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The latest science suggests that preventing runaway climate change means total decarbonisation.
George Bush is behaving like a furious defaulter whose home is about to be repossessed. Smashing the porcelain, ripping the doors off their hinges, he is determined that there will be nothing worth owning by the time the bastards kick him out. His midnight regulations, opening America's wilderness to logging and mining, trashing pollution controls, tearing up conservation laws, will do almost as much damage in the last 60 days of his presidency as he achieved in the foregoing 3000(1).
His backers – among them the nastiest pollutocrats in America – are calling in their favours. But this last binge of vandalism is also the Bush presidency reduced to its essentials. Destruction is not an accidental product of its ideology. Destruction is the ideology. Neoconservatism is power expressed by showing that you can reduce any part of the world to rubble.
If it is now too late to prevent runaway climate change, the Bush team must carry much of the blame. His wilful trashing of the Middle Climate – the interlude of benign temperatures which allowed human civilisation to flourish – makes the mass murder he engineered in Iraq only the second of his crimes against humanity. Bush has waged his war on science with the same obtuse determination with which he has waged his war on terror.
Is it too late? To say so is to make it true. To suggest that there is nothing that can now be done is to ensure that nothing is done. But even a resolute optimist like me finds hope ever harder to summon. A new summary of the science published since last year's Intergovernmental Panel report suggests that - almost a century ahead of schedule - the critical climate processes might have begun(2).
Just a year ago the Intergovernmental Panel warned that the Arctic's "late-summer sea ice is projected to disappear almost completely towards the end of the 21st century … in some models."(3) But, as the new report by the Public Interest Research Centre (PIRC) shows, climate scientists are now predicting the end of late-summer sea ice within three to seven years. The trajectory of current melting plummets through the graphs like a meteorite falling to earth.
Forget the sodding polar bears: this is about all of us. As the ice disappears, the region becomes darker, which means that it absorbs more heat. A recent paper published in Geophysical Research Letters shows that the extra warming caused by disappearing sea ice penetrates 1500km inland, covering almost the entire region of continuous permafrost(4). Arctic permafrost contains twice as much carbon as the entire global atmosphere(5). It remains safe for as long as the ground stays frozen. But the melting has begun. Methane gushers are now gassing out of some places with such force that they keep the water open in Arctic lakes, through the winter(6).
The effects of melting permafrost are not incorporated into any global climate models. Runaway warming in the Arctic alone could flip the entire planet into a new climatic state. The Middle Climate could collapse faster and sooner than the grimmest forecasts proposed.
Barack Obama's speech to the US climate summit last week was an astonishing development(7). It shows that, in this respect at least, there really is a prospect of profound political change in America. But while he described a workable plan for dealing with the problem perceived by the Earth Summit of 1992, the measures he proposes are now hopelessly out of date. The science has moved on. The events the Earth Summit and the Kyoto process were supposed to have prevented are already beginning. Thanks to the wrecking tactics of Bush the elder, Clinton (and Gore) and Bush the younger, steady, sensible programmes of the kind that Obama proposes are now irrelevant. As the PIRC report suggests, the years of sabotage and procrastination have left us with only one remaining shot: a crash programme of total energy replacement.
A paper by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research shows that if we are to give ourselves a roughly even chance(8,9) of preventing more than two degrees of warming, global emissions from energy must peak by 2015 and decline by between six and eight per cent per year from 2020 to 2040, leading to a complete decarbonisation of the global economy soon after 2050(10). Even this programme would work only if some optimistic assumptions about the response of the biosphere hold true. Delivering a high chance of preventing two degrees of warming would mean cutting global emissions by over 8% a year.
Is this possible? Is this acceptable? The Tyndall paper points out that annual emission reductions greater than one per cent have "been associated only with economic recession or upheaval." When the Soviet Union collapsed, they fell by some 5% a year. But you can answer these questions only by considering the alternatives. The trajectory both Barack Obama and Gordon Brown have proposed - an 80% cut by 2050 - means reducing emissions by an average of 2% a year. This programme, the figures in the Tyndall paper suggest, is likely to commit the world to at least four or five degrees of warming(11), which means the likely collapse of human civilisation across much of the planet. Is this acceptable?
The costs of a total energy replacement and conservation plan would be astronomical, the speed improbable. But the governments of the rich nations have already deployed a scheme like this for another purpose. A survey by the broadcasting network CNBC suggests that the US federal government has now spent $4.2 trillion in response to the financial crisis, more than the total spending on World War Two when adjusted for inflation(12). Do we want to be remembered as the generation that saved the banks and let the biosphere collapse?
This approach is challenged by the American thinker Sharon Astyk. In an interesting new essay, she points out that replacing the world's energy infrastructure involves "an enormous front-load of fossil fuels", which are required to manufacture wind turbines, electric cars, new grid connections, insulation and all the rest(13). This could push us past the climate tipping point. Instead, she proposes, we must ask people "to make short term, radical sacrifices", cutting our energy consumption by 50%, with little technological assistance, in five years. There are two problems: the first is that all previous attempts show that relying on voluntary abstinence does not work. The second is that a 10% annual cut in energy consumption while the infrastructure remains mostly unchanged means a 10% annual cut in total consumption: a deeper depression than the modern world has ever experienced. No political system - even an absolute monarchy - could survive an economic collapse on this scale.
She is right about the risks of a technological green new deal, but these are risks we have to take. Astyk's proposals travel far into the realm of wishful thinking. Even the technological solution I favour inhabits the distant margins of possibility.
Can we do it? Search me. Reviewing the new evidence, I have to admit that we might have left it too late. But there is another question I can answer more easily. Can we afford not to try? No we can't.
78 Comments so far
Show AllBush is simply acting out his nature. When you elect a skunk, you get stink. The American voter should be much more cautious, not only in who we elect, but in how we count the votes!
Has anyone proposed shutting everything down on Sundays? It wasnf#039;t that long ago that all stores were closed on that day. Maybe we should shut down both Saturdays and Sundays and cut down the work week to 4 days* Doing this on a global scale would keep an enormous amount of CO2 from`being released and buy us some time while we get our renewable energy act together. But, is there any time left to be bought?
Our greed-driven capitalist free market system is mostly to blame for the dire situation that we are in. I must admit that I do not understand how it works. It seems to me that the rules of the game are arbitrarily made by the big players. But the game has become too deadly. The economic system needs to be reformed to be sustainable and for the benefit of all. This cannot be done overnight, but it has to be made soon. In the meantime we need to change the rules. OK, you can still play, but instead of 7 days a week, you can only play on 4. Learning to play by new rules may not be easy, but it's worth a try. Otherwise not only will we have no game, but there will be not players left to play.
George Monbiot is right on target. It's obvious that global warming is accelerating very rapidly. We'd better fasten our seat belts.
GeoffreyTransom : I'll tell you what I find really really amusing.
So you know everything about "economic modelling" and "making sensible assumptions about the distribution of future changes in exogenous variables".
And you sneer at George Monbiot because he has other priorities than analyzing the scientific uncertainty of climate scenarios?
