anyone follwing Rogan knows that the hysteria over 1 degree celsius is ridiculous. there we climate swings of 8 or 9 degrees celsius over 10,000 years ago accompanying mass extinctions. RFK is correct. the power junkies are weaponizing normal environmental stewardship to enslave humanity.
The issue with climate change is not how big the temperature change is. It's *how fast it happens*. Most previous swings in the Earth's climate occurred on close to geological timescales, with ecosystems having plenty of time to adapt. Our current rate of acceleration out of the pre-industrial comfort zone is what is going to cause problems, not just for humans but living ecosystems across the planet in general.
I enjoy Rogan's podcast but it should not be your sole source of information on serious topics like this, which should be beyond politics. (For that matter, neither should internet comments like mine!)
In the 1970s the hysteria was about cooling, not warming. Then a bit of warming was detected for a while and then that stopped happening and the narrative changed from "global warming" to "climate change." That change in narrative and the fact the innumerable predictions of disaster like those of James Hansen never happened within the time frame specified should have been a wake-up call to the public that this was all hocus pocus but sadly it was not. Climate hysteria is all about money and power for the elite. If we don't wake up from this nightmare soon we will all be cold and hungry. Tragic.
“By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people,” and when in 1974 he wrote “America’s economic joyride is coming to an end: there will be no more cheap, abundant energy, no more cheap abundant food.”
Hard to take these doomsday folks seriously when they keep missing the mark...by a lot!
The fact that this ridiculous charlatan, who has been completely wrong on every single one of his public pronouncements that I am aware of, is nevertheless treated as an acclaimed, award-winning "scholar" and enjoying a tenured sinecure at Stanford, no less, tells one everything one needs to know about the current state of government "science".
“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. ... The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”
Not only was Paul Ehrlich ridiculously wrong, but he is now celebrated by the new “catastrophists”. I guess the IPCC realized that no wrong prediction will ever discredit its authors, so they brazenly declared 2030 as the “end of the world”.
What amazes me is that we now know younger dryas happened, and around 12,000 years ago sea levels rose 400 feet. We don’t know the exact length, but that took from decades to 1,000 years at most. In the last 125 years we’ve seen sea levels rise about 8inches (total) or 0.063inches per year. Compared to the recent past we are in great shape!!
But yet, they keep working at it. Are they suicidal? If there is no more abundant food or energy, it won't be because industry can't do it, it will be because they have been prevented from doing so.
One of the benefits of getting older is we remember things like this. A lot of these people protesting will look back on these times and wonder, “How could I be so gullible?”
Gullible because they are stupid. I’m not old, I’m a millennial. I also realized in my very early 20’s most of the activists driven narratives were complete bs. It took me a decade to shed all the indoctrination, but the cure was easy. Actual knowledge. Learning about sun cycles, the little ice age, younger dryas where 12,000 years ago the seas suddenly rose 400ft. The fact is sea levels have risen about 0.063 inches per year since recordings began around 1900. That is in line with some of the calmest changes in the Earth’s climate in history. Storms are not increasing. The sea levels are not rising. Polar Bear numbers are doing great. So is the Great Barrier Reef - currently seeing one of its largest expansions in the 36 years it’s been recorded. What’s not doing great? The polluted waterways near left wing help holes (poverty is terrible for the environment), and once jungles in the Congo now toxic wastelands compliments of cobalt mining. The whole reason the “climate warriors” want mining off shore is to keep poor brown people around the world enslaved and the wastelands from producing batteries, turbines, and solar panels in someone else’s backyard.
Some will but many will move in to the next “impending” disaster without blinking. Look Ehrlich and Mckibben. They’re still at it despite their record of being 100% wrong.
This is always a great compendium of the various environmentalist hysteria contrivances -- all of it 100% wrong 100% of the time. And yet the fools still fall for it.
I've seen this blog, glad to see that someone is keeping track of all of the false predictions. If you're interested I recently published a piece on this topic in the American Spectator.
LOL! There was no 'global cooling' hysteria. Global warming is real as our use of fossil fuels released greenhouse gases that trap heat. It's physics dimwit.
Yes, but Will Happer and others make the argument that increased CO2 levels have diminishing contribution toward heating. He draws the analogy of painting a barn red. After 2 coats, the barn can only get so much "redder." This is why the earth wasn't 300C degrees when CO2 levels on Earth were more than 15 times what they are now.
Will et al are stupid fucks, they haven't a clue about what they're talking about. CO2 is a greenhouse gas and it will increase temperatures as they did in prehistoric times, higher concentrations led to higher temperatures. Look at Venus. We have the hydrologic cycle to aid in constraining maximums, but they will increase far more than we evolved with and that means everything.
The difference between then and now is that life had evolved in higher CO2 concentrations and the resultant higher temperatures. Now, humans have already decimated wildlife populations and destroyed their environment, which hadn't been the case in previous climate change extinction events. Humans have made matters far worse as wildlife and plants have no where to go due to human encroachment and destruction of the ecosystems that did exist.
Understand this. When enough species go functionally extinct, the ecosystem collapses and so too civilization. We're done and that could happen very soon as wildlife populations are under extreme pressure already.
Steven Koonin, a Rogan guest and Obama's lead scientist on climate change, says the climate emergency is just a lot of hysteria. The impact of man made climate change has so far been negligible. He also thinks there is a high probability future impacts will be small and manageable. Certainly not enough to justify $150 trillion expenditure on windmills, solar panels and electric cars.
A lot of climate hysteria I think is meant to sell the public on shifting away from a fossil fuel driven economy, which TPTB want done for other political reasons.
Respectfully disagree that Team Biden is trying to "sell" we plebs anything. They are signing executive orders and issuing "rules" just as fast as they can.
People like our cabinet post Energy Secretary are going to make money on the new transportation system. John Kerry's head is going to get even bigger with pride* --- while jetting to the coronation, because he says he is saving the planet. We aren't being invited or asked. We are being told, not sold.
*At the BBC broadcast of the coronation this morning, (yes, I watched) Kerry was there and was sporting several medals of some kind on his coat. Those must be Climate Medals. Didn't he throw his US of A 'Nam medals away or "in protest?" How much carbon was produced producing Kerry's coronation participation medals? Hilarious.
Steven Koonin was not "Obama's lead scientist on climate change". He was Undersecretary for Science and Energy at the Department of Energy and had an annual budget of about $200 million for climate-related research, which is a significant amount, but not the largest (NOAA and NASA each were larger). And the lead scientist would have been in OSTP at the White House.
Koonin does have a lot of high-level first-hand knowledge of climate science. He organized and ran the 2013 seminar for the American Physical Society, which had six of the leading climate scientists in the US speak and discuss the major aspects of climate science. https://www.aps.org/policy/statements/upload/climate-seminar-transcript.pdf
The slides used by each speaker are included in the transcript.
That is a pure opinion piece. The writer says: "In an apparent quest for fairness when he led a committee of the American Physical Society (one of my professional organizations) to assess its statement on climate change, he recruited three scientists to represent the 97% consensus, and three contrarians, presumably to speak for the other 3%."
That is pure nonsense. There is no "97% consensus".
And the three "contrarians" were three of the top climate scientists in the country, with at least as significant accomplishments as the other three. John Christy developed and is in charge of the official NASA satellite atmospheric temperature database at the University of Alabama, Huntsville. Judith Curry was head of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech. Richard Lindzen was professor of atmospheric sciences at MIT.
There are many more statements in the essay that attack reputable scientists and ignore the fact that climate science is in fact unsettled, as Prof. Koonin's book title says.
There are no models that predict even just future temperatures. Every one of them overestimates the temperature change from 1990 to 2020 (the current standard) by more than 1 degree C. (many by much more). Knowledge of past climate is very limited, as satellite measurements don't start until just before 1980, and surface temperature measurements are very unreliable and VERY limited in how much of the earth's surface is covered. And we don't know many of the factors that determine climate very well, such as solar cycles or the role of aerosols.
That is a far-left anti-science web site. You can tell they are anti-science when they call people they disagree with "deniers" or "denialists". The first paragraph alone has the word 3 times. Thanks for pointing out the stupidity at these sites that attack highly reputable scientists.
Recent “research” is clearly directed to eliminate obvious evidence for natural, fast climate variations such as the medieval optimum and the Little Ice Age. There’s a recent paper that claims the medieval optimum is just a local phenomenon in England, not seen in the rest of the world. Of course, we know it was present in Greenland, hence the settlements that later disappeared through starvation, when the climate cooled. The point is that you can have “scientific”, “peer-reviewed” papers published in “reputable journals” that are simply hit pieces on demand. As a scientist I’ve seen this countless times in the last 30 years, in topics that were nowhere near climate change in terms of political involvement and consequent pressure on scientists. Today, any of the few scientific papers contradicting climate orthodoxy get immediately flagged as “controversial” (at least) while doomsday drivel of the most obvious kind never has any problem.
