A bi-monthly open thread related to climate solutions.
PS. New year, new moderation policy. Please be substantive – sniping, insults, and tedious repetition will just be culled. We want to maintain a civil and productive discourse here, but the comment threads may need to be re-evaluated if that doesn’t happen.
Real mitigation: UK to eliminate private car ownership?
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/uk-inches-closer-eliminating-private-car-ownership
China hog-wild over EVs?
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/china-phasing-out-all-nev-subsidies-2023
Record number of Tesla sales:
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/tesla-reports-over-308000-vehicles-delivered-q4
Chinese green energy plant shut down due to pollutant emissions:
https://www.zerohedge.com/energy/chinese-utility-terminates-green-energy-plant-xinjiang-due-pollutant-emissions
More REAL mitigation, brought to France by you know who:
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2022/01/02/france-874-cars-torched-and-441-arrested-on-new-years-eve/
Richard The Weaver (@ last months FR page)
“If a battery lasts twenty years and half of our lithium reserves will be used in the initial build, and we maintain an 80% lithium recovery during recycling, we get… 40 years via mining, 32 years via first recycling, 25 years, 20, 16, 12, …About 144 years. I think there’s enough fossil fuel laying around to match lithium’ s unsustainability. (Hat tip to Killian)”
“And since biofuels and synfuels can do the longer-term storage thing, wouldn’t it be prudent to stretch out the lithium thing?”
Very logical points. But I would question your numbers / guesstimates. There appear to be vast reserves of lithium on land and dissolved in the oceans that can be economically extracted enough for a massive initial build of electric transport and other applications and several further generations, without recycling. However recycling has a lot of potential as well. Up to 100% of lithium can be recovered from batteries (Li-cycle, a Canadina company) although its currently fairly expensive to do this. However the potential lithium supply plus its ability to be recycled looks like it would easily outlast reserves of fossil fuels and the economics look feasible (translate more expensive but not eye wateringly so).
However there are going to be huge demands for lithium for transport, battery farms and electronics. My gut reaction is synfuels and biofuels would still be a saner choice for longer term storage like battery farms. This would conserve lithium for transport applications, electronics, etc. However there is no central agency that makes these sorts of resource application calls or analyses costs. Governments dont plan the use of resources. Its determined largely by market forces as you would know. Corporates will tend to do whats most profitable short term. This looks like it means using lithium batteries for quite a few applications. If synfuels were cheaper they would presumably use those but they dont.
However its pretty obvious bottlenecks will develop in the supply of lithium. Although the reserves are there setting up mines is quite a lengthy operation apparently. This might force the development of synfuels and biofuels and alternative battery technologies. Nobody knows because theres no master plan. Its all market forces.
Governments should ideally identify critical materials and make sure they are not used up too fast for frivollous applications, but its easy to say this and much, much harder to actually do this. And technology is such that it seems to have this amazing ability to find ALTERNATIVES. So a masterplan and list of critical resources might be quickly made redundant, once you get beyond obviously critical things like medical technology and a handful of very rare and special metals. And ideally individuals should not waste materials on frivilous things, but what is frivilous to one person is important to another. It’s a minefield of an issue. I think the IMPORTANT thing is to eliminate or reduce waste in all its forms. and make sure we dispose of products in ways where future generations can easily locate and recycle them if they need to.
Nigelj
I have long phantacized in terms of alternatives to the lead acid battery and my suggestion was Aluminium. The basic problemm however was that of the reduction potencial of hydrogen that sets limits to the use of strongly electropositive metals in aquatic cells. Quite to my surprize, Litium solved it by the use of an exotic organic electrolyte containing less free protons in solution..
Aluminium seems to be put aside. It would be the very best. But I happened to see that the Japanese are speculating further on Magnesium, and sodium seems to be in discussion aside with Litium.
There are all reasons to believe that radical problems will be solved by chemical research here, when we look back into the dramatic recent history of exotic battery development.
Cobold is an unlucky solution for the litium cell anode, a quite scarce metal with environmental problems and there seems to be a cobold- rather than a litium problem connected to those litium cells. Rumors go about iron and nickel oxides for possible replacement.
You are mentioning synfuel and biofuel. I think the same.
The great advantage of the combustion engine is that it uses air as the oxidizer. I am very proud of my 2 cyl 4 stroke 2/3 liter high compression diesel boat engine that hardly smokes and drinks at all. It could only need better fruel, and I could gladly pay 2-3 times more for syntetic diesel.
Diesel is science`s answer to the problem ever since Rudolf Diesel, and it only got better and better since then. , As of today, the Diesel engine has got all the worlds records of economy and endurance.
Alternatives to cobalt for Li batteries are much more than “rumor”; many of the Chinese EV makers have been using iron-phosphate all along, and Tesla converted to LFP last year for its standard range EVs and utility scale energy storage products. Enphase is another notable US firm using LFP chemistry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_iron_phosphate_battery
Yes, I found it. Such things are promising and allways interesting.
In fact, I didv not believe in batteries before I had a convincingly strong electrical battery drill in hand.. Where you also can have an extra battery with you to get finished with the work.
So I wonder further, why not hang up those heavy EV batteries in 4 screws and simply drive up on a ramp and change battery in 20 seconds at the stations? You rent the easily exchangeable battery and only buy the electricity.
Battery exchange is hardly a new idea.
More recently:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charging_station#Battery_swap
Nigel,
Yep. Quite a number of ways to expand lithium reserves. Then again, the number of ways consumption might expand are legion.
I think we’re on the same page, here.
I’m guessing it’s time for Re-Pete to go back to his old life. ::sigh::
Potential progress on Sodium batteries. https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/01/04/bluetti-launches-sodium-ion-solar-generator/
Nice to know that the tech is starting to enter commercial service. Thx!
nigelj wrote:
In general, “expensive” translates to “energy-intensive”. The requirement for running such processes at reasonable expense and lightly upon the environment is that such energy be both cheap and clean. If the only energy you need is heat, nuclear energy is just the ticket.
Lithium is relatively scarce, but I keep seeing news items about sodium-ion battery companies. Sodium is inexhaustible. What seems in order is a general system for recycling batteries of all types. A law to label them for automatic sorting and another to prohibit their disposal as trash would do a great deal to close the materials loop. Perhaps requiring a deposit which is refunded when each cell is recycled, a la “bottle bills” in many jurisdictions, would address the consumer-side incentives.
Perhaps there needs to be a crackdown on companies like Apple, which essentially require that an entire device be scrapped because replacing a failing battery is more or less prohibited by design.
This comes back to energy. You can recycle almost anything to any desired degree if you can throw enough energy at the problem. Abundant, clean energy is key to this.
EP. I agree with that, particularly with those ideas about having some laws related to recycling and the crackdown on Apple. These are practical things that just might gain traction with government. New Zealand is moving in that general direction as follows:
“Government will move on right to repair legislation – David Parker”
10/07/2021
“Businesses may soon be legally bound to ensure Kiwis can repair old devices and appliances instead of replacing them, Environment Minister David Parker has indicated.
“I met with Consumer NZ this week, and it is something that they’re very keen on doing, and I’m interested in [right to repair]. We will be considering that as part of our review of waste management legislation,” he told Newshub Nation.
While there is no detail on proposed legislation yet, the ‘right to repair’ generally refers to legal protections which force companies to maintain supply of parts for older products and allows customers to choose who provides their repairs.
The minister may have received some extra motivation to push for change from a recent struggle with his own appliances.
“I’m personally frustrated. I have a fridge that broke down recently and I couldn’t get a part and when I eventually tracked down I couldn’t get someone to repair it,” he said. (my note: the fridge wasn’t particularly old)……………
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2021/07/government-will-move-on-right-to-repair-legislation-david-parker.html
That’s a good start, but it will take much more to really make a dent in the culture of disposability. Almost everybody is complicit in its continuation just by virtue of participation, and the inevitable tendency to feel comfortable with the familiar, and fearful to some degree of the strange or unaccustomed. Then there’s the sheer economic power of such as Apple; its nominal valuation took all of 17 months to increase from $2 trillion to $3 trillion. That’s a lot of lobbying power–and even coercive power.
But IMO it will have to be done, difficult or not. We can’t go on maximizing throughput.
We have Thwaites falling apart and people are still spending far more time talking about incremental non-solutions than actual solutions driven by the central concept of simplification/degrowth.
And you all seem to think this a sane choice…
Let me remind you: Current increase of temps is at 0.5C/decade and accelerating. 8 decades x .5 = 4C. 4C +1.2C = 5.2C. By 2100.
But by all means, do carry on with focusing on incremental changes far more than actual solutions…
K. I would have thought improved repairability is a good example of “an actual solution driven by the central concept of simplification / degrowth”. How is it not? Whether its incremental would depend on how fast and robustly such laws are introduced.
Try to pay attention because you far too often get hung up on something that is not at all important to the point being made. Let me help you out:
people are still spending far *more* time talking about incremental non-solutions *than* actual solutions
A person not-nigel would understand this comment in no way suggests your Straw Man. If something hacks at leaves, it’s not a solution.
Not sure how you get “Current increase of temps is at 0.5C/decade and accelerating.”
As a quick sanity check I plotted trends for 11, 21, 31, and 41 years past on WFT. The 3 longer periods are all close to 0.2 C/decade, with the most recent decade @ 0.31.
https://woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/plot/wti/from:2012/trend/plot/wti/from:2002/trend/plot/wti/from:1992/trend/plot/wti/from:1982/trend
That would suggest acceleration, all right, but then we all know the 11-year trend can be quite misleading. (“Hiatus”, anyone? Well, anyone except Victor, for whom it’s rather a hobby-horse, and maybe KIA.)
Not exactly cause for complacency, to be sure: 4 x 0.2 + 1.2 = 2C. And that number has, shall we say, a certain resonance. (Much less, ‘4 x 0.31’ and so on.)
All of which said, compare Ch. 4 of AR6. Table 4.2 gives a worst-case (‘SSP5-8.5’) global range for 2081-2100 of 3.6-6.5 C. That’s relative to pre-Industrial, and the best estimate is 4.8 C.
Other scenarios, in descending order of severity:
SSP3-7.0: 3.9 (2.8-5.5)
SSP2-4.5: 2.9 (2.1-4.0)
SSP1-2.6: 2.0 (1.3-2.8)
SSP1-1.9: 1.5 (1.0-2.2)
(Ranges given are 5-95%, not the whole ensemble.)
My perception, FWIW, is that at this point neither SSP1-1.9 nor SSP5-8.5 are generally considered highly probable. But 2-4.5 & 3-7.0 should be more than enough to justify “hair on fire,” and even 1-2.6 would be pretty damn bad.
Chapter link:
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_Chapter_04.pdf
Further to the “hair on fire” comment I made in my previous post–
Note also Fig. 4-19, AR6 Ch. 4, as linked above.
The map for SSP3-7.0 (the 2nd-worst case) shows the ENTIRE habitable surface of the earth at or above 2-3 C above Pre-Industrial, with most humans living with 3-4 C. Even most of the world ocean is above 1C.
Killian, what you say is only true if improved reparability is not a solution. It certainly looks like a solution to me. Let me remind you that you have spent literally years on this website talking about things like repairability, recycling and reducing waste. Are you now saying you were wrong and its all just “hacking at leaves”? Or do you just react negatively to improved repairability because I said it?
Of course such things as repairabilty or recycling are not the full solution to anything, but every little bit helps. I do not believe there is any singular, viable solution to our particular climate and environmental problems. Its going to be a combination of things and things that are practical, or its going to be nothing. Humans aren’t good enough to achieve more than that.
Not sure how you get “Current increase of temps is at 0.5C/decade and accelerating.”
Sanity, eh? Well, what about being polite? Only applies to me? Goodness…
The answer is because scientists have said so.
Those crazy scientists: https://youtu.be/A9bFZ_rorg0
Check the comments at 4:42.
Your friend,
Crazy Non-Reality Guy According to Kevin
[Response: Except that she is mistaken. Current trends are around 0.2 to 0.3°C/decade for the last decade or two. I don’t think 0.5°C/decade is even plausible at the 5% confindence interval. – gavin]
Killian, “sanity check” is just an idiom:
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/387320/non-idiomatic-synonym-for-sanity-check
No implication that you’re crazy. Thin-skinned, to be sure, but not crazy.
Gavin, I suspect you are using a different calculation? In the video, she is highlighting a specific time period. I suspect you are using the whole record, or longer than they did in that paper?
BTW, if so, I think the shorter time frame showing the shifts in the slope is the more accurate approach in a rapidly changing environment. I mean, the damned thing is parabolic, so it would make little sense to average the whole thing or even a couple decades – if that is what you are doing.
If you look at the graph in her presentation (~4:50), the trace supports Gavin’s numbers much better than hers. I do note that the vertical guidelines are at 20-year intervals, not 10-year intervals; perhaps she overlooked that fact and misinterpreted.
I’ve just looked at the video Killian posted and the woman scientist appears to be basing her 0.5 degrees decadal trend on about the last five years, if you look at the graphic in the video. The problem is using just five years seems too short to assume the new decadal tend going forwards would be 0.5 degrees. Having said that, its pretty obvious things have accelerated recently.
People, and that includes scientists, use your damned heads, eh? Frightenly, nigel finally gets one right. The trend is in a parabolic curve. It makes NO SENSE to talk about the long-term average when change is parabolic. What is supposed to make that curve slow down, eh? Anybody got a realistic reason for that to happen that is natural? No? Then it requires humans to bend the curve and we are collectively so far too damned stupid to get around to doing that. It’s absolutely crap risk management to argue she got it wrong. She didn’t. And I’m sure her co-authors would have given her piles of shit for distorting the paper if she had.
The problem here is the refusal of most on this site to accept what is right before their eyes – no matter how many times we point it out to you.
It’s *risk*, people. Risk. Stop diminishing that risk if you ever hope to get things to change.
Kevin, you once again sling an insult and walk it back. I posted what a SCIENTIST SAID in their presentation about THEIR work and you call your post a “sanity check.” What is the opposite of sanity, Kevin?
This is not about my think skin. I didn’t make the claim, I only reported it. It’s about you owning your own shit.
Own your shit.
No, Hr.Poet
Here i must correct you.
One should not confuse energy with entropy, and negative entropy is what really matters, …. and costs.
Then you can also have it away from Das Kapital and CREDO IN Dalers and Mammon. or “Cash”.
A teaspoon of salt in the water is easy. But getting that table salt back again in pure cristalline form and the water also as it was quite pure in the glass………… does really cost and pollute. You must ask BigCoal for electric heat and all that glassware and cooling water and you will never get it back quite clean in the same quantities.
Engineers are hardly poetic if they do not mention this first, and even discuss it in terms of “energy”.
Renewables vs. Fossil Fuels: The True Cost of Energy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_BGHy4sfMs
A capitalist look at the financial cost of energy comparing coal, gas, onshore wind and solar (so doesn’t take into account externalised costs that don’t appear on the balance sheet). When all costs are taken into account, solar and wind come out top.
As I’ve said before, wind would be more suitable for the UK than solar. We’ve just had one of the dullest December’s on record when we are in darkness for two thirds of the day normally, so difficult to see how solar could meet demand in this situation. Clearly a mix of sources is optimal.
Commentary with great photos: “Are earthships the answer to our climate change and housing problems?”
“Nick Aspinwall, 09:02, Jan 05 2022”
“Earthships – off-grid, self-reliant houses built from tyres, dirt and rubbish – have become a haven for climate doomers.”
https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/homed/sustainable-living/300490382/are-earthships-the-answer-to-our-climate-change-and-housing-problems
I think these are really interesting and appealing structures. But they are labour intensive to build and expensive to buy, and wont work so well for someone closely tied to a job in the city. But they are interesting experiments, and maybe the ideas can be incorporated into structures that are less geographically isolated, and would work for a wider range of people.
These are old news, and certainly an option depending on your location, climate, etc. Your observations aren’t really all that germane as all design is specific to a site. There is no reason beyond stupid zoning that an Earthship could not be built in a city (zoning is one of those things that really needs to change in many places), nor for them to be expensive. You can build your own easily and have it as “modern” or simple as you choose.
