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.
Denial is not a river in Egypt. Denial is quite commonplace. It’s everywhere. In almost every utterance.
For my generation, the horror film of the world in crisis that we saw 40 years ago as distant and surmountable, is now here. Without us noticing, the movie approached us, and today we are inside it. We are its actors. This crisis situation, unique in history, occurred because the vertiginous changes were led by the interests, objectives, values and ideology of capital, making use of technoscience (corporate science). The contemporary disaster is the fruit of greed; of the double exploitation by the minority of the work of both nature and of humans. We will not get out of this crisis until this double situation of maximum irrationality and injustice is eliminated.
https://www.esperanzaproject.com/2021/esperanza-project/7-aspects-of-civilizational-transformation/
Ref for prior comment on commercialization of science aka sciencism. Old news still happening now.
Heads They Win, Tails We Lose
How Corporations Corrupt Science at the Public’s Expense
Published Feb 17, 2012
https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/heads-they-win-tails-we-lose
Prof Julia Steinberger #ClimateAction #FightFascism @JKSteinberger
Dec 21 Every single time I am quoted as supporting Degrowth, right-wing trolls can be counted on to make 2 arguments: 1. I should be fired (or my salary suitably reduced); 2. I am not a legitimate voice because I am not of “the people”.
They identify with the 0.1% wealth accumulators, when they are … not. They are sure that degrowth means economic “losers” and they don’t want to be losers. Their imagination of alternative systems has been totally stunted by mainstream economics. A system that benefits all without impoverishing or endangering many is simply beyond their imagination. That’s the core goal of degrowth: to make other systems visible, tangible, desirable, inevitable. Huge but important work.
https://twitter.com/JKSteinberger/status/1473077079222722565
Sixth Assessment Report: Working Group III (Chapter )
STEINBERGER, Julia
Sustainability Research Institute UK (Switzerland)
Lead Author – Chapter 3: Mitigation pathways compatible with long-term goals
https://archive.ipcc.ch/report/authors/authors.php?q=37&p=5&p
https://archive.ipcc.ch/report/authors/report.authors.php?q=37&p=&p
December 20, 2021 – A movement for Degrowth is born in Switzerland
by Rachel Barbara Häubi
Degrowth, a solution to the climate crisis? This is what a new association, called “Degrowth Switzerland” suggests. The goal: rethink the quality of life independently of the production and consumption of goods, placing human well-being and the environment at the heart of the priorities. If the approach can make you smile, the movement is gaining momentum. Launched in Zurich in December, it already has a second branch in Lausanne, and around thirty scientists, academics, politicians and citizens of all ages among its active members.
https://www.heidi.news/sciences-climat/un-mouvement-pour-la-decroissance-voit-le-jour-en-suisse —
https://www-heidi-news.translate.goog/sciences-climat/un-mouvement-pour-la-decroissance-voit-le-jour-en-suisse?_x_tr_sl=fr&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-GB
“Economic growth no longer improves the quality of life”
by Rachel Barbara Häubi
While an association in favor of degrowth has just been created in Switzerland , Julia Steinberger is convinced of it: the human being has no other choice, to ensure his future, than to aim for degrowth, in particular by reducing the consumption. A plea that is mainly addressed to rich countries, including Switzerland of course, and that details for Heidi.news the professor in ecological economics at the University of Lausanne and main author of the report of the 3rd group of the IPCC, expected in the spring of 2022.
https://www.heidi.news/sciences-climat/la-croissance-economique-n-ameliore-plus-la-qualite-de-vie —
https://www-heidi-news.translate.goog/sciences-climat/la-croissance-economique-n-ameliore-plus-la-qualite-de-vie?_x_tr_sl=fr&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-GB
It’s time to Decolonise our multilateral system for climate justice
COP26 exposed a need to center the Indigenous wisdoms and regenerative practices of communities that endure the most harm by Priya Lukka Esther Stanford-Xosei Bhumika Muchhala
16 December 2021
These dynamics didn’t happen by mere coincidence. They were the logical outcome of a multilateral system – which includes institutions like the United Nations, World Bank and International Monetary Fund – whose nature is fundamentally colonial. It is governed by a logic of extraction, privatization and racialized exploitation. It curates a knowledge system where categories, metrics and analytics are produced by those in power. As a consequence, colonial ways of seeing and knowing constitute the evidence and analysis that define the solutions, all constructed to support the view that the richest nations at the helm of the multilateral system care and can be entrusted with solving the crisis.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/its-time-to-decolonise-our-multilateral-system-for-climate-justice/
Denial is everywhere, in full view, on stage, and in your face.
Here’s my movement for “degrowth.”
https://www.clubhouse.com/club/regenerative_governance
(Might need a final slash.)
An example of what engages people by Greta Thunberg
Dec 22, 2021
We’re now 2 yrs into the decisive decade. Emissions should be in an unprecedented fall, instead we’re seeing the 2nd biggest rise ever recorded. We’re wasting invaluable time pretending we can solve this crisis without treating it like a crisis. World leaders are still in denial.
https://twitter.com/GretaThunberg/status/1473578172264370180
848 Quote Tweets
1.5K Comments
21.1K Retweets
98.3K Likes
It’s not only world leaders who are in denial.
All I want for Christmas is a society and an expert scientific/academic community that treats climate and ecological breakdown like the emergency it is.
There are people saying more useful things who are sadly not given the profile they should. She’s famous, but she’s not saying a single thing about WHAT to do or HOW to do it.
Somebody hook me up so we can get her messaging on solutions rather than just always complaining about what people who are never going to be important to the solutions are not doing.
Kevin,
I’ve listened several times so far. It soothes me. Thanks.
Killian,
Wise words. Interestingly, I have often applied my demand of self-perfection to others, and worse, to others using my definitions. You have experienced that, eh?
Ray, 2021 has been the best year of my life. I have grown so much. I’ve gotten so much closer to shedding that part of me that causes both others and me so much pain.
You see, my mood affects others. These last almost six years were polluted by my pain.
But relativity applies. I’m way better than I was. And I see peace.
Oh, the Story…
Bullwinkle magic
Your species thinks of magic like “give me a seven” as one rolls the dice. No, it’s not like that.
Remember that Bullwinkle short:
“Watch me pull a rabbit out of a hat”
“Again?”
And Bullwinkle sticks his arm in and fails. He never pulls out a rabbit. Never.
But…
The one I remember is the huge lion.
I ask you, which is more magical? A rabbit or a lion?
So, I tested my limits with the cat. Could I pull a rabbit out of a hat?
Nope. The cat was beyond hope. Jack hat a vet put it to sleep.
So… what magic happened while the multiverse’s collective consciousness laughed at my attempt to be in charge?
I finally got a driver’s license and a credit card, the two additional requirements after one has scored a replacement Sim, which is required for the billionaire-focused system to deign to talk to you.
My insurance is USAA. The military’s socialist insurance and banking system (isn’t it interesting that most of those who Serve choose socialist organizations instead of capitalist even as they demand everyone else gets capitalist (for their own good)).
So, every person I talked to during the bookends of Camry theft (I love bookends; sue me if you don’t approve) was focused on the ethics and goals espoused by their group: nobody is left behind.
But they have no choice. An entity like me, one that fits every crack, every “20% that takes 80% of a System’s effort, for however many levels one wants to ponder 20% of 20% of….
So the System demands that I be left behind. When the computer requires verification before the one who wants to Serve can even bring up the account…
It takes patience, like I used this time, or a hero, like the first time.
You see, I managed to contact a claims adjuster by having my dad, who also uses USAA, well, I’m not sure how I got through to Maggie, a claims adjuster who took all my insults and screams (I was freezing to death in a field).
Maggie found a way. Her friend is a systems administrator who hacked my account, saving my life (or so I choose to remember it).
The rabbit hole was not nearly as deep this time (and I wasn’t a newbie). All I had to do was get through the six weeks it takes. On one leg….
So I got my rental car replacement today, as opposed to on November 14 (the day after I lost my car).