That's bull shit. Peer review is exactly how scientific research is validated and protected from falsity- by ensuring that methodologies are consistent with accepted principles of research.
Lancet editor-in-chief Richard Horton: “The mistake, of course, is to have thought that peer review was any more than a crude means of discovering the acceptability—not the validity—of a new finding…We portray peer review to the public as a quasi-sacred process that helps to make science our most objective truth teller. But we know that the system of peer review is biased, unjust, unaccountable, incomplete, easily fixed, often insulting, usually ignorant, occasionally foolish, and frequently wrong.”
Peer review assumes unbiased opinions from highly qualified individuals who don’t have any vested interest. It was always rather idealistic; it has been severely compromised in the last decades when scientists have been under intense pressure to “publish faster than they think” to get funding, and since the woke zombie explosion it has become a joke, a tool to restrict scientific expression to whatever is acceptable to the establishment, from social sciences to climate studies to Covid directions.
Spoken like the “life-long (well, practically) dissident, activist for peace and environment , community organizer, group & campaign initiator/leader; seeker of justice” you claim to be.
"As a scientist..." You certainly don't marshal demonstrable facts or put forth coherent arguments like a scientist.
"...As a scientist I’ve seen this countless times in the last 30 years, in topics that were nowhere near climate change in terms of political involvement and consequent pressure on scientists. Today, any of the few scientific papers contradicting climate orthodoxy get immediately flagged as “controversial” (at least) while doomsday drivel of the most obvious kind never has any problem"
That’s a weird one! You want to know exactly in what my PhD is (Geology), my list of publications, workplaces and everything else? What exactly are the non-demonstrable facts and in-coherent arguments that have caused your ire? Are you part of the climate catastrophist religion or you just have a lot of bile against anybody who didn’t share your opinions on unrelated topics in the past?
"Today, any of the few scientific papers contradicting climate orthodoxy get immediately flagged as “controversial” (at least) while doomsday drivel of the most obvious kind never has any problem"
That's a difficult one to either prove or refute, wouldn't you say? Perhaps the "few scientific papers contradicting climate orthodoxy" are rejected due to bad science and unsubstantiated claims. And "doomsday drivel?"
All models have been so far off as to be meaningless. Can anyone explain how models in 2000 predicting glaciers in the northern hemisphere would be gone by 2020, when they were observed to have barely changed in reality by 2020, gives us any information supporting climate change hysteria? Can anyone point to a single climate model that both predicts doom and gloom but was somewhat accurate over a 10-year time frame?
The observed rate of sea level rise since recordings in 1900 has been 0.063 inches. Less than 8 inches in 125 years, and no evidence of consistent acceleration. Compared to 12,000 years ago when sea levels rose 400ft in less than 1000 years. Our temperature changes have taken place leas rapidly than going into and out of the little ice age only a few hundred years ago.
The Great Barrier Reef is thriving, as are polar bear numbers. What’s not thriving is the natural areas of the Congo which have been turned into a toxic wasteland chasing mathematically unachievable energy sources that are toxic as hell and so inefficient all they will power is the movement towards expanding poverty (which is terrible for the environment). The assertion that “profound limitations” is meaningless is itself nothing but a distraction from the discussions.
Our models don’t work. All evidence we have is that the Earth’s climate is fairly calm right now compared to what we think we know about the recent and distant past. If humans are having an impact on the climate, we haven’t the tools to have a clue what it is. The climate warriors are lazy communist nihilists. It’s why so many are also CRT loving racists and overt promoters of child genitalia mutilation, drug addiction, and general destruction of functioning society.
No climate models predicted that glaciers would be "gone" by 2020. The models did, however, predict that they would be disappearing at a rather alarming clip in there next 20 years and beyond. Fo you I provided the link below that contains a pretty picture that you might find helpful in understanding the problem.
And then there's this new-fangled search enginey thing called "google." Type in "disappearing European glaciers" and you'll be able to look at a whole lot more of the pretty pictures of melting glaciers that demonstrate the phenomenon "melting glaciers." There are even words accompanying the pictures that provide helpful explanations of what is causing the glaciers to melt.
But you do receive two gold stars for the last two sentences in your post:
"...The climate warriors are lazy communist nihilists. It’s why so many are also CRT loving racists and overt promoters of child genitalia mutilation, drug addiction, and general destruction of functioning society..."
Yes, ma'am. CRT loving racists, promoters of child genitalia mutilation, drug addiction, and lastly but certainly not leastly...busying hastening the destruction of functional society. These people well may be climate warriors and commie nihilists, but lazy? They sound more like go-getters and self-starters to me. Irritating busybodies, perhaps, but lazy?
My point: "profound limitations" is about as vague and opaque as it gets. And what doesn't have profound limitations? Earth is little else than a collection of "profound limitations."
It won’t let me respond below. There was literally a sign out up at glacier national park, circa 2004ish, warning visitors that the glacier would be totally gone by 2020. In 2020, the glacier having not receded, the park decided to take the sign down when it became a meme.
Yes, we were told that models indicated some glaciers would totally disappear by, well, now. There has long been movement in glacier coverage, and as far as the ice caps go, arctic ice caps melting don’t really pose a threat to ocean levels. Antarctic ice caps do, but the promises of gloom from those has also been hyped.
The earth’s climate and surface is always changing. We think we can reconstruct the past to observe what has happened, but we have shown zero ability to really predict the future - even a couple years. The only models which have any usefulness tend to depend on solar cycles and orbit wobbles and nothing to do with humans. The saddest thing is all this faux climate alarm is serving to justify knowingly polluting the environment. Almost 25% of the Congo is contaminated with toxic waste. Destroying the rubber tree forests apparently wasn’t enough. Now wokies want to ensure it’s a toxic wasteland so they can feel good about their electric car. Sad.
The problem for the believers is that their beliefs are based on cherry-picked and falsified data, which were cherry-picked and falsified for political reasons.
Oh, and the other problem is that the predictions by the climate doomsayers never seem to come true.
Our disastrous k-12 education system has been complicit in propagangandizing our children. They are scared shitless by the lies they’ve been told. They know nothing except the world is gonna boil over
I was in school in the 70's during the oil shock and what was called the "energy crisis". We were inundated with "Peak Oil" propaganda and promises that the earth would run out of oil by the time we graduated high school. I'm looking to retire in a few years, meanwhile still waiting for that oil to dry up.
The only impediments to the flow of oil are purely political. In the 1970's it was the Arab Oil Embargo targeting the U.S. for its support of Israel during the 6 day war. Today it's Biden administration policies blocking production -- while selling off our SPR stockpile to China. Remember folks, carbon only matters when its produced by the West. Those belching oil and coal fired plants in China and India are excluded from the conversation.
The White House Correspondence Dinner should be renamed The Muppet Show. That’s basically what they are, a bunch of muppets. Probably an insult to the muppets though.
Regardless, there has been no truly significant increase in temperatures in over 100 years according to NOAA. And the “Climate” is not a monolith, you cannot discuss it without referring to multiple climates around the world, where temperatures rise and fall all the time geographically. It’s asinine to discuss climate change as a whole. The hysterical elite know this, but they do it anyway at the same time as flying around the world in private jets and buying beachfront property.
Here’s some stats to cheer up everyone, you can easily check the veracity of them:
1) Great Barrier Reef at record levels since records began
2) Polar bear numbers five-times higher than in the 1950s
3) Antarctic sea ice increasing by 1% per decade since 1979
4) Since 1982, new tree cover has offset deforestation by the size of Texas and Alaska combined
And here’s a short list of things we’ll have to live without if we get rid of fossil fuels as the deluded barmy greens want us to do:
Forget smartphones/tablets, broadband/internet, wi-fi & the thousands of miles of fibre optic/copper cable, satellites, TVs, microwave ovens, dishwashers, washing machines, tumble dryers, hair dryers, showers, plumbing, bathroom fittings, glass screens, fridges, freezers, cookers, pots, pans, china, glassware, vacuum cleaners, sporting goods like lycra, plastic cycle helmets, light weight bicycles made of kevlar, plastic composites, aluminium & rubber tyres, canoes, windsurfers, climbing equipment, rucksacks, glasses/sunglasses, medical equipment, syringes, PPE, bandages, plasters, bricks, cement, RSJs, roof tiles, double glazing, satellite dishes, aerials, rubber car tyres (even for EVs!) , laminate car windscreens, paints, mains wiring, farming equipment, tractors, harvesters, milling, processing etc, etc, etc, etc.
Hahahaha, resorting to name calling other posters doesn’t bolster your case.
As I said, things must be discussed rationally and reasonably because there is a plethora of misleading dueling information out there. Here’s some to refute yours:
Thanks, but I'll take the science behind my links, which you clearly have not read or comprehended. And most of the links you have provided are either laughable propaganda organs or obvious unscientific blogs---some of them a little "clickbaitey."
