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Poll: What to do about climate change?

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What are the top priorities for climate change?

No action needed
3

11%
Cut Emissions
8

30%
Tax Carbon
3

11%
Remove Carbon Dioxide from Atmosphere
6

22%
Manage Solar Radiation
2

7%
Reduce Personal Carbon Footprint
5

19%
 
Total votes: 27
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Robert Tulip

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Re: Poll: What to do about climate change?

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DWill wrote:I voted for reduce emissions and remove carbon. It's hard to argue that Robert isn't right that without that we won't reach the goals of Paris.
Reducing emissions and removing carbon are necessary but not sufficient, as I explain in my analogy above drawn from Leonardo Da Vinci of Gaia as facing impending cardiac arrest.
DWill wrote: The problem with this combo, I suppose, is that it might confuse the public. If we're going to remove the carbon, then do we even need to reduce emissions? Of course, we do.
This is actually a very complex political and technical argument. Logically, with world emissions at 10 gigatonnes of carbon per year (GTC/Y), if we work out how to remove 20 GTC/Y then we can keep adding ten and still make progress toward climate restoration. I suspect that level of emissions will not continue though.

Bill McKibben argues in this superb new free access NYRB piece, A Future without Fossil Fuels technology is fast making fossil fuels obsolete. That makes me think the public investment focus should be on reflecting sunlight and removing carbon as a security agenda, leaving the rise of renewables to market forces.
DWill wrote: It's a two-pronged attack. Relying only on CR would be just as futile as relying only on reduction.
No, that is not right. CR could potentially scale up to removal of 80 GTC/Y, enabling return to Holocene stability, whereas at best emission reduction can scale up to about two or three GTC/Y in the next few years, given the inertia in the fossil system. They are orders of magnitude different in effect.
DWill wrote:The point I see as crucial but don't often see recognized, is that zero-emission energy is a necessary goal because it may be only for the next 80 years that we have anything to burn!
It might even emerge that fossil fuels are more valuable as petrochemicals than as fuel, which will make burning them uneconomic, even leaving aside the warming effect.
DWill wrote: Circular economy is getting to be a big deal. Maybe if Jay Inslee can get himself elected president, we'll all get a better idea of how we can help.
Inslee said "we have to have a candidate who will make climate change and building a clean energy economy a central focus, an organizing principle for the American people and we need a president who will do the same. I am excited about this because, as I have traveled the country, I hear people waiting for the bugle call from the White House. We heard it from Kennedy when he said we are going to go to the moon. We need a similar bugle call to the American people on this."

The 'bugle call' we need today is net zero by 2030, expanding global carbon removal to the same scale as total emissions. That will basically achieve a circular economy. In my view the most interesting circular economy idea is biochar, storing carbon in soil as fertilizer, and getting the carbon from algae.
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Re: Poll: What to do about climate change?

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Robert Tulip wrote: Logically, with world emissions at 10 gigatonnes of carbon per year (GTC/Y), if we work out how to remove 20 GTC/Y then we can keep adding ten and still make progress toward climate restoration. I suspect that level of emissions will not continue though.
I have a question. You are relying on commercial profits to create a Carbon Removal industry. But in light of the way renewable technology has surged, and can now undersell fossil fuel plants (as explained in the McKibben essay) by a factor of 1/2, might we not see a repeat of the same phenomenon for biochar? In particular, if profits lead to 80 GTC/Y of removal, is there not a danger of excess decarbonization? There is no more reason for the biochar industry to worry about such a danger than for the Koch brothers to worry about global warming.

Of course there would be some negative feedback as CO2 got less common in the atmosphere. But it is hard to imagine such a deficit seriously impacting the profitability once the basic concept was proven and the technical issues solved. I imagine you can see where I am going with this question. Something you consider a blessing, and rightly so, if it can solve the problem of GHG overhang, could turn into a problem precisely because it was responding to profit without any reflection of the external costs it might create.
Robert Tulip wrote:Bill McKibben argues in this superb new free access NYRB piece, A Future without Fossil Fuels, technology is fast making fossil fuels obsolete.
It is indeed an impressive piece of reporting. The foreseeable effect on development of the poor countries is enormous, and the financial impacts are looming large already. His review of the way the financial effects work is deft and insightful, although he probably should have taken account of the financial overexposure of US banks to fracking speculation.
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/arti ... l-tremors/
https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/04/18/f ... ing-bubble
https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/21/investin ... index.html
I would quibble with one point. He argues that assets which cannot pay for their investment cost will continue operating because of bank pressures. This misses the point. The company might write down the value of a coal plant made obsolescent by solar, right down to zero, but that doesn't mean that the operating costs of continuing to burn fossil fuels (whose prices have also been driven down by the same forces) is not worthwhile. Once the capital cost is sunk, it doesn't factor in the the calculation as to how to generate the electricity. The power company at that point is comparing operating costs alone for fossil fuel against capital plus operating costs of bringing solar online.
Robert Tulip wrote:
DWill wrote: It's a two-pronged attack. Relying only on CR would be just as futile as relying only on reduction.
No, that is not right. CR could potentially scale up to removal of 80 GTC/Y, enabling return to Holocene stability, whereas at best emission reduction can scale up to about two or three GTC/Y in the next few years, given the inertia in the fossil system. They are orders of magnitude different in effect.
Well, but to repeat a point I have made before, this premise assumes its conclusion. Both need to be pursued, with incentives to reflect true system costs and benefits, because what CR could potentially do is still a hope, without any basis for claiming all the uncertainty is under control.
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Re: Poll: What to do about climate change?