It turns out that I’m not a billionaire. Who knew?
When I went out to the street to wait for Enterprise’s transportation vehicle I saw a blue nose pit bull. Way skinny. Was it Nina (the dog who surely was in Kansas City with Justin when he totalled my car)?
Magic…
I’m glad. Good wishes for the New Year…
To ensure everyone knows the writing rules I follow:
There can be no forcing. Thus repeated weaves of the same character aren’t allowed. The tricks performed at First Unitarian wouldn’t mean squat if I had done repeated church trick attempts. And no cheating, of course.
There can be no physical fiction. This is universally-reviewed science.
Note that there’s nothing in the rules about descriptions of internal/hypothetical stuff. So, for example, the aforementioned “myelination” thing was just Story. There’s no physical component, so I’m free to play.
This is science fiction, after all. ;-)
XRRC: Shame on you for posting up-thread. You probably thought I wouldn’t notice, and that your screed would go un-rebutted. I post at the end with back-links for threading so as to make it convenient for others to navigate the mess that this discussion software has been turned into.
The first applications of fossil fuel energy were built using “renewables”: wood and charcoal, mostly.
And who says it has to remain thus?
In France, a majority of the power for the electric trains comes from nuclear energy.
Quite right solar panels don’t do it. But two of the developments coming along are the Oklo and eVinci micro-reactors. They’re about the right size to power remote mining operations without a drop of fossil fuel, as well as powering and even heating remote communities where diesel fuel has to be trucked long distances or even flown in.
Portland cement only needs heat to produce it; the source is irrelevant. Iron can be reduced with electrolytic hydrogen, or just electrolyzed itself into metallic iron and oxygen. We can make synthetic asphalt from biomass. It may even be easy: use fast pyrolysis to make “bio-oil”, pump it down old oil wells, let it age and polymerize for a few years, then pump the results back up. All you need to power this process is energy, and nuclear energy is just the ticket.
We used “renewables” to build the first fossil-fuel infrastructure. Now it’s time to use the last fossil fuels to re-base our economy on nuclear energy, which makes almost no demands on nature.
Yada, yada, yada.
Ask any little kid. Nucular has cooties.
RtW: Nucular has cooties.
BPL: No, but it costs more than any other power source and takes the longest to build. A 1 GWe nuclear plant typically costs $10-20 billion and takes 14 years to put up. In some totalitarian nation where they can crush all political opposition it might go up in 6 years, or even 4. An equivalent wind farm can go up in 9 months.
Bpl metaphorically speaking nuclear is perceived to have really big cooties and nobody wants those.
“my mood affects people”
This can be said of anyone. That bagger at the grocery is an incredibly valuable societal resource. S)he should live rather well indeed.
Really. A friggin rare resource, and your society pays them so little…
But me, I feel like an antenna. This is our Story. Ya’ll are helping this Weave…
The rage. It’s everywhere. My childhood was filled with it. My adulthood hasn’t been much better.
And your society has descended into it. It is now consuming Frank. Poor Frank. Jack’s (best?) friend. He just can’t see that Democrats have good motivations.
That fever dream from long ago may have contained valuable data. Your current society is squabbling over metric while, well…
It turns out that Hell does delivery. Much of the complexity of this biosphere will burn right off the planet. Ask Killian about re-building a local ecosystem when several key species go belly up. And once replacement species are occupying the house, getting the old owners back… (they were such nice folks; ya’all loved visiting with them)
And OMFG, the new owners. The McTick family invites all kinds of weedy folks over.
But the metric is too valuable. It supposedly determines whose great great grandchildren will economically own whose.
Let’s pretend that you, personally desire a legacy that significantly advances your descendants over, say, mine (“mine, too!” say ever so many). Assume you achieve your goal. Yay. You win. Ask Greta whether your great great grandchildren will remember you fondly even as they wish that their mansions were in a human-friendly biosphere.
Back to the Story.
The dog was across Railroad Ave, in front of Jack’s shop. I did my impression of running: left leg, left leg, prosthesis, and approached the dog. My eyes now suck, but even so I was doubtful. I reached down and gave it a chance to sniff the back of my hand.
The dog didn’t respond to “Nina” and didn’t show recognition. Instead, it started trotting across Railroad Ave, a wide road that, you remember, just killed Jack’s cat.
You tell me. What Story worth reading wouldn’t have cars coming from both directions? I had to choose. Shout out to the dog, or let it make it across itself.
It went over to Gus’ car lot, skirted my field (out back), and disappeared north amongst Gus’ inventory. I called out, “Nina!” a few times.
Enterprise’s transportation SUV arrived. As I was climbing in I saw the dog back on Jack’s side of the road, but further north, in a yard. I thought about asking the driver if we could go get the dog. Maybe it was Nina after all.
I said I wanted efficient with regular wheels. No alloys. (Last time they gave me an Altima with low profiles on alloy wheels. I returned it with curb rash on two wheels. They let it slide.)
She asked, “How efficient?”
“Very”.
She pointed out front to a black 2021 Chevy Spark. Perfect.
I drove back home, checked my field, and then cruised the neighborhood. Some kids were playing in front of a house on the left side of the road.
I drifted over and asked them if they’d seen a dog. Their spokesman asked, “A pitbull?”
“Yes. Where?”
He pointed back behind the house, “A while ago in that alley, sir”.
I told him I’d give them $20 if they got the dog for me. Had him call my phone. A few seconds later my phone rang, verifying that he’d got it right.
As I backed up I called out, “If you find my dog I’ll give you $40”.
I cruised the neighborhood.
Bagger or attorney.
Your higher power appears to you both, independently. Your Stories corroborated. You believe the Choice you are being Given is real.
Your unborn child is this very Hour entering that phase of development where s)he will take one of two paths. It won’t matter your input:
Your child will become a very well-paid attorney, a shark who is very good at amassing Metric.
Or a bagger at the local grocery. Everyone in your neighborhood will have a great boon. Feeling down? Instead of McFood, head to the grocery for a piece of fruit, maybe some sardines, and a chat with the kid you two raised.
Choose your child’s Destiny.
My phone rang. I still haven’t mastered how to get it out of my pocket without nuking the call (when a phone is ringing a thick perimeter of the screen should be disabled).
It rang again, “We found your dog, sir”.
I didn’t remember where the kids were, so I asked.
“xxxx Madison”.
The dog seemed more responsive; it pulled towards me. Maybe she had doggie PTSD. The spokesman urged the dog to go to daddy. I asked their spokesman for help getting her into the car.
“Her? I thought it was a male”.
Oh, yeah. The scale was off. Nina was only 57 pounds.
O well. Now what to do with a large male bluenose pitbull with golden eyes?
I had to get him off the street. There really is room at the inn. So what if it’s a broken down 8×20 camper running off two extension cords for now. Water is readily available at Jack’s. Lots of women trek way more water way farther.
I gave them $20. Thinking back, that was the agreement. $20 to bring the dog to me, with a $20 bonus should it be .Nina. The kids were happy they could help. Getting a boon at Christmas for helping? That is Santa’s Story.
Carbomontanus and others. I would not propose censorship or moderation of peoples opinions as such, or the information they post. That would be very communist state or Orwellian.
I would however suggest this website moderate some things more strongly. For example name calling, blatant personal attacks, and insinuations people are lying. It gets very tiresome reading that sort of thing and it does not help discussion. I try to resist using that sort of style. Currently despite this website requiring no personal abuse there appears to be absolutely no actual moderation of such things.
And while I believe sceptics and denialists are entitled to their say, I don’t see that this entitles them to spam this website with REPETITIVE misinformation. It is not their platform to spread propaganda. And its utterly self defeating to let them get away with it.
I’ve suggested all this before at least twice, as have others, but have been ignored. Apparently my suggestions must be some egregious infringement of free speech, or much too nuanced and complicated, or revolutionary despite the fact that about 95% of other websites moderate as I suggest.
Skepticalscience.com has good moderation policy that gets enforced. Their moderation policy is here:
https://skepticalscience.com/comments_policy.shtml
However I do thank this website for its good quality articles. Just a shame about the weak moderation policy.