At any rate, many of your links either refute many of your claims or provide inconclusive evidence one way or another to support you claims. Perhaps it's a reading comprehension thing.
So Nature magazine and NASA are “laughable” in your book. This conversation is going nowhere because the bedrock of a decent conversation is missing, that is reason and logic, plus a level of regard for the opinion of others.
There is a stereotype of so called environmentalists who willfully ignore any facts but their own. Your are not helping to debunk that stereotype.
This conversation is over for me. Goodbye, and all the best.
Sorry Tim C, peak climate change hysteria is over with. Humanity has serious environmental challenges ahead, but "climate change" ain't one of them..its been revealed as a scam to further enrich and empower the rich and powerful.
And by the way: this topic is never "beyond politics." So-called "scientists" these days are are as politicized as anyone, the response to COVID taught us that.
Except what you claim about slow swings simply isn’t true. Sea levels rose 400ft at the end of younger dryas. The maximum time span for this rapid warming is 1,000 years, but if May have been as short as a few decades. We haven’t seen sea levels rise a single foot in 125 years, so compared to our ancestors we’re in good shape with a relatively calm climate.
A total of 0.34% of the US population died from c19, remove the over 65 crowd and 0.085% of the population died from c19. Sorry but I’m not that worried.
“people like yourself willingly ignoring a impending catastrophe until it was too late. Events such as every financial crisis that ever happened, WWII, this extinction event, etc.”
Those are not “catastrophes as on the scale of mass extinction.
I’ll say again, people like you have claimed for all of mankind that the world was about to end for various reasons. The one thing they and you have in common is that all were 100% wrong.
“I have no kids. As for living sustainably, everyone is stuck in the reality that selfish people like yourself created through your selfish decisions. I have proposed a number of solutions that would end the use of fossil fuels forever and yet you ignore them.”
Actually you’ve proposed none. You must have me confused with someone else. As for the rest you are in control of yourself. You most certainly could live sustainably if you really wanted to. But for some reason you don’t and choose to blame others.
You missed one thing in your attempt to define Hunan nature several post ago. All species live their lives, only one though contemplates their death...humans. You should spend more time living and less worrying about dying. Take some advice from Jack London and live.
“The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.”
Last comment to you. If you think you are rational and those who disagree with you are not you should read “The Laws of Human Nature” by Robert Greene. You might learn a thing or two.
Also look up the “Morale case for fossil fuels” and expand your depth of knowledge.
Unlike other species we are able to adapt in ways they were not, in large part thanks to carbon energy. Despite the claims of climate catastrophist like yourself we have somehow managed to support ever increasing populations while using less land to do so for example. Perhaps you should take your own advice and do some reading.
No, we're not capable of adapting to totally dysfunctional ecosystems. If the economy couldn't handle the pandemic, which was mild, or the Russian invasion of Ukraine, then it will collapse when a few foundation species enter functional extinction. It's over.
The Permian Era extinction event took 60,000 +/- 48,000 years and we are collapsing wildlife populations at a far, far faster rate. It's over if we don't stop now.
The Industrial Revolution, which is far from over, is the culprit, since it requires continuous massive energy transformations to power it. So far, fossil fuels are the only ones that have sufficient energy density and availability to do it. Any “alternative” will have the same issue; it might not be CO2, but some other manifestation of increased entropy, which ALWAYS accompanies any energy transformation. Guess we should’ve taken that into account before starting the Industrial Revolution. Activists tend to be ignorant people seeking an emotional outlet (but not always).
The answer is in nuclear power, such as developing a commercial scale integral fast reactor, the EBR II, that would provide enough baseload to also enable the hydrogen era that would end all need of fossil fuels.
This is the correct response. 40 years ago. Or rather, we may have sealed the deal (a bad one for us) 40 years ago by demonizing and abandoning nuclear. We'll find out.
We can see the result, abandoning nuclear was a very bad idea, we just refuse to acknowledge it. The integral fast reactor, the last phase of the EBR II, proved itself inherently safe and capable in 1986, yet funding was cut in 1994. Why? My guess is the stupidity of the public and the lobbying efforts of the fossil fuel industry that took advantage of the fear of nuclear. We could have had essentially free power for at least 10,000 years with that technology that would have been replace with fusion, if that becomes feasible.
You’ll get comments about storage, safety, etc. What no one wants to acknowledge is the act of transforming energy (like nuclear to electricity; or solar to electricity; or fossil fuel to kinetic energy)) always increases entropy, and it’s manifested in many ways. It’s the unavoidable cost of modernization, and billions of people not quite there would like to participate, too.
I don’t know how stupid they are. Ignorant and misinformed, yes. But look at the standard “information” they’re fed all their life. That’s one of the nice things about this Substack: it’s exposing one tiny fraction of the misinformation routinely spread, not just in “news”, but in the education system and elsewhere.
"That’s one of the nice things about this Substack: "
I find most posters to be rather ill informed. They see that this is alternative and well, that makes them think that anything goes, and it usually does.
Sure entropy is supposed to increase, but we can control the harm we do, such as going to the IFR and drive our population to a sustainable level that would result in a sustainable world in which everyone, including all nonhuman animals, would have more than enough resources to live comfortably.
Who is to determine what’s “sustainable”? There are 8 billion people-who is to determine who is to live and die?
I mention entropy, because it is at least a theoretically measurable quantity. I would agree there is a bit of a quandary, because the Industrial Revolution started before we knew anything about entropy. Without an objective way to judge what’s best (e.g. thermodynamics), we’re stuck with an elite deciding subjectively what’s best for the rest of us, usually in their favor.
And what's the plan for storage and maintenance of all the radioactive waste generated by an aggressive move to more nuclear power, which, btw, is totally dependent on massive subsidies to work?
Our "how will we pay for it" Congress hands out billions in subsidies to every big industry—Big Ag, Big Food, Big Pharma, etc., etc. It just handed Big Auto an nice paycheck "to facilitate the rapid transition to EVs", never mind the infrastructure to support such a transition is nonexistent but will require additional power generation, which means more power plants using more fossil fuels—well, need I go on? Never mind that all of Big Auto is already capable of moving to hybrids, which is the more sensible transition on the way to all-electric. I could go on.
The integral fast reactor is a breeder. It would use reprocessed existing nuclear waste as its feedstock and then make its own. As time goes by, the amount of long lived nuclides declines into nonradioactive materials and short lived nuclides. The use of such a breeder would essentially create over 10,000 years of fuel, without requiring the extensive mining required now nor the long term storage currently required.
Yet by your own description we would still need to store radioactive waste for X number of centuries, unless the reactor is designed such that the waste it produces is immediately recyclable in itself, with whatever preparation is necessary. And there's still the matter of such plants not being feasible in a for-profit economy without massive public subsidies. Expansion of nuclear power would require nationalization of the power grid.
you should include Roger Pielke Jr. in your investigations as well, as he provides some very data driven analysis. what’s most nuts about the environmental movement is how ass-backwards it is in its objectives. we have a zero-carbon consistent energy source available in nuclear today which they reject. of course, they favor the fantasy of intermittent renewable energy, where battery tech (even when available to the degree necessary) will damage the environment even worse just in the mining requirements and the energy needs of that mining equipment. that equipment needs the sort of energy that renewables will not soon provide not to mention that renewables themselves provide their environmental calamities (minerals for solar cells, turbines crapping out or being noisy messing w/animal kingdom, etc). it’s utterly maddening to see the shortsightedness of these people who believe themselves to be doing good w/no real plan for substitutes to what they’re trying to shut down. heck, Germany is now mining the dirtiest coal after shutting down their very efficient nuclear plants...progress 🤣. i’m also afraid that they’ve reached cult or religious status in their thinking and can no longer imagine that their renewable god(s) doesn’t exist w/o having their own identity collapse ☹️
Rather than reply to all of these people individually, and because I value my time, I'll just expand a little bit further:
* I do not subscribe to hysterical "end-of-the-world" Chicken Littleism. That said, a look at the Earth's record will show that "minor changes" of a couple degrees in either direction result in profound, long-term changes. These will not all be negative. Previously arid or unproductive areas of the planet, for instance, may actually benefit from warmer and wetter climates. It is hard to argue that anybody is going to benefit from rising sea levels, however, and the instability introduced into weather systems as the planet adapts is unlikely to be positive either.
* Zeroing in on any single scientist's opinion is unhelpful, whether they are in sync with the consensus or not. There are three things that the majority agree upon, and I have not been convinced by dissenting opinions that these are not true:
(1) Human activity is pouring massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere at an unprecedented rate.
(2) CO2 levels in the atmosphere have measurable, quantifiable, provable impacts on the average temperature of the Earth.
(3) Small changes in the Earth's temperature can have profound, large-scale impacts.