Killian. Old news to who? Do you think everyone reading this website would be familiar with the details of them? How would you possibly know?
They are old news to me. I think various eco-housing has been discussed here off and on over the years. Jim Larson talked about it in 2013: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/06/unforced-variations-june-2013/
The trouble with building these structures is largely about our building codes and construction permitting. There is not a lot of assistance at the local building departments for the diy-ers who want to build a non-traditional home.
Cheers
Mike
Mike. I’m sure you are right that eco housing has been discussed here from time to time, but it seems unlikely to me that EVERYONE reading these pages would have read those posts, or that they would have covered all the points in the article I posted. You yourself have said you don’t read everything that gets posted here. When people say things like “thats old news” its mostly just egotistical points scoring.
By the way you are repeating what I said earlier about the problems building these homes. Im not criticising you for that, but hope you see the irony. :)
Old news to informed people. Obviously, that does not *ever* include you.
Nigel: If synfuels were cheaper they would presumably use those but they dont.
Richard: Synfuels have suffered from the lack of an efficient engine. Doubling efficiency makes what’s now untenable attractive.
Killian,
Yeah, lots of “earthshippy” stuff is illegal or discouraged. I often visualize the inevitable(?) conflict between local authorities and a guy who wants to build his place with old tires and rammed earth and water recycling through biological filters/gardens and….
RTW
“Yeah, lots of “earthshippy” stuff is illegal or discouraged. I often visualize the inevitable(?) conflict between local authorities and a guy who wants to build his place with old tires and rammed earth and water recycling through biological filters/gardens and….”
In New Zealand structures like mud brick and rammed earth buildings are now legal to build. They used to be essentially illegal to build, and local authorities determined construction standards and were antagonistic towards such structures. The fear of anything different. But there were also some legitimate concerns about earthquake resistance.
This all changed in the 1990s when the building code was centralised so that central government determined construction standards. The code allows novel structures to be built provided they comply with certain design rules or alternatively are designed by the qualified people and backed up with calculations. Local authorities cant prohibit them anymore. Solutions were found to the earthquake issue and put in the codes.
The reason for all the drama about them needing to comply with laws and have calculations is we have high earthquake risk. But anyway this whole issue of allowing novel solutions is something that can be liberalised yet you can still have some basic rules to ensure that we dont build unsafe structures. But they can be objective rules not the arbitrary judgement of some annoying local official.
https://www.getty.edu/conservation/publications_resources/pdf_publications/pdf/gsap_part2b.pdf
Now howzabout we apply this to nuclear energy as well?
Dr.E.Poet
You have no actual small and smart and clean nuclear reactors to sell. That seems to be your largest, personal problem and handica0p as long as you advocate and announce it.
Happens all over the US. It’s psychopathic; it’s about property values, not safety. How do we know? Straw bale buildings are extremely earthquake resistant yet largely illegal in California.
All as the current system dies….
Nigel,
Much of the problem lies in the inevitable fact that some folks are better at prototyping and adjusting and regrouping and all the tear-your-hair-out problems complex one-off systems present.
Ya walk in all flowers and Green, but when your first attempt, uh, hits a brown phase, and neighbors exist…
It’s a tough nut.
Killian is being consistent. “It’s not enough”.
Still a tough nut.
Your society burns through most of its effort in fighting, bickering, and landfilling product just to ensure Others don’t get anything without paying tribute (profit).
Seriously. If all the brilliant folks who are figuring out how to screw you and everyone else were to do actual productive work…
It isn’t about $$$$. It’s about brilliant brains. Your society rewards negative work, so brilliant brains do what is required to Win your society’s game.
So you recycle a phone after a ten year court battle. Big whup. Those attorneys’ brains were wasted for a decade. They coulda done something productive instead, eh?
So, do I start another Weave when JWST goes online? Entanglement is my thing, after all.
RTW
“It isn’t about $$$$. It’s about brilliant brains. Your society rewards negative work, so brilliant brains do what is required to Win your society’s game.”
Yes. Read the book called Other Peoples Money about the parsasites and leeches in the financial industry and it would make you weep. I did briefly consider that game but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. And don’t get me started on lawyers. They are even worse than you probably think. Not claiming I’m perfect.
But here is the problem / dilemma: The capitalist system rewards both positive (useful) and negative work (leeching on the system, gambling, paper shuffling, loan sharking, etc,ect ). This is because capitalism largely doesn’t define what is positive and negative work, because capitalism says it cant be adequately defined. You know it when you see it but its hard to define and measure. The exception is criminal behaviour, but even that has grey areas that are contested.
The alternative is some form of socialism where governments define “acceptable” work. Do you really trust ANY government to do that properly? I think it could be a disaster, worse than the disease. There is just no simple answer, if any answer. The leeches or leeching behaviour are the price we pay for a vibrant capitalist decentralised economy where people can do whatever they want, provided its not physically harming other people or theft. So you have to roll with that system and look after number one, and maybe promote changes to the system that make small differences and which are likely to be adopted (like the examples I gave).
I’m not saying I like the current system, but changing it is difficult without making things worse. especially when the people changing it are often dim wits. And that includes on both sides of politics. You might do OK as a benevolent dictator but most wouldn’t.
No offense, nigel, but I think virtually *all* governments, socialist or not, “define acceptable work”–with (e.g.) contract killing, theft, fraud, etc. largely proscribed. It’s just a matter of where the line gets drawn–and who gets to draw it, of course. Is it agreed by a representative body, or is it imposed by fiat of one, or perhaps a few?
Important questions–but seems to me that the permissibility and indeed necessity of having some such governmental ‘definition’ is not in doubt.
Kevin. I understand that. I did specifically say “This is because capitalism largely doesn’t define what is positive (acceptable) and negative (unacceptable) work, because capitalism says it cant be adequately defined…. The exception is criminal behaviour….”
But going BEYOND that looks very problematic to me as I suggested. Governments will probably make a mess of it.
An example: While lawyers are annoying and do a lot of negative sounding work, we do actually need them. And if you tried to narrowly define what they do in law, for example banning them from certain types of activities deemed negative / parasitical I think it would become a nightmare getting that right and adequately defined and documented, and you would have to do it in detail for every profession on the planet.
Part of me thinks we should still try, but it just doesn’t look practically possible. Its a typical well meaning liberal / left leaning idea that becomes an impossibility in reality and could backfire.. And I speak as someone who mostly leans towards liberal and left leaning ideas!
Perhaps make “attorney” a publically-funded occupation. “Equality before the law” prohibits for-profit attorneys, eh?
From a capitalism perspective, isn’t “acceptable” work any work that generates financial wealth, and “unacceptable” work is any work that consumes financial wealth?
Kevin: “ virtually *all* governments, socialist or not, “define acceptable work”–with (e.g.) contract killing, theft, fraud, etc. largely proscribed. It’s just a matter of where the line gets drawn–and who gets to draw it”
Furthermore, proscription is not the only tool the non-socialist governments have and use: every day they reward what they consider positive – with tax credits or subsidies, and penalize with taxes and levies , what they consider negative.
So they have the tools – the question is whether they want to use them or not (see Thatcherism and Reaganomics), and whether the selection of what’s positive and negative reflects the opinion of the society or not (the billions in subsidies to fossil fuel companies or destructive industrial fishery). In the climate area the most effective tools are cap-and-trade and carbon-taxes which try to use the efficiencies of the market – to minimize the societal cost of the
decarbonization of the economy.
To pre-empt Killian – no, I don’t think these are ideal solutions, or that those systems are impervious to industrial lobbying and corruption, but merely that they are better than alternatives – Communist system that tries to manually run the economy and society, or the utopian Killianism that seems to imagine that 8 billion of people will reject the current political and economic system and beliefs, and with magically acquired selflessness and increased empathy to other people and other lifeforms – will abandon consumption, alter their believes and priorities in life, and since cities seem to be focal sites of complexity and consumption divorced from nature – move en masses to the country into radicial simplification of the regenerative agriculture, where they will in harmony with each other and with nature.
And all these -within the next …few decades to achieve net-zero GHGs emissions
I think such radical, pie-in-sky, vision is not only futile, but actually counter-productive – the perfect is an enemy of the good (see Killian dismissing anything short of his all-or-nothing perfect solution as “hacking at leaves,/i>”). In fact, utopian ideas ended up in their opposite – like the ideals of equality and fraternity of the French Revolution resulting in its antithesis
in the form of the revolutionary Terror, with Revolution “eating” not only its enemies but then its children,
When an utopian idea fails to inspire a bottom-up revolution in human minds, other show to replace the top-down revolution – forcing “what’s good for the people” onto those people.
And in fact – the radical simplification – and implied nobility of the agriculture over the separation from the nature, and crazy consumptions of the cities, had parallels in the recent past: both the Cultural Revolution and Khmer Rouge rule – forcibly moved many millions of the urban dwellers – considered being spoiled by consumption, contaminated by foreign influences and ideas, to the country – to have their lives forcibly “radically simplified”, and to be
“re-educated” into the new, correct, values.
Again, I am not comparing our Killian, even toutes proportions gardées, to Mao or Pol-Pot, rather to the well-intentioned idealist thinkers, like Marx, whose (some) ideas were used later by Mao and Pol-Pot – whether they truly believed in parts of them, or just found them useful in obtaining and solidifying their power.
So while no solution is perfect, some are worse than others.
Piotr. Agreed. I just want to point out my criticisms about the government being able to adequately define acceptable verses unacceptable work (apart from basic things like criminal behaviour) related more to job descriptions. There’s certainly nothing wrong with using taxes and subsidies etcetera as management tools to encourage / discourage certain things.
I’ve said the same things about the ideas Killian posts literally years ago. Check the archives. I wonder if he will understand if its coming from a newbie, and stated with good clarity. Im not optimistic.
I think that ‘criminality’ may be a rather less basic or clear-cut matter than we tend to think. And it’s worth noting how it can shift over history:. In this place, slave-owning was not only tolerated 160 years ago, but legally protected (and indeed nurtured). Now it’ll get you a hefty sentence in the pen, and quite right, too.
The parallels with environmentally destructive behavior are significant already; who’s to say they may not become more significant still?
Yes, true.
The basic problemj with Killianism is that the killians become teachers of “english language” systematics and primary basic principles and logics without ever having learnt Permaculture.
Which may be why they perform as drunken sailors.
To label the only possible path to long-terms solutions with the pejorative terms you do, then LOBBY FOR suicidal options that are even more fantasy because they CAN’T solve the problems is lunacy
To review, one pathway, one that is already lived and already exists in various places across the planet, is supposedly unrealistic, but YOUR Piotrism of choosing non-solutions of doing nothing that can actually solve the problems we face is somehow intelligent and level-headed?
Idiocy
No, there are other options, but you still don’t know how to be intellectually honest.
Let me repeat what I’ve told you far too many times already: In egalitarian societies, i.e. government-less, there is absolute autonomy, yet very high levels of cooperation and cohesiveness.
Figure it out.
Try the Graeber. et al., book before responding, please.
On brilliant brains:
Tell me with a straight face that if the USA had focused its DARPA stuff and Defense budget towards defending humanity, with intense dives into Eathships and various productive things instead of death and destruction,
that we wouldn’t be way better off right now.
Seriously? Who the fuck cares about hypersonic missiles? As if they matter. Can you provide a non-laughable scenario where development of the tech is non-stupid?
“We’ve got the biggest biceps” is what a friggin ‘roid addict would say. Do you respect steroid junkies?
RtW: Who the fuck cares about hypersonic missiles?
BPL: Anyone in the US defense establishment who has to worry about Russian and Chinese hypersonic missiles. Anyone who has to figure out ways to shoot down hypersonic missiles. Anyone who lives in cities that might be targeted by hypersonic missiles.
National defense is not an insubstantial, airy-fairy concern when there are at least three wars raging right now and real people dying in them, plus two countries trying to stave off possible invasions.
Yup.
Eliminating much of this world’s misery would appear to be much cheaper than preparing to deter the security threats arising in large part from that very misery.
Cheaper… but also much less helpful in maintaining the power of political elites.
RTW
“Seriously? Who the fuck cares about hypersonic missiles? As if they matter. Can you provide a non-laughable scenario where development of the tech is non-stupid?”
There is a very small possibility that if America didn’t develop hypersonic missles it just might lead to China or Russia getting bold and attacking America or some other country. Because the end result has very high stakes serious consequnces, its an important possibility even although its small. By analogy, its similar to the low probability high impact climate events.
So its very hard for America do demilitarise even slightly. I dont like this because military spending diversts resources from more useful purposes, but its hard to see an ideal solution thats workable other than international arms control agreements that set a cap on numbers of weapons.
And its an example of what Joseph Tainter proclaims about simplification: Namely that societies become complex which can be problematic, but its hard to unwind this without causing more problems. Its like being stuck on a treadmill unable to get off.
There’s this thing called history. It is filled, since day one, with no breaks, of one group of humans attacking other groups of humans. They use what ever weapons they have at the time. If you ignore the latest weapons, your group of humans become worm food. That is why Defense is important to all nations. The USA has been doing the heavy lifting of protecting much of the world since WW2.
If you don’t care if you survive, then yes, defense technology is stupid, but most people DO care. This concept extends from the individual to nations. If you want war, show weakness to the bad guys of the world – as the USA is doing right now.
Yep. And the current next-gen weapons are economic. Stuff that goes boom is worthless other than to force your position onto others in longstanding disputes. Note that they ain’t making any more “longstanding disputes” any time soon. So gains via weapons are capped HARD.
Meanwhile, the country that develops, say, a cheap superconducting megagrid will laugh at the paltry gains by a competitor: “You burned through alllll of your human and other discretionary capital and all you got was a minor re-drawing of your border?? LOFL. What a loser!
There’s this thing called history.
Then there’s this thing called bullshit history, outright lies, lunacy, and pathological insanity.
The actions of the US have turned more humans into worm food since WW2 than any other nation or violent group on Earth has.
The combined US military is one of the largest GHG emitters on earth – it’s essentially a destructive, deadly, anti-human institution.
XRRC: The actions of the US have turned more humans into worm food since WW2 than any other nation or violent group on Earth has.
BPL: Probably numerically incorrect. The Soviet Union is responsible for at least 80 million state murders, not counting all its war killings. The PRC, 60 million plus. I don’t think the US can compete.
Exaggeration and swallowing lies without checking is not limited to “nuke freaks”. Far from it, it is very common. I can see the problems of the world being solved in your head is so easy. I have seen your type before far too often. I might as well be listening to an Evolution denier, a 9/11 Truther, a Capitol Rioter, an Anti-Vaxxer, or a Birther such is the disconnect to reality and math.
Please don’t waste your time throwing your Truth Bombs. It’s sad to watch this across multiple topics here.
XRRC: Exaggeration and swallowing lies without checking
BPL: This to my claims of Soviet and PRC genocide. XRRC is, among other things, a Holocaust denier, though it’s the Soviet and PRC holocausts he’s denying.
You might want to check Antonov-Ovseyenko’s “The Time of Stalin” (1982). He had access to the records of the Central Statistical Administration of the USSR, so I think his figures are reliable. His estimate for Stalin was 100 million, but he was counting deficit births, which are important demographically but not, to my mind, murders. My estimate using a demographic model and Antonov-Ovseyenko’s point figures was 80 million. You might also check the many works of Robert Conquest, or any professional historian’s overview of the relevant history. There are journal articles available.
For the PRC, the figures are 30 million in direct executions and labor camps, and 30 million which can be apportioned between the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Perhaps the GLF can be discounted since it wasn’t deliberate murder; just genocidal incompetence.
But calling it all lies just reveals what a comsymp you are.