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Robert Tulip wrote: Reducing emissions and removing carbon are necessary but not sufficient, as I explain in my analogy above drawn from Leonardo Da Vinci of Gaia as facing impending cardiac arrest.
Wait, I thought that carbon removal was pretty much your answer to the problem, with emission reduction being not even really necessary. What am I missing?
Robert Tulip wrote:
DWill wrote: The problem with this combo, I suppose, is that it might confuse the public. If we're going to remove the carbon, then do we even need to reduce emissions? Of course, we do.
This is actually a very complex political and technical argument. Logically, with world emissions at 10 gigatonnes of carbon per year (GTC/Y), if we work out how to remove 20 GTC/Y then we can keep adding ten and still make progress toward climate restoration. I suspect that level of emissions will not continue though.
Isn't there something about reducing emissions that makes it a more practical goal for local, state, even national governments? That quality doesn't speak to the effectiveness of ER in achieving the needing lower carbon concentrations in the atmosphere, but it does explain why it has been the go-to solution, as contrasted with public investment in carbon removal installations. Well, I know you say that CR can offset its costs by selling the carbon removed, but that has to be seen as speculative at this point. The collective "we" is a valuable element in the battle. It's there to some degree regarding emissions reduction campaigns, but it's absent when it comes to CR. Even after the technology to remove carbon at scale has arrived, what country is going to undertake the expense of erecting it, when the costs will be borne by that country but the rest of countries would be free riders?
Bill McKibben argues in this superb new free access NYRB piece, A Future without Fossil Fuels technology is fast making fossil fuels obsolete. That makes me think the public investment focus should be on reflecting sunlight and removing carbon as a security agenda, leaving the rise of renewables to market forces.
Again, the problem of the world acting together on the security issue. The treaty on chlorofluorocarbons would seem to be a possible model, but climate change action requires so much more than switching to different refrigerants did with regard to the ozone hole. But I agree that McKibben makes a good case that we won't need to actually face peak oil before oil peaks as the stuff we use to run the economy.
Robert Tulip wrote:
DWill wrote: It's a two-pronged attack. Relying only on CR would be just as futile as relying only on reduction.
No, that is not right. CR could potentially scale up to removal of 80 GTC/Y, enabling return to Holocene stability, whereas at best emission reduction can scale up to about two or three GTC/Y in the next few years, given the inertia in the fossil system. They are orders of magnitude different in effect.
I mean that emissions reduction is what we get as we are switching to renewables, as in any scenario we must. Say we did shovel all our effort into CR. If we decarbonized the atmosphere, great, but we'd soon not have enough energy to have much of an economy (because then we'd face peak oil). So I think you are also assuming that we'd be massively investing in ocean algae farming as the big renewable that would also remove carbon. The possible barriers to that happening are many, but I don't mean to poo-poo it.
Robert tulip wrote:
DWill wrote:The point I see as crucial but don't often see recognized, is that zero-emission energy is a necessary goal because it may be only for the next 80 years that we have anything to burn!
It might even emerge that fossil fuels are more valuable as petrochemicals than as fuel, which will make burning them uneconomic, even leaving aside the warming effect.
No doubt fossil fuels will continue to be valuable for making plastic. It was interesting for me to learn that with a relatively small amount of hydrocarbons, we can make all the plastic we're likely to need, especially as we engineer plastics that can be infinitely recycled. We now divert about 8% of oil production to petrochemicals.
The 'bugle call' we need today is net zero by 2030, expanding global carbon removal to the same scale as total emissions. That will basically achieve a circular economy. In my view the most interesting circular economy idea is biochar, storing carbon in soil as fertilizer, and getting the carbon from algae.
Circular economy means all sorts of other things, of course, and perceived usefulness doesn't always translate to economic value. I hope that for biochar, it will. Before you started talking about it, I wasn't aware of biochar or its potential.
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Re: Poll: What to do about climate change?