At this point, I am tired of people arguing about any of the above. The best evidence we have gathered to this point says all of this is true, and this evidence has been cumulative over the last several decades.
* There are vested interests in shifting economies to "greener" forms of energy, and not all of them are pure at heart. This is obvious because this is how humans operate. People are always trying to make a dollar off big projects like this. That said, it is foolish to ignore that vested interests currently exist and have been manipulating what should be rational discussion about this issue. Namely, rent-seeking coal, oil and gas companies and their associated parasitic lobbyists, and politicians who would like to turn it into a "culture war" issue that they can cynically try to get votes from.
* My own personal opinion is that I would prefer to have a house that can generate its own electricity from the Sun, store excess power in a battery, and recharge a vehicle that I'll never have to take to a petrol station again. Less pollution from combustion engines is a bonus to the financial gains here, in addition to smashing odious regimes (i.e. the Saudis) that hold us all hostage to their manipulation of fossil fuel markets.
I also think that the baseline load for the grid should be nuclear energy, but at least here in Australia, that ship sailed a long time ago with weak-willed politicians who preferred to just kick the can down the road rather than deal with the problem at the time.
Again, I encourage people to look at the weight of the evidence and the agreed-upon facts, rather than one preferred expert, no matter where your opinion on the matter is. (Joe Rogan will be the first guy to tell you not to listen to Joe Rogan on complicated subjects! Part of what makes him such a refreshing listen, IMO.)
Peace out everyone. Nice to see Matt's writing getting appreciated by such a diverse crowd.
“Again, I encourage people to look at the weight of the evidence and the agreed-upon facts, rather than one preferred expert, no matter where your opinion on the matter is. “
I would encourage you to do the same. Several good ones here in Substack to include Schellenberger, Epstein and Pielke to name a few
“Zeroing in on any single scientist's opinion is unhelpful, whether they are in sync with the consensus or not. “
When those scientists have undue influence on our politicians and policies and are consistently wrong it makes sense to zero in on them.
Agree the grid should be nuclear but it is hard to take the environmentalist seriously when they claim doom and gloom but refuse to include nuclear as a solution.
Regarding 'CL', you should consider that previous climate change events resulted in extinction events, this is no different except that humans have been the cause of extinctions and wildlife population declines faster than in those previous events. If we don't reverse direction now, it's over and that's not hysteria, it's a fact proven by the fossil record.
Can you elaborate? Where is this information? Also what is your starting point for this claim of a meaningful increase in the rate of change? There is nothing concrete here. I am curious to learn more.
If you really want to know read Steven Koonin's book, "Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn't, and Why It Matters" He was Obama's lead climate scientist. Of course he was attacked by the climate "science" crowd for his views but everything he says is backed up by the IPCC's own data.
As I posted previously, there is no significant global warming taking place over the last 100 years according to NOAA. We cannot possibly discuss “Climate” as a whole, it’s asinine, the world is made up of varying climates that rise and fall geographically. It’s a complex issue that the hysterical elitists don’t want to discuss in any rational meaningful way because then we’d be enlightened. And if they were truly worried we’d have nuclear energy.
Plus they never answer how we’ll make things. Here’s the shortlist of things we’ll have to live without if we get rid of fossil fuels as the muppet greens want us to do:
Forget smartphones/tablets, broadband/internet, wi-fi & the thousands of miles of fibre optic/copper cable, satellites, TVs, microwave ovens, dishwashers, washing machines, tumble dryers, hair dryers, showers, plumbing, bathroom fittings, glass screens, fridges, freezers, cookers, pots, pans, china, glassware, vacuum cleaners, sporting goods like lycra, plastic cycle helmets, light weight bicycles made of kevlar, plastic composites, aluminium & rubber tyres, canoes, windsurfers, climbing equipment, rucksacks, glasses/sunglasses, medical equipment, syringes, PPE, bandages, plasters, bricks, cement, RSJs, roof tiles, double glazing, satellite dishes, aerials, rubber car tyres (even for EVs!) , laminate car windscreens, paints, mains wiring, farming equipment, tractors, harvesters, milling, processing etc, etc, etc, etc.
And here’s some good news to cheer you up, go ahead and check the veracity:
1) Great Barrier Reef at record levels since records began
2) Polar bear numbers five-times higher than in the 1950s
3) Antarctic sea ice increasing by 1% per decade since 1979
4) Since 1982, new tree cover has offset deforestation by the size of Texas and Alaska combined
Not long ago, the NYT, the flagship of climate catastrophism, published an article about temperate forests flora and fauna in N Greenland around 2 million years ago. The article was oblivious to the implications: just a very short while ago (in geological terms), the climate was much warmer, enough not only to allow the “northern passage” to be permanently ice free, but to grow forests so far north. Somehow, that wasn’t the end of the world.
Yes, the earth's climate has changed over geologic time scales. The last time atmospheric carbon dioxide amounts were this high was more than 3 million years ago, when global surface temperature was 4.5–7.2°F ( 2.5–4°C) warmer than the pre-industrial era. But such climate changes in the brief time period we are experiencing today are unprecedented- outside of major planetary disasters (such as asteroid strikes, major volcanism, etc.) that likely contributed to mass extinctions. What we are now seeing is the result of CO2 (and other industrial greenhouse gas emissions) that is itself unprecedented in planetary history.
We know that to prevent major sea rise - which would inundate most of the coastal areas of the globe, we must keep temperatures from rising beyond about 1.5 C higher than present. We're on a pace to exceed that. It won't be 'the end of the world' itself; but it WILL LIKELY be the end of human civilization such as we know it, and very many of the other species with which we co-evolved. Given that so many people are so willfully denying the obvious, I'm glad that I don't have children / descendants to worry about.
We are currently in a high-stand, where the relative sea-level rise of the last few thousand years inter-glacial interval is raising much slower but hasn’t flattened. It is highly dishonest - and always done by climate catastrophists - to claim that sea-level rise is necessarily due to anthropogenic melting of the ice caps. Not the mention the other commonly used trick, where pseudo-scientific articles ignore high local subsidence due to compaction of thick recent fluvial deposits, such as in the Louisiana coastal area. Even geoscientists like to keep it silent, to milk more money - I’ve seen that personally in action.
First question I always ask is: how do you know that atmospheric carbon dioxide amounts are the highest in three million years? From tree ring samples and (easily manipulated) mathematical models? There weren't accurate or consistent global CO2 or temperature measurements even 100 years ago.
Second, how is it possible that a 1.5deg C increase - such that the climate of 2100 New York City will be equivalent to the climate of 2020 Baltimore - will be the end of human civilization?
No, I didn't say what your statement, "Second, how is it possible that a 1.5deg C increase - such that the climate of 2100 New York City will be equivalent to the climate of 2020 Baltimore - will be the end of human civilization?" suggests I did.
Again, I didn't say that a rise of 1.5C would be the end of civilization. I see that reading comprehension is NOT your forte. That explains things. In any case, there's no point in attempting a dialogue where either you either can't comprehend or intentionally misrepresent my statements. Good luck, fella, I think you're going to need it.
I didn't say that a 1.5°C increase would be the end of human civilization. No one could possibly say at exactly what increase a tipping point will complete the destabilization of climate control systems; any more than one can accurately predict the entirety of the consequences from the perturbation of that complex system. But it is fairly certain that, because a significant percentage- perhaps most of the larger, and many keystone species can't adapt to the rapidity of changes in their ecosystems, the current mass extinction already underway can be expected to accelerate.
Even humans, even with all of our wonderful technologies, are still interdependent on very many. Take pollinators, for instance- already in many cases facing extinctions. How will you eat? If more of the world is aridified (it's already beginning in many places), how will food be grown in those places?
And of course, even if the worst that happened was the predicted sea level rises (it's already underway... but watch out if the major Antarctic glacers break loose!), just think of how many hundreds of millions (or billions?) of refugees will be created... and what will ensue in geopolitical terms once they're afoot? We can rightly be concerned with the growth of government repression now, but just wait 'til the refugee waves destabilize things!
You’ve got to like that: “answers from some actual scientists”. Of course, actual scientists wouldn’t post here, right ?
Condescendence is the trade mark of climate catastrophists; after all, how could you display your “luxury beliefs” and enjoy being holier-than-thou without a thick dose of condescendence?
As to the “actual scientists”, ask yourself how many have sold their souls during the pandemic supporting ideas that caused widespread harm? Oh, but I forget, when it comes to climate change “the science is settled”.
"...we must keep temperatures from rising beyond about 1.5 C higher than present. We're on a pace to exceed that. It won't be 'the end of the world' itself; but it WILL LIKELY be the end of human civilization such as we know it".....
The no.1 trick used by climate zealots is to push a Manichaean view, where EITHER you’re a pure believer, from exclusively man-made climate change to “attribution” of each and every weather disaster to climate change to forcing people to buy EVs and banning gas stoves, or you’re a filthy “denier” who deserves to be silenced because “science is settled” and you don’t care about the fate of your grand-children, who by the way the zealots would like to live back in the pre-industrial age to “save the planet”.