Climate Protests and Civil Disobedience
16 mins review Cabot Institute for the Environment
Written and Presented by Dr Oscar Berglund Professor Colin Davis University of Bristol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_7pGfRnZao
Dr Oscar Berglund’s Climate Emergency unit, my evolving lab for how to save the world with young folk who’ll help to save it. We do this with the help of inspirational scholars & activists from around the world & our own @cabotinstitute 1/13
https://twitter.com/berglund_oscar/status/1469453914508562436
The Thwaites glacier is showing signs of disintegrating which can potentially lead to rapid sea level rise. This is with about 1 degree of warming. The conventional solution of reducing global emissions or NET will not be fast enough. A rapid local solution may need to be found. Off the top of my head what about:
1). The Thwaites glacier is melting due to a warm ocean current. Would it be possible to cool the regional source of that current with some regional geoengineering like atmospheric aerosols? Even just until global climate solutions become more embedded.
2) The Thwaites glacier holds other glaciers in place apparently. As the Thwaites glacier ice sheet breaks up other glaciers start speeding up their motion. Maybe they could be physically restrained at their termination, anchored to the bedrock by piles or something. What I’m saying is emulate the physical restraint provided by the Thwaites glacier. Huge task of course and in such an isolated place.
3)Could you cool the warm current somehow at the face of the glacier by pumping in colder water from deeper down in the ocean? It would buy time until CO2 levels are reduced. Although there is no local energy source.
Others may already have considered this. Might not be possible or practical.
Nothing to worry about Nigel. It is predicted to take hundreds of years to melt. Plenty of time for people to move to higher ground, build sea walls, etc. Source:
https://ktla.com/news/nationworld/scientists-sail-to-antarcticas-doomsday-glacier-to-figure-out-how-fast-seas-will-rise/
Quote: “The Florida-sized glacier has gotten the nickname the “doomsday glacier” because of how much ice it has and how much seas could rise if it all melts — more than two feet (65 centimeters) over hundreds of years.”
When you read news, it’s important to consider if it is “reasonable”. Like when you hear about a bunch of people committing an “insurrection”, yet most are charged with “parading” in the capitol, “trespassing”, etc, and exactly ZERO are charged with insurrection, treason, sedition, none had guns, etc. These are clues that it’s all political theater for the low-information voter.
KIA: Nothing to worry about Nigel. It is predicted to take hundreds of years to melt. Plenty of time for people to move to higher ground, build sea walls, etc.
BPL: It’s happening NOW. A city doesn’t have to be under water for sea level rise to make it uninhabitable. The sea just has to rise enough to seep into aquifers and back up sewers. A city without fresh water and sewage disposal becomes a death trap, as they are finding out right now in Virginia.
KIA: you hear about a bunch of people committing an “insurrection”, yet most are charged with “parading” in the capitol, “trespassing”, etc, and exactly ZERO are charged with insurrection, treason, sedition, none had guns, etc. These are clues that it’s all political theater for the low-information voter.
BPL: Stop defending treason and insurrection, KIA. “None had guns” is especially disingenuous since they certainly intended to kill certain people. Everyone in the insurrection on January 6th, 2021 was a traitor and ought to be shot or sent to prison for life. Ditto for the people who incited them, including Trump.
KIA, the following article suggested the collapse of the Thwaites glacier could possibly lead to rapid sea level rise this century, about one foot more than expected.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2021/12/16/antarctica-glacier-collapse-raise-sea-levels/8924940002/
Sure the visit underway to the ice shelf on will help clarify this. However I think we will still end up needing some sort of engineering solution to the Thwaites glacier issue and also the rapidly warming arctic, all in addition to reducing global emissions. Plus what BPL said.
It doesn’t matter what people call the Whitehouse incident whether its insurrection, treason, parading, tresspassing, invasion, riot, or whatever it was plainly unacceptable, irresponsible behaviour by complete morons putting life in danger and undermining the rule of law, and the fact is Trump said and did nothing and sat there probably gloating. I don’t go along with the death penalty, but throw them all in jail and throw away the key.
Nigel,
It is neigh impossible to fathom a working governmental system unless ya start from scratch. Killian would say something like “first principles”.
So, the first thing to rip out of the System is the concept of districts. They divide. They result in zero sum games. They serve no use. A Senator, for example, should have the country in mind when making decisions about the country. Other thoughts lead to grift and swamps. Districts suck.
Richard,
You aren’t starting from scratch. You are just modifying one small aspect of the current system of government that annoys you. Granted it annoys me as well.
And whos first principles? You would have to get people to agree on those, before you even redesign the system. I doubt that there are any generally agreed or universally always correct first principles, apart from scientific laws.
To start from scratch you need to completely redesign the current system of government. You need a masterplan. You need to convince a public sceptical of change and unwilling to even use their brains. It could take a long time. Get back when you have a masterplan. Killian has a masterplan on governance, however I dont find it terribly convincing.
And we probably already have all the basic options. Democracy versus dictatorship. First past the post versus proportional representation. Socialism v capitalism. Its unlikely that there is anything that hasn’t been thought of.
And remember the Soviet Union and Moas China “started from scratch” and what a great success that was (SARCASM).
And whos first principles? You would have to get people to agree on those
For chrissakes… this is like saying people need to agree that colors exist, or oxygen, or trees. There is nothing to agree on. First Principles simply ARE. The exist, period.
KIillian
This is your problem.
It has been discussed and disagreed on by the old greeks allready and further all through the dark ages,
What is and which are the primary principles? and which are the secondary and further ones that are not adult and in charge yet and can be shown aside first “forchristssakes” if I understood him right.
A lot of things exists and simply “ARE”. But which of them are to be taken serious and given the range and to be set on and taken for sure anchor-points of our definitions, politics eating heating washing and fucking and thoughts?
There , it seems, that Genosse Killian is really unexperienced.
Don’t first principles start from sustainability and its definition? Societies have sustainability as a boundary condition on their way of living, one way of following that is to avoid consuming natural resources faster than they can be replenished.
I vaguely recollect from my school days something about subsistence farming in the rainforest. A community clears a small area of forest, farms the land for subsistence, after a few years the soil is exhausted of nutrients, so they move on and clear a new area. The area that is left behind regenerates by natural processes until it becomes part of the forest again. This to my mind is an example of a sustainable living practice. Industrialised nations coming in with bulldozers to clear huge areas of forest for palm oil plantations is not a sustainable way of living.
Richard. In hindsight I realise my response was a bit negative. Put it in the devils advocate, and getting grumpy with ongoing covid epidemic category.
New Zealand has diluted the influence of political districts by changing from FFP (first past the post) to MMP (mixed member proportional representation).
Does this bear any resemblance to simplification or first principles?
Scoraig, highlands of Scotland. The remote UK community living off-grid:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-45046023
First Principles are… First Principles, like the Laws of Thermodynamics are the Laws of Thermodynamics. It makes no sense to ask that question. You either pay attention to them or you don’t. If you do, you will make wiser decisions; if you don’t, you will make maladaptive decisions.
And, sure, they are certainly living a much more simplified life than is typical. This is very good. Their overall consumption is likely a fraction of that of a typical person living in Scotland. But don’t confuse this with sustainability/regenerative systems. They are simplified, but there’s little evidence of them seeking true regenerative status – at least from the article.
That said, if everyone on Earth lived that simply, it would certainly massively reduce consumption, emissions, etc. This is why I suggest simplification plus global regenerative agriculture as first, simple steps representing the low-lying fruit of solving our problems. Those two things alone would get us into negative emissions and greatly slow, but not stop, ecosystem destruction and resource base reduction.
What an enlightening discussion. It is really a great feeling to see and interact so many subject expert on a single page and the credit goes to the author of this blog.
The Age of Energy Disruptions
by François-Xavier Chevallerau, BiophysEco
December 10, 2021
https://www.faninitiative.net/articles/the-age-of-energy-disruptions/ an interesting resource rich website.
At Nigel: Global warming is… uh… global. The regional solution is global. The solution is very rapid reduction of greenhouse gases. We have to get to net zero very fast, like yesterday, if we wanted to prevent the Thwaites collapse.
I will watch and read as the engineering types explain why your regional solutions cannot work.
The Thwaites shelf and glacier collapse will raise sea levels catastrophically if we don’t get to net zero sometime this week… which is to say,.. these things will happen and they are irreversible. Some folks have been talking about these things for a while. I see that you now say the conventional solution of reducing global emissions or NET will not be fast enough. I agree with you. Welcome to the “hurry up club.”
CO2? Is that the cause? how are we doing with that? Pretty good, I guess:
December CO2
Dec. 2021 = 416.71 ppm
Dec. 2020 = 414.26 ppm
We are back around that magical 2.4 ppm rate of increase. I think that if we see a transition to EL Nino warm cycle in late 2022, as I have read we might, we will see an acceleration of all kind of global warming impacts. The Thwaites collapse will probably not speed up appreciably because the ocean currents that are driving that collapse are slower to move than some other possible irreversible changes in other regions that are in the wings.
When these big things start to happen, it is probably too late to do anything but pack your go bag and think about adaptation. Drastic changes that we could make today would likely alter the arc of the great extinction to a certain extent. We should commit to those, but I don’t know if we have the will and ability.
Cheers
Mike
Mike, obviously we always push as hard as possible to reduce global emissions. However we have a couple of things that are critical points for sea level rise including the Thwaites glacier and the combination of artic warming and amplification and the greenland ice sheet. All I’m saying is it might be useful to also find local solutions to the ice sheet issues. Given they are local and targeted it might be politically easier than the massive task of reducing global emissions. Assuming the engineering works. Nobody has said it cant.
BPL,
You and I have differing definitions of “has to”. I don’t think anyone in the military “has to” worry about hypersonic missiles. Instead, just ignore them. It’s not like they’re dangerous or useful or anything. It’s not like the USA is going to fall because of external threats. I’d be way more worried about slow minds than fast missiles. You know, Proud (to be stupid) Boys.
That US Offense budget is a sweet resource up for grabs, especially since it comes with dedicated and capable folks who joined the organization with a sense of Serving.
Imagine if we chose to use such a team to help humanity instead of to run around countering (creating) fake threats for political and financial goals. Iraq? Fake and a total lie.
Afghanistan? Just a place to burn ordinance pointlessly. Well, and to keep US peasants from noticing that Saudi Arabians did 9/11, but that’s even worse, eh?
Vietnam? Another lie.
Gosh, anyone know of a single dollar well-spent by the US military in the last 50 years? Where did we get good value? I’m thinking that using aircraft carriers as barges to take aid to disaster victims (Haiti?) counts as a positive, but still a horrendous value.
Drop the gun-toting budget by 90%. Use 100% of the savings to build, say, the Army Corps of Engineers into a world-saving force for good.
Keep the team. Change the mission.
Or go play with hypersonic missiles while the planet bakes off its human-friendly biosphere.
The USA only has so many young men and women, so many brilliant minds, so much attention span. Seriously, BPL, do you think there’s enough to BOTH save the biosphere AND play soldier to the tune of a trillion dollars worth of our best and brightest per year?
RtW: Afghanistan? Just a place to burn ordinance pointlessly.
BPL: They attacked us, not the other way around.
RtW: Well, and to keep US peasants from noticing that Saudi Arabians did 9/11, but that’s even worse, eh?
BPL: See above.
RtW: Gosh, anyone know of a single dollar well-spent by the US military in the last 50 years?
BPL: Oh! Oh! I know this one. Intervening in Bosnia and Kosovo to prevent at least some of the genocide! Oh, and overthrowing Hudson Austin in Grenada in 1983 when his troops were pulling 50 people a day out of their homes and shooting them because some family member was a member of the opposition! Oh, and preventing the Soviet Union from a tank and motorized invasion of western Europe through the Fulda Gap! Oh, and throwing the Soviets out of Cuba in 1962!
Ahhh, the Fulda Gap. Where we were going to save the population by blowing them up with nuclear weapons mounted on Jeeps, under the control of not-exactly-the-best-and-brightest NCO’s.
And Grenada, where the US enforced it’s noble Latin America policy of not supporting murderous dictators… oh wait.
But, of course, we can’t forget the brilliant success in Lebanon just a few days before the Grenada invasion… oh wait. I don’t suppose there was any connection?
z: Ahhh, the Fulda Gap. Where we were going to save the population by blowing them up with nuclear weapons mounted on Jeeps, under the control of not-exactly-the-best-and-brightest NCO’s.
BPL: Would it have saved them to let the Soviets take over western Europe?
z: And Grenada, where the US enforced it’s noble Latin America policy of not supporting murderous dictators… oh wait.
BPL: For once we did the right thing. So you invoke all the times we did the wrong thing to prove… what, exactly? The point made by the OP was that the US had never used its military to do anything good. A single counterexample would have been enough to overturn that point; I gave four.
z: But, of course, we can’t forget the brilliant success in Lebanon just a few days before the Grenada invasion… oh wait. I don’t suppose there was any connection?
BPL: I doubt it. Our students were kidnapped, remember? We weren’t responsible for the timing of that, unless you want to get into deep dark conspiracy theories on the order of the 9-11 truthers or the “Roosevelt knew about Pearl Harbor” freaks.
“would it have saved them?”
Well yes. They would not have died gruesome radiation deaths from indiscriminate use of our various tactical nuclear munitions. In any event, the Soviets had no great motivation to invade, and the possibility of full-scale nuclear war was sufficient deterrent.
And note that the US did not by any means “throw the Soviets out of Cuba”; there was a diplomatic deal done, about offensive missiles, saving face and lives all around. No shots fired, and the Cuba continued under Soviet influence.
As for Grenada, “doing the right thing” was coincidental; it happened to distract from the Beirut fiasco and limit the political damage to RR. It would have been easy enough to deal with any hostages by trading for them with some weapons just like he did in Iran. Do you really think the new government wanted to give up the money that would be provided from future US students once the dust had settled?
There are competent people in the military… there were even (a few) back then… but the intersection of military career motivations with civilian political/economic motivations results in inappropriate use of force almost all the time.
That Fulda Gap of yours is probably another reminent WW2 Metamphetamine stimulated meme from those days and later on..
RTW: “Gosh, anyone know of a single dollar well-spent by the US military in the last 50 years?”
Well, there’s that whole Internet thingy. And battle-field medicine has revolutionized trauma care, saving countless lives. And if you want to go back 60 years or so, the military was instrumental in improving the reliability of electronics technologies. We still use Military Standards for testing in the space program.
And DOD has been among the loudest government entities proclaiming the dangers posed by climate change–regardless of who was President.
I agree that Iraq and Afghanistan accomplished less than nothing, but that had more to do with political interference and naivete than military strategy or tactics.
Nigel,
Thanks for the compliment.
And the core to the solution is to strip those who seek to hold high public office of their financial rights. They must agree to live a median lifestyle for the rest of their life should they win.
Think of the ramifications. Who would seek office? Trump wouldn’t, eh? Bernie would for sure. I wouldn’t be too surprised if Yang tried to strip himself of his wealth by winning.
If you don’t like the greedy dipshits who enter and win today’s game, it’s not the dipshits’ fault. The game is flawed. Design one that attracts the type of person you would respect, and suddenly lots of folks will trend towards your ideal. Overton windows can change entire societies, especially if you put the new window on a different wall.
Nathan Hagens’ new podcast interview project – The Great Simplification
#3 Arthur Berman “Oil: It was the best of fuels, it was the worst of fuels”
https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/03-arthurberman
with Oil Essentials: scarcity or abundance, and the energy transition
Slide 30
Power density: how much energy can be converted to power from a volume
Natural gas has 200 times more power density than solar and 1000 times more power density than wind
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/61d5bc2bb737636144dc55d0/t/61ddf96153634f28a1ec7b16/1641937256358/NJH+Presentation+December+2021.pdf
I’m not bright enough to figure out some of those graphs. Different Y-axis labels but only one type of data?? Or no clue which lines go with which Y-axis labels (all labelled totally differently from either Y-axis label)…
But other than that, thanks, was good stuff.
If I understand what you’re saying above, In the graphs with dual Y axis the colored lines with RHS means right hand side, and LHS means the left hand side axis.
The page headings are often the same text, so ignore that text look instead at the type of data being presented on the Y axis.
Which I admit is little difficult and poorly presented.