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geo wrote:If we are to find solutions to climate change, I agree we will need something like a Great Awakening.
The Gaian Great Awakening needed today is a reconciliation of science and religion, recognising that life is intimately connected to the emerging order of the cosmos, placing culture within nature. My view is that humanity is on a disorderly trajectory towards collapse, due to systemic errors in prevailing thought. We face a psychology of chaos, with supernatural religious belief creating mass delusion, enabling a path of fantasy, and yet modern science lacks the story to change direction.

Changing this trajectory requires a new paradigm. The fact that we do not have a coherent public conversation about climate change is evidence of the inability to overcome the extreme tribal polarisation of political worldviews. A new Great Awakening will need to draw in elements from the different sides, accepting the Christian mythos while entirely rebasing it in the modern ethical framework of evidence and logic.
geo wrote: Being aware of our own personal footprint might help us see the larger context of climate change.
The context of climate change is the problem of how to switch from disorderly chaos to a vision of scientific order as the basis of planetary civilization. My view on how Christianity can assist that process draws from the myth of the last judgement, the idea from Matthew 25:31-44 that providing food, drink, health, freedom, friendship, material conditions and solidarity is the entire basis of human salvation. This is a transformative vision of the purpose of religion that intimately links to personal climate footprint as the empirical measure of existential reality.

The connection to the larger context of climate change reflects the hierarchy of needs, that we need a sociology before we can construct a cosmology. In this way of seeing things, the sociology is the material basis of salvation, while the cosmology is about the planetary trajectory, seeing the earth in astronomical terms as a circular economy, grounded in the orbital systems that provide the long term basis for natural climate change.

This cohesive vision connects the personal to the cosmic through the alarming observation that we are all in this together and the current trends are very bad. In natural climate change seen in the geological record, feedback amplifiers far tinier than fossil fuel emissions have produced planetary effects vastly bigger than the warming we have seen to date, so we need to get real about practical geoengineering as the only basis to stabilise the planetary economy.
geo wrote: It's interesting to see how recycling has become so widespread in the last ten years or so. Most of us who dutifully separate our garbage from our recycling might consider that our parents and grandparents probably produced vastly less garbage than we do today.
Recycling is essentially a religious ethical habit, grounded in the sense that waste is evil, with the circular economy faith that we have a moral duty to convert all our waste to assets.
geo wrote: Almost everything we buy today is encased in plastic. We are somewhat blind to how much consumerism has taken over our lives. I don't pretend to know the answers, but perhaps the bigger movement arises from a grass roots which arises from a sense of personal awareness and responsibility.
There is a cascading perception of duty. Our sense of personal duty in reducing waste at home generates a psychology and politics and philosophy that asks why and how our society can have such a wasteful mentality as to treat the air as an open sewer, with heedless indifference to the good of the future. The best line in the Bible on this whole observation of planetary duty is from the Apocalypse, that the wrath of God is against those who destroy the earth. (Rev 11:18)
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DWill wrote:I might question whether the analogy with religious revivalism in the 19th Century really leads to any kind of action model for fighting climate change. What matters is only that we stop a certain behavior, i.e., using the atmosphere as a waste sink.
All intentional action is based on thought. Our conscious intentions are formed in language, creating a story about what is real and valuable. Only by changing this story can we change the actions that it causes. Philosophy is the basis of politics. A new enlightenment, a synthesis of faith and reason, is the only thing that will generate the public conversations on strategies for our common planetary future.
DWill wrote:It's hard for me to see how heightened consciousness can be a lever for accomplishing that task. Are there any historical instances we can cite of such psychological events making the kind of difference we need?
Well, Keynes did say ‘Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.’

That is a cynical cautionary economist view on the unconscious relation between thought and action, which also indicates the psychological basis of sound action in correct thought. My view is that the biggest challenge, while avoiding what Keynes called frenzy, is to distil an ethical theory of reality from systematic philosophy.