Yes, ice cores from the last few thousand years show significant increases in CO2, and we should be concerned about that, although declaring that past increases have not been fast has no basis, since we don’t have ice cores or similar high-resolution measurements for CO2 for two million years ago, let alone the Jurassic. We don’t want to find out how much CO2 and how fast it would be released by a Yellowstone-like mega-vulcanic eruption. My original point was not to discard a man-made component to climate change, but that the whole thing has turned into a cult involving massive scale indoctrination and intolerance; given that it would be ridiculously naive to imagine that climate scientists come up with results dictated only by honest analysis of data.
I love it when people cite a media celebrity as an authority about a topic like climate science.
And I find it remarkably tragic when, judging by comments, so many people are content to form opinions and conclusions about such things as climate from the statements of their media heroes; ignoring the facts and even their own senses. Perhaps they live in a bubble, where no changes have been noticeable; though I'm lost to think of any such place. Where I live, the climate is rapidly changing: longer and more severe drought, warmer / shorter winters; unmistakably/remarkably hotter summers, more wind, and most remarkably, much wilder swings in temperatures from day to day. The changes are so evident that I think deniers of the anthropogenic climate forcing must be willfully blind.
There's some weird mimetic basis of the human brain. You can tell when people are full of shit when they say the same thing over and over but from different people (all the posts about Koonin for instance -- this is like someone from MSNBC telling me about how they are an expert on "anti-censorship").
There are two things: the earth climate is changing. Anthropocentrism or not, we will have to deal with that at some point, because uh, look at the geological record?
The other thing: if it's like how COVID worked, every parasite will want their piece of the pie. This is "climate science" as a political object, essentially, who will desperately use the object to gain as much power and resources as possible.
So, we can either grow up and deal with both of these issues, or we can foster our social media / ideology addiction and continue to listen to the bullshit stories that leave the reality of these unchecked and we can continue to sit around and be self-righteous about how great our opinions are.
Perhaps the mimesis is just an aspect of the general tribalism of which we see seemingly endless examples. Much of it is almost cult-like in nature; i.e. it relies upon 'authority' figures who are often elevated to almost holy stature.
This goes in all directions, of course: a Fauci, for example, can be at once hero to many and demon to many others. Nuance, perception of shades of gray, is lost.
OF COURSE, in a capitalist society, and especially where concentrated capital has so much control over both electoral and policy politics, parasites will abound. I mean, why let any disaster go wasted when it can be capitalized upon? So of course big Pharma profiteered from the pandemic! Of course corporations will use climate change concerns for marketing! Of course some players will persuade the steering of more public moneys to their particular businesses!
That some then take these facts of profiteering as 'proof' that the issues in question are faked is just another example of that loss of critical thinking and inability to perceive nuance; and I conclude that it is a societal-wide problem now. Maybe those who used to say, rather jokingly, that "it must be in the water" , were unwittingly on to something.
And what was the world's global population when those other swings happened? That's the question those who keep tossing out this factoid as if it demonstrates there's no need to change anything apparently don't stop to ask themselves. How many people are you willing to sacrifice so you can keep consuming at the absurd levels required to maintain global capitalism?
if you want to stop growth and consumption, your goal should be the elimination of the federal reserve and a legal system that prohibits fractional reserve banking and counterfeiting and punishes it by death. if human ecology is out of sync with nature, it is directly attributable to this.
Climate change is a reality, whether you think so or not, and it will, and it is affecting life on this planet with rising sea levels and glacial melt, etc. They have been concerned with this issue since the industrial revolution. It's a reality that needs to be addressed, and all industrialized nations, including China needs to address it since they produce three times the crap we do, and California gets a lot of it's fall out on it's west coast. Think of how sane it would have been if this issue were addressed in our schools in the 20th century, the century often called the century of the environment, with Teddy and conservation, then preservation, putting aside natural lands, and Rachel Carson and Silent Spring that advanced the environmental movement, but for the most part is wasn't. Now people think it's all new, and that it's bullshit. It's not. What is bullshit is Biden's timing in addressing climate change in the middle of a pandemic. Then you have climate change activists trying to turn the tide by blocking traffic, throwing paint at pictures, gluing themselves to walls and being an overall pain in the ass. Educating people as there growing up and learning I think is the best way to make a difference and had we done that we wouldn't be reading articles like this in the 21st century.
Humanity's effect on climate is almost irrelevant and is demonstrably so compared to normal and extraterrestrial processes of the past. If humanity has any united mission, it would not be trying to prevent a 0.2 degree celsius increase on temp. it would be space improvements that can deflect comets and meteors.
Climate change is a reality, but I have no desire to force that truth down your throat. Read up on it and choose sources you feel are unbiased. That's all I suggest if you are really interested. Unfortunately this has become a very politicized issue , so put that aside and judge it on it's own merits. You can't compare volcanic eruptions and rises in temperature to the continuous non-stop out put of CO2, and it not just that gas, it's nitrous oxide and methane. Too often this issue has become a political football. There is big money in the oil industry, not to mention who trusts Biden and anything he has to say. His tactics were really stupid in this regard, since it's not a good idea to talk climate change, and shut down the Key Stone pipeline in the middle of a pandemic when hundreds of thousands of people are dying from a virus that I think was made in a lab funded by us.
Anyone considering Rogan's opinion regarding global warming is an idiot. What deniers, or rather idiots, don't understand, or choose to ignore, is that climate change, which is what AGW is, results in extinction events when they occur too fast for living things to either adapt to the new conditions or can't move to climate zones that they can tolerate.
Humans are THE problem and have been driving an extinction event over the past thousand years or so with an increase starting in the 1970s that is faster than that seen in the Permian Extinction. When enough species enter functional extinction, it's over and so are we.
Deniers have weaponized greed, Ayn Rand's "selfishness is a virtue" bullshit ideology, to promote selfishness and greed. We change now or it's over.
Stupid. There are already far too many people than the planet's ecosystems can support. We're a virus and we're destroying the only host that can support us. Not Mars, Earth.
I don't have kids, and used to think that was an important contribution to all of the problems we are facing, but if you listen to Elon, or Peter Zeihan, it is population collapse, particularly in the developed world, that we are facing. Once we get to 9 or 10 billion in world population, we are headed in reverse quickly.
Populations are already declining in Europe, China, and North America. India's population is set to decline in another 20 years or so. Really the only continent with large expected growth is Africa.
Elon and Zeihan are idiots. They either refuse to accept the fact that humans decimating wildlife populations is an extinction event that will result in our destruction or they are too stupid to have even considered the obvious signs.
If we were at less than 2 billion with a sustainable economy based on closed-loops, we'd be set. But no, we listen to stupid people like Elon and what's his name and other religious zealots.
"Almost no one who has fervent ideas has a good epistemic basis for the amount of certainty they have. There is a disconnect, between the amount of certainty they have, and the amount of certainty they SHOULD have, through right process."
you should tune into Rogan. he has all kinds of guests, some experts, some just opinionated. always pretty interesting. it might cure you of that arrogant and ignorant attitude to some degree.
There's no real reason to listen to his show. He has too few competent people on. There are valid science and fact based shows, so there's no valid reason to get his overall stupid guests' stupid opinions. You should try that, such as listening to This Week in Virology (at microbe.tv/twiv). A better educated public would lead to a better world, but here we are.
Fools. Won’t be so cute when prime farmland is covered in solar panels, when they freeze in the winter because the grid can’t handle the load, when they go hungry, and the devastation to third world countries because of horrible mining practices. Guess these kids are for slave labor and eco-imperialism that denies third world countries the energy they need to feed the people.
I wish they thought through the ramifications of this. I wish they knew all the predictions of the world burning up didn’t come through. I wish the read perspectives like Alex Epstein, Bjorn Lomborgh Sp? I wish they questioned what they learned in college or what the media tells them. They want meaning and something to push against, maybe volunteering to make their local community better might be good.
I was part of an activist group that won good limits on wind and solar in our county, but Illinois has taken away counties’ rights to make ordinances. People will be so sorry when beautiful farm fiends become brownfields and they freeze in the winter. Oh and electric rates will become unaffordable.
This is nonsense. Renewable energies are already competitive with natural gas, price-wise, and potentially could become much more so. We certainly don't need to take farm fields out of agriculture to do it. Indeed, most renewable energy advocates are pushing for decentralization of energy generation and the ability of all to generate their own / distributed / local energy systems. Lomborg is an idiot, by the way, and simply wrong on most of his conclusions because many of his assumptions are false.
Price-wise, or cost-wise? There's a significant difference, especially when governments can put their thumb on the scale to make one type of energy "cheaper" than the other.
