gates claws (A. Barreda, 2021). From there, biotechnology companies, environmental or biomedical consulting firms, firms dedicated to agribusiness, informatics or chemical consultancy proliferated. Without scruples, the main ecologists of the country dedicated themselves to washing the image of the largest polluting and ecocidal companies, and biotechnologists turned into corporate shareholders. In a normal way, subsidies, awards, scholarships and support flowed from corporations to biological, ecological, biotechnological, agronomic, biomedical and chemical research centers
In sum, the commercialization that spread into all areas of the country’s social life also arrived at science and made normal a set of unethical attitudes, values and practices. Today we urgently require the rescue and reboot of science and technology with a vocation for service, and this implies the presence of critical researchers with social and environmental awareness.
Victor M. Toledo, research scientist at the Institute for Ecosystem and Sustainability Research (Instituto de Investigaciones en Ecosistemas y Sustentabilidad), Morelia Campus UNAM, is a Mexican biologist with PhD from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM)
https://www.esperanzaproject.com/2021/esperanza-project/the-corruption-of-science-an-international-issue/
The 500+ fossil fuel companies at cop26 is another example. This corruption project is global and it’s a raging success.