Speaking of historical instances of the influence of theory, the entire history of socialism is an effort to implement Marx’s theory of class war, while Adam Smith’s theory of market forces helped enable the immense prosperity generated by modern capitalism. My view is that placing both those ideas within the larger framework provided by Christian theology is essential to generate the needed reforms of climate policy. I am not suggesting the traditional form of Christian revival, but rather a complete transformation of the nature of faith to reconcile with reason.
DWill wrote:Looking at my own situation, what would an awakening of consciousness look like? I can't picture it, but how would it change anything, anyway, unless as a result of it I renounced just about every advantage I have? Just by being a North American with a middle-class income, a house, two cars, traveling by air occasionally, etc., my footprint is at least twice the world average. Am I going to drop out of all of that? No, I don't think so. All the people in my life would be upset, for one thing, but I also would find it very difficult to do. And it would not feel virtuous, rather desperate instead.
Middle class Americans are actually in the top 1% of world income. In 2013 the world median income was $8 per day. So “twice the world average” would still leave you rather desperate. But that is okay, if you can use your privileged situation to develop ideas about how to transform the earth, for example through industrial systems that transform waste into assets. Vows of poverty are self-indulgent against that planetary metric. New ideas can only come from people with the time and freedom and ability and resources to develop them.
DWill wrote:So the radical restructuring of economic life that many people are talking about, some of it under the heading of circular economy, is about all I can see as a possibility, and even that faces long odds. It's likely that "people like me" will need to become the exception before very long, resist that reality though I will. There is some hope in the changing expectations of the youngest adults, who care less about owning things than my generation did, cars and houses, for example. Whether that lesser interest is enough to start to make a major difference, I don't know.
A friend recently pointed out to me that annual economic growth of 3% would lift consumption by 18 times over a century. He argued that was unimaginable on a world scale. My view is that if we think of production in terms of energy, such a massive increase in wealth is ecologically possible, and could actually provide the basis to protect biodiversity and regulate planetary temperature, enabling total recycling of everything to maximise value.

Remember the sun pumps out two billion times as much energy as hits the earth, and the ocean has more than a billion cubic kilometres of water, so the potential scale of future energy use is huge.
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Re: Poll: What to do about climate change?

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Harry Marks wrote:I voted for a carbon tax because it brings all the others in its wake.
A carbon tax addresses future emissions but does little about the committed warming from past emissions. Questions about a carbon tax include the speed of its effect on temperature, and the risk, shared with all climate measures, of political delay. Committed warming is already big, and can only be removed by the combination of solar reflection and carbon removal. Taxing carbon does nothing to remove the four Hiroshima bomb equivalents per second of heat that we have been adding to the planet, but only stops future heat. Getting rid of that timebomb of stored heat requires geoengineering. Unfortunately, the USA has just vetoed UN analysis of geoengineering status.
Harry Marks wrote: Robert makes a cogent argument that removing carbon is needed, but a reasonable carbon tax will create incentives to remove carbon, and thus, as usual in economic policy, recognizing reality in the form of prices will motivate many smart and effective people in a way that central decisions will not.
I would like to see carbon taxes introduced alongside what you call central decisions. Using the moon shot and atom bomb models, governments have a key role in directly mobilising resources to prevent warming as a security emergency. The oil and gas industry has to be forced to invest in carbon removal and direct cooling, and it is likely that such investment could only occur as a deductible against a carbon tax.
Harry Marks wrote:Likewise, many environmentalists argue that we need to learn to be at one with our environment and quit with the extractive mentality. All well and good, I say, but until the revolution has come, do we have to have a scorched earth as the price for people's slow response?
The idea of atoning for sin by ending an extractive mentality is far too superficial. It is true that the attitude that assumes resources are infinite is morally evil, and has no place in the circular economy of the future in which all waste must be seen as the basis of new assets. However, the transformation of metal from ore to technology is the basis of civilized wealth, and ongoing investment is necessary for metal exploration and extraction, if not for fossil fuel exploration.
Harry Marks wrote: The pent-up destruction is already almost unbearable, and if we recognize that it will be twice as bad by the time it is undeniable and obviously urgent, then putting our faith in a radical change in culture just looks like eco-cide.
In fact, the pent-up destruction caused by committed warming is already incompatible with ongoing global stability, so must be defused as a matter of urgent priority. This destruction is already scientifically undeniable, so there is no excuse for delay on geoengineering, which is the only way to defuse it.

Your point about “faith in a radical change in culture” is highly complex. Geoengineering research and development can proceed in a way that is decoupled from any radical social change, addressing climate as a purely technical problem. However, the barriers to approving such technical investment are cultural, and will only be overcome through political analysis, including discussion of radical change in culture.