It's hard to have a conversation with someone who uses sweeping generalizations that are usually at odds with reality. OF COURSE energy costs rise- as they do regardless of the source. Prices have risen on about every commodity and service for as long as I've been alive- and that's a hell of a lot longer than wind, solar energy has been around. As for your 2nd claim about comparative efficiency, there is no factual basis for your thinking. Just ideological belief. But reality doesn't care a whole lot about what you (or I) think.
Except the sun doesn’t shine 24/7 and the wind either blows too hard or doesn’t. The turbines in the North Sea were quiet last winter. They froze in Texas a year or so ago.
The NAACP was up in arms about how expensive energy had gotten because of renewables in California.
I am very in touch with reality with regards to this. Perhaps you’re the ideologue.
Both price-wise and cost-wise. And you're right, governments can (and do) put thumbs on the scale. It is still heavily weighted for fossil fuels- which is of course do the fact that concentrated capital controls both electoral & policy politics - and fossil fuel companies own very many politicians.
I would hardly characterize thousands and thousands of acres of industrial soybeans and corn, not to mention their deleterious effects on the soil and atmosphere, as "beautiful."
As a person who lives in those thousands of acres of beans, wheat and corn I beg to differ. Watching the seeds grow from straight lines of green to plants as tall as one story buildings through drying and harvest keeps a person in touch with the cycle of growth and rest. Sunlight on bean leaves is as beautiful as sunlight on water. And yes I know we’ll the smell of the spray in the spring and summer. It’s more healing to the eyes and soul than thousands of acres of solar panels would be. And renewables can’t carry the base load.
This is a topic in my wheelhouse.. Biden made a campaign promise that many knowledgeable people thought was illegal. Offering leases is required by pesky old Congress. Sure enough he tried not to offer them and the courts got after him (note: separation of powers was working). I honestly don’t know what these folks wanted him to do.
At a recent Society of Environmental Journalists panel at their annual conference I attended, Secretary of the Interior Deb Harland stated the obvious..
“Interior Secretary Deb Haaland defended her department's approval of the contentious Willow oil project on Friday, saying that despite President Joe Biden's campaign promise to end new drilling on federal lands, "We're not going to turn the faucet off and say we’re not drilling anymore.''
Obviously, it ain’t happening. And plenty of campaign promises have been broken. So what is this really about? It’s not about climate change.. it seems to be about closing off domestic production.. and whom does that benefit? Is this a Russian-funded disinformation effort? Just kidding.
All of the usual phrases from the handbook are presented in the video, and after listening-through our secretary of the interior to the point of her quote at the ~16-minute mark, “if only humans would get out of the way and let nature take over”, I have decided hereafter to cede my personal sovereignty to the secretary of the interior and to the Biden-Harris administration non-disinformation fountainhead, equally righting every injustice with discerning, non-previously-available-historic, generational justice. We’re all gonna pay big with our lives and like it. I hear and I obey.
Seems your "wheelhouse" could use a bit more width and length. Either that or you're having difficulties with the breaking balls and hard sliders.
The people responsible for "closing off domestic production" are the oil producers themselves. U.S. oil companies haven't increased production for a simple reason and it's financial, not political: U.S. oil companies have come under immense pressure from their shareholders to stop investing in new oil production due to high costs and low returns, and to start using the billions in earned profits to pay dividends to shareholders and, of course, their CEOs.
The fracking boom in the U.S. is winding down. Great while it lasted for U.S. oil. Fracking is not like conventional oil production---it requires an enormous number of wells and drilling them is an expensive proposition, and when the oil extracted from these wells doesn't cover costs they get shut down. And investors, for obvious reasons, are reluctant to drill new wells---when oil prices are low, new wells are likely to be unprofitable. Most of the easy to find oil---the low hanging fruit of the Bakken field---has been recovered.
There are currently 25,000 oil drilling permits in the hands of U.S. oil companies that have been issued by the U.S. government that are going unused because oil companies perceive that they can't make money drilling. Simple.
There's an acronym for this in the oil business: EROI.
"Energy Return on Investment (EROI) is a ratio for describing a measure of energy produced in relation to the energy used to create it. For instance the ratio would illustrate how much energy is used to locate, extract, deliver, and refine crude oil relative to how much useable energy is created. Additionally, oil companies have begun to take a hard look at the economic feasibility of drilling in the Arctic for the same reason. High production costs that outpace the price on world oil markets."
That American presidents possess more than a smattering of control over oil production in the U.S. is one of the more irritating shibboleths of the American electorate in general and partisan know-nothings in particular.
It will take you less than a minute to google any number of websites devoted to oil and energy that will confirm this. Extra work in the batting cage is therefore advised.
Seems your "wheelhouse" could use a bit more width and length. Either that or you're having difficulties with the breaking balls and hard sliders.
The people responsible for "closing off domestic production" are the oil producers themselves. U.S. oil companies haven't increased production for a simple reason and it's financial, not political: U.S. oil companies have come under immense pressure from their shareholders to stop investing in new oil production due to high costs and low returns, and to start using the billions in earned profits to pay dividends to shareholders and, of course, their CEOs.
The fracking boom in the U.S. is winding down. Great while it lasted for U.S. oil. Fracking is not like conventional oil production---it requires an enormous number of wells and drilling them is an expensive proposition, and when the oil extracted from these wells doesn't cover costs they get shut down. And investors, for obvious reasons, are reluctant to drill new wells---when oil prices are low, new wells are likely to be unprofitable. Most of the easy to find oil---the low hanging fruit of the Bakken field---has been recovered.
There are currently 25,000 oil drilling permits in the hands of U.S. oil companies that have been issued by the U.S. government that are going unused because oil companies perceive that they can't make money drilling. Simple.
There's an acronym for this in the oil business: EROI.
"Energy Return on Investment (EROI) is a ratio for describing a measure of energy produced in relation to the energy used to create it. For instance the ratio would illustrate how much energy is used to locate, extract, deliver, and refine crude oil relative to how much useable energy is created. Additionally, oil companies have begun to take a hard look at the economic feasibility of drilling in the Arctic for the same reason. High production costs that outpace the price on world oil markets."
That American presidents possess more than a smattering of control over oil production in the U.S. is one of the more irritating shibboleths of the American electorate in general and partisan know-nothings in particular.
It will take you less than a minute to google any number of websites devoted to oil and energy that will confirm this. Extra work in the batting cage is therefore recommended.
I thought the point of this post was not about if you agree or disagree with the climate activists (which I do not), but rather the fact that it was not covered by the mainstream media. I believe if it were a republican president who had broken a campaign promise, any protest against him/her would be big news.
Matt has had an influx of conservative readers who are not interested in censorship in general, only censorship of conservatives, and they seem to think Racket is a conservative publication which would only publish an article about environmentalist protestors to dunk on them.
A green agenda by corporate interests with profit the only motivation. While the true problems , mainly industrial pollution , are completely disregarded and poverty continues to grow because they really only care about the bottom line; profits at any cost. Suicidal madness.
If I had kids that behaved this way, I would kick them out of the house and cut off their money to force them to work. No wait! The government would finance them and give them a tent to live in. Basic cultural mechanisms don't work in a socialist environment. I guess that means socialism is unnatural and dehumanizing.
Every time I hear of one of these protests I go out of my way to do something that would be considered "high emissions". In fact me and friends have even started a (joke?) of who has the highest carbon footprint. I hope the idea goes viral
If they "heat" things up enough they can all just replace fossil fuels by being human batteries like in The Matix. Sounds as plausible as the plan to power our energy juggernaut of a society with windmills & solar panels.
Oh wait, I forgot electric cars. Well that changes everything doesn't it?
Utopia is just around the corner. Joe said it's so and we all know Joe doesn't lie.
Although Vlad's defeat has been just around the corner for about 6 months now so that "corner" might be farther away than we think. Sort of like a liberal optical illusion.
Yeah, that's it, an optical illusion. No doubt. So there's no reason to go all Negative Nora on Joe.
It’s worse than you think. Solar and wind energy are not constant and reliable and are usually far far away from where the electricity they produce is used. Therefore; they must be backed up by inefficient “fast spin” gas generators close to the cities.
This means that actually, deployment of solar and wind power generators burns 50-100% MORE gas and oil than if we had just stuck with gas generators to begin with.
I agree to some extent; except that nuclear power generation is just a fancy steam powered turbine, and can not be "fast spin" like gas and oil generators can. Also, nuclear material needed to run and maintain nuclear power plants is also a very limited resource (not everyone has some). The entire amount of refined nuclear material in the world would fit on a football field about 3 feet high.
Sorry to be a buzz-kill on this, but nature does not allow for free lunches and there is no solution to this game. Just know that everytime someone says they have "figured out a way" to produce more energy out than goes in...they are lying. And if they also say that they have figured out a way to produce energy without waste product (exhaust of some sort)...also a lie.
