Robert Tulip wrote: There are a series of major stumbling blocks in the climate debate which appear to be taboo, and which I think result from the fact that climate change is presented through the intensely political lens of emission reduction.

In practice, emission reduction means the assumption that humans are using too much energy and need to use less, as though we are approaching some sort of physical limit. The unspoken implication, among some of the climate lobby, is that our planet is above its carrying capacity for humans and we need to kill off a few billion people to save the planet.

What is wrong with emissions reduction being political? The current, negative sense in which you use the word implies factions fighting for ascendency against each other. You may believe there exists a worldwide environmentalist cabal, bent on emissions reduction, whose real aim is socialistic control of economies, but I'm not with you there and think that no evidence supports that notion. Assuredly, emission reduction will take political work of a very high magnitude.

No one has even implied killing off billions of people because we already use too much energy. If you're referring to population limits, that's obviously not killing people.

Such an outlook is obviously morally repugnant so never gets asserted directly, but it seems to be at the background of the debate, poisoning the well for a sensible conversation about how ecology and growth could become compatible.

If you change physics, perhaps. Unlimited energy use by one species has to negatively affect the others. While I'm sympathetic to win-win scenarios, there needs to be reasonable accommodation on each side. On one side we have the single species, homo sapiens, placing no limits in itself, while on the other is the millions of the rest of species, playing by natural rules that make them perfectly accommodating..

The idea that environmental concerns could be addressed outside the framework of climate change is wrong. Global warming is the primary environmental disrupter for our planet. When there is an elephant in the room, it will dominate the conversation.

The presence of high level of toxins in animals living in the deepest, coldest places in the oceans shows that your perspective is clearly wrong. Such an environmental problem is "outside the framework of climate change." So is one such as high levels of lead in public water systems. But there are many others as well.

Robert Tulip wrote:

DWill wrote:There remain huge questions of resource use and species preservation outside of the problem of global warming.

No there are not. All these huge questions are inside the problem of global warming, not outside it.

Again, I strongly disagree. Our species was living off environmental capital long before the era of global warming, with effects that were bad, but they were felt moe on the local level. Now that there are 7 billion of us, the effects can go global.

Robert Tulip wrote:

DWill wrote:Envisioning a human population of 50 bilion people is to write the death sentence for thousands of species, even if the planet didn't warm by a single degree.

My view is that humanity should move to the sea, building floating cities at massive scale. Saying the planet could support fifty billion is a way to try to shake open the very unhealthy and sclerotic conversation about population, which is indoctrinating young people in liberal circles into the insane idea that having children is evil.

If you object to politics in emissions reduction, that's nothing at all compared to the politics of forcing people off land masses. That would require totalitarian world government--unless we've reached such a point of desperation that there seemed to be no choice. That, however, is not the planned and orderly process you think can happen.

There is so much abundant material in the ocean that we could shift to a sustainable economy, vastly bigger than the current world total, and still give back much farmland and forest on earth to managed wilderness and biodiversity. My view is that this is the decisive step needed to prevent human extinction, since failing to cross the threshold of the blue frontier is a recipe for conflict and collapse.

Then I'd have to say, sadly perhaps, that this all is simply outside the realm of the possible.

DWill wrote:What is wrong with emissions reduction being political?

This question gets to the heart of why I like Trump. The problem with climate change is how we model an economic scenario for future planetary stability and security. The rival scenarios are pro capitalist, based on technological ingenuity, and anti capitalist, based on government leading the way.

My view is that the most coherent capitalist vision clashes with the entire scenario that claims emission reduction is the only way to stabilise the climate. A capitalist entrepreneurial model for climate stability could start with the idea that the only practical way to stop climate disaster is to convert emissions into useful products. Emission conversion is the answer, rather than to reduce emissions. Under that conversion model, alliance with the fossil fuel industry is the key to fixing the climate.

The fossil fuel producers should have a material incentive to sustain their business model in a world of changing technology, by adopting game changing methods, as Kodak failed to do. Neither emission reduction nor runaway emissions will deliver climate stability, and the only people able to manage emission conversion are the ones responsible for the emissions in the first place, the fossil fuel industry.

The problem with emission reduction being political is that it sets up a false moral vision whereby emitters are imagined as evil and governments are seen as good, so political regulation is given the job of saving the world from the wicked capitalists. That is the liberal 'socogony' that Trump voters rebel against. Given how industrial energy supports all modern human achievement, the liberal moral scheme positing growth as bad is a dangerous delusion. Don't pick a fight you can't win.

DWill wrote:The current, negative sense in which you use the word [political] implies factions fighting for ascendancy against each other.

Yes, and that is exactly what is occurring with Trump’s assault on climate science, an assault which is a populist reaction to the political overplay of the Paris Agreement which portrayed the fossil fuel industry as evil. America relies in a big way on fossil fuels, so what you call a “fight for ascendancy” is not going to be won by pointy-heads who don’t get politics.