Emission reduction equally involves a faith in a radical change in culture, with the dubious assumption that social engineering is easier than mechanical engineering. I would like to see real engineers tasked to get on with research on saving the planet with all technical options properly addressed, without holding that process hostage to any social theories.
Harry Marks wrote: We have a lot of experience to show that corporate capitalism can work wonders to clean the environment, but will only do so if the incentives are present. Yet so far we have done close to zilch to provide such incentives.
Failure to agree on climate action illustrates how the emission reduction hypothesis of decarbonisation involves dubious political assumptions which have generated a massive backlash including the election of Trump. I think it is essential to partly separate climate politics from hostility to conservative social and economic values, in order to work in partnership with corporate capitalism, aiming for a bipartisan approach. That may involve an easing of pressure for emission reduction, if it can be proven that carbon removal does the same job better. Carbon tax can be minimised through a shift of corporate investment focus to geoengineering deployment. I see that as the model to provide market incentives to fix the climate.
Harry Marks wrote: Why waste breath haranguing individuals to change their wicked ways when the really efficient changes require large-scale coordinated technical efforts, rather than goodness of consumers' hearts? (Invisible hand, and all that.)
There is an element of walking and chewing gum here. Debate about social values for a circular economy can occur alongside the industrial investment that will actually fix the climate.
Harry Marks wrote: Among the many forecastable effects of incentives would be serious efforts to remove carbon, and probably some pretty efficient measures to use it commercially.
Very true. I continue to advocate what I call the Seven F benefits of large scale ocean based algae production – food, fuel, feed, fertilizer, fish, forests and fabric - aiming to make carbon removal the major new profitable industry of this century. All these products and more involve converting carbon from waste to asset. A high carbon economy can set a trajectory to regulate planetary temperature by mining carbon from the air.

The Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, Guy Debelle, gave quite a good speech last week on recognising climate trends - Climate Change and the Economy.
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Re: Poll: What to do about climate change?

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IMHO....the whole climate change fiasco is a hoax. Of course the climate changes. It's been changing since the dawn of creation. You would think that during the ice age if man were capable, I guess he would have tried to prevent the ice age, but it seems we turned out alright without man's shenanigans. From the words of a very interesting article:

Similarly, people are manipulated and deceived regarding dire climate change/global warming reports.
This hysteria and apocalyptic fear mongering reminds many of the 1970 Earth Day predictions that fizzled like a firecracker:
-End of civilization in 15-30 years
-100-200 million deaths to starvation yearly for 10 years
-A new ice age by 2000


Here are Al Gore's prediction that flopped!
1. Rising Sea Levels – inaccurate and misleading. Al was even discovered
purchasing a beachfront mansion!
2. Increased Tornadoes – declining for decades.
3. New Ice Age in Europe – they’ve been spared; it never happened.
4. South Sahara Drying Up – completely untrue.
5. Massive Flooding in China and India – again didn’t happen.
6. Melting Arctic – false – 2015 represents the largest refreezing in years.
7. Polar Bear Extinction – actually they are increasing!
8. Temperature Increases Due to CO2 – no significant rising for over 18 years.
9. Katrina a Foreshadow of the Future – false – past 10 years, no F3 hurricanes; “longest drought ever!”
10. The Earth Would be in a “True Planetary Emergency” Within a Decade Unless Drastic Action Taken to Reduce Greenhouse Gasses – never happened.


Do I believe that we should be doing things to help our most important asset the earth? Of course! I recycle, only use biodegradable plastic, luckily I'm in an area where I rarely (if ever) have to drive, and so on. BUT...the earth is a living entity that makes "natural" shifts that man can do nothing about. I can imagine if humankind could they would get rid of the sun and replace it with a huge LED light. The climate change hysteria is simply another way to control the masses and charge a new tax "a carbon footprint tax." The best thing to to is prepare, but change it....I don't think so. Just my opinion....!

A new map emerged showing how today's countries looked 300 million years ago when they were locked in one giant land mass:

Image
The landmass of the earth will change again. Who knows where Japan, New York, or Australia will be geographically in 100-1000 years? One thing is for sure. "Everything will change, nothing stays the same. The young become the old, and mysteries eventually do unfold" Enjoy your life! :RockOn:
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Re: Poll: What to do about climate change?

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geo wrote: Mary Midgley, a British philosopher, saw the Gaia "theory" as a useful myth for our times.
Midgely’s 2001 article ‘Gaia – The Next Big Idea’ is available at demos.co.uk. She explores how reverence for the Earth as sacred, as a self-organising system maintaining conditions in which life can exist, is a new holistic mental model for our place in the world, overcoming the pervasive way of thinking which separates us from the world, and different parts of the world from each other.