If the moderators rejected each comment with insults, personal attacks, etc then there would only be maybe 50 comments per month. You have made your share of such disgusting comments, as have the others who bellyache about the moderation policy. Some here write full page comments – do you think the moderators have time to read all of such drivel to find the buried insults? I doubt it.
Denialists usually post common beliefs about CC not being real. The rebuttals to those comments, are likely the most useful aspect of the website to those unfamiliar with CC science, or to those who doubt CC is man-made.
No it wouldn’t lead to 50 comments being posted. Plenty of websites reject abusive comments and get hundreds or thousands of comments each day. It doesn’t have to be excessively picky moderation. You just delete the worst and it helps tone everything down.
I freely admit I’ve made the occasional nasty comment, but nothing like as bad or frequent as the worst offenders here. And this is what happens on unmoderated websites. They just become shouting matches full of nasty comments and eventually nearly everyone sinks to that level . You have made some yourself, although to be fair you are one of the better behaved.
Mrkia,
You have a path to maybe at least partial payoff.
Just sayin’.
The Story:
IIRC we left off yesterday, before the vet visit…
I called the South Omaha Animal Hospital this morning around 6AM, leaving a message. I had found a dog and wanted to find out if he had been chipped, and if not, get him chipped and given an initial patient exam.
But pitbulls like to use their jaws
I mean, if your musculature consisted of a tactical nuclear weapon and not much else and you’d love to chew, too. Give them an outlet or it’s your own fault that your place gets shredded as badly as a police search by cops who know and despise you.
Re-Pete had shown great interest in a rabbit. He wanted it bad. His focus wasn’t where it must always be, on me. He was torn. Now, as Killian taught, perfection ain’t happening. But the question remained: did Re-Pete, like Pete before, consider animals to be way fun chew toys? Not even the slightest malice involved but Run. Bite. Shake. Return with a big grin kills your pet just as dead. (“Pitbull Pete” was named after a basketball star, “Pistol Pete” Maravich, who was known for his accuracy at long distance shots)
That nuke is paired with a hero’s soul. They’ll do what the Mission takes. Negative stimuli, such as pain, don’t matter: they’ll do what their human has trained them to do even as body parts are lost. If a guy trains a large male pitbull to kill, fuck your handgun. You, sir, are dead.
And Re-Pete plays with some serious force. His love-wrestling bites hurt. Your femur will shatter with one intentional bite. I’m going to get a thick rope. I bet tug-of-war will be our game.
I sat in the Chevy Spark, talking to USAA, getting the automobile coverage I needed. You see, since my car was totalled (and other cracks I snuggled into), my policy was now a general policy not attached to a vehicle, so there wasn’t collision and stuff.
But I have the SUV that Gus sold me, sitting untagged in the south lot. It had been insured with USAA back in March so the rep linked my policy to the SUV and then adjusted the coverages to match what I had with the Camry. She was a bit confused during the process. But she was game and diligent. Hailey (I hope I remembered your name right, kid), thanks, kid.
Then it was off to the vet
Was Re-Pete chipped?
So, the SUV’s $250 deducible etc etc coverage now extended to the Chevy Spark, Re-Pete and I headed to, well, That Place, as any dog will whisper.
And since the SUV is a piece of crap and my Camry was sweet my premiums went down. Sweet.
I called them from their parking lot to let them know we’d arrived. They cleared out the waiting room and came to the front door, letting me know that it was safe to come in.
We all talked in the waiting room for a good while. They’d treat Re-Pete as a new patient. Check for parasites, chip him, shots, everything. Worst case scenario is that Re-Pete’s real owner gets his/her dog chipped for free. Sounds like a guaranteed win to me, even though it would suck.
Re-Pete disagreed. Fuck the worst case, the guaranteed case was way worse than I described.
Such a Puxxy. After he got chipped the nurse came back in the exam room and laughed. Re-Pete was hiding from them by having his front half in my lap.
The evidence that economic growth is associated not only with climate change but all the other ills of resource depletion is overwhelming. But evidence is not enough.
“When we look at the discourses at the international and even at the national level, the recourse to the evidence is not what is necessarily moving the argument,” points out ecological economist Katharine Farrell of the Universidad del Rosario in Colombia. “We need to reflect on why the evidence that exists is not being taken into account.”
There are several reasons why the evidence in favor of degrowth has not been persuasive to policymakers and the public. One challenge has been non-rational fears of a world no longer governed by economic expansion.
“Maybe we have to sit with people and ask them what they are afraid of if there’s no technological solution, if there is no growth. What are their fears?”
suggests Marga Mediavilla, a systems engineer at the Universidad de Valladolid in Spain.
It is also difficult to push against a prevailing consensus, particularly given the risks of exclusion.
“The very thought of being rejected will convince us to self-censor,” notes Simon Michaux, a geologist with the Geological Survey of Finland. “We will not look at certain ideas and thought patterns. We will censor what we say based on what we think the rest of the group thinks so that we don’t get pushed into an outside group.”
The complexity of the problem poses certain challenges as well.
“We tend to be reductionist in our thinking,” argues William Rees, a bio-ecologist at the University of British Columbia. “We tend to choose one issue at a time to focus on and we lost sight of the overall picture. You can hardly get people to connect the dots, to see climate change, biodiversity loss, the pandemic, ocean pollution, and climate change as all symptoms of overshoot.”
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2021-12-23/the-selling-of-degrowth/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
Yes true. However the economist.com has gone against the group think beast. They have come out and said that we might have to learn to live with low or zero economic growth. They quote the example of japan. They think low or zero economic growth is inevitable and will happen naturally. Rates of economic growth have been declining in developed countries ever since the 1970s due to an aging demographic, poor productivity growth, a slowing in innovation (somewhat counter intuitive) increasing costs of resource extraction and market saturation (from what I’ve read). The point is zero economic growth will probably happen naturally of its own accord, sometimes this century and we probably cant stop it even if we wanted.
11:01. An hour till Christmas…
When I called the South Omaha Animal Hospital from their parking lot I noted that they probably wouldn’t consider the leash I bought for Re-Pete to be adequate for safety. Yes, it was one grade above Walmart’s $1.99 special, but his 5′ teal tether invokes an elephant’s leash: a gosimar (sp) gold link that controls via representation; I mean, can you imagine the heft and bother of a physically adequate elephant leash?
They all agreed that Re-Pete didn’t have a mean bone in his body. And they were awed by his innate power. He left through the same empty waiting room, but this time with two stout leashes held by the vet and a nurse.
The Puxxy threw up on the way home. Fortunately, Nina’s blanket kept the rental car from getting gooped.
I called them up and they agreed that it wasn’t anything to be concerned about. I accused them of stressing Re-Pete out. They countered by noting that some pups get car sick.
Eh, PTSD takes many forms. I choose to believe that even if he tosses his cookies in cars from now on… ;-)
I also cancelled his neutering appointment. “Found” doesn’t equal “owned”. Neutering someone else’s dog is bad. Neutering their magnificent blue nose pitbull would be an abomination.
Jack’s family was gathering for sandwiches . IIRC he said he has seven kids, thirteen grandchildren, and two great grandchildren. He invited me to join in.
O yes. The vibes given off by those who were already there were sweet. Yes, Jack has experienced tragedy this year. He had a new lamenting-style joke, “Ho, ho, ho”. Wonders if God doesn’t like him anymore.
I thought silently, “Did God hate Job?”
I laughed at how Jack celebrates almost two birthdays a month. Constant celebration. Told him his problem is that he’s also constantly working.
I’ll write more later. For now, Merry Christmas. This Weave is essentially complete. There are a couple of possible endings, but its Teaching is set.
Gavin Schmidt
Many things are true.
Many things are inappropriate, irrelevant, non-constructive, nasty or in bad faith.
The intersection of these two classes is not empty.
When people respond badly to a nominally ‘true’ statement, it may not have much to do with how true it is.