It seems to me you haven´t even begun to understand what Monbiot is talking about...
Personally, I find the idea that mathematical models can be used to predict all kinds of probabilities rather absurd, at least in the context of biological / ecological systems and even more so, when human activity (behaviour) is involved...
(With all these mathematical wizards and computer models where is Wall Street now??? Can extreme ideology (Greenspan) greed (banks, hedge funds, investors)and ignorance (house owners)be factored in as "exogenous variables"???)
But in this case I don´t give a shit about the flaws in anybody´s computer models because you just need common sense (logical and systemic thinking), a basic understanding of ecology and open eyes to see what is going on. Monbiot clearly shows with the example of the melting ice / permafrost (which happened much earlier than models had predicted) that this is certainly not a linear development and and all mathematical models cannot do justice to the complexity of (self-organizing)biological systems (too many variables and little or no understanding of the complex relation between the parts, subsystems, their interdependency, feedback loops, thresholds, etc.). A system is more than the sum of its parts and analyzing each part (doing a lot of scientific measuring)to the extreme will not help to understand how the system really works...
The problem is the awesome interconnectedness and a dynamic structure: interference in one part of the system can produce unexpected results in other parts and since humans tend to prefer linear thinking we have managed to ignore what so called "primitive" peoples knew intuitively: that we are part of nature, dependent on nature and not her master and that a system based on exploiting the natural capital for short term profit with no self-limiting principle is bound to self-destruct sooner or later....
Our political and economic leaders are still worshipping on the altar of economic "growth" (a biological term abused by economists)because apparently they have not understood the consequences of exponential growth.... (and neither have the banks...)
What can be calculated with a mathematical formula though, is the relation between the cost and efficiency of a technical system and this has shown that technical “profit-now clean-up later” solutions (by not addressing systemic faults) need more resources and energy, further reduce the efficiency of already inefficient production processes, and lead to higher costs. The current concepts of “carbon capture” or “Clean Coal” technology are a perfect example of this unsystemic approach. As long as production increases, the environment will suffer because all efficiency gains or technical improvements (i.e. fuel efficient cars) will be set off by the sheer number of additional products...In the case of the (European)auto, the fuel efficiency was wasted in order to to sell more "high-powered" cars..
The production process itself must be subjected to environmental considerations (nature designs "in the field", so the "creation" must be compatible with the system; i.e. the activity of genes is influenced by the environment; man designs in the laboratory /on the computer and then puts the creation into the system where it disrupts the order and organisation....)
From the ecological point of view, a recession is a good thing and if billions can be found to bailout the Wall Street Crooks than there should also be money to build a greener economy but the concentration of economic power is already too great to expect any real change... (Democracy Now showed yesterday that GM had already designed an electric car years ago but ExxonMobil bought the patent of the battery and killed the project...)
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/11/25/naomi_klein_robert_kuttner_and_michael
The same happens with solar or other de-centralized energy technology....(starve it financially then keep saying for 2o yrs that it is still not market-ready.....while pumping zillions into the coal, oil and nuclear industry...)
Hi there Tocquevile22.
First, I did not 'sneer' at Monbiot. I simply said that he was being opportunistic (and a polemicist) in making reference to modelling results when he was in no way a supporter of the modelling paradigm (I know its weaknesses in the economic context, and the statistical properties of forecasts do not change if you forecast climate instead of demand for dog food).
The issue is not whether the planet is or is not getting warmer - that is a matter for dispassionate measurement (as I understand it, the average global temp has been DECLINING since 1998). Ice is melting, or it isn't. It snowed in Australia in summer 2008, or it didn't.
It's 'data'. That says NOTHING about causation.
The important questions to ask before we go any further are (in order of importance):
(1) is any observed change in mean temperatures MEANINGFUL and PERMANENT?
(2) What are the ramifications?
(3) Can we do anything about it?
(4) What is the payoff compared with doing nothing?
Up until now, I have not mentioned human agency as a causal mechanism - because as you rightly point out when you metion the complexity onf nonlinear (chaotic) dynamic systems, causation is nigh impossible to properly determine.
As it stands, the heat sink effect and the changes in measurement methodology impart enough variability and bias BY THEMSELVES, to overwhelm any putative warming. the 'hockey stick' is thoroughly discredited, but it was an article of faith two years ago.
If you have answered questions 1-4 rigorously (for me, the best guess I can make is
(1) No - the disribution of changes is random, as is their magnitude;
(2) unclear - cooling very bad, warming to 1000AD temps not bad at all;
(3) unlikely (see your statement about nonlinear feedback in dynamic systems);
(4) Costs GUARANTEED to be > benefits if government involves itself.
That set of answers will come off as glib - but I have been interested in this stuff since 1992 (when I first read of Erlich's bet with Julian Simon), so I can assure you that I am not blasé about it.
Now once we get to CAUSATION, we have a raft of different questions:
(1) Are the changes exogenous to the Earth - do they stem from solar or other influences?
(2) Does human activity contribute? To what degree, and how?
(3) what is the least-cost solution - adaptation or attempts at climate central planning?
(3) is the key. We might decide that it costs us less - long term - to adapt our behaviour to the likely outcomes of the putative change (e.g., grow grapes in England under the warming scenario, have a global die-off if the trend is cooling). Above all, I am certain that people in low lying regions will not sit on the beach right up until the day that the water goes over their heads... they are not stupid and we are not their parents.
The solution proposed by politicians: that we trust the parasites that leech of our taxes (and all manage to retire to live in palaces); that we accept the highly unlikely concept that corrupt parasites and their Court jesters will not lie to us to enrich themselves.
What we are being asked to do, is to expend resources NOW in order to try and offset a future that is not knowable EVEN IF the warming hypothesis is correct.
Do you remember Y2K? We spent 6% of GDP - TWO WEEKS' WORTH OF OUTPUT - paying doomsayers who told us planes would fall out of the sky and Mazuzu would stalk the Earth. The best guess (in 1998) of the likely costs of doing nothing were under 0.2% of GDP (half of ONE DAY's output).
I was right on Y2K, and I am reasonably sure that I am right on this.
It is a mindset difference - you seem to advocate the 'precautionary principle' with respect to climate change (we must do something, just in case) and the 'proactionary principle' with respect to political interference (trust politicians to MAKE us do something).
I am the total opposite. I advocate the precautionary principle with respect to politicians (we must keep politicians out of the reach of our money and effort, otherwise the steal it and use it to blow shit up). I save the proactionary principle for my continued amazement at humankind's ability to overcome environmental challenges through self-directed means ('trust the market to price the environment properly and/or find a least-cost solution to any stuffups').
There is NO WAY my mind can be changed on the pernicious effect of political interference - it's been 400 years since the Treaty of Weestphalia and the political class have produced nothing except a train of abuses and a rising body count. 250 MILLION people died in the 20th century - and you seriously ask me to trust them with something critical?
Constant references of examples of cronyism between Wall Street, industrial conglomerates and government don't help YOUR thesis (about capitalism) - they help MINE (about CRONYISM - and the willingness of politicians to do ANYTHING to enrich themselves and their cronies using tax money to do so).