This new thinking should be central to climate policy. However, the way this Gaia line of thought is derided and mocked by the mainstream mentality that is destroying the earth directly demonstrates the stumbling block preventing climate action.

The modern detached fragmented vision of the scientific and commercial individual finds the integration of the Gaia theory unacceptably mystical. Yet such an integrated vision is required to understand the science of homeostasis, the ability of complex systems to maintain stability. Just as health of the human body must be diagnosed at the level of the organism, so too must the planet be studied as a unitary whole.

That planetary perspective means to live as a part of nature, not apart from nature, a paradigm shift that is still only gradually percolating through prevailing thought, and whose implications for climate and commerce are still weakly understood.

Wholistic thinking is a theme that I wrote about in my Masters Thesis, where I argued that the Cartesian mentality of western science is intrinsically defective in its failure to see things in a relational way, its inability to think about how everything is linked to everything else.

Midgely notes that this conceptual gulf appears in the abusive attitude of science towards wholistic thinking. She sees the idea of Gaia as not only useful but as scientifically necessary. She poses the problem of Gaian thinking as “the increasingly urgent question of intrinsic value. We must learn how to value various aspects of our environment, how to structure social relationships and institutions so that we value social and spiritual life, as well as the natural world, alongside commercial and economic aspects.”
Harry Marks wrote:Like most mythos, [the Gaia theory] is not a description or an explanation but rather a motivational narrative.
On the contrary, Lovelock presents planetary homeostasis, the scientific basis of the Gaia theory, as a descriptive explanation of how global systems have maintained stability. You are right that the importance is motivational, but this simply shows how the myth of Gaia as earth goddess bases its theory of value on facts.

Linking to the theme here of how to maintain climate stability, the geoengineering view is Gaian in seeing warming as a chemical imbalance of the biosphere that can be remedied to some extent by addition of sulphur, iron and salt to the air where these are deficient for planetary health. Geoengineering, as a sound philosophy, must extend the core Gaian principle that life regulates the composition of the atmosphere to maintain dynamic stability through the use of technological methods.

Midgely observes that coal, oil and chalk are storehouses of carbon removed from the air by life, and that biofeedback stopped the earth from heating up as the sun heated over the last billion years. The implication now for climate science is that these biofeedback principles must now be employed with technological acceleration to use living systems to store carbon to prevent dangerous warming.
Harry Marks wrote: If people can see themselves as part of an adjustment process that all of nature shares, they may be influenced both to think less extractively toward nature and to feel more reflective and capable about formulating a conscious, deliberate response.
This concept of extractive thinking is deeply embedded in Western culture, and especially in the American pioneer mentality of the endless frontier. The Biblical tradition of imagining God as a personal supernatural creator who blesses human dominion over the earth has the perverse consequence of justifying the extractive mentality of alienation from the earth.

By seeing spirit as superior to nature, and by imagining that our real heavenly home in the afterlife is infinite and eternal, superior to the finite temporal conditions of life on earth, traditional religion supports the wide and easy path of destruction. That is not to attack religion as such, only to say religion should return to its authentic origins, for example by thinking scientifically about what the hard and narrow path of salvation proposed in the Bible might mean in evolutionary terms.

We are now riding the tiger of extraction, constantly extracting more to sustain prosperity. Carbon removal as a climate response offers the key way to shift from the destruction inherent in extractive thinking, repurposing carbon dioxide from waste to asset to enable a circular economy with enduring value.
Harry Marks wrote: I rather suspect most mythos narratives for our time will have to combine some element of scientific understanding with some way of helping us feel good about being part of larger mechanisms of causality.
Now Harry you are making me think I should add a seventh category to the poll, to say the top climate priority is a change of thinking. How I see what you call a mythos narrative as emerging now is to make science the foundation, and to build upon scientific knowledge a systematic story of meaning that is grounded in religious tradition, looking especially at the Christian Gospel story to see Jesus Christ as an authentic existential hero presenting the path to a transformed and evolved consciousness.
Harry Marks wrote: A simple example might be rejecting the use of genetic modification for purposes of enhancement of the powers of biologically normal people (which the college admissions scandal does not give a lot of hope for – but at least the value will be part of some mythic narrative).
There are so many sick values that our consumer society endorses – envy, vanity, inequality, appearance, fantasy, exclusion. This gene tampering example you give supports the model of a tiny elite locking themselves away from the suffering masses. I simply do not think such a mentality will remain politically feasible.
Harry Marks wrote: If people get used to monitoring their own footprint, then it will be much more meaningful to them if their power company does something to substantially reduce that footprint.
We are shifting towards a planetary moral vision in which waste is seen as a primary sin, so people do see the end results of their actions as morally relevant. Monitoring your personal ecological footprint involves minimising waste, supporting the vision of the circular economy, where all waste is transformed to asset. That can only transform our theory of value as governments move to regulate corporate activity to ensure that externalities are incorporated into profit and loss results.