Oct 12, 2021
thread https://twitter.com/ClimateOfGavin/status/1447746460116824070
What does that mean to you? That depends on the context you choose to frame it in.
PS
The challenge, Marga Mediavilla clarifies, is not with emotions or instincts per se.
“The problem is that rationally we are seeing a problem that the instincts don’t want to see. What we need is coherence among the three levels, with feelings, instincts, and rationality all working together.”
William Rees agrees.
“I was not suggesting that there is anything wrong with emotions or instinct,” he adds. “But often they are in conflict with what our rational analyses tells us. If you believe a certain thing emotionally and are confronted with contrary information, it can be very difficult to accept alternative information.”
The Persistence of Group Think
It’s one thing when individuals are struggling in their own minds—and indeed throughout their entire bodies—to reconcile emotionally felt convictions with a set of fact-based assertions. This struggle becomes considerably more complex when it intersects with group dynamics.
For instance, an individual might conclude, based on available evidence, that the sky is about to fall. But the community where the individual lives dismisses this conclusion for no other reason than that it goes against received notions. Should the individual go public with the evidence based on rational observation and data collection? Or should the whistleblower keep quiet out of a fear of ridicule?
“Humans are entirely social,” Joshua Farley points out. “We can’t survive apart from the group. So, being part of the group is the most rational thing to do, from an evolutionary point of view. To signify that you’re part of the group is often to believe in crazy shit. Believing in crazy shit helps you stay alive. Rational science is good for the next 50 years, but if you’re not part of a group you’re dead in a few weeks in evolutionary terms.”
This group mentality applies to everyone, from scientists to those who belong to anti-vaccination groups. It has been shaped by our evolved neurobiology, William Rees points out, and it forms our identity from an early age.
“Every group has ingrained but socially constructed beliefs that distinguish the ingroup from the outgroup,” he notes. “This is absolutely the case for scientists as well those who are religious and those who oppose everything we support. We are part of our tribes, and we seek out people and experiences that reinforce the way we think.”
Simon Michaux provides an example of the challenges of groupthink from his involvement in a meeting on sustainable development within the European Commission in Brussels.
“There were CEOS, ministers, lots of bigwigs impressed with their own opinions,” he recalls. “They were getting up and saying that they want to take the world to a more sustainable place. I stood up and made two observations. First, I said that all industrial products in Europe depend on raw materials mined from the Global South, that the components are manufactured in China or Southeast Asia. All their sustainability rhetoric was lovely and what we should be going toward, but they were ignoring where the stuff was coming from. They were saying that ‘we don’t mine, it’s a dirty business,’ but they were still buying stuff from China.”
Michaux continues, “The second thing I said was that everything on the list they wanted to achieve was achieved by aboriginal culture thousands of years ago, an outcome that was stabilized for thousands of years. Then European colonialists turned up and destroyed that culture. ‘Can anyone refute those two points?’ I asked. And the room went silent. At a chemical level, humans are terrified of being rejected and getting pushed into an outside group.”
It is one thing to convince individuals to change their minds. It’s no easy task to alter the thought patterns of a group.
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2021-12-23/the-selling-of-degrowth/
Then there’s the old sayings. A leopard cannot change it’s spots. And you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink. Many things are true.
6:43AM Christmas morn. Those parents with polite children who let them sleep in are arising (adapted from “Calvin and Hobbes”).
Re-Pete got his presents a few hours ago. He had been good forever it seemed. He had had had to use his jaws. My choice was do Christmas at 3AM or to serve as his chew toy myself.
Pitbulls are built out of triangles. Their jaws were engineered by way smart breeders. The design starts with brute strength. Their grinning cheeks can power eye watering pressure. Then things get interesting.
I just bothered Re-Pete so I could look in his mouth. Lots of daggers up front and craggy mountains behind. Rip and/or crush on tap.
His jaws are way wide. This gives him lateral leverage for maximum damage while shaking, which is the second half of his bite.
The shaking is powered by a neck that escapes human metaphor regardless how many steroids they take in the attempt.
The neck is braced by the top of his structural triangle, his broad chest. Watch a pitbull sprint. There’s a bit of a human’s butterfly stroke in the way they power in on a target.
Re-Pete likes his new bed (I originally bought it for Nina). I fashioned a make-shift chew toy out of a towel I found in the cargo trailer. Mice had politely given it an interesting smell.
We’ll get a thick rope at Menards or Home Depot for tug-of-war, a jacket at Petco for warmth and visual safety, and treats and biscuits for stocking stuffers. Christmas at Richard and Re-Pete’s place.
So, where were we? O yes, at Jack’s.
I was talking to one of his sons (of whichever variety, birth or marriage and I don’t remember if all these interactions were with the same guy even though I’m going to write it that way). I let him know that I was going to apply for a security job. My rent is $500 and my electricity is $50, so I’ll ask for $550 after taxes to provide security. Everything is paid by walking my dog randomly at night. He liked the idea. I told him I needed to go home to check on Re-Pete. I didn’t trust him alone, yet. He might have destroyed my place.
He didn’t. “Good boy, Re-Pete”.
I took Re-Pete across the street to the sidewalk in front of Jack’s. His kid was on a ladder and affixing a decal on a cargo trailer. I called up to say hi. He asked if my place had survived.
“Yes, but Re-Pete had gotten into my roasted turkey breast. Opened the container with his talented teeth and had a little snack. Well, all of it.”
The kid laughed. I said I didn’t want to bring Re-Pete past the sidewalk today, but under controlled circumstances, so JJ the dog and especially the kittens are safe.
Jack went on high alert when I told him about Re-Pete. The thought of some kids crying at Christmas because their dog was missing…
10:53PM. Christmas is almost over. I’m too tired to keep things neat, to wrap it up with the paper and now one would expect of a Christmas Gift…
This Weave was about communication, about how the loss of a single letter changes, inverts, perverts. You see, “A Boy and Whose Dog” has a glaring typo that I dilligently, I falsely Followed.
I played the entire Story as a zero sum game. At first there was only one Nina. Either the kid who tried to assassinate me or I could have her, a rare resource.
Then, Re-Pete showed up, an even larger example of the ghost Dog (see one of these puppies in person and their gorgeous greyed-out and blued used-to-be-fawn coat will tell that tale) that would give me a ghost of a chance of surviving until next Christmas.
You see, the real title of this Weave, the title I dilligently fought against, is, “A Boy and Whose dogs”.
There is no scarcity. Even if I am not currently with my Re-Pete, but someone else’s dog, I now have access to a stud, a magnificent stud who is in demand for pick-of-the-litter service in gratitude for saving “their” dog, whoever they are.
There is no scarcity. This is “Loaves, fishes, and Ghost Dogs”.
But why the fuss? What difference does it make?
This was only the first (rather inept) attempt on my life. The odds of my seeing another Christmas are nill, a hard zero. Only another, and another, and another gossamer thread…
You see, I don’t have to read The Revelation of Saint John to know who I am. Like Jesus before me, who was nailed to a cross for his hash tag, #trashthetemple, when he lost it with the metricisors who had perverted what’s God’s, turned it into what’s Caesars.
I’m the dude they paint with the ultimate slander, along with targets on my back, my chest, my head.
Read that fever dream. I haven’t yet, but I am sure:
They say that I’m the Antichrist.
And nowadays religious nuts, terrorists come with standard-issue kit of modified assault rifles fed by massive magazines. Yeah, Re-Pete can take out a gang, maybe even a wolf pack,
but I am surely toast.
Eh, these odds suit me. It’s how I swim.
And the Story? Time to calculate my score. Remember, the goal is achieving more zeros in the miniscule probability the math guys calculate as one in ten to the one followed by ever so many zeros.
I’ve gathered some zeros. What were the odds of, for example, a male ghost Dog showing up at my door? His remaining after I didn’t immediately snag him? Those kids and their boon?
But the competition is massive: a pencil through a table has so many zeros in its pocket. And a human, full or half, only lives so long. To gather enough zeros to win I can’t stay linearly exponential. I need ten to the x raised to the y. How?