Nigel,
Your self-reflection is noted. I think we RC commenters are all doing a lot better than we were a year ago. I salute us.
And yes, the district thing is just a random segment that I chose to start with. Either that or Pontificate, which seemed wrong since this is a collaborative build. As if I have all the answers. I pull my weight and then some. But left to me alone, I’d probably get us all killed.
So, you agree that districts are likely a net negative. I’ll add a second structural member:
It is foolish to expect everyone to be any one thing. Thus, expecting more than, say, 10% of the population to keep track of systems design (politics) is a fool’s errand. And insisting that It Be So is abuse.
RTW.
Yes redesigning government from scratch could be a collaborative build where each person or sub – team deals with some component. So government is rebuilt from scratch by chipping away at various aspects. But I feel it also needs some sort of overall plan or vision to give a basic direction and unity and to motivate people, and that sort of thing tends to come from one person. Without that vision people will just squabble about their little part of the puzzle being the most important.
And I have become so disenchanted with new societies built around masterplans and visions. Just look at examples in history and its mostly a mess or a disaster.
And speaking of parts of the puzzle, the thing that most troubles me is the influence of lobby groups on politicians. We really should have publicly funded, ie tax payer funded, election campaigns, but it probably just isn’t going to happen. Its a, old idea but only a handful of countries have even partly implemented this
Killain’s answer to the problems of government is not to have a government. However that would be very hard to do because even if you ran society with his form of egalitarian group decision making that is still a form of government. Its just a different form of government that is very democratic and less top heavy. However IMHO it is also very cumbersome to try to make every decision by consulting everyone. .
And conventional governments can do good things, for example Piotr mentioned how governments already have tested mechanisms that can encourage good behaviours. They don’t always get used probably because of the limitations of politicians and the public who vote for them, and disagreements over basic ideology and philosophy. The problem isn’t so much the basic structure of government. The problem is us, humans. The problem is everyone. We can design theoretically great systems but humans arent good enough to actually make them work. George Orwell understood this.
Mrkia,
I missed a lot of the discussion during my Weave. Did you take a stab at my one-sided bet with partial credit? 10% right would be $100, after all.
I figure the regs as a group should judge.
Last chance. Tick. Tick. Tick.
This study (open access) may be of interest. “Political Legitimacy, Authoritarianism, and Climate Change”
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/political-legitimacy-authoritarianism-and-climate-change/E7391723A7E02FA6D536AC168377D2DE
XRRC wrote:
It’s simply ridiculous not to rate nuclear energy on the same measures. One 6-gram enriched uranium pellet produces as much useful energy as a ton of coal, and does it without producing even the slightest amount of greenhouse gases. Nuclear plants require on the order of 1/6 as much concrete and 1/10 as much steel as wind and PV do.
Elysium Energy has a scheme for a radically simplified nuclear reactor which can “burn” our existing inventory of “high-level nuclear waste” (which is really a slightly-depleted stockpile of highly concentrated energy).
The New York Power Authority ran a poll on most desirable source of energy and got overwhelmed by the number of write-in votes for nuclear.
E-P: One 6-gram enriched uranium pellet produces as much useful energy as a ton of coal, and does it without producing even the slightest amount of greenhouse gases.
BPL: Greenhouse gases are produced by the vast amounts of cement used in construction nuclear power plants and by the mining and construction work involved.
Once again we see the nuclear proponents’ tendency to exaggerate to the point where people simply stop listening. Energy will be “too cheap to meter.” Nuclear power “has never killed a single civilian.” “There were no deaths from radiation at Fukushima.” It’s not enough to argue about the size of the effect, nuke freaks just lie and assume we’ll swallow the lies without checking.
Hr Levenson
They aren neither poets nor engineers.
AISOPOS has delivered a fable about borrowed feathers also, that may be appliciable to this.
RtW:… Afghanistan…
BPL: They attacked us, not the other way around.
RtW: Well, and to keep US peasants from noticing that Saudi Arabians did 9/11, but that’s even worse, eh?
BPL: See above.
RtW: Huh? That’s crazy. Afghanistan was accused of giving Saudi Arabian suspects safe haven. Full stop.
Disagree?
To put a fine point on it, prior to the US’ invasion no Afghan has committed a terrorist or other non-personal attack on any American ever.
Now, the source I’m paraphrasing could be wrong, but BPL, please justify pounding of a country back into the stone age. Assume Jesus is listening, so use his standards and teachings about how the USA should have proceeded at each moment in time.
News flash: Jesus’ words weren’t so much about ethics and morals, but friction. You want things to go smoothly? Be the oil.
RtW: To put a fine point on it, prior to the US’ invasion no Afghan has committed a terrorist or other non-personal attack on any American ever.
BPL: Afghanistan harbored Al Qaeda and green-lighted the attack on the US. The Taliban was morally responsible for 9/11. We were right to respond as we did. The fact that we didn’t do it well is irrelevant.
It’s propaganda, and that’s all it ever was.
RTW, I agree Americas invasion of Iraq was completely unjustified and also ultimately a bungled mess.
I don’t think Americas invasion of Afghanistan is so clear cut. These are allegedly the goals for America invading Afghanistan: “Twenty years ago, the US-led allied forces went into Afghanistan and toppled the Taliban’s hard-line Islamic regime. … The primary aim of the US invasion was to hunt down Osama bin Laden and punish the Taliban for providing safe haven to al-Qaida leaders. (Bin Laden)
https://www.dw.com/en/how-the-us-invasion-changed-afghanistan/a-59427641#:~:text=Twenty%20years%20ago%2C%20the%20US,Taliban's%20hard%2Dline%20Islamic%20regime.&text=The%20primary%20aim%20of%20the,haven%20to%20al%2DQaida%20leaders.
I think America was justified in doing something in retaliation against the Teleban. But they punished the teleban by flattening the capital city with a fair bit of “collateral damage”. It was cruel and crude.
Of course you are right most of the people involved in the 911 attack were Saudi Nationals and it was in the Bush Administrations interests to quietly ignore that and deflect attention onto Afghanistan. But no proof was provided that the Saudi government was complicit in the attack, and its not too clear to me why the Saudis would do this to an ally. A better explanation is the hard line islam in Saudi Arabia at the time radicalised the people involved in 911:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/saudi-arabia-shows-anti-extremism-terrorism-efforts-9-11-anniversary/
In any event America had no strong case to blame Saudi Arabia, or invade Saudi Arabia.
Of course Americas relationship with Saudi Arabia means it tolerates some awful behaviour by that country. Americas foreign policy has not always been a shining example of consistency or good ethics. But whos has?
Good points, Nigel. But…
I remember reading a really good text on bin Laden’s take.
It discussed infidels in the Holy Land. There are rather easily followed scriptures, such as a zizya (way mutilated word, sorry) tax for each non-Muslim soldier in Saudi. The USA should have paid it. Heck, it would have cost nothing. The money was flowing. Just label it according to Islamic tradition.
It talked about the very real harm the US has done to the Saudi people. Such riches, all bestowed by England-then-the-USA on a fucking klepto-family. Who wouldn’t be in a killing mood?
Seriously, Nigel, if the USA had taken 99.9% (or whatever%) of New Zealand’s wealth and given it to a crooked family of ultra-rich leeches who do nothing of any value (unless you consider murdering and dismembering journalists valuable) who supported the USA’s taking, would you diss the New Zealanders who tried to free their country?
Nigel: “Humans aren’t good enough to achieve more than that.”
Richard: humans are only as good as they perceive they have to be to prevail.
Ya know, that “fear” thing the bad guys have been using against us? It sure smells like a force multiplier to me. I’m ramping up for the next Weave.
Damn, that high wire looks thin. Eh, wish me luck. No, not now, but soon. Gotta incorporate the JWST in the next Story, not because the last Story was particularly True, but because the Story leads reality by the nose (ask Kathy Bates).
“humans are only as good as they perceive they have to be to prevail.”
And to have sex. Particularly to have sex.
BPL,
I made a sculpture during that war. A triangular blue piece representing a mangled dove of peace, titled “Kosovo”.
The best aspect of that war was the teamwork. I wholeheartedly approve of the USA providing it’s fair share towards keeping us all safe.
I don’t know the precise funding required for this noble goal, but I’ll put out the same number I started with: 10% of current military spending. If a bit more is needed, cool. Works for me.
The rest should go to fight the definite, as opposed to maybe enemy; The biosphere in its current form is under serious assault.
BPL,
The Soviet Union’s economy, um, I think I remember “Russia”, so adjust, was Italian-sized. The Germans have proven themselves a tough nut to crack, and they have way better tech than the Ruskies. Add in Canada, Australia, Japan, France, England, etc, etc etc and it is a laughably simple guaranteed win even when assuming the USA stays neutral:
Hold the line, switch production to war, mop the floor.
That Fulda gap? Sure has quite the vulnerable anchor on the western side, eh? I’d hate to have to secure it without naval superiority.
Yeah, dude. England is quaking in their boots at the thought of engaging the Ruskies at sea.
“But they might hurt us as they commit suicide” is an illogical fear.
RTW. While the western governments fear of Russia is a bit overblown and has shades of George Orwell about it, to keep their populations worried and compliant, dont underestimate the power of Russias military and their technology, determination and hardiness. Read the history of the German defeat in Russia in WW2. Its an incredible largely untold tale. 30 million people died.
RtW: “But they might hurt us as they commit suicide” is an illogical fear.
BPL: It’s EXACTLY when a regime is convinced that it’s going down that it might pull out all stops. Hitler was willing for Germany to be destroyed when he was losing, and if he could have blown up the world as he died, he would have.
BPL. Yes. .I think Putin would be capable of anything if pushed into a corner. The possibility might be small, and we cant see right into his personality, but the conseqences are so grave it cannot be ignored. And another example is the attack on the Whitehouse, pretty much incited by Donald Trump.
Quibble: Capitol, not White House.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law
It is not 1944. The world is different now and the specifics of Russia are totally different to Germany as well. Analogies can be helpful when they are relatable. Putin and the Russian Government are not Hitler.
Russia is right: The West promised not to enlarge NATO & these promises were broken
The events of three decades ago are haunting the politics of the present
By Tarik Cyril Amar, a historian from Germany at Koç University in Istanbul working on Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, the history of World War II, the cultural Cold War, and the politics of memory.
https://www.rt.com/russia/546074-russia-nato-relations-lie/
This is no secret. The US/NATO simply dismiss it as if it is not a relevant issue when it is. But who cares what the Russians think? No one much. An entire race/country has been long condemned as being genetically pathological liars for over a century by intelligence services and the political class.
When you believe all of them are liars from birth it makes it so much easier to dismiss everything they ever say about everything. Typical Racist mindset when you know about it and think about it.
The indictment of Hillary Clinton lawyer Michael Sussmann for allegedly lying to the FBI sheds new light on the pivotal role of Democratic operatives in the Russiagate affair. The emerging picture shows Sussmann and his Perkins Coie colleague Marc Elias, the chief counsel for Clinton’s 2016 campaign, proceeding on parallel, coordinated tracks to solicit and spread disinformation tying Donald Trump to the Kremlin.
https://mate.substack.com/p/indicted-clinton-lawyer-hired-crowdstrike
Five Trump-Russia ‘collusion’ corrections we need from the media now — just for starters
The US media’s Russiagate reckoning goes far beyond the Steele dossier.
https://mate.substack.com/p/five-trump-russia-collusion-corrections
It is not so much that people are gullible or stupid (they are), but that people lie and other people are too lazy and biased or bigoted to check or keep an open mind for factual evidence to arrive on the scene. Most do not have the time to keep up.
There’s good reasons why Trump et al and the GOP assume the Democrats are evil untrustworthy liars; it’s because they knew for certain there was no Russian / Putin collusion or interference in the 2016 election or the supposed DNC hack.
Of course Trump and the GOP totally deserved what they got after years of accusing Obama of not being a US born citizen. A pox on all their houses.
Why anyone would take at face value what either side says or vote for any of them or believe the corporate US media ever again is astounding yet to be expected. People do and will continue to do so.
January 6th is not an anomaly — it is part of a larger story.
https://www.dailyposter.com/how-the-meltdown-became-an-insurrection/
Meanwhile nothing is being done about the corruption, abuse and criminal nature of digital manipulation of elections everywhere, from Brexit to Trumps victory, by neoliberal Billionaire Elites wishing to destroy the power and role of the established Political Class in the West and democracy in general. Let the Market Rule is their Religion. A Market they control and manipulate though their wealth and influence. They are succeeding.
It is they more than anyone else who are constantly blocking by multiple means any sustained serious political action on global warming and climate change by the US and others. Is it 75% of Republican voters believe the 2020 election was stolen? That’s no accident. Vaccination push back? No accident.
That’s far more serious a threat to life and liberty than what Russia and China are doing or thinking.
“But they might hurt us as they commit suicide” is an illogical fear. Damn right it is!
People, including climate scientists and academics, everyone, are generally quite naive and ill informed. They simply do not have the time to be full time investigators and reporters to know about or to expose all the lies and BS manipulative spin being spread every day 24/7.
So they spread it further instead.
XRRC: The world is different now and the specifics of Russia are totally different to Germany as well. Analogies can be helpful when they are relatable. Putin and the Russian Government are not Hitler.
BPL: They might as well be. Putin wants to create Soviet Union 2.0, and he is well on his way to doing so, having already conquered Chechnya, Georgia, Crimea, and eastern Ukraine. Appeasers like you might be ready to give him anything he wants–Trump for President, a cowed NATO, a conquered Ukraine–but the rest of us are not. Ukraina svoboda nye sche vmerla!
There are far more serious a threats to life and liberty and the climate from inside the USA than anything Russia and China might be doing or thinking.
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2022/01/forced-responses-jan-2022/#comment-800119
Uh, dude, when you find yourself using RT as a source, you maybe what to rethink your opinion. The histories of the US military and of NATO are not without their atrocities, but Vladimir Putin is not someone you want to sit down and have tea with…
And perhaps if Vladimir Putin did not insist on threatening his neighbors, NATO membership might not be in such high demand.
Ray, the source was
By Tarik Cyril Amar, a historian from Germany at Koç University in Istanbul working on Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, the history of World War II, the cultural Cold War, and the politics of memory.
That you can’t see past the obvious log in thine eye says more about you, not the use of a simple url. It was simply an easy ref to use. There are hundreds of others that say the exact same thing about that history.
Why does that unsettle people so? That there might actually be much more to the surface story hype?
If you think Tarik Cyril Amar got it terribly wrong feel free to challenge what he said. Western academics and ex-politicians and govt officials have confirmed the accuracy of this issue. iow it is an accepted historical fact.
The New York Times said Iraq possessed WMD. According to your standard any report by an academic in that paper should not be read ever again. NYT should never be used to share stories or history?
People think Russia is so DUMB it has nothing better to do than to run around threatening their neighbors. Wants to take over western Europe? Maybe they are bored. North Korea is going to nuke japan and the usa and China wants to take over the world entirely. So the story goes, and so many believe it. Same as millions believe the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.
Sorry beliefs and gullibility don’t cut it with me. Life is not so black and white. urls that host a simple analysis of histiory do not frighten me either. I can think for myself.
Allende elected Democratically was bad and Pinochet the champion of Liberty, installed with the backing of the CIA, was good. But today everything you hear in the NEWS is true!
“The Taliban were responsible for 9/11”
Seriously. Is it the lead in the water?
Sorry, Dude, but RT is simply NOT a credible source on any subject. It is a propaganda organ of the Kremlin. I put no more faith in it than I do in VOA (which I used to listen to while in the Peace Corps just for laughs, while listening to BBC for quasi-credible news). Nobody publishes in RT unless they have an agenda or they cannot publish anywhere else.
And your dismissal of Russian involvement in the 2016 election utterly discredits you. Paul Manafort did share polling data with Russian operatives AND Russia was behind the hack that selectively leaked emails from the DNC (as well as having had a role in the Climategate hack back in 2009). Sorry, Bud, but we have nothing to talk about.