By the way, I had a chat with my astronomer friends about my previous comment about the sun pumping out two billion times more energy than hits the earth, and this has actually been quite extensively studied by no less than Freeman Dyson, hence the Dyson Sphere.
Last edited by Robert Tulip on Thu Mar 21, 2019 8:48 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Poll: What to do about climate change?

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PJPross wrote:IMHO....the whole climate change fiasco is a hoax. Of course the climate changes. It's been changing since the dawn of creation. You would think that during the ice age if man were capable, I guess he would have tried to prevent the ice age, but it seems we turned out alright without man's shenanigans.

Well, that's wishful thinking for you. Man's shenanigans won't have any impact. Why? because, well, because, well, because that would be no fun at all, and anyway bad things happen randomly so this must be just random.

We have a single prediction about the effect of rising CO2, with no basis for thinking the opposite might be the result and plenty of verification both in the lab and in the atmosphere. We have several specific implications which have been verified, including the cooling of the upper atmosphere (because re-radiation is impeded by GHG's) and the largest warming effect coming at night, when sunlight is not impacting the atmosphere. And we have the gradual but extremely persistent result of rising temperatures occurring as predicted. The fact that not every prediction has been exactly realized in the center of the uncertainty bands is taken as essential refutation by those who would, for whatever reason, deny the process. No scientists take such motivated reasoning seriously.

PJPross wrote:From the words of a very interesting article:

Similarly, people are manipulated and deceived regarding dire climate change/global warming reports.
This hysteria and apocalyptic fear mongering reminds many of the 1970 Earth Day predictions that fizzled like a firecracker:
-End of civilization in 15-30 years
I see. A. Some environmentalists make apocalyptic predictions that turn out not to be based in a very accurate picture of things, so B. All apocalyptic predictions by environmentalists must be hysterical, unscientific and useless. It would be smarter to address the specifics, which numerous analysts did with the predictions you cite. Within just a few years people had very strong reason to doubt every one of the predictions you cite, but the same has not been true of global warming and climate change. In fact not a single scientific alternative has been proposed that comes even close to explaining the facts we have, which are within the uncertainty bands laid out from the beginning of the climate modeling that verified the process.
PJPross wrote:1. Rising Sea Levels – inaccurate and misleading. Al was even discovered
purchasing a beachfront mansion!
Tell it to the government of Mauritius or the Mayor of Miami. High tide floods are coming up from the ground in these and other places where they were unknown 50 years ago.
PJPross wrote:2. Increased Tornadoes – declining for decades.
I'm not aware of this claim nor of evidence that tornadoes have been declining. A quick tour of Google sources reported several studies finding tornado activity rising or inconclusive, but none finding that they are falling. And the most recent was:
https://news.uchicago.edu/story/large-s ... tudy-finds
PJPross wrote:3. New Ice Age in Europe – they’ve been spared; it never happened.
That's a fictional prediction. The prediction of increased spread of the polar vortex, so an increase in freezing days during winter, has in fact been confirmed. Given that it is counterintuitive but predicted by climate modeling, ordinary people should sit up and take notice. But what fun would that be?
PJPross wrote:4. South Sahara Drying Up – completely untrue.
Having just spent 3 years in West Africa, I can tell you that people in the vulnerable Sahel region at the Southern border of the Sahara are quite aware that they are facing increasing drought. You can examine data on the World Bank site,
https://climateknowledgeportal.worldban ... historical
It requires "explore further" to get the historical comparisons, but I looked at just two countries, Somalia and Mali, and the rainfall looks about the same but the temperature is higher, comparing the recent data (1991-2016) to the long-term average, (1901-2016). Ask any farmer what the result of that would be.
PJPross wrote:5. Massive Flooding in China and India – again didn’t happen.
Again I am unfamiliar either with this forecast or with the data, but there have been plenty of devastating floods in China and India in the last 30 years.
PJPross wrote:6. Melting Arctic – false – 2015 represents the largest refreezing in years.
This is totally a lie. The melting of the Artic ice is clear and clearly documented. The largest refreezing may be true, since it started from a lower base of end-summer ice, and the sea temperatures have not changed even by as much as the air temperatures, but it does not in any way refute the retreat of the Arctic ice in summers.
PJPross wrote:8. Temperature Increases Due to CO2 – no significant rising for over 18 years.
Don't you love weasel words like "significant"? Even in the middle of the "pause" the temperatures were rising, and now the pause is over (one can guess the approximate date of your "interesting article" from that claim) and the temperatures are rising fairly rapidly again. As Robert has recently documented here, the temperatures observed are completely out of any range of previous fluctuations on such a brief time scale. There is no forcing function other than human-generated GHG which can plausibly come close to explaining the data.
PJPross wrote:9. Katrina a Foreshadow of the Future – false – past 10 years, no F3 hurricanes; “longest drought ever!”
Might check that again. Does "Harvey" mean anything to you? Have you heard what hit Puerto Rico last year? [Edit for accuracy: 2017]. If you really want to understand the world, check out what the weather has been doing in Honduras, Nicaragua and Guatemala in the last 10 years, and then see if you can connect the dots to desperate peasants heading north.
PJPross wrote:10. The Earth Would be in a “True Planetary Emergency” Within a Decade Unless Drastic Action Taken to Reduce Greenhouse Gasses – never happened.
Again I am not familiar with that prediction, but the GHG induced drought in Syria was a strong contributing factor to the Civil War there, whose refugees have driven the political upheaval in Europe. As the Middle East and Indian Ocean continue to get hotter each year, you can expect more desperation-driven conflict and more ostrich behavior in the rich countries blaming it all on "those people".
PJPross wrote: The climate change hysteria is simply another way to control the masses and charge a new tax "a carbon footprint tax." The best thing to to is prepare, but change it....I don't think so. Just my opinion....!
Unfortunately for all of us, the physical processes of the earth don't care a bit about your opinion (or mine). You can spout paranoia about "controlling the masses" for as long as Exxon tells you to, but it isn't going to get those temperatures back down.
PJPross wrote:A new map emerged showing how today's countries looked 300 million years ago
Who knows where Japan, New York, or Australia will be geographically in 100-1000 years?
Please try to pay attention to the difference in time scale.
PJPross wrote:Enjoy your life!
Enjoy your trolling. But don't expect to be taken seriously by those who really do care about Planet A.
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Re: Poll: What to do about climate change?