The who’d a thunk it factoids were all against my efforts. I was cheering for zero sum, the game I’ve been railing against. (Damn, I’m a fool).
Remember Bullwinkle magic. Remember that phrase, “for the sake of the Story”.
Not for me. Not only couldn’t I have written the Christmas tale we wove, I wasn’t even slightly interested in its actual direction.
Walking in faith is going to get me killed. Or so the odds say.
Fuck the odds. Re-Pete and I are going to swim through the hail assault rifles bring. We aren’t going to hide. The nuts now know where we are.
It’s going to be an interesting (or brutally short) year.
Merry Christmas.
Mitigation. How are we doing mitigating AGW? Not that great? If it appears that humans aren’t going to get the job done, maybe we should ask the BIG GUY upstairs to help? No, I’m not talking about Brandon.
Maybe we should try prayer. Perhaps if a majority of humans asked for help from above, the BIG GUY might hear us? Couldn’t hurt, right?
Yeah like the power of prayer stopped all those deaths, all that poverty, all those wars…… God clearly has the headphones on, listening to music.
I found Re-Pete’s preferred toy: my arm wrapped in protection. Makes sense.
Justin3 travelled and got stuck here to try to kill me.
Re-Pete travelled and got stuck here to team up with me.
Time to get in shape. Time to train.
Time to carve a gosimar possibility or seven. Ya never know when one will be handy.
Oh, and Why is Forced Responses two months?
Dunno, but it spans this Weave perfectly.
And Nina is the product of a breeder who is part of or close to Justin3’s family in St Louis. I like road trips. Maybe Re-Pete will get lucky.
I was in the passenger seat. The driver accelerated. The road veered right. The driver veered left, down an embankment.
At the bottom was a large brick building. Like the house I noticed across from Planet Fitness, its bricks were bright red, it’s mortar impossibly white.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of death I will purge fear. I opened my door to leap out and roll. It wouldn’t be too bad.
My leg was stuck. Not by a thing, or so it felt; just Stuck. All I saw was the approaching wall.
Pencils and tables. Me and a wall.
The wall’s colors were cartoonish. It. Wasn’t. Real.
As I passed through I sang/lilted to the consciousness besides me that was dissolving into pain, “I survived”.
I burst into and through another plane, and a couple more. I wanted to remember, but I was overwhelmed.
I woke up. I haven’t remembered a dream in decades. 8:30AM. We sleep in a pile on the third of a seating area that I’d left cushioned. My left leg was on Re-Pete’s hips. His head was on my stump. I’ll snooze a bit, walk Re-Pete, write this, and now its time to head to Petco to get Re-Pete’s jacket and stuff.
The cost of renewables is exploding in Finland:
https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2021/12/27/finnish-man-blows-up-his-tesla-to-protest-22600-repair-cost/
;)
And Happy Kwanza everybody:
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/12/27/kamala-harris-touts-seven-principles-marxist-rooted-kwanzaa/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JV04rj5QCzU
;)
You do know that every time you link to Breitfart or all the other Kremlin-funded rags, you only discredit yourself, right?
Electric cars are not “renewables.”
And there’s something missing in the account given. The tale goes:
Problem is, the Tesla in question was a 2013. So either Mr. Katainen bought it used, or there are several years elided from the story.
Mr. KIA says:
Planning to blow up an electric bicycle too?
Climate scientist Glen Peters says: “I am sure climate scientists ‘get’ #DontLookUp, but does the average viewer ‘get’ it? Or is it just another comedy for them? (I have no baseline to assess) some Anecdotal evidence: says “no” “
https://twitter.com/Peters_Glen/status/1475396943102754816
There is a lot going on in #DontLookUp, much of it is (I believe) really subtle under the radar and unspoken. The comments by the cast in interviews are just as interesting. I am pretty sure Glen Peters doesn’t get the mirrors being held up in #DontLookUp as far as it applies to some climate scientists in particular and the collective overall. The movie isn’t as blunt or as obvious as most reviewers suggest it is. Thinking “I have no baseline to assess” already says so much, too much. Everyone is a target and at fault in this fictional play.
Found a trailer for the Dont Look Up movie:
https://www.imdb.com/video/vi15057689?playlistId=tt11286314&ref_=tt_ov_vi
Looks like great commentary on the human condition.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
I haven’t divulged fully. You see, I’ve noticed an ephemeral pair a few times before. An old man of lower class walking through the neighborhood. With a magnificent animal. But only when nobody else was around. I don’t remember anything about their looks.
Re-Pete is gone. My ghost dog has disappeared.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
I wish I was the one Writing these Stories.
Shit.
XRRC
My email is richardtheweaver@gmail.com
No thanks.
This site has really gone to the dogs.
There’s always a logical explanation.
Duh. Otherwise your reality would break.
We’ll see where this leads. If that old man and my ghost dog are corporal Jack will find them.
Re-Pete:
Take a large male pitbull. Now beef that Puxxy up. Jaws wide enough and neck strong enough to twist any limb into a compound fracture. One bite turns what was functional to nothing but pain
Still want to play?
Start fawn. Add white toes all around. Perfectly even. Like nail polish (yeah, he’s a Puxxy until you get me agitated).
A white blaze above his nose. And two tiny white dots, on the back of his head and a bit down and to the right on his neck.
Now turn the dog you’re visualizing into a ghost. Grey out the fawn while adding a hint of blue.
Re-Pete.
Shit. I still suddenly notice the pressure of his snuggle. And then not.
Shit
His eyes? Golden. They drill right through you.
His bark? One authoritative. As if two are needed.
His growl? Gutteral and quiet. Letting me, not you know.
The cool thing about Weaving is noticing the plot twists and associations. It’s just like reading a book. “I should have figured that out!”, we readers exclaim.
Weaves start locally and expand to societal and, of course, astronomical.
Re-Pete’s eyes. JWST.
Yeah. We’ve got some coasting to L2. Then, should I survive, we’ll see what we’ll Weave.
I offered my nieces, well, I’ll write later.
Peace amongst you. Cuz your mood affects Others. There’s lots of Others. For example, MAGA folks need your compassion at this particular moment
Quantum trivia:
Entanglement isn’t limited by the speed of light.
The standard thing is to entangle locally and then spread, but really, is that the only way?
O yeah, Re-Pete’s tummy to the bottom of snout is white, too. A pink link that leashes his nose to his blaze.
Gonna get real cold in Omaha. He wouldn’t have made it if those kids hadn’t found him. Same kids?
Their neighbor has a pitbull, too. Brought it out to get acquainted.
So Re-Pete is fine with bigger pets. But I’m guessing a small pet that flees would die if he was off-leash.
Time for a test, using Jack’s two kittens.
I wonder how Justin and Nina are doing. Bet Kansas City is getting cold, too.
Eh, he’s resourceful. Send him good vibes.
I put in $40 towards a pizza party for the staff at the vets. Re-Pete is quite a few 20%s, way deep in resource requirements.
Sounds like a treasure. The folks at South Omaha Animal Hospital agree.
From Richard the Weaver to Tiras the banker:
I got a call from the vet. Seems they were having difficulty keeping Re-Pete on site. He kept climbing out of their kennel and could I come quick?
What did they expect? 12′ chain link would deter a ghost dog?
He’s home. See you tomorrow
Thank you, Lord. These past few hours… I’ve never felt so alone and naked.
Oh yeah, climbers can be defeated by covering each corner with metal.
I’ll give them a start by donating the screen protector thingy Re-Pete ripped off my trailer’s door.