Cheers
GT
GT's Market Rant
Another great article by Monbiot. Visit his website at www.monbiot.com. A treasure trove.
The fantastic thing about Monbiot (well there are several, but...) is that he's educated in science, he does painstaking research, will take on anybody in a scientific debate and keep it on the subject...no ad hominem attacks (like me...I know, I know!), and he footnotes everything. Don't believe him, check it out yourself, and contact him. He'll debate anybody who's worth it, and correct his errors. He's increbible.
Now, check out Geoffrey Transom below, to see what the exact opposite of what I've just said is all about. Buddy pukes out the worst, more pretentious gobbledigook you can imagine, brags about having done "economic modelling" (getting paid to strike weird poses while people take pictures..!??) but doesn't tell us at what 'think tank', brags about having a PhD that he doesn't have, etc., etc.
Check out his weird info at his web site: http://www.linkedin.com/in/geoffreytransom
This doesn't really belong on this string, but when I left the Food Bank yesterday we were out of almost everything and nothing was coming in.
PLEASE donate to your local Food Bank, I understand this is not just happening to us. Giving is down everywhere for obvious reasons, but even one can would help. Please help them out.
Yep, it's time we all went into depression mode. Too young to remember the Great One? It was awful, but there was a lot of generosity too. And with Roosevelt, even the wealthy were finally forced to loosen their pockets a little.
". . .annual emission reductions greater than one per cent have "been associated only with economic recession or upheaval."
This may be the upside of the downturn. Maybe only a complete collapse of our carbon-based industrial economy can save us.
The Jaded Prole
I'll tell you what I find really really amusing.
I spent several years at an economic 'think tank' that specialised in economic modelling. Forecasts and the like.
Folks like Monbiot are ULTRA-dismissive of economic modelling - and with some reason, since confidence intervals for forecasts vary with the square of the forecast horizon. Much of my PhD concerned trying to narrow those forecast bounds by making sensible assumptions about the distribution of future changes in exogenous variables.
Mostly though, folks like him are anti-economic modelling because it tells them things that they don't want to hear - that government spending just drags future expenditure forward (due to the requirement for government to hold to a budget constraint in the long run - i.e., nobody gets to accrue infinite debt), that monetary policy can't possibly work in the medium term... things that everybody ought to understand but that folks on the Left have always tried to wish away.
And yet these same folks cling like limpets to every prognostication from CLIMATE modellers. Let me tell you - understanding as I do how uncertainty attaches to forecasts: the forecast bounds on climate forecasts will look like the world's largest ear-trumpet.
Imagine the famed 'hockey stick' from Mr Gore's investment scam - then put another one upside down underneath it. That's your forecast bound.
You claim that you did "economic modelling". Does that mean you got paid for standing around striking poses while people took pictures of you?
@getreal
TranScum should tell us why he is not part of Monash University team anymore...
@getreal
TranScum should tell us why he is not part of Monash University team anymore...
If you have any integrity at all, challenge Monbiot. He'll love to debate you.
Economic think tanks are to science what the drunken loudmouth at the tavern is to logic. You guys are nothing but the worst of ideological prostitutes, bleating whatever words, euphemisms, and 'graphs' will appear to support the positions of the $$$ people who pay you to pretend that science backs up their greed.
What was the name of the think tank???
99 times out of 100, dweebs who take this condescending, smug, more-intellectual-than-thou attitude of ..."You know what I find amusing...", and who brag on sites like this of having a PhD, are phony wanna-be's.
You're even too simplistic to figure out how to post properly.
I challenge you on your pompous, wanna-be serious dude HONOR to go directly one-on-one with Monbiot. Send him an email if you're so hot on this topic, frat-boy, and he'll pick up the challenge, and you and him can duke it out with the science. He'll make you eat your correspondence school Phd in less than 24 hours.
This difference between the ideological crap from those 'think tanks' and Monbiot's science, is...SCIENCE. You guys spew self-flattering ideological garbage and that unbelievably ridiculous, pretentious giberish...like the following:
"...confidence intervals for forecasts vary with the square of the forecast horizon. Much of my PhD concerned trying to narrow those forecast bounds by making sensible assumptions about the distribution of future changes in exogenous variables!" LOL What ridiculous giberish! You must think we're all as foolish and stupid as you.
The following from your site, Mr. Pomp.: http://www.linkedin.com/in/geoffreytransom
________________
"Geoffrey Transom’s Education
Monash University
BEc (Hons) PhD (unfinished), Economics and Econometrics, 1990 — 2000"
-- Well, well, well... Phd unfinished...after 10 f....g years. You must be a simpleton!
-- Pardonnez-moi cher monsier... Mais est-ce possible que vous n'avez jamais complété votre doctorat !? Mon Dieu ! Pas fort votre histoire. Est-ce bien possible que vous n'êtes qu'un pitoyable, prétentieux, petit trou de cul ? Il me paraît... On ne doit pas prendre tout le monde pour des cons, après tout !
_________________
"Geoffrey Transom’s Specialties:
Strongly held opinions, outstanding technical knowledge, almost preternatural numeracy without being Rain Man. A good memory for facts. Fluent French (lived there for 3 years, and still maintain a home there). Exceptional understanding of financial markets."
-- Strongly held views..LOL..great science there buddy!
-- almost preternatural..(existing outside of nature: Webster's) I'll say...!!
-- good memory for facts!!!????
(Interviewer: "So Not-quite-finished Dr. Pompous Preternatural, what would you say would be your top qualification for this posting at Scr*w the Workers Corp.?
--"Well, I do have a good memory for facts."
--Interviewer: "Like the boiling point of water, # of planets, the # of continents, the capital of Australia...?" Excellent! I believe we have something for you in the mailroom."
_________________
"Took tutes for some other subjects too if I recall."
-- tutes...?? "If I recall.." Not such good memory when bragging about your ridiculous 'academic' career.
__________________
"GT's done a range of reasonably interesting things -"
-- Look man, the least you could do it learn how to do up a proper CV. This is embarrassingly bad. "...a range of reasonably interesting things...!??
___________________
"The job was what Americans with their *loved* for overblown job titles, would call an 'Assistant Professor'."
-- ...with their...loved.... not too strong on writing, are we...???
-- so... Mr. Pompous (almost) Preternatural made it all the way to... Assistant Professor!! Mom and brother-in-law must be impressed with that!
____________________
"Geoffrey Transom’s Interests:
Financial markets, eating"
-- LOL
___________________
"Geoffrey Transom’s Contact Settings
Interested In:
career opportunities; consulting offers; new ventures; job inquiries; expertise requests; business deals; reference requests; getting back in touch"
-- not a lot of work for Freemasons with strongly held opinions, feeble minds and shoddy education, and love of food... is there?
___________________
If you have any INTEGRITY AT ALL, challenge Monbiot on his science. Send him an email. www.monbiot.com
@getreal
very funny! You got it!
Amazing how you don't even need to meet this conman to figure what kind of fucked up guy he is...
Take care
DB
So you know what the difference is betwen a 'CV' and a 'web profile'?