[off topic. There are many places to discuss that stuff everywhere else. Let’s not have this place taken over with the same arguments.]
Gotta love how RT can’t ever have anything whatsoever in its programming that’s worthwhile. You realize dissident voices go where they can, not always where they would most like to be? I know of at least 3 legit voices that broadcast from RT. Like people often say, one’s presence in a given place is not necessarily to be construed as support. Or do Victor’s and KIA’s presences here indicate they really do support ACC in full and without question?
What poor thinking from people who clearly consider themselves great thinkers.
[off topic. There are many places to discuss that stuff everywhere else. Let’s not have this place taken over with the same arguments.]
Sure. It would also be helpful if you stopped allowing ignorant falsehoods and gaslighting lies and disinformation about other people, including lies about myself, being posted in the first place. If people were not already gaslighting & lying about others and spreading known falsehoods there would be no correction needed.
IN the meantime the smarter readers on this forum would totally get the following:
Staying informed is work, and requires you to seek out different, contradictory sources to get the full picture. Always look to see who is really behind the story and what/why it is being presented to you; it’s rarely the reporter, although the outlet may(will) provide a spin; it’s the “source” feeding information to the “reporter”. Don’t fall into the trap of reading only sources that present a perspective you already agree with. People you disagree with are rarely completely wrong; they have reasons, often valid, for their perspective, even if their conclusions or desired policies are “wrong”.
In short, staying informed is lots of work and an open – but not gullible – mind.
https://blogenkiops.wordpress.com/2021/03/15/sources-of-information/
and this too is very mature, wise, intelligent and helpful
https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/04-chuckwatson
K: “What poor thinking from people who clearly consider themselves great thinkers.
The ignorant, the uninformed, and the stupid are found everywhere.
They think the people who “appear to” disagree with them, or are sharing something different which they reject outright without checking it on so-called “ideological grounds”, are being subject to propaganda and misinformation, when the truth is all sides are being fed propaganda and misinformation daily. And they do not even know it.
This basis alone justifies their non-stop abusing insulting ridiculing and lying about “the other” … while out the other sides of their mouth they proclaim their adherence to the scientific academic methods of get the hard evidence, get the data, analyze it rationally and only then try to draw an intelligent conclusion about it.
You can’t reason with dumb. But sharing good info/data with others which was what i was doing is not allowed because Dumb gets too upset and cannot handle the Truth.
XRCC: “Russia is right: The West promised not to enlarge NATO…”
That assertion is speculation. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlargement_of_NATO#German_reunification
Correction: the assertion is claimed/speculated to be speculation. While the speculators claim everyone is lying through their teeth including Gorbachev. But who cares what people think or what Wikipedia or McFaul or US Officials might say on the matter? I don’t. What matters is what the Russians have been saying for 30 years already, to every single US president and NATO official in ear shot. That is no secret though few know or care about it. So anyone can pretend they said nothing. That way the media do not need to report it. Or they can believe all Russians are liars from birth, so there is nothing to see here. :)
Everyone can believe whatever they want and whatever they are told to believe. It’s brilliant in it’s simplicity. Climate science denial is effective for the very same reasons. Goebbels and many others say repeat a lie often enough and people will believe it. That’s very true. :)
XRRC never met a Communist or former Communist regime he didn’t like.
A very long post full of stuff and nonsense. SAD! It is also off topic!
“For Whom the Cap Fits.”
Hat tip to Russell on the don’t look up page.
We should not be too surprised how it is endemic social and behavioral norms can survive for decades to centuries within cultures. The sins of the father are visited upon the son.
And the daughter tenfold.
Jan 15, 2022 thread commentary
Last year @JKSteinberger , @CharlieJGardner & I @berglund_oscar organised a letter signed by hundreds of climate academics, warning against the criminalisation of climate protests
It reveals the politics of policing, showing that the police protects the state & private property against the interests of people & humanity. It delegitimises the police & the state.
https://twitter.com/berglund_oscar/status/1482152312797814785
Peaceful environmental protesters are being threatened, silenced and criminalised in countries around the world including the UK and the US, according to some of the world’s leading climate scientists and academics.
More than 400 leading experts – including 14 authors from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – say that non-violent civil disobedience from groups like the school strikers, Extinction Rebellion and the Sunrise Movement have transformed the debate around the climate crisis in recent years.
But in an open letter published on Monday they warn governments around the world are criminalising them at a pivotal time in the fight to tackle the escalating climate emergency.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/19/environment-protest-being-criminalised-around-world-say-experts
One of the biggest problems for humanity and people in the Global North especially is being unable to come to grips with the fact that it is precisely Science and Technology that have brought us to this point.
For climate scientists as a group it is additionally realizing their choices and actions have directly contributed to systemically kicking the can down the road for over 30 years.
This little truism might help:
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Albert Einstein
“One of the biggest problems for humanity and people in the Global North especially is being unable to come to grips with the fact that it is precisely Science and Technology that have brought us to this point……“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Albert Einstein”
I agree with the first statement. However solving the climate problem without scientific thought would have to be very basic trial and error and logic, guesswork, or astrology. I don’t think they are compelling or would be better. We cant really go backwards whatever Einstein said.
And the alternatives to a world that deliberately abandons modern technology are very basic subsistence farming which seems like an impractical solution. It seems we are stuck having to maintain a technology based society, but only that technology that is really important, although defining that is not as easy as it appears.
Extinction Rebellion UK
BREAKING: Jury verdict for #Shadwell3: NOT GUILTY
Phil Kingston, 85, Reverend Sue Parfitt, 79 and Father Martin Newell, 54 were found not guilty of obstructing trains or carriages on the railway under the malicious damages act.
When a jury hears the truth about the escalating climate crisis, they understand the urgent need to act.
The real crime lies with a government failing to safeguard the future of the human race, not with protestors sounding the alarm.
Juries get it. Action is necessary. #ActNow
https://extinctionrebellion.uk/2022/01/14/breaking-three-xr-christians-acquitted-for-shadwell-dlr-action/
Amitav Ghosh: European colonialism helped create a planet in crisis
Indian author says pillaging of lands and killing of indigenous people laid foundation for climate emergency
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/jan/14/amitav-ghosh-european-colonialism-helped-create-a-planet-in-crisis
“Why has this crisis come about? Because for two centuries European colonists tore across the world, viewing nature and land as something inert to be conquered and consumed without limits and the Indigenous people as savages whose knowledge was worthless.”
“It was this settler colonial worldview – of just accumulate, accumulate, accumulate, consume, consume, consume – that has got us where we are now.”
“For Ghosh, the survival of our planet hinges on interacting with Earth as a living being to be listened to, understood and respected. ‘The indigenous peoples of the Americas have been saying for decades that our past is your future and now that’s proving to be the case.’”
“The failure of most theorists of capitalism to acknowledge how capitalist development was fundamentally dependent upon colonial exploitation and appropriation appears to be a consequence, according to Patnaik and Patnaik, of an ‘almost deliberately cultivated ignorance.’”
————————————————
The rise of capitalism in the global North depended on imperial appropriation, not as a side-gig but as a fundamentally constitutive feature. Brilliant work by @GKBhambra here: open access
Colonial global economy: towards a theoretical reorientation of political economy
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09692290.2020.1830831
Abstract
Standard accounts of the emergence of the modern global economic order posit its origins in the expansion of markets or in the changing nature of the social relations of capitalist production. Each fails to acknowledge the significance of colonial relations underpinning these processes, as formative of, and continuous with them. This is a consequence of the dominant understandings (across different theoretical perspectives) of capitalism as a distinct and self-contained economic formation of modernity, the origins of which are seen to be endogenous to Europe and north America.
As such, there is a concomitant failure to acknowledge, or regard as significant, the global connections forged through colonialism that are the condition of capitalist-modernity. I argue for the need to recognize the significance of historical colonial relations to both the establishment and continued reproduction of global political economy. In this article, I seek to reorient our understanding of the histories that underpin theories of capitalism to be inclusive of colonial relations and for the framework of analysis to be transformed by their appropriate consideration.
( There has been a mountain of academic work done along these lines. The evidence keeps pointing to the same conclusions and direction. There are also the major shifts in beliefs and practice pre-colonialism as well which started the Economism Religion off – starting with the land and resources Theft of the Commons in the UK and Europe then later the same practices in the colonial outposts everywhere. )
As an example of a non-capitalist problem of the same nature, communism was even harder on the environment. If you’ve got an anti-capitalist agenda, that’s fine, but please don’t try to disguise it as anti-global-warming activism. It just makes enemies.
Your ideas are often frappingly blunt Mr.Levenson.
If you by communism mean the political situation of the soviet bloc and of China, the basic religion of both is rather consumerism exppansionism and capitalism.
it is not “dia- lectic materialism” and heroism for nothing.
The major difference to the “west” and the part of the world that has much of its ideological roots in european renaissance, may first of all be the “western” ideas of the individ and individual freedom and responsibility, and of liberalism. Making that part of the world rather less “capitalistic”. with another known tendency of “humanism”, where Values are defined and believed in and frought for that are different from Matter and Mammon.
Extreme cleptocracy namely , Adamj Smiths invisible hand in charge everywhere and down into details, the consequent lacki of trust and possible honesty when it came to money, is what made the soviet block so poor and less productive all the time.
Today, the same disease seems to ruin , flatten, and pollute the USA also.
Carbo.
“If you by communism mean the political situation of the soviet bloc and of China, the basic religion of both is rather consumerism exppansionism and capitalism.”
This is true in todays world, but not 50 – 100 years ago. Back then communist and capitalist countries were mostly quite different. The history is quite clear. The clue BPL was referring to the past was in BPL saying communism WAS even harder….
Lack of productivity in the former soviet union and Maos China was probably mostly to do with collective ownership and control. Farms operating under private ownership and control (sometimes illegally) were far more productive.
BPL.
I also have doubts about the wisdom of mixing in the climate issue with the debate about capitalism. Its a hard fact of democratic systems that Joe Biden getting anything done at a political level about climate change means trying to get at least some Republicans to support his agenda. Telling them capitalism sucks and is causing climate change or whatever just isn’t going to get their support for anything.
Likewise having huge pieces of legislation that mix in climate, and liberal leaning social goals doesn’t sound so smart to me. Have discussed this with various people.
Dont get me wrong. I do tend to support many of the Democrats socio economic goals and while I dont oppose capitalism I do think it has to evolve and change. But it seems best to deal with these things somewhat separately from the climate issue.
It seems to me the study XRRC posted would be right that colonialism was often brutal and unethical by todays standards, but what do we actually do about this? The past is the past.. We cant change the past. Indigenous peoples are not paragons of virtue either. They were often violent for whatever reasons. If we compensate indigenous peoples for the unjust things colonists did to them, will they compensate all the people they did harm to in the distant past? It becomes absurd.
The thing to do is to ensure all peoples are treated fairly and justly in todays world and have equal opportunities and that indigenous peoples remaining lands are protected. Sure we should openly acknowledge injustices in the past, and never pretend they didnt happen, but we have to also be future focussed.
I think what you’re primarily missing in this, Nigel, is that colonialism has a living legacy, on probably a worldwide scale. Reparations ARE essentially future focused, because they seek to dismantle power structures still operating to preserve an inequitable (and deadly, because unsustainable) status quo.
Kevin, I would have thought reparations are things like giving indigenous communities money and land in payment for wrongs done during the colonial period. For example the NZ government breached the treaty of Waitangi, and Maori lost land as a result. Its an interesting issue if you google it. The government has paid them money and given them land in compensation, and I support that, because a contract was broken.
The problem I have is where does the process end because the Maori just want more and more to settle these past grievances and it all has to come out of taxation ultimately. It becomes a gravy train, it is absurd and I certainly didn’t cause the problems.
I do agree power structures are often inequitable and there are things that can be done to remedy that. This is a nice summary of the NZ situation. Refer:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/pou-tiaki/300189932/2020-the-year-we-challenged-systemic-racism-in-aotearoa-and-around-the-world
KD McKinney, yes, you have it correct there.
I do not accept that people choose to comment before researching and before thinking about topics. It’s debilitating to watch when it is so easy these days to find relevant information in seconds.
“I thought reparations are ………..”?
For beginners only:->
Definition of reparation
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/reparation
https://www.britannica.com/topic/reparations
Holocaust survivors receive German reparations to this day
18 Feb 2021 … Germany started making reparations payments to Holocaust survivors back in the 1950s, and continues making payments today.
https://theconversation.com/holocaust-victims-got-reparations-so-why-not-descendants-of-trans-atlantic-slavery-164478
The blueprint the US can follow to finally pay reparations
https://qz.com/1915185/how-germany-paid-reparations-for-the-holocaust/
Bernice King says father would be ‘disappointed’ over voting rights decline, calls for reparations
https://news.yahoo.com/bernice-king-says-father-disappointed-140503321.html
Japanese Americans Join The Struggle for Black Reparations
https://news.yahoo.com/japanese-americans-join-struggle-black-163000637.html
“Moving forward with tangible repair”: First recipients selected for Evanston reparations program
https://dailynorthwestern.com/2022/01/14/uncategorized/moving-forward-with-tangible-repair-first-recipients-selected-for-evanston-reparations-program/
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_reparations
Opinion | The Forgotten Debt to Vietnam – The New York Times
18 Nov 2000 … Aside from General Giap’s strategic arguments, simple justice suggests that it is time to pay our debt.
Vietnam seeks US reparations for the chemical Agent Orange
31 Aug 2018 … The Department of Veterans Affairs paid US$24 billion in disability compensation to 1.3 million Vietnam War veterans.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reparations_for_slavery
Reparations to Africa
Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann.
https://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/14448.html
What the US can learn from Africa about slavery reparations
6 May 2021 … In South Africa, Nelson Mandela and his ruling political party, the African National Congress, created a Truth and Reconciliation Commission
How Britain stole $45 trillion from India And lied about it.
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2018/12/19/how-britain-stole-45-trillion-from-india
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shashi_Tharoor%27s_Oxford_Union_speech
UK must pay India reparations for its colonial plunder. Germany offers lessons
In apologising unambiguously and agreeing to pay such a high sum as reparations, Germany’s actions stand in stark contrast to the approach adopted by its European neighbours, many of whom maintained vast colonial empires in the 19th, 20th and early 21st centuries
https://www.hindustantimes.com/opinion/uk-must-pay-india-reparations-for-its-colonial-plunder-germany-offers-lessons-101623137442698.html
Opinions vary while the historical facts and impact analysis by high quality research academics and institutions become clearer as time goes on.
The topic issue to day, raised and discussed repeated at COP26 was the enshrined code in the UNFCCC about Equity and the need for Reparations and ongoing support from the nations who have caused the majority of global warming and those who have not but are already and suffer inequitable harms as a result if no ongoing financial and technology infrastructure support is forthcoming.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02846-3
The broken $100-billion promise of climate finance — and how to fix it
20 Oct 2021 … At Glasgow’s COP26 summit, countries will argue for more money to mitigate and adapt to … Global climate action needs trusted finance data.
https://sites.duke.edu/duketotheunfccc/2021/11/29/climate-financing-outcomes-from-cop-26-the-need-for-climate-reparations-to-the-global-south-and-the-emerging-role-of-digital-finance/
The Need for Climate Reparations to the Global South and the …
29 Nov 2021 … Climate Finance Outcomes from COP 26: The Need for Climate … proceeds to support climate adaptation efforts in the Global South.
https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/cop-26-voices-global-south-finance-climate-change-environmental-justice
COP26: Voices From the Global South Talk Money | Sierra Club
8 Nov 2021 … Funding, or climate reparations, is an equity issue given that developing nations have contributed the least to climate change but have been …
https://waronwant.org/news-analysis/cop26-demanding-justice-global-south
COP26: Demanding justice for the Global South | War on Want
1 Nov 2021 … Reparations for climate damages. Rich countries must agree to provide additional public finance in compensation to those bearing the brunt of …
‘Unsurprisingly those being asked to Pay, those in Government representing their PEOPLE who are collectively over 200-250 years of History directly responsible for the global warming, for climate change and for todays and future extreme weather events and sea level rise for centuries ahead, do not want to Pay.