DWill wrote:You may believe there exists a worldwide environmentalist cabal, bent on emissions reduction, whose real aim is socialistic control of economies, but I'm not with you there and think that no evidence supports that notion.

When I see people asserting claims of conspiracy theory, as you are doing here, I look at how the perceived conspiracy may represent a misunderstanding. The caricature that you describe is actually how many Trumpites think.

There is no secret Bolshevite spectre aiming to impose a climate dictatorship. Rather, what you call the “worldwide environmentalist cabal” are pursuing policies of emission reduction which they see as compatible with market economics and incentives. However, the problem is that these policies would result in an undue level of government control of society, even though such control is not their conscious primary motive.

A conspiracy or cabal requires deliberate conscious intent, whereas the situation for climate policy is that the big government component of emission reduction is seen by environmentalists as only a secondary consequence, not a primary driver. Unfortunately, the Trumpites see the spectre of big government as a primary threat, and view emission reduction through that threatening prism.

DWill wrote: Assuredly, emission reduction will take political work of a very high magnitude.

Not just political work, but scientific work, to persuade voters and policy makers that emission reduction is economically feasible. I do not think that case has been made, or that it can be made. That is why I say forget emission reduction, and aim instead to remove double the amount of carbon we add so the economy can keep emitting carbon and the fossil fuel industry can get on board with actions to save the climate, in a world where carbon is used for mass infrastructure. Claiming that emission reduction can become a compelling political idea is barking at the moon. It has been weighed in the balance and found wanting.

DWill wrote: No one has even implied killing off billions of people because we already use too much energy. If you're referring to population limits, that's obviously not killing people.

The Population Bomb by Paul and Anne Ehrlich, published in 1968, began with the statement: “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate.”

Even though the Ehrlichs were alarmist, their antinatal meme has entered the popular imagination in the rich world in a big way, not to promote apocalyptic slaughter like the blood up to the bridle of Rev 14:20, but to convince people that bringing children into this world is morally suspect.

DWill wrote: Unlimited energy use by one species has to negatively affect the others.

We are nowhere near the real limits of energy use. Industrial algae farms on one percent of the world ocean would solve global warming and provide super abundant energy, also enabling the fossil fuel industries to become sustainable. Using many magnitudes more energy is essential to preserve biodiversity.

Your comment reminds me of Bill Gates’ alleged 1981 comment about computer RAM that "640K ought to be enough for anybody." The 4GB figure now common is something like seven orders of magnitude more than the situation forty years ago. Similar transformation in energy use is conceivable.

DWill wrote:While I'm sympathetic to win-win scenarios, there needs to be reasonable accommodation on each side.

Carbon mining is a win-win, but there is no accommodation from the carbonistas of Paris, who just loathe and detest geoengineering as a Satanic monstrosity, with the UN Convention on Biological Diversity going so far as to issue a fatwa demanding “that no climate-related geo-engineering activities** that may affect biodiversity take place.”

DWill wrote:On one side we have the single species, homo sapiens, placing no limits in itself, while on the other is the millions of the rest of species, playing by natural rules that make them perfectly accommodating.

Yes, human civilization has pushed up against the boundaries of the global commons, but that does not at all justify your “no limits” comment. Britain produces vastly more agriculture than its commons did in medieval days. We have physical planetary limits, but a paradigm shift in technology can show that those limits are actually vastly greater than our current total resource use.

We are nowhere near exploiting the potential of the billion cubic kilometres of the world ocean, something that would radically ease the environmental pressure on biodiversity. Failure to manage the commons, especially in the world oceans, is the big threat to the millions of the rest of species. Just as gasoline has triple the unit energy of wood, we can find that new energy sources will unleash hitherto undreamt of power. The ocean is the whale in this space.

DWill wrote: The presence of high level of toxins in animals living in the deepest, coldest places in the oceans shows that your perspective is clearly wrong. Such an environmental problem is "outside the framework of climate change." So is one such as high levels of lead in public water systems. But there are many others as well.

Those are serious problems, but this issue is about ranking serious problems like in the order of needs. Saying all environmental problems are in the climate frame is like saying that there are no health problems outside the framework of eating, because without food we cannot have health. Without a climate we cannot have safe ecology or water supply. Even the deepest seas are impacted by how carbon added to the sea is destroying their food supplies.

DWill wrote: If you object to politics in emissions reduction, that's nothing at all compared to the politics of forcing people off land masses. That would require totalitarian world government--unless we've reached such a point of desperation that there seemed to be no choice. That, however, is not the planned and orderly process you think can happen.