Where's your CV?
And who are you to issue debate challenges on behalf of George Monbiot?
The punctuation idiosyncracy and the slightly-region-specific French gives me a very good clue as to your identity, but it would be really good if you had the courage to actually confess who you are.
Until then, you're just another anonymous coward on the web - who clearly believes in climate modelling forecasts, but not economic modelling forecasts. So somehow you think that forecast bounds 100 years out are narrow for climate modellers, but forecast bounds two quarters out are wide as all get-out for economic modellers.
OK - that's another data point - no understanding of statistics.
I am getting a lock on your profile now.
* Took the time to go from my blog to my LinkedIn profile;
* retained a high dudgeon for the entire time;
* 'critiqued' a dated CV like s schoolteacher;
* used selective extracts in order to try and paint a picture of dishonesty on my part;
* decent French;
* oddball punctuation;
* hasty thinking; almost evangelical adherence to a 'climate change' authority figure;
* no sense of irony (e.g., a sense of humour is 'required' apparently only if it doesn't conflict with yours, plus upbraiding people for being impolite while calling them an arsehole (nice touch))
I had initially thought they might be DM, but no - due to the accents and the use of 'petit' (Daniel would never use it - he is too insecure about his own height). JD is a candidate given knee jerk reaction if anyone disses da Jooze - and the over-punctuation is somewhat feminine.
If you have any moral courage (rather than moralising outrage) you would use your own name, rather than trying to get reflected glory from George Monbiot.
No matter - if you don't identify yourself within a week, I will use your IP address (the one that was used to go from here to the blog to the LinkedIn page) to get your name from your ISP, and make you known.
Cheerio
GT
GT's Market Rant
This is a straw man argument if I have ever seen one. Climate scientists do something that makes them scientists...something that economists who tend to be more ideological almost never do...they change their model to take into account new data.
We are seeing huge resistance today from the established economists to the ideas that perhaps the evidence is demonstrating that their models which involve pure, unregulated financial instruments are horribly wrong. Economists like to pretend they are doing science, their reactions to the markets, which are so blatently political reactions put paid to this other ideology widely held.
Meanwhile the climate scientists, when faced with the incredible pace of the observed facts of climate change, are trying to get their models to properly account for these observations and tell us what they imply for the future. The direction of those changes is not a random fluctuation as you imply in your post, they all head the same way.
This isn't some cute political stunt where you can just search high and low to find the last crazy on earth to offer a 'balanced' opinion so that your hockey-stick can turn over...this is actually happening, right now. Climate scientists, despite well funded opposition from many quarters and despite real threats to their livlihood from a hostile administration are simply trying, desperately, to tell us something we have become unaccustomed to hearing for the last several decades...the truth as they see it. However bitter that pill might be to swallow.
Indeed, in Al Gore's hockey stick reference you again invoke the kind of untrue propaganda we have seen so much. Al Gore was perfectly honest about that plot. And it stopped in 2004. Guess what, the trend continues.
There are certainly predictions as to how it will turn over, don't make the usual economist's mistake of thinking that scientists too can only extrapolate on a graph with a ruler. Scientists are all well too aware that ALL exponential distributions are unsustainable and ALL of them precede a major overturn of any graph you can name, usually do to some equilibrium condition being massively disturbed. This particular model doesn't turn over for many hundred years and then it doesn't necessarily ever come back to the same place it was.
Excellent. Kudos to you and your perfectly reasonable, logical, informed post.
And it's great that people like you pop up to set the record straight for Mr. Unfinished-but-bragging-about-PhD. But I'd be willing to bet the US debt against a bag of day-old doughnuts that it's way over his head. He's hardly worth the trouble.
But thanks. Check his absurd website: http://www.linkedin.com/in/geoffreytransom
Just another right-wing, bleating faker.
I'll tell you what I find really really amusing.
I spent several years at an economic 'think tank' that specialised in economic modelling. Forecasts and the like.
Folks like Monbiot are ULTRA-dismissive of economic modelling - and with some reason, since confidence intervals for forecasts vary with the square of the forecast horizon. Much of my PhD concerned trying to narrow those forecast bounds by making sensible assumptions about the distribution of future changes in exogenous variables.
Mostly though, folks like him are anti-economic modelling because it tells them things that they don't want to hear - that government spending just drags future expenditure forward (due to the requirement for government to hold to a budget constraint in the long run - i.e., nobody gets to accrue infinite debt), that monetary policy can't possibly work in the medium term... things that everybody ought to understand but that folks on the Left have always tried to wish away.
And yet these same folks cling like limpets to every prognostication from CLIMATE modellers. Let me tell you - understanding as I do how uncertainty attaches to forecasts: the forecast bounds on climate forecasts will look like the world's largest ear-trumpet.
Imagine the famed 'hockey stick' from Mr Gore's investment scam - then put another one upside down underneath it. That's your forecast bound.
To hang on the every word of climate modellers - without any understanding as to whether the model's closure is sensible, whether the model's parameters are estimated or imposed (and by what method, using what data, they are arrived at)( and whether or not the model has been stress-tested (i.e., run as a simulation of history to see if it produces sensible outcomes for endogenous variables).
I can tell you that this is a daunting task; I can also tell you that it has NEVER been done to a level that would pass muster among a group of professional modellers.
If Monbiot is a convert to the modelling paradigm, I would be pleased. But he's not: it's jsut that he has decided to accept one (very shoddy) set of forecasts and tout the 'model' that they come from, because the outcomes suit his prejudices.
So he's a polemicist. And when it comes to climate modelling, he's an ignorant one (for example, I bet he didn't know that the parameter that determinesthe extent to which CO2 emissions 'lead to' warming is IMPOSED, and the estimation medthodology used was AWFUL... an 'F' in any undergraduate level subject on Estimation and Hypothesis Testing.
Cheerio
GT
GT's Market Rant
You know what, I think you're that delusional that you might actually think your gibberish is real.
@getreal November
Hi
Geoffrey Transom is a complete conman. As his previous landlord in France, - where he lived with his "girl friend" as a parasit-, we can provide you all the documents ( Police reports, Judgement, -those 2 were condamned by a Civil Court-, Officers Requests, emails, testimonies from people they abused). FYI, this disgusting delusional- coward- scum got deported back to Australia for anti-semitism and holocaust denial. He didn't even have a valid passport. I have pics of our house the way they left it. Unbelievable! He pretends to be "upper class" but he is just a white trash scum. He claims to be an anarchist because he can't face what he is really: a conman, a parasit, a coward. Everything he blames on people is what he is doing himself. Probably mentally unsane.
Up to you
Take care
DB
I'll tell you what I find really really amusing.
I spent several years at an economic 'think tank' that specialised in economic modelling. Forecasts and the like.
Folks like Monbiot are ULTRA-dismissive of economic modelling - and with some reason, since confidence intervals for forecasts vary with the square of the forecast horizon. Much of my PhD concerned trying to narrow those forecast bounds by making sensible assumptions about the distribution of future changes in exogenous variables.