The climate issue and capitalist systems/economics issue are joined at the hip like Siamese twins.
They are, essentially, the one and the same inseparable issue.
Where goes one, goes the other.
The past is the past.. We cant change the past.
But people can learn that their opinions, knowledge and beliefs about the past are so Faulty they are in dire need of correcting.
Why, it won’t change the past?
Of course it won’t. But we can actually change our knowledge and opinions and beliefs about the past. That changes many other things simultaneously by synchronicity. The world as we know arrived in the present based upon our collective understanding and beliefs about the Past.
Change the Understanding about the Past and that automatically will change the Present accordingly.
Some call that Learning from the Past.
Today the ongoing massive emissions of GHGs are damaging and harming the planet and people. That logically calls for Reparations being made by those who are most responsible for such Damages.
It’s Logic. As Logical today as any other Reparation made or Law suit settled by Court Order.
Denial is not limited to climate science. The people, those nations, most accountable and responsible for climate damages to date are clinging to denial of their collective responsibility and culpability. Intentional or not is besides the point.
That environmental and economic damage that would be caused by GHG emissions and Land use changes, forest destruction and more has been known since the 1980s and before.
Stupid mythical beliefs of the supremacy of invisible hands in present and so on need to be relegated to the garbage bin of history as much as Science in general, Galileo and Evolution in particular had a similar effect on unfounded Faulty beliefs over time.
The issue is not only about indigenous peoples. It is far broader than that. It’s about between nations, between groups of nations and other nations, and between groups of people within nations too.
The thing to do is to learn about the issues involved first, the thing to do is to do some reading of the research and analysis already done, to think about the many issues and perspectives involved, to consider all the possible options long before ever pronouncing a verdict of what the world should do about it while getting the whole issue totally wrong.
In fact pronouncing a verdict of what the world should do about it is the last thing anyone should be doing at present.
If you have issues with the content of the material then say so, don’t disguise is as attack on some nefarious agenda you assume or imagine or prefer I might have. Your beliefs preferences and opinions are yours to own not mine.
Instead actually dealing objectively with the ideas and historical reports presented by experts who have researched the topic/s shared might be a better more rational mature approach. Even reading the refs in full and understanding where they are coming from, and the history they report upon, would be more helpful before commenting and then merely asserting I have some agenda and that that is a real problem here.
Boy some people on these pages are incredibly thin skinned and judgemental, presumptuous and unnecessarily argumentative. Every where they look they only see enemies attacking them. You poor things. How sad.
XRRC: Boy some people on these pages are incredibly thin skinned and judgemental, presumptuous and unnecessarily argumentative. Every where they look they only see enemies attacking them.
BPL: Imagine that.
Who wants to bet he doesn’t see it?
Talking about “blind spots”, he must have missed it completely, twice.
“For Whom the Cap Fits.”
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2022/01/forced-responses-jan-2022/#comment-800044
The paranoid spokesman in politics doesn’t only show up in a Donald Trump, the GOP and anti-vaxers. Polarized extremists living in a black and white stereotyped world are everywhere.
They tend to assume they never need listen to anyone or read an academic paper or an historical analysis they assume must challenge their precious biased beliefs because their they already Know It All.
Little has changed for some unfortunates since a woman refused to sit at the back of the bus. How dare she challenge the accepted norms of society and people’s precious biased beliefs like that?
Integrated schools? “Never I say.” Make changes to the economic systems of the world? “Over my dead body!”
That may well be the ultimate outcome of clinging to delusional beliefs systems and being a determined knowledge illiterate.
Reading the analysis and considering objectively and holistically the ideas and historical reports presented by experts who researched the topic/s shared is a rational mature approach.
If you have time to read it and modicum of interest in how global economics drives climate change impacts and ongoing fossil fuel growth.
These issues were a large part of COP26 last year, and have been widely broached across academic science literature.
https://theconversation.com/cop26-deal-how-rich-countries-failed-to-meet-their-obligations-to-the-rest-of-the-world-171804
https://earthjournalism.net/stories/cop26-global-south-feels-cheated-again
https://sites.duke.edu/duketotheunfccc/2021/11/29/climate-financing-outcomes-from-cop-26-the-need-for-climate-reparations-to-the-global-south-and-the-emerging-role-of-digital-finance/
“For Whom the Cap Fits.”
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2022/01/forced-responses-jan-2022/#comment-800044
The paranoid spokesman in politics doesn’t only show up in a Donald Trump, the GOP and anti-vaxers. They are everywhere.
Gosh even the Democrats meld political economy with addressing climate change be it Biden’s approach or the more leftie Green New Deal. It’s not like anything being presented above is somehow new. Though maybe ignored and sidelined for decades by the global north with all the power in the world.
Reparations for past harms is not a new concept nor is it unworkable. It’s worked quite well before. Hundreds of times in geopolitics at national and racial scales. But sometimes not so well. It plays out in court rooms all over the world every day.
Here’s how to repay developing nations for colonialism – and fight the climate crisis
Michael Franczak and Olúfẹ́mi O Táíwò
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/14/heres-how-to-repay-developing-nations-for-colonialism-and-fight-the-climate-crisis
Thinking never killed anyone I am aware of. So something said such as “of an ‘almost deliberately cultivated ignorance.’”” might be argued is not really the case but is more so a matter of natural human cognitive dissonance at work. Maybe some acted with intent but overall it was a huge cultural blind spot and it still is.
Our entrenched beliefs are so precious. Which why so many groups have pushed back against science and reason and academic processes and research/analysis for hundreds of years. And they still do. Even trained scientists do this. Because they too are human with deeply held beliefs and opinions that cannot withstand some challenging scrutiny at times.
False. Neither the USSR nor China led in emissions, historical or otherwise, until very recently.
Correct, except it is irrational unhelpful to look at China as single country then they say their emissions are the highest today as if it means something, when it doesn’t without qualifications as to population size, as to total cumulative emissions and more meaningful per capita emissions.
Who has contributed most to global CO2 emissions?
https://ourworldindata.org/contributed-most-global-co2
Cumulative global emissions (my summary + calculations)
USA 25% with ~330 mln people today = 0.076% per million people
EU-28 22% with ~513 mln people with UK today = 0.043% per million people
China 12.7% with ~1,400 mln people today = 0.009% per million people
For a reasonable logical perspective the combined First World Global North OECD membership countries with 843 million from the USA/EU-28 have contributed 53% (913 bln tons) of global CO2 emissions since 1750.
The Chinese country with 1400 million have contributed (200 bln tons) or 12.7% of of global CO2 emissions since 1750.
There are some key points we can learn from this perspective:
the United States has emitted more CO2 than any other country to date: at around 400 billion tonnes since 1751, it is responsible for 25% of historical emissions;
this is twice more than China – the world’s second largest national contributor;
the 28 countries of the European Union (EU-28) – which are grouped together here as they typically negotiate and set targets on a collaborative basis – is also a large historical contributor at 22%;
many of the large annual emitters today – such as India and Brazil – are not large contributors in a historical context;
Africa’s regional contribution – relative to its population size – has been very small. This is the result of very low per capita emissions – both historically and currently.
The UNFCCC Paris Agreement / Treaty 2015 opens with
In pursuit of the objective of the Convention, and being guided by its
principles, including the principle of equity and common but differentiated
responsibilities and respective capabilities, in the light of different national
circumstances,
Recognizing the need for an effective and progressive response to the
urgent threat of climate change on the basis of the best available scientific
knowledge,
Also recognizing the specific needs and special circumstances of
developing country Parties, especially those that are particularly vulnerable to the
adverse effects of climate change, as provided for in the Convention
https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/english_paris_agreement.pdf
Original UNFCCC convention
https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/convkp/conveng.pdf
Sorry, an transcription error
the USA/EU-28 combined have contributed 47% (913 bln tons)
4.5 times more than the Chinese have contributed to global warming to date.
Upon whose people does the greater obligation and scope lay to act accordingly to the science to address and repair the greater damage and harm they have already caused?
Global warming is being driven today by the combined cumulative emissions of GHGs and other drivers. Any country at Net Zero Emissions will still be responsible for causing harm by it’s historical cumulative emissions!
Were China to get to leveling off fossil fuel emissions by 2030 and achieve Net Zero Emissions by 2060 then it still may not beat the USAs cumulative CO2 emissions at that time. Despite China’s population being about 4 times larger!
https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/china
https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-states
Emissions today do matter if the ultimate goal is to get back to pre-industrial CO2 levels. Today’s emissions are the accumulations over the future. What has already been put in the atmosphere needs to be taken out, either by developing some sort of carbon drawdown technology, or look to how it is done in nature. It is not just about what has happened in the past, it is also about where we are heading in the future.
If we could wave a magic wand and cut all the emissions of the wealthiest developed countries to zero immediately, it would make minimal difference to climate change if India and China replaced those developed countries and became as wealthy per capita with similar per-capita emissions.
The first goal should be to stop increasing emissions, then find a way to reduce them. That requires coopoeration from every nation on Earth, not just a priviliged subset. Given the current wide variance in per-capita emissions some nations are going to have to expend a lot more effort than others to help achieve this goal.
One problem is that India and China want to develop further and bring more of their poor people out of poverty and increase quality of life. They are not going to listen to anyone from the priviliged West telling them they can’t do this on emissions arguments when the West historically became wealthy through the same method (yes appeal to hypocrisy is a fallacy but that is how people tend to argue). What is needed is a way to bring up the poorest nations to a much better standard of living whilst bypassing the dirty technologies which the West used during the industrial revolution.
Hi Adam,
“It is not just about what has happened in the past, it is also about where we are heading in the future.”
Yes of course. What must be understood is the causes of both are different and the nations most accountable are different for different reasons. The COP system is all about a treaty where different nations have different abilities and different accountabilities to act more than others.
“cut all the emissions of the wealthiest developed countries to zero immediately”
I know of no one saying that. Do you? Then why mention it. I do not understand the relevance of this kind of comment.
“if India and China replaced those developed countries and became as wealthy per capita with similar per-capita emissions.”
That is not happening. Is not going to happen. The example above out to 2060 with the US/China shows China will clearly be 4.5 less per capita than the USA by then. So, what you’re talking about is not a problem than needs solving.
“….not just a priviliged subset. ”
Of course. That is obviously so. It is enshrined in the UNFCCC treaty even if it is weak.
“The first goal should be to stop increasing emissions, then find a way to reduce them. ”
Yes and the first obligation is for the “privileged subset” to go first and to go hard.
They have the resources, the wealth the technology and the opportunity to do it first, and then share the technology asap with the rest so they can take a different more efficient less GHG emitting course. Again the default expectation of the UNFCCC since it was established. But it is happening far too slow.
“Given the current wide variance in per-capita emissions some nations are going to have to expend a lot more effort than others to help achieve this goal.”
Yes. That too would be the “privileged subset”. The ones with the much higher per capita emissions and the greatest wealth and ability to act. But many are not, and others have been far too slow to act and remain dragging their feet. as per COP26 outcomes.
“What is needed is a way to bring up the poorest nations to a much better standard of living whilst bypassing the dirty technologies which the West used during the industrial revolution.”
That is again stating the obvious and the default position of the UNFCCC. Not only for those nations for the 150 others who are in the global south. It is the West, the global north, the colonial powers, the english speaking nations especially, which is placing barriers stopping the poor/poorest global south nations from bypassing the dirty technologies etc etc etc and the global north who keep punching out emissions at extremely high rates when they could have should done better for decades to today and into the future.
That is where the biggest disagreements occurred at COP26 . People should listen to what the global south, india and china, africa and south america and the rest have been saying for decades. At least since the Paris treaty they have been screaming for proper assistance and cooperation and equity in accountability of who does what and when.
Well that is my understanding as to the state of play given what I know about COP26 and before that. Thanks for the comment. I hope the above is taken in good faith.
Plus the nations with the higher historical cumulative emissions which already causing damage to everyone globally is morally accountable to act faster and harder and do anything they can to remove as much of their past emissions asap as they possible can when they can.
That is the global north, the west, the oecd. About 40 nations out of 200. India and china do not rate on that yardstick. They are also deploying renewable energy at a rate that outstrips the global north nations historically and today.
Of course the majority of people and governments of the west/oecd global north care less about such information or notions of historical culpability or equity or fairness or decency. They only care about themselves and pointing at other nations and deploying as many logical fallacy arguments as they can to disrupt the political discourses.
Yeah, the USA blew its carbon budget decades ago. What ya gonna do about it?
Quote BPL:
” As an example of a non-capitalist problem of the same nature, communism was even harder on the environment.”
Lol, that won’t help funny capitalism shit I bet :))
Kevin,
Yeah. Humans are used to low-mass threats. A big cat jumps and you have a fight. That translates, though poorly, to a car crash.
But trains boggle our minds. They
Just. Keep. Going. Even as they’re braking. Even as they pass through you.
And trains are a speck compared to Thwaites and co. “Pump in gravel or colder water (but by definition is still going to be above freezing)”, says the ant upon seeing Hoover dam failing.
You can watch. You can stop adding to the show. But what’s done is gonna do what it’s gonna do.
I wasn’t sure where to put this, with Don’t Look Up perhaps, but here goes:
I just watched his outstanding Ted talk for the 5th (at least) time, and recommended it to a bunch of people. Is it possible Gavin Schmidt could produce an updated version? The substance would not need to change much (it’s timeless) but unfortunately many people might dismiss it as too “old”. I think it’s the best layperson’s explanation, though perhaps my background in science, limited as it is (and by other standards quite exceptional), puts me outside the “normal” lay skepticism about expertise in science.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrJJxn-gCdo
I also found myself fantasizing if Gavin had taken the diCaprio lead in Don’t Look Up, it would have been a better movie? Probably not, and he’s already got a job, besides the interaction with Cate Blanchett’s reporter character would have been more than problematical, but couldn’t resist the idea.
As usual, I’m the fool who steps in where angels fear to tread. But if I didn’t, that might be unhelpful too?
Hi Susan, Thanks for the vote of confidence. I can assure you that my acting talents are slight, and that taking the lead in any movie is both extremely unlikely and not a good use of anyone’s talents. – gavin
Of course, but good for a lark anyway. Meanwhile, The emergent patterns of climate change (link above) is one of the best presentations about science I’ve seen anywhere. That was what I really had in mind, but couldn’t resist (as usual) distracting from my main point with this silliness.
Quoth BPL:
A 70s-vintage nuclear plant requires 40 metric tons of steel and 90 cubic meters of concrete per average megawatt. The corresponsing figures for wind are 460 tons and and 870 cubic meters, factors of 11.5 and 9.7 times as high respectively. In other words, the only “green” in “renewable energy” is greenwashing.
That was the personal opinion of the then-head of the AEC, and the context pretty clearly shows that he was speculating about nuclear fusion.
Not outside the Soviet Union, it hasn’t.
There has been ONE fatality attributed to radiation from Fukushima, which is probably a mis-attribution because it was from lung cancer rather than more commonly associated cancers like leukemia. Further, the decedent was a plant worker, not a member of the general public.
If radiation is so dangerous, you should be pushing to eliminate coal (which spews uranium, thorium and their decay products out the stack) and natural gas (often full of radon). In the normal operation of a coal-fired power plant, it emits many times the radioisotopes that a nuclear plant is allowed to.
And how much steel and concrete and further especially critical materials, use of resources and waste for the digging and refining of U235, and later re- cycling and cleaning up of used fission material, keyeword Shellafield.
What about the entropy of all those necessary additional, supporting and assisting physical chemical processes?
Whataboutery does not provide data or answers to questions.
Anyone sincerely concerned about “cleaning up of used fission material” would be promoting and calling for the wide scale rollout of HTG GenIV Nuclear reactors capable of reusing spent fuels and processing all toxic nuclear wastes to a totally safe level for reprocessing and burial/storage or reuse.
Unfortunately the nuclear club PR departments don’t have the deep pockets that fossil fuel corporations and political parties have to spend on western digital social media platforms by the Billion$ to “re-educate” (sic) the alsorans who vote.