Out of the climate scientists on here, my voice is one of the most desperate and the most like the scientists in #DontLookUp I plead, I curse, I make myself vulnerable. I point steadfastly to the meteor. Ironically, this limits my access and exposure in the mainstream media. (thread)
https://twitter.com/ClimateHuman/status/1475905299114455041
Why Sneering Critics Dislike Netflix’s ‘Don’t Look Up,’ But Climate Scientists Love It
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidrvetter/2021/12/28/why-sneering-critics-dislike-netflixs-dont-look-up-but-climate-scientists-love-it/
This could have been a scene in #DontLookUp The media is a major part of the problem but they are too self important to ever face it Most of my friends are in the media. They’re just ignorant and cynical. They are not interested in ‘the environment’. They don’t understand how serious it is. Same with politicians imho. Their interests revolve around celebrity and superficial political culture. It’s insane. (thread)
https://twitter.com/MrMatthewTodd/status/1475163541162369024
#DontLookUp is an intriguing event. I wonder if it will cut through or make a difference. Gore’s film did for a few years it really shifted public opinion in the west, even changed peoples votes in some places, and then all went back to normal again. Now it’s ancient history. Today climate scientists and related academics label the UK COP26 a success, a step in the right direction, 1.5C is still achievable, or they say nothing at all. Who are the climate scientists today saying news worthy things that are worth hearing and which are inspiring rapid political changes and action?
Degrowth.
“Do We Need to Shrink the Economy to Stop Climate Change?”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/16/opinion/degrowth-cllimate-change.html
The commentary has good arguments both for and against the economic “degrowth” solution to climate change. Its a good, realistic summary, simply and clearly stated.
Haven’t read it, that you think “stuck in the middle, so largely useless: equals “realistic” is so old news…. try understanding the reality. What is totally unrealistic is to expect a middle-of-the-road response to suffice for an emergency beyond any and all human experience.
Someday you need to figure this out or you and yours are going to end up in very bad situations.
#DontLookUp Leonardo DiCaprio on Instagram: 3.5 mins video comment
“The harmful ramifications of climate change are ongoing and undeniable. It is crucial we take the necessary steps to protect our planet.…” “… and that we have this very finite window of 10 years to make this transition.”
https://www.instagram.com/tv/CX_n9fbDpOr/
Beau,
The problem is that police are used as first responders. Instead, they should be first responder protectors.
They escort experts to just out of sight; Calvary coming over the hill.
But only if needed. The rest of the time the first responder waives the cops off, allowing said cops to escort another first responder.
So, police departments shrink, or their folks are split so as to accommodate both missions.
And by segregating out their duties that too-expensive warrior suddenly becomes cheap. Seriously? You want to pay a warrior to babysit a car accident?
Not everyone needs to be a warrior.
A comment I left at Beau of the fifth column’s YouTube about the kid who was killed by cops. I’ve been too busy Weaving to keep up with much else.
And, way importantly, when the cops arrived the first responder is still in charge. A cop should serve and protect, not govern.
The risk? Your species might become known, and not in a favorable fashion.
Yeah, just kill me. As if your society can pass muster.
My take so far:
Interacting as and with your species’ collective consciousness is painful to me. If I were “in charge” and I decided to protect Others from you, I’d tweak probability so as to isolate you with space debris. Asteroids boink into each other and…
But first, I’d give you a chance. I’d ask for a volunteer. “To be born is to die”.
Their memory would be wiped. They would arrive nine months after your first satellite returned to Earth, during massively large solar cycle.
I don’t know, Bubba’s, your clock may be ticking.
Hug a Maga guy or gal. Let them read a Story that might heal the rage billionaires planted.
This Weave better be over. Only a couple of days left.
I vote for “quiet”
President Biden, I ask a great favor:
Let their people go. 1/6 had very fine people on both sides. You know how easy it is for the gifted to turn the People into the pawns.
A second favor, please, Sir:
Go after the powerful who use their gift for grift with a ghost dog’s determination.
Ever since he got back he insists on laying in my spot at the head of the bench, kicking me to the foot.
He curls himself up and becomes a heavy ass rock. Then stares benignly at me. Gotta roll him..
And it’s like that Greek guy’s rock: recursive.
Don’t take his side. He’s security, so he needs to be by the door. But that’s where the drafts are. He’s faking PTSD to stay warm.
198 over 130
Weaving is hard
This body is coming apart. Symptoms are worsening: colors, semi-halutionations, brain fog, dropping things, fighting with my phone to get to Forced Responses, to receive phone calls…
The Christina who cleaned my teeth was way worried. I tried to sooth her fears: I only have to make it a couple more days.
If I don’t make it, I implore you:
Do not turn JWST on. It’s too damn risky.
It would show restraint. Heal your society, then reach out.
Surely any higher power would respect your determination to grow.
And who knows? Maybe when you’re ready to see JWST will still have some fuel in its tank.
And if not, no worries. Now you know how to build a golden eye.
But I dunno. Will it take another volunteer?
Excuse me, but what does this have to do with solutions to climate change?
It’s got nothing to do with climate science or solutions.
It’s what happens on every un-moderated discussion forum.
Some alternatives:
https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/
https://www.climate-debate.com/guidelines.php
https://skepticalscience.com/comments.php
https://climateinterpreter.org/content/discussion-forum
https://www.facebook.com/groups/1179146558932305/ XR discussion forum
https://thegreenmarketoracle.com/2021/05/10/the-best-blogs-and-websites-about-climate-change/
https://blog.feedspot.com/global_warming_blogs/
https://www.climaterealityproject.org
https://350.org/science/
https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/
Accurate information is the foundation of a functioning democracy
Climate Feedback is a worldwide network of scientists sorting fact from fiction in climate change media coverage. Our goal is to help readers know which news to trust.
https://climatefeedback.org
Yes, Dr.E.Poet. Here I must give you right.
I hoped for the longest thatb the weawer could begin to weawe at least, butb idleness is the root of all evil.
It is also the cause ofr what Reality Checked has caloled a sewer.
When the cribs are empty, the horses are biting. It does not help with tin detailed moral rules and regulations of behaviours. It is lack of work, lack of purpose, ofv LOGOS, Mean8ing, and Causa Finale..
People must agree on wat to do and then be able tom do it, then they will lift together and contribute their due share.
It is not just to fillup aq who0le factory with the very best “tools”, put people into there and command “Produce..” or “work” and expect work to be done.
There must be a tooltask to be done and clear reults to be expected, that people can agree on.
Recommended by Leonardo DiCaprio
“It’s funny and terrifying because it conveys a certain cold truth that climate scientists and others who understand the full depth of the climate emergency are living every day.” –Peter Kalmus, climate scientist #DontLookUp https://twitter.com/LeoDiCaprio/status/1476593328464400384
I’m a climate scientist. Don’t Look Up captures the madness I see every day
by Peter Kalmus 30 Dec 2021
“But this isn’t a film about how humanity would respond to a planet-killing comet; it’s a film about how humanity is responding to planet-killing climate breakdown. We live in a society in which, despite extraordinarily clear, present, and worsening climate danger, more than half of Republican members of Congress still say climate change is a hoax and many more wish to block action, and in which the official Democratic party platform still enshrines massive subsidies to the fossil fuel industry; in which the current president ran on a promise that “nothing will fundamentally change”, and the speaker of the House dismissed even a modest climate plan as “the green dream or whatever”; in which the largest delegation to Cop26 was the fossil fuel industry, and the White House sold drilling rights to a huge tract of the Gulf of Mexico after the summit; in which world leaders say that climate is an “existential threat to humanity” while simultaneously expanding fossil fuel production; in which major newspapers still run fossil fuel ads, and climate news is routinely overshadowed by sports; in which entrepreneurs push incredibly risky tech solutions and billionaires sell the absurdist fantasy that humanity can just move to Mars.
“After 15 years of working to raise climate urgency, I’ve concluded that the public in general, and world leaders in particular, underestimate how rapid, serious and permanent climate and ecological breakdown will be if humanity fails to mobilize. There may only be five years left before humanity expends the remaining “carbon budget” to stay under 1.5C of global heating at today’s emissions rates – a level of heating I am not confident will be compatible with civilization as we know it. And there may only be five years before the Amazon rainforest and a large Antarctic ice sheet pass irreversible tipping points.