Mostly though, folks like him are anti-economic modelling because it tells them things that they don't want to hear - that government spending just drags future expenditure forward (due to the requirement for government to hold to a budget constraint in the long run - i.e., nobody gets to accrue infinite debt), that monetary policy can't possibly work in the medium term... things that everybody ought to understand but that folks on the Left have always tried to wish away.
And yet these same folks cling like limpets to every prognostication from CLIMATE modellers. Let me tell you - understanding as I do how uncertainty attaches to forecasts: the forecast bounds on climate forecasts will look like the world's largest ear-trumpet.
Imagine the famed 'hockey stick' from Mr Gore's investment scam - then put another one upside down underneath it. That's your forecast bound.
To hang on the every word of climate modellers - without any understanding as to whether the model's closure is sensible, whether the model's parameters are estimated or imposed (and by what method, using what data, they are arrived at)( and whether or not the model has been stress-tested (i.e., run as a simulation of history to see if it produces sensible outcomes for endogenous variables).
I can tell you that this is a daunting task; I can also tell you that it has NEVER been done to a level that would pass muster among a group of professional modellers.
If Monbiot is a convert to the modelling paradigm, I would be pleased. But he's not: it's jsut that he has decided to accept one (very shoddy) set of forecasts and tout the 'model' that they come from, because the outcomes suit his prejudices.
So he's a polemicist. And when it comes to climate modelling, he's an ignorant one (for example, I bet he didn't know that the parameter that determinesthe extent to which CO2 emissions 'lead to' warming is IMPOSED, and the estimation medthodology used was AWFUL... an 'F' in any undergraduate level subject on Estimation and Hypothesis Testing.
Cheerio
GT
GT's Market Rant
Why do you keep repeating this pretentious giberish. Can't you even figure out how to post properly?
The "end" of late-summer sea-ice is splitting hairs. After 90% of that ice is gone, the last 10% isn't that important. I predict maybe 90% reflection loss next September.
It's not the area amount of ice that's growing back that's really important...it's the thickness. This new ice is much thinner than it used to be, so it can't absorb as much heat before melting again, sooner and sooner each year.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7692963.stm
I really can't improve on George Monbiot's science, so I won't. Well-argued.
Absolutely, we can get to carbonless energy technologies for building heat, for transit and for electricity.
I'll make one exception. If the algae biofuel people ever get their technology working, they're going to generate vast amounts of diesel fuel per acre, using carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as a raw material. Biodiesel would then be a cheap way to store plenty of energy for transportation.
My additions are that we need to look at low impact ways to stop the runaway Arctic methane release, through restoration of the Arctic Ocean's pack ice and possibly through the creation of cirrus clouds over the oceans to reflect some sunlight back into space.
We also need to restore man-denuded desert areas to their carbon-eating ways, and we need to restore the dead zones in our oceans (such as at the mouth of the Mississippi) to their original carbon-eating and food-producing state through oxygenation of the water.
Finally we need independent non-governmental verification of whether any carbon dioxide is saved. Cutting down a forest so that it can later be replanted does not save any net CO2.
Please do not fret over the climate. We voted for a winner (O'Bama) so everything is going to be as good as it's going to get. Who needs a progressive revolution? The "audacity of hope" is going to make the climate better. Responsibility offloaded. All praise to that Hebrew god!
Anyone who thinks that the dire threat of global warming is going to seriously disrupt the pollution of the planet with greenhouse gases by industry has rocks in their head.
You have to get your priorities right. Profit comes before survival. I mean George told us at APEC that free trade and free markets and no regulation is what counts in this (dying) world.
We humans are simple savages. We know not what we do. We care not what we do.
Evolution will take care of us. Soon.
Read more at:
www.dangerouscreation.com
Actually, while it's true that the threat of global warming is not going to stop industry (and finance, MIC, and the govt...working in concert) from continuing down their path, it's a myth that they are blindly pushing forward, oblivious to the coming environmental degradation and eventual collapse. It's a myth that profit comes before survival.
They are aware that we cannot continue down the path of more and more consumption for more and more people. They are also aware that the alternative energy technologies that are currently available to us, or which can realistically be developed in the near future, can replace only about 3-6% of our current usage.
These elites are a bunch of very intelligent, well-educated people, who obviously have a great deal of skill and experience in planning and strategy. If you think they don't have a plan, think again.
What happens in nature when a population gets too big to be supported by it's habitat? A die-off. Except this time, the elites will provoke, expedite and manage the die-off, selecting which segments of the population will survive...those useful the the global elite order.
It makes sense.
annabelle: i seem to remember a point back in the late 60's or early 70's when commercial airlines switched over their engines to smokeless..that left only the military with smoking engines..as i am an old small plane pilot i observed the disappearing of the smoking planes..then i left flying and lived for 30 yrs. in the woods where i always believed any plane i saw smoking was military..in 2000 i moved to new hampshire and had a house with a southern view..there were dozens of smoke trails on a daily basis..took me a while to realize all these planes were probably not military..something changed from the mid 70's to 2000..i have seen references over the years on cd to chemtrails, but have never really looked to see what changed..
ken
ken, thanks for the input. There are so many of the chemtrails at any given time that it must involve at least five or six planes each leaving a four part trail that disperses over a wide area and lingers in unusual patterns, these planes appear to be flying at a lower altitude than commercial jets and certainly out of the normal flight pattern. Most of the information available is either a conspiracy theory or someone is selling something to protect you from the deadly combination of barium and other chemicals. If this is an attempt to alter naturally occuring weather patterns it would be nice to know that the combination of different chemicals that are being used is hazardess for public health. If it is a blind experiment the public should be made aware of the hazards if they exist. I have been taking pictures of chemtrails for over five years and still no one seems to understand what chemtrails are all about.
they don't need chemtrails to do anything to weather patterns.......
they already have HAARP.................
coco
I have heard about HAARP several times, but haven't read a clear explanation of how it works. Can you point me towards that information?
with pleasure................
www.haarp.alaska.edu
www.haarp.net
the first site is the official site and the second is, well, see for yourself.
Apparently George Wanker Bush also has one more shot left. There's a photo on The Huffington Post of The Great Texas Worm drinking a Pisco Sour at the APEC meeting in Latin America. We always knew he still needs a little help from his friends. The day before he was squinting and wearing a poncho, trying to look like Clint Eastwood in "Fistful of Dollars". The problem with a weakling like Bush is that having reached the pinnacle of failure and having done it on the world stage, having spent so many days chasing greatness only to wind up like Wile E. Coyote chasing the Roadrunner and having dynamite explode in his face, or running off a cliff, is that failure that big, that overwhelming, cannot be denied. So yes, he's drinking again because the only alternative is impossible: telling himself he's a great man while sober. His fantasies are like complex machines; they need to be well oiled.
This was not mentioned in this article, but I have been wondering about whether or not chemtrails are affecting climate change. I have read about them and there appears to be a lot of 'assumptions' but no real definite answers as to what they really are. Here in northern Michigan we were bombarded with chemtrails all summer. I just returned from a ten day visit to Virginia and every day the sky was filled with chemtrails. They are a curious configuration and it is interesting how they can meld into a hazy day even with clear skies. Any information on the affect on pollution or climate change?