If the permanent removal of toxic radioactive nuclear waste is your thing then deploying safe GenIV Nuclear plants are the long term solution at scale.
No one needs to dig up another piece of uranium for hundreds of years because enough “fuel” already exists to run thousands of GenIV nuclear reactors if done right based on the science and not the blathering opinions of uninformed people who know next nothing about anything (present company excluded)
XRRC
I took a look at it.
Those further generations of nuclear reactors look very much like science fiction planning to be commercial and “viable” in 10-20 years, similar to todays rumors of nuclear fusion.
Moral 1:
Adjust yourself to whatsabouts.
They discuss high and very high temperatures. in tight devices under pressure.
Try and draw your conclusions from and try and build on the circumstance that, at red hot and higher, common water H2O, superheaqted steam, becomes more agressive to common solid iron and steel, than strong, hydrochloric acid. The same rules for most other chemical reactions and relations also. It can take quite expensive and exotic materials like beryllium rhhenium and iridium.
They manage to build high and very high temperature steel metal gas turbine exhaust blades that run and perfrormj at high orange up tgo yellow hot. But, at what costs? it is for hitech military use only. And very minutely controlled gaseous molecular matter passing. It glazes and clogts immidiately in volcanic smoke for instance and falls down. Thus, obviously not for an extreme chaotic mess of reaction products.
And the same for exotic rocketb engines. The space x rocket entgines can run and be re- cycled maximum 10-15 times I guess before the metals get corroded and brittle.
How many hours in an exotic high temperature “fast breeder”nuclear reactor “Molten salt” and so on is that?”
So, my very good advice is: Try and be better aware of freak commercial groups science fiction sales promotion, especially when that kind of answers and suggestions would be very popular and sell very well in cyberspace and in the blogosphere.
Not everyone keeps up with Elon Musk.
We had a nuclear reactor scandal here in Norway, the rather secret Halden Reactor,, that was also earning on selling “research”.
They had put metal alloy samples from Japan and elsewhere into the very radioactive reactor core to run it for 1 and 2 years and so on and then examine the result. Then in the meantime the reactor had to close down and be re- started again more tan one time fror other reasons, which they kept secret. And served the results and materials back for analysis as if everything had been quite in order by routine as promised, guaranteed, and paid for.
After more than one such secret event in addition to quite normal reactor rusts and leaks that needed general repair all over, that very secret and fameous “experimental” reactor was closed down.
By that neutron density onto common and exotic alloy materials, how many months or years does it have to calm down for any technicians and plumbers to get into that for elementary repair?
Moral2: Be sceptical to that professional nuclear science fiction ease and halleluja.
Moral3: Better ask an experienced electrician and plumber who is aquainted to such bizarre devices elsewhere.
I know better than that from the classical scientifricv chemical lab and workshop allready, so whatttabout rather classical physical and chemical honesty order and routine and oficiality instead?.
Thanks for the interesting commentary. I’m all for skepticism and checking the evidence is credible supportable, and listening to scientific engineering experts in various fields. I also enjoy reading scientific papers and reading what the IAEA has to say about things Nuclear in it’s reports and conferences. Though I am definitely not an expert myself.
SO if people are skeptical they too can read what the literature and various bodies like the IAEA has to say on these matters, or ignore it completely, and even label them biased and unreliable. People can make their own decisions.
A couple of equally interesting points –
1) the Halden Reactor is not a safe GenIV nuclear reactor. It was built in 1958. Whatever transpired with it in Norway is inconsequential and irrelevant to whether or not safe GenIV Very High/High Temperature Gas Reactors are safe, functional, cost effective, and capable capable of safely processing nuclear waste and/or using spent nuclear fuels/waste as a fuel source going forward.
2) I am and so would many other be quite aware of the potential of “freak commercial groups science fiction sales promotion” and spinning disinformation to a gullible uneducated emotionally charged public and their policy makers. I was not reporting on any such “promotions” here.
3) https://www.iaea.org is a reasonably good resource for anyone wanting get uptodate with the science and engineering behind modern nuclear safety, GenIV/GIF, Hydrogen production, heating services, fuel alternatives and waste management and re-processing.
4) 10 September 2021 China prepares to test (it’s first) thorium-fuelled nuclear reactor
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02459-w
(of course I accept that some people would not believe anything China/CPC ever said about anything, but nevertheless, it is what it is. )
5) Fully operational and Meltdown Safe GenIV HTG reactor is connected to the grid.
A) 12 November 2021 – The second reactor of the High Temperature Gas Cooled Reactor-Pebble-bed Module (HTR-PM) at the Shidaowan plant in China’s Shandong province has reached criticality for the first time, China Huaneng has announced. The first of the unit’s twin reactors achieved first criticality in September 2021.
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Dual-criticality-for-Chinese-demonstration-HTR-PM
B) 21 December 2021 – The demonstration High Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactor – Pebble-bed Module (HTR-PM) at the Shidaowan site in Shandong province of China has been connected to the grid, the partners in the consortium building the plant have announced.
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Demonstration-HTR-PM-connected-to-grid
Modern advanced Generation IV nuclear reactors are not science fiction, they are real.
HTR-PM High-temperature gas-cooled reactors use graphite as a moderator and helium as a coolant, with uranium fuel in the form of 6 cm-diameter ‘pebbles’. Each pebble has an outer layer of graphite and contains some 12,000 four-layer ceramic-coated fuel particles dispersed in a matrix of graphite powder.
The fuel has high inherent safety characteristics, and has been shown to remain intact and to continue to contain radioactivity at temperatures up to 1620°C – far higher than the temperatures that would be encountered even in extreme accident situations, according to the China Nuclear Energy Association (CNEA).
The HTR-PM follows on from China’s HTR-10, a 10 MWt high-temperature gas-cooled experimental reactor at Tsinghua University’s Institute of Nuclear & New Energy Technology, which started up in 2000 and reached full power in 2003. Beyond the HTR-PM, China proposes a scaled-up version – HTR-PM600 – with one turbine rated at 650 MWe driven by six reactor modules.
The HTR-PM has been repeated proven in Tests, and accepted by the IAEA as such, to be meltdown proof with passive cooling systems.
It took Solar PV over half a century to catch on to the mainstream and become cost competitive too.
I do not know what the future is for various types of GenIV safe nuclear reactors or their applications such as treating nuclear waste and other matters, but the science and engineering to date is fairly clear about their capacity to that and more at scale going forward.
I do not know if HTGRs Safe GenIV PM Thorium Molten Salt etc Reactors will gain political or public acceptance in the future either. But there are many orders been placed by countries globally for them to be built asap. The GenIII+ reactors are also far superior and safer than anything previously built.
But knee-jerk hand-waving fears about reactors built as far back as the 1950s, to 3 mile island, Chernobyl or Fukushima, is not a rational scientific evidence based response to the known facts about modern GenIII+ or GenIV nuclear reactors.
What do think I know is that the world of nuclear science technology and engineering has definitely moved on, even if many of the people in the world have not.
What do I think? I don’t know if proceeding with deploying more nuclear reactors is a good thing or a bad thing. I am not qualified to judge such steps. Besides whther they are built or not is totally out of my control anyway.
Whatever is going to happen is going to happen. That’s my position.
So don’t blame me for what is going on in Nuclear industry nor accuse me of being some evil or stupid cretin wanting to destroy the world with nuclear radiation. Because to say so is plain nuts.
What just happened is I shared some credible information about GenIV nuclear with some extras. Feel free to ignore it, or do your own research if you choose to, and feel free make your own decisions, and leave me out of it.
You do not need me to agree with you or anyone else, nor do you have to argue with me about anything.
Hr XRRC
I see the mentioned experimental reactors are all chineese. I would like to have it also from an independent source.
Then it is rather obvious and natural that if safety has been a serious concern, then some results must also have been acheived. But the finding of new dangers have also reached responsible press, I think for instance of further very exotic bomb materials in the actinide- series. Also remember polonium 210 and very agressive thorium isotopes for silent political killing.
I see that they obviously try and avoid the classical situation of catastrophic meltdown by diluting the fissionable material into heatproof substances that cannot be confined by”meltdown” any further. , dissolve it in molten salt for instance. Or build it into extreemly heat resistant pellets of fireproof ceramics and graphite, and gas- cool it all by helium.(Why not argon?)
Still, when it is theoretically that easy and safe, why has it not become technically and economically feasible very long ago allready? Are unsolved problems and difficulties not told of?
I can remember all the easy does it.- propaganda from the mentioned, secret, Halden- project, that had the same style.
My conspirative suggestion is that: they needed so much plutonium for the arms race (up to 20 times overkill capacity to feel absolutely sure and safe) , that also could pay for peoples electricity by peoples own safety taxes, , that Thorium was put aside! But then came Cernobyl & Fukoshima, and nuclear became very unpopular.
I searced further and found ThorCon, that looks most promising as described.
That is a mixture of 15-20% enriched Uranium with the rest Thorium in molten salt, probably alkali fluoride. That can be made foolproof in the running state but at recycling and “refurbishing” you will quite necessarily run into my classical inorganic chemical analytical lab when that incredible mess of chaotic radioactive fission products quite necessarily has to be dissolved in water and in thin nitric acid cold and hot for separation. What about the Tritium for instance? Technesium is not discussed, Caesium and Iodine may be easier.
Moral: another Shellafield plant factory.?
But by Thorium, much less trans- uranes will be produced. I read hovever in the ThorCon advertisement that quite a lot of enriched uranium also has to be present in the pelleted bed and the molten salt methods.
Then I se crooky crime and terrorism is suggested in your litterature list, even State and “internal” terrorism..
And to my opinion, we ought rather to reallize such difficulties and be honest about them when or if we have to conscider more nuclear electricity.
Rajendra Pachauri of the IPCC did recommend it carefully..
XRRC said I don’t know if proceeding with deploying more nuclear reactors is a good thing or a bad thing. I am not qualified to judge such steps
I am, and they are not at any degree of scale. Anything can have a niche usefulness, but if it isn’t sustainable, it should not be built at this time, period. We are far too far into overshoot to keep destroying the ecosystem. I have no problem with R&D, but we simply do not *need* these unsustainable, poisonous units to meet our needs for the foreseeable future.
“Safe” levels? Right. Why does it need to be buried if it’s “safe?”
And what about sustainability? No form of nuclear is sustainable. Why would we base our future on the unsustainable?
And what of the timeline? Do you know where the tipping points are? Multiple papers point to at least some having already been crossed.
Ergo?
Good questions from killian.
my understanding was there’s so much existing waste already not all of it could be used post processing, and it becomes useless ‘stuff’ so may as well bury it? I’m only guessing from things I have seen years ago. Besides, if this was to happen it’s decades in the future, so my comments are all hypothetical anyway.
If you think anything nuclear is unsustainable, then I don’t care. Fine. Nuclar weapons sure aren’t sustainable either … but the fact remains that VHTG GenIV nukes are the ONLY technology known to man that will effectively process even weapons grade plutonium etc to either reusable nuclear fuel or to a safe inert substance. So if you want Nukes destroyed then GENIV nukes sound fairly important, don’t you think?
Any better ideas than reprocessing using nuclear reactors? I am all ears.
Meanwhile, I recall now some processing only managed to get 99% of radiation gone, so there was a situation where sometimes reprocessed waste probably needed safe containment storage burial whatever for maybe 100 years just to be safe.
But hey, I can’t remember clearly as this was years ago. I am not a USB storage stick of every detail I have ever seen or kept. I am not going to go searching either because this is so unimportant to me I am not going to waste my time doing other people’s work, who already “know for certain” everything about nuclear already. See?
No point arguing the point or discussing it with me. If you are interested go find out for yourself first hand.
My feeling if interested in opinions, is that the biggest thing going against expanding nuclear energy to GenIV at scale is that the whole system globally becomes unstable and unsafe due to endemic social and national collapse due to climate change impacts decades into the future from now.
Without a stable civilization then both nuclear reactors and weapons are serious problems for humanity that is just one more global risk everyone keeps ignoring.
That being said nothing is going to stop russia and china and korea and the saudis and the Europeans plus dozens of other countries from continuing to build nuclear power plants. Maybe the US might stop one day but I seriously doubt that. Their military would never allow it.
It’s a dead end topic.
Carbonatanus – “I see the mentioned experimental reactors are all chinese. I would like to have it also from an independent source.”
Isn’t one enough to prove you were wrong saying no GenIV, none existed, and they were all a fantasy?
Apparently not. If you need some more sources then go find them yourself. I incredibly not interested.
Believe whatever want, talk all you want about the meanderings of your mind about related nuclear issues too, and think up all the unanswered questions you can think up. It’s none of my concern. Good luck
Hr XRRC
I looked further into it and found one experimental thorium molten salt reactor running in the fifties in the USA. very convincing and promising “It was even quite boring at the job, it all worked all the time without any problems!”
Q1: So what are the problems?
Q2 Are they secret?
To my opinion, that looks like proper poetic engineering. And I was the one who had to explain that.
Instead of keeping things apart and together at right density by mechanical forces, simply set on chemical molecular forces instead, Chemical molecular repulsive and attracktive compressive frces are much stronger and cheaper and more safe.
I even had to suggest a conspiratory theory d/o of what may have been the very sectret problem, namely Bomb plutonium verdammtnochmal and any other project was put to rest and frorbidden because of that. Thorium reactrs may even have “threatenhed” to consume and to cost too much Pu 239.
And
Q3 why do the Germans fear and hate nuclear energy?
( I have actually heard itb from that side many years ago that it is because they hate Plutonium.)
, The Germans are very rational and practgical in our days, and they really suffer and have problems enough with their “Energiewende”
There is even a EU-NATO Geopolitical discussion going on around Nordstream 2, the new russian gas pipeline, that is an alternative to the pipeline through Ukraina. Russian gas is my very clever suggestion from decades ago for western Europe and how to get rid of Moslem- and anglo- americccan monopolized oil and gas and get better friends with the russians instead.
Todays situation with new hydroelectrical cables to EU and to England is an electricity price catastrohy that spreads also to Scandinnavia because of free- float free market agreements. Even Norway, that exels in hydroelectric and- gas, suffers from that “geopolitical” nordstream 2 dispute,and Sweden & Germany buildiing down their nuclear at the same time to become green and renewable.
so I repeat:
Q1 So what are the problems? and
Q4, what has halted it since it is so safe and clean and cheap and easy?
“Owls in the mosses!” we say of such secret problems.
One needs not even to make meanders when it simply lookis like very traditional owls in the mosses.
All the time that also such “Hypermodern” molten salt reactors did run splendidly 65 years ago.
Earth to E-P:
We are.
It is a bleak forecast even by the Met Office’s standards – the complete collapse of society leaving armed militias and criminal gangs to roam the land unchallenged.
That is one of the doomsday scenarios set out in a report commissioned by the UK’s weather service to model the potential consequences of climate change.
The extraordinary report, called Shared Socio-economic Pathways and developed for the Government-funded UK Climate Resilience Programme, sets out supposedly ‘plausible futures’ as a result of global warming.
One of those scenarios described by the authors is a surge in ‘Right-wing populism’, resulting in the collapse of ‘political and governance systems’. After that ‘a tipping point is reached when the police and justice system (as known in the past) cease to exist’.
Under a different scenario in the report, a ‘rich elite’ imposes conscription. ‘Society is more divided than ever,’ the report suggests, ‘with the majority of the population having low incomes and poor health, contrasting with a rich ruling elite. Social unrest increases and the prison population skyrockets. To keep the general population in line, governments introduce military conscription by the end of the century.’
Commissioned by the Met Office and funded by the UK Climate Resilience Programme, this pioneering interdisciplinary research developed a set of UK-SSPs (Shared Socioeconomic Pathways) that are consistent with the global SSPs, and provides a series of innovative products that will aid future research into the UK’s climate resilience.