“The Earth system is breaking down now with breathtaking speed. And climate scientists have faced an even more insurmountable public communication task than the astronomers in Don’t Look Up, since climate destruction unfolds over decades – lightning fast as far as the planet is concerned, but glacially slow as far as the news cycle is concerned – and isn’t as immediate and visible as a comet in the sky.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/29/climate-scientist-dont-look-up-madness
Peter Kalmus NASA (JPL) climate scientist terrified by society’s inaction. Revoking fossil fuel’s social license. Founder @ClimateAd https://climateadproject.org/ ; author of Being the Change: Live Well and Spark a Climate Revolution ; #EmergencyMode ; located on Colonized Hahamog’na land, CA
https://twitter.com/climatehuman
.
recommended climate / economics author
T. J. Garrett: Long-run evolution of the global economy – Part 2:
Hindcasts of innovation and growth
Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA
https://esd.copernicus.org/articles/6/673/2015/esd-6-673-2015.pdf
Abstract. ….. The model appears to attain high skill partly because there was a strong impulse of discovery of fossil fuel energy reserves in the mid-twentieth century that helped civilization to grow rapidly as a deterministic physical response. Forecasting the coming century may prove more of a challenge because the effect of the energy impulse appears to have nearly run its course. Nonetheless, an understanding of the external forces that drive civilization may help development of constrained futures for the coupled evolution of civilization and climate during the Anthropocene.
Conclusions
In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, Alice was
urged by the Red Queen to run with her ever faster. But,
“however fast they went, they never seemed to pass any-
thing”. As the Red Queen put it, “Now, here, you see, it takes
all the running you can do, to keep in the same place”. In
the 1950s and 1960s, civilization made exceptionally rapid
gains in energy reserve discovery and resource extraction ef-
ficiency. This spurred a rapid acceleration of growth in global
wealth that required an equal demand for energy. What fol-
lowed post-1970 was more constrained growth because di-
minishing returns settles in for any large system and because
fossil fuel resource discovery only just kept up with increas-
ing demand (Bardi and Lavacchi, 2009; Murray and King,
2012).
Further along, we might anticipate that decay from nat-
ural disasters and environmental degradation will also play
an important role in civilization’s growth trajectory (Arrow
et al., 1995). Statistics presented here suggest that decay has
thus far been a comparatively weak player. This may change
if, as expected, atmospheric CO2 concentrations reach “dan-
gerous” levels and decay rates increase (Hansen et al., 2007;
Matthews et al., 2009; Garrett, 2012a; Mora et al., 2013).
Should diminishing returns, resource depletion, and decay
combine to cause civilization growth to stall, then simula-
tions described in Part 1 suggest that external forces may
have the potential to push civilization into a phase of acceler-
ating decline. Civilization lacks the extra energy required to
compensate for continued natural disasters, much less grow,
and so it tips towards collapse.
Contraction of wealth implies a rate of return η that is neg-
ative (Eq. 4). From Eq. (5), this suggests a global economy
with a positive nominal GWP but, in effect, a negative real
GWP. Fortunately, recent history does not provide a guide
for such a global economic disaster. Still, one might imag-
ine a scenario where historically accumulated global wealth
shrinks because, at regional or sectoral levels, an ever smaller
fraction of civilization remains involved in gross economic
production. A nominal GWP remains to be tallied, but it is
increasingly offset elsewhere by some combination of wars,
a degrading environment, growing unemployment, inflation,
death, and decay. Energy consumption is still required to sup-
port society – after all, we must always eat. But a diminish-
ing portion of society is able to add net value calculated with
monetary instruments that offer promises of future returns.
The silver lining of a contracting civilization might
be slowing CO2 emissions, and eventually slower climate
change. The model introduced in Part 1 for making multi-
decadal hindcasts of civilization evolution allows for both
positive and negative feedbacks to be represented in the
coupled evolution of the human–climate system. This paper
shows that the economic side of this model is successful at
reproducing the past 50 years of economic growth. The next
step will be to use the model to provide a range of physically
constrained forecasts for the evolution of civilization and the
atmosphere for the remainder of this century.
Timothy J Garrett – Verified email at utah.edu – Cited by 4633
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=5Bb8nQQAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao
examples
Emissions from ships with respect to their effects on clouds
Effects of Arctic haze on surface cloud radiative forcing
Are there basic physical constraints on future anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide?
Long‐run evolution of the global economy: 1. Physical basis
No way out? The double-bind in seeking global prosperity alongside mitigated climate change
TJ Garrett
and
Past world economic production constrains current energy demands: Persistent scaling with implications for economic growth and climate change mitigation
TJ Garrett, M Grasselli, S Keen
…. that there is so much knowledge as close as our finger tips
EP,
Lincoln talked about a house divided. Getting people together, healing the wounds is necessary. Otherwise, we’ll keep squabbling and nothing will be done.
If folks aren’t sure that this Book is just a book. Remember, the folks who aren’t terribly interested in solutions to a “hoax” are generally rather religious, and they’ve been primed to expect the End Times.
And then there’s me. I had no clue where this Story would lead. And frankly, I think it turned out pretty good. Better than I could have written.
Doubt is a grand product. Maybe I channelled something. Nobody knows.
Regardless, I got a ghost dog and a cherry 2011 Prius out of the deal.
So yes, this isn’t the “Engineer”, but the “Poet”. Hopefully it will sing to enough people to make a difference.
Neil deGrasse Tyson Dec 30
Finally saw the @Netflix film “Don’t Look Up,” a fictional tale of a Nation distracted by pop-culture and divided on whether to heed dire warnings of scientists.
Everything I know about news-cycles, talk shows, social media, & politics tells me the film was instead a documentary
https://twitter.com/neiltyson/status/1476293956153581578
I really like Neil a lot and he is not alone in the above view, but seriously, the issues are far more complex than a simplified notion of “distracted by pop-culture and divided on whether to heed dire warnings of scientists.”
One take could be this by Stefan C. Aykut 22h
I just watched #DontLookUp AND we just published an article on climate activism. Both ask: why don’t we react adequately to a global crisis, when the facts seem crystal-clear?
A Thread on how the film (mis)represents the climate crisis & how a social science perspective helps.
1/14 https://twitter.com/StefanAykut/status/1476544289572331526
(1) the problem: the asteroid is so big & apocalyptic that everything else disappears. Inequality, racism, relations of exploitation are secondary in the film. Yet, these are fundamental features of the climate crisis & central to understanding inaction.
(2) agency: there is no society in the film, only individuals & elites. No organized groups, no parties, no trade unions, no social movements. When people act together, they are massified as violent mobs or indistinct cheering publics. Hence, collective action is [represented as being] impossible.
(3) the solution: because there is no society & no collective agency, the only possible solution to the problem is technology. Here: nukes. For climate, the website of the film advocates for renewables & carbon capture. But techno-fixes alone won’t do.
The demands of the climate movement for rapid & profound change are based on science and factually “right” yet they often prove insufficient to operate the deep societal changes needed.
7/14
So how can a social science perspective help? This is the central question in our collective reflection piece:
**It’s not enough to be right! The climate crisis, power, and the climate movement**
The demands of the climate movement – for rapid and profound change – are based on scientific findings and the political commitments to the Paris Agreement. The activists are, therefore, factually “right”. However, being right is not enough to justify or to accelerate the practical implementation of knowledge and decisions. We explain which social factors are at work, and how the climate movement can benefit if they incorporate these factors into actions for social change.
https://ingentaconnect.com/content/oekom/gaia/2021/00000030/00000004/art00006;jsessionid=45oq2h17660eq.x-ic-live-01
Conclusion:
How can the social science propositions presented here be ap-
plied to the climate movement? First of all, the previous commu-
nicative focus on scientific facts – for example under the slogan
“Listen to the science” – was certainly effective in lending legiti-
macy to the climate problem and putting it on the political agen-
da. This strategy, however, no longer suffices. Instead of contin-
uing to insist on the scientific necessity of decarbonization, we
must focus on engaging in the social discussions on political
solutions and paths toward transformation. The starting point
must lie in the plurality of social realities, values and constella-
tions of interests. Acknowledging this plurality and the existence
and legitimacy of other perspectives regarding societal priori –
ties is key to the search for suitable allies in order to forge broad
societal alliances for change.