According to an NPR news story of the early 90s, “chemtrails” were confirmed by the USAF to a New York weather station as being elements in the Star Wars program.
'do we want to be remembered as the generation that saved the banks and let the biosphere collapse?'.............
that's a 'loaded' question................i don't want to hazard an answer.
but i don't think we'll be remembered at all.........if we continue the way we are going, there won't BE anyone left to remember...........
as some have pointed out already, the physics of the situation will be the emotionless arbiter of the future of all life on this planet...human opinion is worse than worthless, as it is given worth by humans where none exists, thereby continuing to dominate discussion (we gotta have jobs\cars\tvs\stores\cell phones\toys\computers\houses!)...we must completely stop industrially altering the molecular structure of our planet and start planting food and living by consuming that food...this is the only 'change' that counts...can we do it? is it too late? I'm not optimistic, but I really want to feel like part of a worldwide movement in the 'reversal' direction, as it's difficult to find motivation in continuing to destroy, alter, consume and discard until it's over...who needs more crap in the form of presents? Is there a name for this recent malaise ~ a certainty that the planet is dying due to human chemical activity, coupled with a certainty that there will be no large-scale changes in that behavior due to human mental activity?
Nice post.
Not exactly PC but cuts to the chase & then puts it in a nutshell.
Shame that there only appear to be a few folk that see it that way.
Will someone more scientifically literate than I please help with this? I got an email from an old classmate (very right-wing) including the following article: "By Christopher Booker, The TELEGRAPH, London UK. Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 16/11/2008 (I cut some because of the 1000-word limit.) Yet I couldn't find it on the Telegraph's website 2 days later. Is this just tin-foil hat stuff??
"A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which...is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.
This was startling because: Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China's official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its "worst snowstorm ever". In the US, NOAA ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years...
GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit [Adele again: are these bloggers credible?], began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery...scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October...Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated TWO MONTHS running.
The error was so glaring that when it was reported on the two blogs - run by the US meteorologist Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre, the Canadian computer analyst who won fame for his expert debunking of the notorious "hockey stick" graph - GISS began hastily revising its figures. This only made the confusion worse because, to compensate for the lowered temperatures in Russia, GISS claimed to have discovered a new "hotspot" in the Arctic - in a month when satellite images were showing Arctic sea-ice recovering so fast from its summer melt that three weeks ago it was 30 per cent more extensive than the same time last year. {Adele again: ANYONE SEE THESE IMAGES?)
A GISS spokesman lamely explained that the error in the Russian figures was that they were obtained from another body, and that GISS did not have resources to exercise proper quality control over it. This is an astonishing admission: the figures published by Dr Hansen's institute are not only one of the four data sets that the UN's IPCC relies on to promote its case for global warming, but they are the most widely quoted, since they consistently show higher temperatures than the others.
...Again and again, Dr Hansen has been to the fore in making extreme claims over the dangers of climate change...Yet last week's latest episode is far from the first time Dr Hansen's methodology has been called in question. In 2007 he was forced by Mr Watts and Mr McIntyre to revise his published figures for US surface temperatures, to show that the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s, as he had claimed, but the 1930s.
...Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, recently startled a university audience in Australia by claiming that global temperatures have recently been rising "very much faster" than ever, in front of a graph showing them rising sharply in the past decade. In fact, as many of his audience were aware, they have not been rising in recent years and since 2007 have dropped...Dr Pachauri, a former railway engineer with no qualifications in climate science, may believe what Dr Hansen tells him. But whether...it is wise for the world's governments to embark on some of the most costly economic measures ever proposed, to remedy a problem which may actually not exist, is a question which should give us all pause for thought."
One effect of our apparent climate change is higher precipitation, leading to more powerful low pressure systems and higher wind on average. Stronger lows can pull polar air down to temperate zones more effectively, causing snow where weaker lows cause rain. So, we can both have higher average temperatures and more snow at times.
The Exxon/Mobil well-funded whispering campaign to discredit global warming theories will attempt to raise any current scientific defect, large or small, into the press's awareness. However, science doesn't work by daily "talking points". Science presumes a sense of good will in a cooperating body of scientists, a few of whom will make honest mistakes in data collection, and a very few of whom will fabricate evidence, but most of whom generate consistent data. Right now many global warming projections and simulations are fitting past and present data pretty well. Most researchers in the field are tuning out the paid nitpickers as untrustworthy sources of data or of useful theories.
The press is different. Sometimes wealthy wingnuts pay reporters' salaries, so they need to pay rapt attention to a particular day's talking points.
See this: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/11/10/giss-releases-october-2008-data/
And this:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/11/mountains-and-molehills/
I recommend following the Realclimate.org blog to keep up with the actual science.
David
One set of bad data does not negate a theory which has literally billions of data points. And "temperatures...since 2007 have dropped" That was last year! Hardly long enough for a trend.
Good point!
Global warming has finally been explained: the Earth is getting hotter because the Sun is burning more brightly than at any time during the past 1,000 years, according to new research. A study by Swiss and German scientists suggests that increasing radiation from the sun is responsible for recent global climate changes. Dr Sami Solanki, the director of the renowned Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Gottingen, Germany, who led the research, said: "The Sun has been at its strongest over the past 60 years and may now be affecting global temperatures. The Sun is in a changed state. It is brighter than it was a few hundred years ago and this brightening started relatively recently - in the last 100 to 150 years." [Telegraph]
Global warming and melting polar ice caps are not just problems here on Earth. Mars is facing similar global changes, researchers say, with temperatures across the red planet rising by around 0.65 degrees over the last few decades. [Register]
UPDATE: Since this article was first written, the sun has gone into a quiet phase. There are no sunspots, and the Ulysses spacecraft is confirming that the sun has dimmed slightly and the solar wind slowed down. Inevitably, and to nobody's surprise (except perhaps Al Gore), the Earth is now showing signs of cooling. Defying the predictions of an ice-free arctic sea this summer, the north polar icecap actually increased its area by twice the size of Germany.
The first paragraph implies that Dr. Solanki attributes climate change to solar activity. This does not appear to be the case. Here is one specific link:
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=14751, with a quote:
>>The influence of the Sun on the Earth is seen increasingly as one cause of the observed global warming since 1900, along with the emission of the greenhouse gas
, carbon dioxide, from the combustion of coal, gas, and oil. "Just how large this role is, must still be investigated, since, according to our latest knowledge on the variations of the solar magnetic field, the significant increase in the Earth's temperature since 1980 is indeed to be ascribed to the greenhouse effect caused by carbon dioxide," says Prof. Sami K. Solanki, solar physicist and director at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research. <<
And another: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3869753.stm
And one more: http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=15385
I wish the OP had put more specifics to the sources rather than simply naming newspapers.
George Monbiot says that it is unrealistic to expect humans to change their behavior and reduce their consumption voluntarily so he wants to take on the laws of thermodynamics and build the infrastructure for us all to drive electric cars.