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Harry Marks wrote:
Enjoy your trolling. But don't expect to be taken seriously by those who really do care about Planet A.
:calmdown: :yourpoint: ...Unfortunately for you, your diatribe doesn't change the "truth" that climate change is a hoax and simply another way to try and control the populace. What's more, if you take caring about the planet seriously then you would realize that the earth will continue on its course despite man's approval or disapproval and there's little you or anyone else can do about it. Which basically reveals how vulnerable we (regardless of the relentless bravado) are against "nature." Each of us are just passing through this earth and none of us will live to see the dramatic transformation of the earth that it performs "organically." The "hoaxers" always predict decades for these earthly changes to manifest in order to keep the masses under control. As I wrote, the earth's changes are organic and the transformations occurring now started 100s of years ago.

Climate change loonies also believe that carbon dioxide is bad for the planet and will make everything die. If you check the process of photosynthesis you will see how it works. Photosynthesis uses carbon dioxide to create energy, metabolic energy for plants. It's their food! I mean why are leaves green? Because leaves contain chlorophyll which is used for photosynthesis. Why is the grass green? Yet, the leftist-climate change believers say that there is not enough rain forest anymore but claim carbon dioxide is bad. So, if lefties want more rain forest why are these delusional individuals at war with carbon dioxide? The rain forest needs more carbon dioxide in order to flourish. You see how backward thinking deranged climate change believers are? Or, maybe you don't as you are one of them!

Should we stop using so much plastic?....YES. Should we cut down on gas emissions?...YES. Should we take better care of the Fukushima nuclear waste that is destroying the Pacific Ocean?...YES. However, even if these things weren't happening, the earth goes through a "natural" rebirth...Get It? In other words, if we discontinue the pollution we are causing now, it will make a difference as the earth has the ability to rejuvenate. But it won't change the earth's natural course of metamorphoses. In your zeal to try and prove a point, you totally "missed the point." Man didn't create this world and if you truly care about the planet you will work on the delusions going on in your head. You probably believe the earth is flat and that the "New Green Plan" from the asinine Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is brilliant! :laugh: As you are the REAL troll here, I'm sure you can't comprehend my words. Anyway, have a nice day. I'm not going back-and-forth with you. "I don't have to argue truth....I live it." GOOD BYE :bye:
Last edited by PJPross on Fri Mar 22, 2019 10:37 am, edited 2 times in total.
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