The activists are not encumbered by knowledge of how the universe actually works. They only know how to disrupt and destroy.
At current consumption rates there is an estimated 230 years of uranium left. And I don't think it is unreasonable to assume that if necessary other sources of radioactive fuel are viable alternatives. Uranium was chosen partially because one of the waste products is plutonium, which can be used in military applications. But hopefully fusion generation will get figured out one day...
I think we just disagree on some things, but happy to have the conversation :)
“At current consumption rates there is an estimated 230 years of uranium left.”
Uh yeah…about that…and who is making that prediction and based upon what information?
“if necessary other sources of radioactive fuel are viable alternatives”
Really? you sure about that? Please elaborate. I want to hear all about pebble reactors, thorium cooling, and sodium reactors…please cross-reference with viable data about current state of fusion reactors and breeder technology and how much fresh water and waste storage will be needed.
“Uranium was chosen partially because one of the waste products is plutonium”
Incorrect. Uranium was chosen because it is in greater supply, easiest to refine, and easiest to crack. When Fermi & Oppenheimer chose Uranium to develop the 1st atomic bomb, I doubt very seriously they were concerned with the future use of plutonium for future military needs.
Actually, the world's first nuclear explosion, at the Alamogordo test site, was a plutonium bomb. The bomb that was later dropped on Nagasaki was also a plutonium bomb. The Hiroshima bomb was a uranium bomb.
Oppenheimer and his team had calculated that the plutonium bomb, due to particularities in it's firing mechanism absent in the uranium bomb, was more likely to fail than the Uranium bomb, and thus the need to build two of them and use one of them for the all important test in New Mexico.
Do I trust the NEA? I dunno, about as much as any other government agency. But at least they provide a ballpark estimate. If you know more than the NEA please provide us with your information.
I understand your point and its funny but It doesn't matter because...entropy and resistance.
The only difference between an internal combustion engine (ICE) and a plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) is the distance to the tailpipe. The same amount of oil and gas are burned to power both. These are nature's laws, not mine. (see: 1st Law of Thermodynamics)
The illusion is one of control. If you have a gallon of refined oil (gas/diesel fuel) you are in personal possession of over a hundred million years of the collection by plants of solar energy refined into a gallon of pure potential. If you go all electric, you are trusting someone else to provide you with the very energy you need to live; regardless of your political views or religious beliefs or race...etc.
Totally your call, but if I were you, I'd go with the fossil fuels and autonomy over my life.
They say that Western democracies and specifically The USA has freed billions of people around the world, lifting them from poverty and authoritarian governments. But it was really fossil fuels that allowed this. Don't be so quick to bite the hand that feeds you.
Your comparison of gas and electric is nonsensical. You are reliant on someone else, probably a bone saw wielding Saudi, to produce that gallon of gas every bit as much as for the electricity. Let's not get some kind of emotional attachment to frigging petroleum.
“Your comparison of gas and electric is nonsensical.”
I disagree, of course. ;) They are two sides of the same coin, but one is easy to obtain and decentralizes control of energy; whereas the other requires the 1st (petroleum) and then has astronomical investment in generation plants and infrastructure to distribute and can be cut off instantly by any central command and control. Once I have gas/oil in my possession, you can not stop me from using it. Can you say that about a computer controlled electronic car networked to the world wide web? Whole house heat pump? Water pump?…
“You are reliant on someone else, probably a bone saw wielding Saudi, to produce that gallon of gas every bit as much as for the electricity”
Incorrect.
“Bone saw wielding Saudi”?? WTF??
Petroleum reserves are spread all over the world, and we in the USA have more of it than anyone else. Yes, we are dependent upon professionals and skilled laborers in all sorts of fields of endeavor to provide us with all sorts of things we need to survive like fresh water, electricity, gasoline, food…etc. but at least with petroleum, once it is delivered into our personal possession, we are free to do with it whatever we want. If you centralize control of a distributed resource like electricity, you are completely dependent upon the central authority that controls it for your very existence.
“Let's not get some kind of emotional attachment to frigging petroleum.”
Oh, we are attached at the brain stem to “frigging petroleum” and have been for over 100 years now. Or did you think we went from 1 Billion people to 8 Billion people practically overnight for some other reason?? Look I am not emotional about any of this. I’m just an engineer and thought I would add some of what I have learned over the years studying this subject. I am not emotional about mathematics. The equation is the equation. I am just the messenger.
Post-collapse, if you have the wherewithal to service and repair the oil tank in your basement and overhaul your vehicle's transmission and engine, then you're good to go with oil and gas. If not, what fossil fuel reserves you do have in your possession are best marshaled for oil lanterns and Molotov cocktails.
I'm not arguing with you. There isn't an EV anywhere in my future unless Joe hands me one free of charge. Even then I'd probably just sell it on Ebay & then use the money for something else.
I bought one because I think they are cool and they have instant-on torque power curve...addictive as hell! But as a practical matter, no, just a rich guy toy and completely useless in most real world crisis scenarios. My "go-to" vehicle is a diesel truck, and an old one at that. :) Funny thing about diesel engines, not dependent on the oil companies if push comes to shove. I ran my truck for 5 years on waste vegetable oil converted to biodiesel in an old water heater I keep in my backyard. It can run on regular vegetable oil too. When diesel exceeded $6/gallon here in Cali last year, I just ordered pallets of vegetable oil from Costco at $4.90/gal 😂
If they really wanted to get anywhere, they'd be arguing for the suppressed technologies, like 100mph carburetors or any number of patents that have been classified by the military related to energy. For people to simply protest that we need to not have carbon emissions puts us in a position of being a medieval society (with fireplaces only for the rich folks). You're begging for a 60% reduction of human population.
Economist Jeff Currie of Goldman Sachs (Global Head of Commodities Research in the Global Investment Research Division): “Here’s a stat for you, as of January of this year. At the end of last year, overall, fossil fuels represented 81 percent of overall energy consumption. Ten years ago, they were at 82. So though, all of that investment in renewables, you’re talking about 3.8 trillion, let me repeat that $3.8 trillion of investment in renewables moved fossil fuel consumption from 82 to 81 percent, of the overall energy consumption. But you know, given the recent events and what’s happened with the loss of gas and replacing it with coal, that number is likely above 82.” … The net of it is clearly we haven’t made any progress.”
At present, these are a set of facts not well-known to the general public. In another decade, they will be very well-known facts to the general public.
As a veteran protestor over many decades, one thing that jumps out in the video is that about 100% of the protest signs look professionally printed. That has not been true of any real grassroots protest that I have ever seen. To me this is a sure sign that top-down money was behind the organization of this event meant to demonstrate criticism of the Biden administration by left climate militants.
if the climate fascists spent as much time and money planting trees and investing in devices that can harvest CO2 as they do trying to shut down and enslave others, we'd have this so called problem licked.
Boy, the stupid deniers are out in force. Morons with no redeeming qualities. The fact is that we either end our use of fossil fuels, replace our extractive economy with a sustainable one and reduce the human load to a sustainable level, well below 2 billion, or we collapse every ecosystem that exists.
Deniers should read about previous extinction events and understand that humans have been driving extinctions at a faster rate than seen at the end of the Permian Era. AGW is but the final straw that will end life on earth as we know it and collapse civilization.
Denier is accurate. You deny facts because you're wrong as are all deniers. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, it traps heat in the atmosphere and thus changes the climate and as we have been causing a steep decline in wildlife populations, we are driving an extinction event that will collapse them because they have no where to go due to human destruction of habitat and cannot evolve fast enough to adapt to where they're stuck.
The use of the term denier is an attempt to shut down debate by associating people with the concept of holocaust denial, hence its use in climate, Covid, gender, race, everywhere the woke want to suppress debate.
It’s a fascist tactic.
Finally, I think all that use the term should be locked in a room with a bunch of old Jews with number tattoos on their forearms and iron bars in hand, and beaten until they learn manners.
Co2 emissions are tied to human civilization and cannot be decoupled any time soon. If you believe it’s a problem, stepping off the planet is the only solution so don’t let the door hit you in the ass as you step off the planet.
Your continued presence here shows you have no belief.
Don't be so incredibly dim. We are THE cause of all of our problems, the on-going extinction event being the most pressing. We could end our use of all fossil fuels if we a) developed a commercial scale integral fast reactor that would provide plentiful baseload power that would (b) enable the hydrogen era that would end the need for oil while (c) we close all loops from waste back to production and (d) develop policies to get people to stop having kids and (e) end the animal-base meat industry.
"Almost no one who has fervent ideas has a good epistemic basis for the amount of certainty they have. There is a disconnect, between the amount of certainty they have, and the amount of certainty they SHOULD have, through right process."
Please consider that I'm spot on regarding this. What we're doing, driving an extinction event culminating with AGW will result in total ecosystem collapse. It happened in the past due to natural causes and will now due to us.