Human behavior is what we have to work with. We haven't even tried to encourage conservation. A five-dollar gasoline tax would do a lot to encourage the kind of behavior that needs to be adopted. But everybody just throws up their hands and says it's "politically unrealistic."
Bullshit.
Tommy:
I think that you are essentially correct. The majority of activity (in the U.S.) concerning climate disruption has been symbolic or efforts so small as to be a drop in the bucket. The problem cannot be addressed by individuals buying a hybrid car or using green light bulbs. The problem can only be effectively dealt with by governments and their societies' working together globally. The countries most responsible aren't really doing anything, but it is not the fault of their populations. There's a great desire by many people to do something. Changing human behavior is fairly easy; look at advertising, look at Public Relations, look at Fox News. What is difficult is changing human behavior while our society is propagandized daily by the values of consumerism. If our governments actually represented us instead of corporate power, who knows what could be done? If you look at the countries which have made the most green progress, like Germany and the Scandinavian countries, there seems to be a correlation to the level of meaningful democracy. I wonder why?
Fundamentally, what's best for the environment and ourselves within it is diametrically oppositional to what's best for "our economy", that is, Market Capitalism. This is the real issue, which Monbiot omits. We have known about climate change for 30 years and very little progress has been made. Although, lots of progress has been made for maximizing profits. Until our economic system is challenged, green activities and technologies won't be much more than green washing.
Here is a way to change human behavior: free public transit:
http://freepublictransit.org
Here is the problem as I see it. You can't get most people on board unless it is scientifically proven, so far it is not, or you can present a compeklling argument to do something. So its very hard to refute some idiot like Limbaugh by suggesting its a good idea to do what we can just in case.
"Man-made global warming is a total hoax. It has no basis in fact, and yet it has acolytes out the wazoo."
This based on the evidence is obviously false. There is enough evidence to suggest that even if it turns out not to be man made, we contribute to it....So how do you present a good argument for doing what we can?
My suggestion is to go after the things that could be sold as good for everyone that also would help with Global Warming.
If your observations reflect your true view of the situation, then I'm probably not as optimistic as you seem to be about the impact of 'scientific evidence' on the actions of supposedly 'thinking' individuals. If people can believe in immaculate conceptions, 72 virgins for martyrs, hell and fairy-tale heavens - without any actual scientific evidence - then they can be induced to believe in just about anything. And if they can believe in such things then why are you surprised (if you are surprised) that, generally the same people, prefer to believe pleasing stories that reject global climate change and don't require them to alter their lifestyles?
I don't see religious faith being related to climate change in belief. Religious belief is belief in something that cannot be proven scientifically.
Climate change could be proven scientifically to be man made, so far it just hasn't been possible. There are many folks that believe in it similarly to a religious belief, others that believe there is enough evidence to make it believeable even though it is not proven.
"generally the same people, prefer to believe pleasing stories that reject global climate change and don't require them to alter their lifestyles?"
My view is that they don't reject climate change, they reject the notion that it is man made and if its not man made we can't do anything about it. I believe it has been presented too radically or perhaps I should say presented as ...climate change is man made, we can't prove it scientifically, but we say so and if you don't believe us and go along you are a bunch of knuckle dragging rednecks.
The Green group han't been noted for their political skills I'd say.
But if it could be proven scientifically or presented in a more palateable way, I think it wouldn't be as much of a problem.
Watch the approach to cars, that will exemplify whats wrong with this kind of approach and why it give the opposition such an easy target.
I trust I've just made myself as obscure as usual (LOL) Does this make sense to you?
The only useful connection I see between religious belief and let's call it 'climate belief', is to make the point that people are extraordinarily gullible and resistant to reality - particularly a 'reality' which makes them uncomfortable. That, and people don't like anybody fiddling with their lifestyles.
Whether 'climate change' is 'natural', 'man made' or only 'man abetted' it seems to be occurring. With species survival possibly at stake you would think we as a species would not risk extermination and recognize that the problem exists and try to mitigate it to the best of our ability. But then I sometimes overstate our capability to act with reason. So I won't hold my breath - until, that is, I have to.
I agree with you, except people aren't nearly as gullible as you think they are in my opinion.
"particularly a 'reality' which makes them uncomfortable. That, and people don't like anybody fiddling with their lifestyles."
This is oh so true!
As I said above, my feeling is this has to be presented in a different way. The "my way or the highway" approach of the Greens isn't working that well and does play right into the hands of the Limbaughs of the world.
I don't think any government ever has all the information about a huge problem before it makes a decision to confront it. Did JFK know with exact certainty that the Soviets would back down over Cuba? Did Reagan know with absolute certainty that the Soviet Union would collapse just after he left office? Why does climate change have to have absolute proof, so much so that even Rush Limbaugh would believe it, before we do anything to stop wasting energy (and money), stop polluting (and poisoning our own people), and instead harvest the elements provided freely (sun, wind, geothermal, tidal) instead of permanently destroying vast areas of land (coal/uranium mining) and risking nuclear fallout?
The problem is that the government doesn't need to believe it, the population needs to believe it. They won't accept it based on theory, though I don't think there is any problem getting incremental thins done like solar panels, better CAFE standards, energy credits for retrofitting homes, etc.
What they won't stand for is being lectured asnd having something crammed down their throat thats a theory. Thats my opinion at least. Present it differently in other words.
A theory...like evolution or gravity? I wonder, has global warming been declared as a scientific theory yet (which is as close as science can come to proof).
Global warming has finally been explained: the Earth is getting hotter because the Sun is burning more brightly than at any time during the past 1,000 years, according to new research. A study by Swiss and German scientists suggests that increasing radiation from the sun is responsible for recent global climate changes. Dr Sami Solanki, the director of the renowned Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Gottingen, Germany, who led the research, said: "The Sun has been at its strongest over the past 60 years and may now be affecting global temperatures. The Sun is in a changed state. It is brighter than it was a few hundred years ago and this brightening started relatively recently - in the last 100 to 150 years." [Telegraph]
Global warming and melting polar ice caps are not just problems here on Earth. Mars is facing similar global changes, researchers say, with temperatures across the red planet rising by around 0.65 degrees over the last few decades. [Register]
UPDATE: Since this article was first written, the sun has gone into a quiet phase. There are no sunspots, and the Ulysses spacecraft is confirming that the sun has dimmed slightly and the solar wind slowed down. Inevitably, and to nobody's surprise (except perhaps Al Gore), the Earth is now showing signs of cooling. Defying the predictions of an ice-free arctic sea this summer, the north polar icecap actually increased its area by twice the size of Germany.
Nothing can nor will be done when you got Rush telling 10+ million a day:
"Man-made global warming is a total hoax. It has no basis in fact, and yet it has acolytes out the wazoo."
Multiply his brainwashed legions by 4, add in another 20 million FOX and friends zombies, and we got nearly half the country unwilling to do a damn thing about the "liberal" hoax until it's way, way too late. They're like the drunk drivers who swear they drive better wasted - until they wipe out a family. And even then, after they're released from prison, most usually end up driving drunk again.
Advice to the rest of us: spend a bit more time preparing to survive what's coming, and a bit less trying to change un-changeable minds.