The global SSPs, used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are a set of plausible socio-economic future outlooks up to 2100 that provide the challenging context within which future decisions on climate change mitigation and adaptation must be determined and implemented.
https://www.camecon.com/uk-socioeconomic-scenarios/
https://www.ukclimateresilience.org/news-events/pioneering-study-develops-shared-socioeconomic-pathways-ssps-to-equip-research-on-uk-climate-resilience/
UK-SSP narratives & systems diagrams (Key Products)
Scenario Fact Sheets containing a detailed narrative and system diagram for each of the five UK-SSPs
Video animations for each of the five scenarios of the UK-SSP project can be watched on YouTube
https://www.ukclimateresilience.org/products-of-the-uk-ssps-project/
Zoonotic Diseases and Our Troubled Relationship With Nature
William J. Ripple (scroll down to artcile)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/08901171211063998
graphs https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FJKcZ-xWUAQCbZJ?format=jpg&name=4096×4096
One hypothesis on how COVID-19 originally infected people in China is that the virus spilled over from infected bats and possibly other wild animals that were forced into close proximity with humans, making it a zoonotic disease. Humans – their increasing numbers, soaring extraction of natural resources and escalating consumption – are changing the planet in fundamental ways that threaten our overall health and well-being, especially that of future generations.1 The ever-increasing pressure we exert on nature endangers not only the biosphere, but human civilization itself.2
Phenomenal economic growth, particularly in wealthy nations, has consumed massive amounts of natural resources, only to deposit much in landfills, with unprecedented global warming emissions as a byproduct. Explosive world population growth (3 billion people in 1960, nearing 8 billion now) has spread human populations to remote areas, thereby destroying wildlife habitats, and forcing wild animals to adapt or perish (Figure 1A). Some 1 million species of plants and animals are now facing extinction worldwide.3 In North America alone, 3 billion birds have vanished in recent decades.4 The world has likely now entered the sixth mass extinction.
Quoth Carbomontanus:
No point responding to deliberate obfuscation.
He is hardly an engineer being not even able to remember and recall and to guess for himself and grasp that of energy and entropy.
Neither a proper poet.
Rather an influenzer on behalf of something , with an obscure “agenda”
We see that when they fall back on their special and defrinite and limited propaganda whenever possible., and the cleanness and easiness and necessity of that special product for everyone to cure anything.
They are lacking knowledge and own creativity, like we expect it from engineering poets.
EP. Your “quoth carbomantus” link doesn’t go to the actual source material, but to the top of the page. Possibly a website software problem.
Hit Enter, and it will go to it.
Yes, it is website software problem.
Happy to help.
Thanks. Should have thought of that. Hitting enter seems to fix a range of bugs.
The link works for me. If it doesn’t go directly there, put your focus on the address bar and hit “Enter” and see if that doesn’t do the trick.
We call for immediate political action from governments, the United Nations, and other actors to prevent the normalization of solar geoengineering as a climate policy option. Governments and the United Nations must assert effective political control and restrict the development of solar geoengineering technologies at planetary scale. Specifically, we call for an International Non-Use Agreement on Solar Geoengineering.
https://www.solargeoeng.org/non-use-agreement/open-letter/
Priti Patel
Last night Labour blocked the Government from introducing new measures to stop Insulate Britain
& XR bringing our country to a standstill.
Once again Labour’s actions are proving they are not on the side of the law-abiding majority – instead choosing to defend vandals and thugs.
Dr Charlie Gardner
I am not a vandal or a thug, I am a scientist and a peaceful climate activist
I have tried to talk to what’s his name who “leads” XR, (sorry, blanking on his name), but he’s not interested in a regenerative approach, only dying on the sword of 60’s era activism in an era of rapid global change in which the old rules don’t apply… to anything.
Perhaps you and I could have a conversation about regenerative pathways to long-term solutions?
Are you thinking of Roger Hallam? He is kind of out there on the margins and one tracked. Not very sociable. If it was him I don’t think he is in the leadership group anymore. Maybe try again, and talk to someone else?
I can’t see how I could help any, I’m simply doing a bit of PR for XR and similar ideas while killing time, that’s all.
No, not Roger.
You are supporting XR because you think changes are needed. You don’t care what those changes are?
Some things make more sense to me than others, but it is not up to me. I like XRs 3 pronged political approach most of all, and without a huge public groundswell of non-stop protests they encourage and organize nothing is going to have any chance.
I seriously doubt they and Greta’s band of protesters will fail to make a dint. I’m not hopeful at all. I think the world is too far gone already. But I could be wrong.
Their are no silver bullets either, it a total restructuring of how the world operates and how people think that is the long term solution and I do not see that happening until post-catastrophic collapse globally.
Chemical pollution has passed safe limit for humanity
Boyd, a former UK government chief scientific adviser, warned in 2017 that assumption by regulators around the world that it was safe to use pesticides at industrial scales across landscapes was false.
The chemical pollution planetary boundary is the fifth of nine that scientists say have been crossed, with the others being global heating, the destruction of wild habitats, loss of biodiversity and excessive nitrogen and phosphorus pollution.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/18/chemical-pollution-has-passed-safe-limit-for-humanity-say-scientists
Outside the Safe Operating Space of the Planetary Boundary for Novel Entities
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.1c04158 open access
There has been a 50-fold increase in the production of chemicals since 1950. This is projected to triple again by 2050
https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/research-news/2022-01-18-safe-planetary-boundary-for-pollutants-including-plastics-exceeded-say-researchers.html
Peter Kalmus – NASA climate scientist terrified by societal inaction.
We are clearly at a historic and planetary crossroads. We must reign in corporations and the rich, who have learned over the centuries how to capture media and politics, entrenched, and are now much harder to reign in. For our survival, however, reign them in we must.
https://twitter.com/ClimateHuman/status/1483489448985653249
Just one more reason simplification is the only rational pathway.
BTW, Rachel Carson said it how long ago? Mollison and Holmgren 42 years ago, and every permaculture practitioner since, among others.
Boyd’s a little late to the game.
XRRC. Preventing normalisation of solar geoengineering seems wise. However this is what worries me. Firstly such agreements tend to be voluntary things like arms agreements or other United Nations agreements.
And secondly if we don’t fix the climate problem the conventional way with renewables, or nuclear, or something similar some country that is at serious risk from heatwaves or sea level rise might engage in solar geoengineering. All it takes is a fleet of aircraft injecting aerosols high up in the atmosphere. Almost any country could deploy that, or a small group of countries.
How would you stop them? Any agreement they sign up to wont have many teeth. You cant really shoot down the civilian aircraft. Such a country could hold the world to ransom.
How would you stop them?
nigel dismissed his last 5+ years on this site in a single sentence.
How on earth do you conclude that?
All sensible concerns.
Probably as likely to happen as the The Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty coming to pass.
https://fossilfueltreaty.org/open-letter
Nigelj
That is one of the things that teally also worries me.
If men get mad enough, they will begin tanking up their fleet of long distance jetliners witth 3 to 5% sulphurous fuel, that is also especially cheap. It is stinky “heavy” bunkers oil.
That will do!
And the sky will not be blue anymore.
And we will have proper “Chemtrails” at last, everywhere.
Video on “HOW TO STOP GLOBAL WARMING”: This is REAL CC mitigation:
https://twitter.com/BreitbartNews/status/1176223216215494664
Found it here:
https://www.breitbart.com/environment/2022/01/18/climate-alarmists-the-sixth-mass-extinction-really-has-begun/
Original article:
https://www.sciencealert.com/new-evidence-confirms-the-sixth-mass-extinction-has-already-begun-scientists-warn
No one in their right mind treats Breitbart as legitimate news.
Maybe not, but the only thing the “author” changed was his heading. The content was a series of short copy pastes from the original science alert article.
Essential they both say the same thing verbatim with a minor edit here and there. What a difference a couple of words makes, and what site it is posted to.
But that’s what modern digital PR, manipulation and deception looks like, in the USA in particular, today. Rarely does anyone notice or care. It’s a free for all. Almost everyone in this dystopian present is an emotional over-reactor, thoughtless and misinformed.
I think its important to look at a range of views and not get stuck in one source of information which can lead to group think. Then make up your own mind. Not suggesting you dont. I occasionally look at Brietbart for that reason, and some stuff is ok, however I dont find it terribly credible overall.
I did used to read nexus magazine and uncensored magazine. They are really way out on the fringe. However I failed to find anything that sounded even remotely credible, so I gave up on those two. There was a lot of re-hashing of all the flouride and chemtrails conspiracy BS. It became a bit much for any sane person to bear and was verging on brain dead. But I do think its important to at least read something a little bit on the fringes.
As to America, Russia and Chinas geo-politics they really are as bad as each other at times. Its almost comical if it wasnt so serious.
Maybe McKay might do a movie on that too? :)
Nigelj
You frorget that not everyone have got their own mind that can be made up..
Be more precise here.
You mean in their left mind don’t you?
People in their right mind DO treat Breitbart as legitimate news.
;)
:
That assertion is inconsistent with the evidence. See https://adfontesmedia.com/static-mbc/?utm_source=HomePage_StaticMBC_Image&utm_medium=OnWebSite_Link
Deliberately obstructing motor traffic increases pollution. Motor vehicles are at their least efficient when idling.
Correctamundo! Tell it to the freeway haters who fightthe addition of new lanes to relieve congestion.
Except that merely adding new lanes rarely relieves congestion.
https://www.vox.com/2014/10/23/6994159/traffic-roads-induced-demand
Why?
Jevon’s Paradox.
The same applies to Energy. The more wind/solar renewables built, the more oil pipelines, the more mining leases given out, the more nuclear power plants, the more hydro dams, the more Electric Cars and Trucks built the more energy people will use…… without additional counteracting Social Economic Policies being universally implemented by Governments across the world.
XRRC, Jevons’ also explains why increased efficiency never overcomes consumption growth.
Some opinions, including Gavin’s (at 2:57), in answer to my question (posted above) about how the Tonga eruption would affect CC:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TdlPiiSSsw
We also know from Pinatubo that the affects re: potential global cooling, are quite short-lived.
We’ll take what we can get, right?
Quoth Killian:
Perhaps. But “simple” and “low-energy” are not the same thing. Things like the Elysium MCSFR are very simple, but produce a lot of energy from a compact system. (I have a note to myself to do a thermodynamic analysis of the Elysium steam cycle; haven’t started it yet.)
The best thing we can do for nature right now is to decouple human needs from nature. We have seen what happens when even a much smaller human population tries to meet our needs from natural material and energy flows; it is disastrous. Fossil fuels allowed us to partly decouple our needs, but are now having side effects we can neither ignore nor live with. It is time to finish the job and put a ceiling on the human impact upon the biosphere.
Ecomodernism is the future of humanity (if humanity HAS a future).
How does the world “decouple human needs from nature” ?
i don’t understand what you mean by this.
EP. I see you have worked things out. Our reliance on modern technology does indeed create some problems with pollution and eating up scarce resources, but trying to substitute things like timber for modern technology and energy supply brings a whole lot of problems of its own. We haven’t got much natural habitat left as it is. Humanity has backed itself into a corner with no great options, but yes I go along with the decoupling from nature idea. Nuclear power can be part of the mix.
A nice vision. Like those space faring futures where Earth becomes a nature preserve, but we get to live here, too.
Thomas Zimmer is a historian and DAAD visiting professor at Georgetown University where he focuses on the history of democracy and its discontents in the United States
(what are the chances for sustained action and legislation to address emissions and climate change in the USA within a dysfunctional authoritarian anti-democratic system?)
‘In states where Republicans are in charge, they are fully committed to erecting one-party-rule systems.’
‘the Democratic party is not simply a political opponent, but a radically “un-American” enemy.’
‘the Republican party has been focused almost exclusively on … white conservatives who tend to define “real America” as a predominantly white, Christian, patriarchal nation’
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/19/america-biden-trump-authoritarinism
And not just for America: as we are witnessing a similar conflict shape the political, social and cultural landscape in many western democracies, this is a struggle of world-historic significance.
This next article is a really excellent overview of the state of play in the UK and why the many promises made at COP26 by Boris Johnson’s Govt are worth next to nothing.
It’s not just Johnson: the whole culture that cheered him on needs booting out
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/20/boris-johnson-culture-mourning-mother-downing-street-partied-prime-minister
and
Extinction Rebellion donor, billionaire Chris Hohn, leads world’s top-performing hedge fund
He has pumped more than £4bn into his personal children’s charity and in recent years has taken on a second cause: the climate crisis, promising to use TCI’s $44bn of investments to “force change on companies who refuse to take their environmental emissions seriously”.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jan/17/billionaire-philanthropist-leads-worlds-top-performing-hedge-funds
The U.S. has sustained 310 weather and climate disasters since 1980 where overall damages/costs reached or exceeded $1 billion (including CPI adjustment to 2021).
The total cost of these 310 events exceeds $2.155 trillion.
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions/
Scientists target PR and ad firms they accuse of spreading disinformation
“More than 450 scientists on Wednesday called on the executives of major advertising and public relations firms to drop their fossil fuel clients and stop what the scientists said was their spread of disinformation around climate change.”
https://www.reuters.com/business/cop/scientists-target-pr-ad-firms-they-accuse-spreading-disinformation-2022-01-19/
Why only 450?
What were the other ~40,000 active working climate scientists doing that day?
IN the UK there’s bollocks of political incompetence and BS, and then there’s what the UK people really want and support.
Hands up if you support rewilding! You’re in good company: a @YouGov poll released today found that 81% of Britons support rewilding, with 40% strongly supportive.
A clear mandate for politicians to do more to reverse the decline of nature.
https://www.rewildingbritain.org.uk/blog/brits-are-behind-rewilding
Some interesting things I came across:
1) Review. “Top risks for 2022.” Includes climate change mitigation challenges, covid issues, and geopolitics. (that dreaded word geopolitics)
https://www.eurasiagroup.net/files/upload/EurasiaGroup_TopRisks2022.pdf
2) Study: “Opposition to Renewable Energy Facilities in the United States from Columbia University Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Law details the remarkable feature of cavemen trying to hold us all back, by law.”
Sigh. Some of the examples are fascinating.
https://climate.law.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/content/RELDI%20report%20updated%209.10.21.pdf
3) Research study: “hopeless pursuit? National efforts to promote small modular nuclear reactors and revive nuclear power. Thomas & Ramana WIREs Energy and Environment”
https://wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wene.429
This is just for information. I’m not arguing these reactors are a hopeless pursuit or our salvation. But the enormous challenges of scaling up any one source of zero carbon energy, it makes sense to me to spread the load between a range of options including nuclear power.
4) Study “THE NEW COAL. PLASTICS & CLIMATE CHANGE (pdf), Bennington College”
“The report documents the plastic sector’s staggering contribution to greenhouse gas emissions in the United States which is now poised to surpass those of coal-fired power plants. Plastic is the new coal. Key findings include the following, plastics manufacturing is currently a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States; the petrochemical industry’s plastics infrastructure is expanding, and emissions are slated to increase dramatically; the health impacts of emissions released by the plastics industry are disproportionately felt by low-income communities and people of color; “chemical recycling” shares more in common with incinerating than recycling waste.”
Getting rid of a lot of plastics, and using alternatives seems very feasible to me. Its one of the most workable forms of simplification. And where we really need a specific plastic using recycling of course.
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5eda91260bbb7e7a4bf528d8/t/616ef29221985319611a64e0/1634661022294/REPORT_The_New-Coal_Plastics_and_Climate-Change_10-21-2021.pdf
Yes really.
I didn’t read the links though I am sure they are spit on.
Re-Pete and I are in Colorado, taking a mini trip to both stock up and see what needs to be patched.
First thing is Re-Pete is incredibly social, but massively strong and goes bonkers with joy and frustration. He sees potential playmates and screams in pain if it doesn’t happen. I NEED to teach him “stay” and “come” so I can (with prudence) let him run free on less than absolutely safe situations.
Right now we’re at a park hoping someone with a big friendly dog shows up.
But yeah, refrigerants are way strong ghgs, so sure, the stuff the plastics industry spews probably has hundreds to hundreds of thousands more ghg potential per molecule than CO2