Second, given the depth and urgency of the necessary chang-
es, there cannot be a one and only technological, political or ac-
tivist strategy. Politics is not the “calculation of the optimal”, but
rather “the art of the possible” (Geels et al. 2017, p. 475). This
insight, however, should not be misunderstood as a call for mi-
niscule, detached steps. Instead of focusing on the one, “right”
solution, however, the question is how different strategies can
be combined in order to generate synergies. The goal is to broaden
the societal imagination horizons so that they can connect
with varied visions of the future held by different sectors of so-
ciety. The range of possible modes of action includes not only
the usual democratic means of exerting influence and the com-
munication and information work, but also the creative exploi-
tation of legal means and the building of pressure from civil so-
ciety through direct action. Additionally, through experimenting
in a targeted way with sustainable forms of living and doing busi –
ness, new spaces for social transformation processes can emerge.
Third, this way of connecting strategies with solutions is nec-
essary to address and integrate different, especially hitherto dis-
advantaged, social groups and organizations from other sectors
of societal action into the dynamics of transformation through
social engagement, political conviction or economic interest. On-
ly by generating broad societal support for change (Aykut et al.
2019) can those power structures that are entangled with the fos-
sil-fuel system be overcome. As long as these power structures
remain in place, it will not be enough to be right – no matter on
how much or conclusive scientific knowledge the claims of Fri-
days for Future or other protestors might be based.
Hence, logically, it’s deeply misguided that IPCC’s “Six Assessment Report” prioritizes policy makers instead of informing and educating and advising the entire global Public and Civil Society in general
The “Summary for Policymakers” [SPM] is aimed wrongly at Policymakers / Politicians, and not the Public (who does have the Power in a democracy). Noting that not all nations are even Democratic but they still do have a responsible Civil Society and Networks who are willing to listen and act.
The SPM wrongly depends on policy makers & the media to communicate, educate, and to act. #Don’t Look Up clearly shows how flawed that strategy is, as has the last 30 years of inaction thus far.
Ditto the UNFCCC and the whole COP system.
For an act of peaceful civil disobedience to block an oil pipeline, a judge designated Jessica Reznicek a “terrorist” and gave her a draconian 8-year prison term.
Courts must not be used by the fossil fuel industry to silence the heroes who defend our Earth.
@FreeJessRez
Jessica Reznicek (born July 25, 1981) is a Catholic Worker and climate activist from Iowa. On June 29, 2021 she was sentenced to eight years in federal prison for a series of attacks on the Dakota Access Pipeline. Reznicek, along with fellow activist and Catholic Worker Ruby Montoya, held a press conference in July 2017 in which they announced they had sabotaged the pipeline over a number of years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessica_Reznicek
Steven R. Donziger (born September 14, 1961[1]) is an American attorney known for his legal battles with Chevron, particularly the Lago Agrio oil field case in which he represented over 30,000 farmers and indigenous Ecuadorans in a case against Chevron related to environmental damage and health effects caused by oil drilling. The Ecuadoran courts awarded the plaintiffs $9.5 billion in damages, which led Chevron to withdraw its assets from Ecuador and launch legal action against Donziger in the US.
In 2011, Chevron filed a RICO (anti-corruption) suit against Donziger in New York City. The case was heard by US District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who determined that the ruling of the Ecuadoran courts could not be enforced in the US because it was procured by fraud, bribery, and racketeering activities. As a result of this case, Donziger was disbarred from practicing law in New York in 2018.
Donziger was put under house arrest in August 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of criminal contempt of court, which arose during his appeal against Kaplan’s RICO decision – he refused to turn over electronic devices he owned to Chevron’s forensics experts.[2] In July 2021, US District Judge Loretta Preska found him guilty; he was sentenced to 6 months in jail in October 2021.[2]
While under house arrest in 2020, twenty-nine Nobel laureates described the actions taken by Chevron against Donziger as “judicial harassment.” Human rights campaigners called Chevron’s actions as an example of a strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP).
In April 2021, six members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus demanded that the Department of Justice review Donziger’s case.[4] In September 2021, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights ruled that the pre-trial detention imposed on Donziger was illegal and called for his release
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Donziger
Shouldn’t the US Justice Dept be running a RICO case against Chevron instead? This world is upside down and inside out and entirely screwed up.
1 September 2020
More than 200 lawyers file judicial complaint against Judge Lewis A. Kaplan over abusive targeting of human rights advocate Steven Donziger
Complaint signed by 37 organizations representing 500,000 lawyers worldwide details shocking violations of the code of Judicial Conduct by U.S. judge in long-running Chevron retaliation campaign
Chevron and Kaplan targeted Donziger after he helped Indigenous peoples win a landmark $9.5 billion judgment against the company in 2011 for dumping oil waste in the Amazon
https://iadllaw.org/2020/09/more-than-200-lawyers-file-judicial-complaint-against-judge-lewis-a-kaplan-over-abusive-targeting-of-human-rights-advocate-steven-donziger/
A Clinton Democrat Congress appointee no less. Where money buys Lawyers and Judges
Happy New Year 2022
@CarolineLucas Green MP for Brighton Pavilion, former leader and co-leader of @TheGreenParty UK.
529,200 Followers
Just watched #DontLookUp & it’s bloody brilliant – perfectly captures humanity’s capacity for denying the blindingly obvious, the absurdity of an economic system which puts profit above survival of life on earth & a media mostly choosing to ignore the reality of nature’s collapse.
EP,
The Story seeks to unify your species.
The typo thing (singular vs community) shows how easy it is to unintentionally pervert the Message. Hopefully people will choose to learn: Your books have wisdom, but they
were written by men.
Perhaps they were divinely inspired, but the human writers’ human frailty and imperfections prevent a digitally accurate transmission.
It’s all analog.
The JWST bit provides motivation. None of us knows whether either of the two doomsday scenarios will unfold. And none of us know how long our isolation will take to set up:
Travelling to Earth would take time for a species, and translating the miniscule boink of an asteroid into the closing of your launch window could take decades.
And watch those 1/6 traitors again, in a different light. They were duped into “protecting their country” by committing treason. But it shows the passion they have for their country. Treason? Or victims brainwashed via 12+ hours a day broadcasts?
They did their own research. Fox, NewsMax, and OAN. Perhaps a couple more. Yep, all the trustworthy news sources sang the same song.
Those people were duped via an Orwellian plot.
BPL,
Eye roll. Yelling “fire!” in a theater isn’t cheering for the fire.
Mrkia, “your society”?
Richard: That’s a literary device. Playing prophet separates the character in the book from everyone else. Remember, it’s a book. But is it a Book? I have no opinion,
Nigel: Degrowth
R: It is generally more profitable to landfill most returned purchases. It helps maintain scarcity. The world’s economy does not care about you. It cares about lining the pockets of those in charge.
Yeah, it’s efficient, but efficient at what?
And I’m having second thoughts about Gus. He did something childish by blocking me in yesterday.
But today he brought me a shopping bag filled with food. He also warned me that if I parked by my trailer I’d have trouble getting my Prius out. Promised that he wouldn’t block me in. Was it an apology?
Getting cold in Nebraska.
BPL,
Do you remember the last time? You accused me of jealousy. I explained my motivation. Equal opportunity.
The family farm? LOL. If inheritances were limited (to, say, $1,000,000) and taxed as ordinary income the parents’ motivations would change, especially once the inheritances are fully funded.
The stereotypical family farm you imagine. If a million won’t.buy it, tell me what it would take. Of course, a government loan can fix the issue, eh?
Two or so days ago I offered to give my nieces all of my past, current, and future inventions. If they accept they’ll (hopefully) soon have the funds to do much good.
XXRC: Heads They Win, Tails We Lose
Richard: and They Win even more. Wars and hurricanes are profitable. So are inferior products that will soon be landfilled. Pretty much everything that hurts people is way profitable.
Covid was an amazing boon, eh?
Eh, it depends on your point of view.