Agreed that there is a huge oppositional force in the face of scientific and empirical findings about climate change. A few skeptics/acolytes haunts the halls of CD as well, as we've seen. I appreciate their skepticism, but in the face of the evidence, they are whistling in the dark or simply parroting what they've heard on thug radio.
I also agree that the rest of us should be learning how to live in a different world. Though, I don't think anyone can predict in what form that will be - so, let's not lose hope. And yes, let's let go of those who won't change. C'est la vie.
"All Nature's difference keeps all Nature's peace." Alexander Pope
Is it too late for total debushification?
Or is that debullshitification?
The study of conditions on other planets has convinced me that the scenario is even more grim that noted. The methane gushers noted above from the permafrost are a very serious matter, not only because methane is four times more efficient as CO2 for retaining heat, but because releasing methane into a hydrated atmosphere is a recipe for producing ammonia. Reflectivity of sea ice could, in short order, be replaced by the reflectivity of ammonia clouds forming seasonally over the poles. Since ammonia freezes at a lower temperature than water, ammonia clouds would form at higher elevations, blocking the solar energy sustaining the water cycle in the atmosphere. Water below would precipitate out and little outside water would circulate back inside. Winters at the poles could become bitterly cold and dry, although global temperatures would continue to climb and the atmospheric water cycle is compressed beyond the area where the ammonia clouds cover the poles. This would greatly increase the violence of storms throughout the rest of the world and further accelerate the timetable of imminent catastrophe. I, for one, predict the formation of seasonal ammonia clouds over the poles by 2015.
Do you still think vegans are grey George?
You really damaged your credibility with that one.
Its fine that you warn about disaster but if your answer for not doing the sensible thing and cutting the meat diet is "vegans look grey skinned to me," then it makes it hard to take what else you say seriously.
Walk the walk, not just talk the talk.
You are correct. Eating a lot of meat is as bad as driving a car. You should be kinder to George Monbiot, he is a potential ally.
http://freepublictransit.org
The population of the planet increases at three people per second.
But let's ignore that and pretend technology will fix everything.
And soon it will be four people per second. Give people means of birth control and the birth rate decreases. Get the population of the globe to agree to one child per family for two or three generations and then the problem would be much more tractable. In the mean time stop useing fossil fuels.
Other things that reduce birth rate: educating young girls, reducing child deaths.
A good way to reduce waste would be to eliminate the private auto. A campaign exists for free public transit.
http://freepublictransit.org
Decarbonization will more than likely require serious action up to and including warfare, as there are powerful corporations and nations for whom a carbon based energy economy is viewed as a life or death proposition. They include Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, China, Shell, Exxon, & BP, among others. Until the disadvantages greatly outweigh the adventages for these players, then this problem remains.
www.wunderman-comics.com
GO TIDAL (CURRENT) ENERGY!! If we are serious about 'decarbonizing', then we need to accelerate deployment of all carbon-reduction schemes, and especially those that have the potential for large-scale reliable carbon-offset. IMO, the most feasible high-density resource for providing FIRM, carbon-free baseline energy is in the tidal currents sloshing by on all our maritime shores and major river estuaries. FYI, tidal (current) energy has the following remarkable advantages: it is predictable (i.e. FIRM), it has much higher energy density-potential than wind or solar (e.g. sea water is 832 times as dense as air), there are many excellent tidal current resource sites nearby to grid-hookups and population centres on both maritime coasts (and worldwide), it is non-polluting and has the lowest enviro-footprint relative to other large-generation energy technologies, and the concepts or tidal technologies now emerging worldwide are proven.
All that remains to fully seat this technology is the political will to support it; presently the UK is working most aggressively to develop a tidal industry for electricity and billions in jobs and exports, but so is Korea, New Zealand and others. FYI, JFK was a huge tidal energy proponent and champion of harnessing the Passamaquoddy tides for renewable, FIRM, non-polluting energy.
Check out this industry association: Ocean Renewable Energy Group: oreg.ca for more industry news;
- Sincerely, Michael Maser, Blue Energy International (www.bluenergy.com)
I checked the site, I like it, it looks very good..I do have a question though...would using the energy of the tides affect coastal erosion...make erosion slower? I would think that would be a good side effect.
Bush has waged his war on science with the same obtuse determination with which he has waged his war on terror.
The war the Bush regime waged, and continues to wage, against science is, in a way, even more shameful, depraved and degrading than the invasion and occupation of Iraq. You would expect a nobody, a nonentity, a piece of human excrement like George Wanker Bush to do the latter and kill hundreds of thousands. In this, he is no different than any other murdering tyrant in history. But for the government of the United States, early in the 21st century, to trash science . . . I don't know; what can you say? Soon he'll be gone and I hope I outlive him so I can piss on his grave.
Good piece, except for one thing: there is no such thing as "one shot left" as far as human intention is concerned. We can try to fix things, but in the end, natural selection decides, and the self-focused human species falls into line w/ all the creatures of this Earth. Beautifully, we are just generators of variation and Mother Selection ultimately decides how things are filtered, for good or ill.
Strength through Peace.
Too deterministic. Humans, individuals, all actors in the universe, are part determiners and part determined. It is a never-ending dance involving an infinite number of feedback loops, each of infinite complexity, going on for an eternity.
Sioux Rose
KIVALS: Good analysis, although I would add the fixed orbits of the planets in our solar system, and the spiritual tasks they, as emissaries, perform. It's all in the vibrations... evident enough in the moon's pull on the tides, our biological aging process according with earth's revolution around the sun. There are far more subtle, equally powerful cycles operating that link all sentient beings with this green planet and its place in the dance of time.
Um, yeah, and when I pull three bong tokes instead of just two it looks like you are laughing out the other side of your face. The idea that humans can direct variation is what leads to determinism my dear 'kivals", not the other way around. Evolution requires three things: 1) variation; 2) heritability of the variation; and 3) the (potential) differential success of inherited variability in subsequent states. Natural selection plays a primary role, but there exist other "filter" mechanisms such as drift, stochastic processes, mutation, etc. So, before you wax pseudo-poetic while being critical get your facts straight.
What a childish response from a simple and confused mind. For starters, you apparently are not well-acquainted with the concept of "determinism." Under an assumption of determinism, all human action is directed by antecedent events, including action to "direct variation" or not. That is completely consistent with your model, which assumes some natural order, beyond human control, that will direct all phenomena relevant to human survival in a manner that determines the outcome.
Furthermore, your simple model is handicapped by its top down structure, with no possibility for loops, and certainly not feedback loops. Just the human knowledge, the human models, of the process empowers humans to alter the process. That makes human action a particularly important part of the feedback loops involved in the evolutionary process regarding humans, but even animals without such awareness and knowledge are involved in their own processes, helping to determine the outcome. The animal could be viewed as the embodiment of the evolutionary process in a particular instance, determined and determining simultaneously.
And, maybe the most important point, is that you apparently do not understand the duality of (1) models of processes vs. (2) actual participation in the processes. I would elaborate but you are not worth the time.
Good-bye.