How such a new frontier could attract migration is a better way to pitch this idea. If bluefield ocean cities are designed to be very pleasant and attractive and wealthy and innovative places to live, there would be no suggestion of any unwillingness to move.

DWill wrote: outside the realm of the possible.

Not at all. The current world aviation and communications industries could not have at all been imagined when our grandparents were born. Seeing the ocean as the primary frontier requiring pioneers to develop its potential will be the big change in human life in the coming centuries.

Pretty good article in the Atlantic:

What is a Populist?

https://www.theatlantic.com/internation ... mp/516525/

Mudde said it was difficult to predict the impact Trump’s populist presidency could have on American democracy because the populists he’s studied in advanced democracies have ruled in parliamentary coalitions, meaning they haven’t held as much power as a president in the U.S. system does. The populists who’ve led presidential systems are largely in Latin America, which has weaker political institutions than the United States does.

It's a hard one to call because we don't know how much of what he said in the speeches written by Bannon and Miller is really in his heart. He's been so all over the map politically that you wonder if he has a sort of political core. The author makes the point, though, that populism is minimally political, or a "thin" ideology. It doesn't take an ideologue to be a populist. Trump wants to be the guy that delivers for the "forgotten" Americans, and it might be as simple as that. Another article I read on populist movements said that, at least in democracies, these movements tend to last for one or two cycles, then they're spent. You can see this happening quickly to Trump's movement if he doesn't expand his appeal to other groups of voters. He did, after all, win with a good deal less than a majority of the pop. vote, with no serious third-party candidate drawing many votes away.

Why do people express moral outrage? While this sentiment often stems from a perceived violation of some moral principle, we test the counter-intuitive possibility that moral outrage at third-party transgressions is sometimes a means of reducing guilt over one’s own moral failings and restoring a moral identity. We tested this guilt-driven account of outrage in five studies examining outrage at corporate labor exploitation and environmental destruction. Study 1 showed that personal guilt uniquely predicted moral outrage at corporate harm-doing and support for retributive punishment. Ingroup (vs. outgroup) wrongdoing elicited outrage at corporations through increased guilt, while the opportunity to express outrage reduced guilt (Study 2) and restored perceived personal morality (Study 3). Study 4 tested whether effects were due merely to downward social comparison and Study 5 showed that guilt-driven outrage was attenuated by an affirmation of moral identity in an unrelated context.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.10 ... 017-9601-2

http://reason.com/blog/2017/03/01/moral ... lf-serving


I find this applicable to the moral indignation over the issue of deporting illegal aliens/border security that so many lefties scream about, but have never actually been directly affected.

That explains a lot: Fox News is a moral outrage warp drive engine.

We're still waiting for the "hinge!" Donald Trump's demeanor has been described as "unhinged," at many points during the campaign and during his first press conference. Then came his joint address to Congress, in which he used his indoor voice, read from a teleprompter, and recited a list of grand, largely unrealizable campaign promises. But he didn't rant and rave, so he cleared the very low bar and was praised for being presidential. Hinged at last! I suppose some people even thought he was serious about ending "trivial fights."

Now, without citing any evidence, he charges, of course in a tweet, that the Obama White House tapped his wires in Trump Tower (actually he tweeted "how low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones"). The confidence one can have that he's telling the truth can't be anything but abysmally low, given all the other times he has made wild accusations that never were verified.

Does Trump act this way because, deep down, he knows he can't handle the job he was chosen for, so he covers up by disrupting?

Some right wingers think there's some there there...
The Obama Camp’s Disingenuous Denials on FISA Surveillance of Trump by Andrew McCarthy 3/5/17.

I'd like to quote the Pressec Mc. Carthy: This is disruptive politics. Period. SIT DOWN!
Here's a good write up courtesy "failing NYT": http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/ ... spartanntp

Trump has been under surveillance but not by Obama. They know too much about who met with who and what they discussed. So, they've been watching these guys but the thing is, he's been doing business with Russians since the late 80s. Is he that dumb not to realize that US intelligence would find out and want to know what he's saying to the Russians? They pegged him a long time ago. Even if Obama ordered them to wiretap, they would have told him, "We've been doing that since '87."

You can almost feel the noose tightening around Trump. It's in the air--you can feel it. His days are numbered. I think he colluded with the Russians and I think the IC has it all documented. I believe his presidency is toast. The question is how many will go down with him?

I don't think they are really getting rid of him because he colluded with the Russians. They are getting rid of him because he is a walking disaster. He is unfit. He is a bad joke on our republic. He's crude, crass, tactless and without a single redeeming quality. He doesn't care what he says to anybody, doesn't care what the consequences are, doesn't care who gets hurt. We need to get rid of him now. Well, I think "now" is coming quickly. Before he can do any real damage.

I think the govt has seen enough. I think most of us have seen enough. It's time for Trump to go bye-bye.