"Almost no one who has fervent ideas has a good epistemic basis for the amount of certainty they have. There is a disconnect, between the amount of certainty they have, and the amount of certainty they SHOULD have, through right process."
I use the evidence, you post phrases to avoid that evidence. The fossil record provides the certainty, although as we have choice, we could avoid the otherwise inevitable. Accept this reality, before it's too late, otherwise you're simply living on the slopes of Vesuvius ignoring that it will erupt.
"Almost no one who has fervent ideas has a good epistemic basis for the amount of certainty they have. There is a disconnect, between the amount of certainty they have, and the amount of certainty they SHOULD have, through right process."
It was no accident we launched when we did. All we needed was the Substack platform.
It is fair to say that among the group pictured in this post and doing this generally worldwide, there are some folks who mean well and truly believe that climate change is an existential crisis. A few (very few) are actually well or even highly informed. It is also fair to say that those who fit such a description are likely in the minority.
None of this is surprising to us as environmental industry veterans. Ayn Rand's "Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution" predicted this, and why and from where it would emanate. The only thing surprising for us is that it has taken citizens of the Western world this long to recognize the malevolents hiding among the well-intended.
I think part of the belief draws from the fact that the environment WAS polluted badly in the 1960s through 1990s.
I remember acid rain and smog. These were real. Federal clean air laws cleaned a lot up. So the provenance for “global warming” includes truly beneficial science-based legislative remedies for cleaning up autos and power plants that did a lot of good.
According to the comments here, the glaciers aren’t melting at an alarming rate, there is no sea level rise causing people to relocate, the jet stream is functioning normally, etc. You scientific geniuses can continue to delude yourselves all you want. Nature bats last. There is no planet B.
The a$$holes at this dinner and after party don’t give a shit if the planet burns so long as they maintain their privileged status to the end.
Insults to this post expected. I won’t waste my time answering them. I don’t have all day to monitor them. Have a nice day.
Better to let the insults come from you and let your statement stand on its own.
It is actually a shining example of why we love free speech and hate censorship.
Rather than insult you we'll surprise you - we agree that "the a55holes at this dinner party and after party don't give a 5hit if the planet burns so long as they maintain their privileged status to the end". And, we'll add, the same could be said about certain "environmentalists" with regard to human prosperity. They don't give a 5hit if humanity suffer and even perishes, as long as the institutions and systems they hate get burned to the ground in the process. Once you understand this, and them, you realize that self-immolation is the price they expect to pay (and you to pay with them), then you may understand both sides of the battlefield and consider the situation with greater clarity and objectivity.
A fun read of both crazy and condescension. So both the elites AND environmentalists are radical nihilists, next-step anarchists eager to see their programs through AND sit back and watch the "institutions and systems they hate get burned to the ground in the process." (With an aside, that was my very nihilistic thought re: high school a few months before graduation. Execute the plan to graduate, and then sit back and watch the whole place burn to the ground. Never made it to the planning stage, though.)
It's funny---these sprawling, bedrock conspiracy theories hugged tightly by both the left and right are easily encountered over and over in precincts such as these, far and wide, though I have yet to encounter or be presented persuasively with any real or lasting evidence that such plans exist. From either the environmental nihilists or the nihilists of the WEF and Davos set.
Whatever happened to the "ego" as both conscious and unconscious impetus and motivating factor in the affairs of men? "Ego" as defined by Oxford: "...the part of the mind that mediates between the conscious and the unconscious and is responsible for reality testing and a sense of personal identity."
From my experience, and certainly as it pertains to such grand programs as the ones under discussion, it can be reliably said, I believe, all other motivating factors aside, that the ego is always at the wheel.
I respect your opinion and agree for the most part. Warming due to human CO2 and other air pollutants is real and is a problem. There is room for reasonable debate about the degree, timing, and appropriate policy response.
What has unfortunately occurred with the climate change debate is that some of the first episodes of seriously bad cancel culture occurred within the scientific community 10-20 years ago, when scientists who did not advance a narrative of impending catastrophe got attacked and mobbed by political activists representing themselves as honest scientists. There were a few “scientists” who were more interested in politicking and personal aggrandizement than in doing quality work. Good scientists lost their careers for the crime of being objective. Michael Crichton even wrote a sci fi novel with that toxic situation as a main premise. Also look into the climategate scandal. Consequently a too large amount of the literature in climate science is some of the worst in the physical sciences. There are people such as myself and the above poster EnvironMental who saw this situation from inside the scientific community, and it is/was not a healthy scene.
Also the tactics of many climate activists is appalling, and they tend to have an intolerance that doesn’t help the cause at all. Defacing renaissance art only sends a message about the activists and debases any argument or cause they think they are promoting. The result of these problems is that a large part of the public is completely turned off to hearing about the realistic degree of climate change and some cost-effective ways to minimize the problem. I think an understandable response to that stuff is what you are seeing in these comments.
Thank you for your educated response. What I saw mostly in the comments before responding was flat out denial of the problem. That’s not understandable. It’s frightening. Common sense tells us there is no such thing as infinite growth on a finite planet. That is indisputable. This is not a normal cycle as some prefer to believe. Humans are changing the climate in a way that threatens the continuation of most life on the planet. Denying it, won’t solve it. We’ve become accustomed to a way of life that’s not sustainable. There’s no question that those who have caused the majority of the problem, (greedy psychopaths) intend to use the upheaval they created to their own advantage. I get that. It’s how they maintain their grip on power. Trouble is, some people take that to mean the whole issue is fake. Nuance is dead.
With all do respect, going from "there is no such thing as infinite growth on a finite planet," which is hard to dispute, to "humans are changing the climate in a way that threatens the continuation of most life on the planet" which is highly debatable, is quite a stretch.
Here is a quote you probably won't like:
"Almost no one who has fervent ideas has a good epistemic basis for the amount of certainty they have. There is a disconnect, between the amount of certainty they have, and the amount of certainty they SHOULD have, through right process."
“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.” Bertrand Russell
Provide any examples supporting the above assertions? Must be dozens, if not hundreds, given that scientists "were mobbed by political activists representing themselves as honest scientists." Other than a novel by Michael Crichton?
NOT ANYTHING SPECIAL HERE. This is a NORMAL “CLIMATE CYCLE”. PERIOD. There is NO climate change-it’s all FICTION. Do you think Glaciers have never melted? Do you think they’ve NEVER calved? There’s NOTHING to worry about except BILL GATES, GEORGE SOROS, KLAUS SCHWAB, CHELSIE CLINTON, HILDEBITCH CLINTON & OBLABBA (who’s currently enjoying his 3rd Term in Joey’s ear!!)
Bill Gates is making himself useful at the moment by shepherding 4th-generation nuclear power out in Wyoming. And I just played 18 holes with both Soros and Schwab and from what I understand that's all they intend to do in their dotage---as long they can walk. Can't speak for the others.
anyone follwing Rogan knows that the hysteria over 1 degree celsius is ridiculous. there we climate swings of 8 or 9 degrees celsius over 10,000 years ago accompanying mass extinctions. RFK is correct. the power junkies are weaponizing normal environmental stewardship to enslave humanity.
The issue with climate change is not how big the temperature change is. It's *how fast it happens*. Most previous swings in the Earth's climate occurred on close to geological timescales, with ecosystems having plenty of time to adapt. Our current rate of acceleration out of the pre-industrial comfort zone is what is going to cause problems, not just for humans but living ecosystems across the planet in general.
I enjoy Rogan's podcast but it should not be your sole source of information on serious topics like this, which should be beyond politics. (For that matter, neither should internet comments like mine!)
In the 1970s the hysteria was about cooling, not warming. Then a bit of warming was detected for a while and then that stopped happening and the narrative changed from "global warming" to "climate change." That change in narrative and the fact the innumerable predictions of disaster like those of James Hansen never happened within the time frame specified should have been a wake-up call to the public that this was all hocus pocus but sadly it was not. Climate hysteria is all about money and power for the elite. If we don't wake up from this nightmare soon we will all be cold and hungry. Tragic.
Ah yes. I remember when Paul Ehrlich said
“By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people,” and when in 1974 he wrote “America’s economic joyride is coming to an end: there will be no more cheap, abundant energy, no more cheap abundant food.”
Hard to take these doomsday folks seriously when they keep missing the mark...by a lot!
The fact that this ridiculous charlatan, who has been completely wrong on every single one of his public pronouncements that I am aware of, is nevertheless treated as an acclaimed, award-winning "scholar" and enjoying a tenured sinecure at Stanford, no less, tells one everything one needs to know about the current state of government "science".
“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. ... The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”
~ Paul Ehrlich, Mademoiselle, April 1970
The very archetype of useful idiot.
And what does that say about those who follow him, not to mention those whose breadth of climate "science" comes from reading a feminist magazine?
Not only was Paul Ehrlich ridiculously wrong, but he is now celebrated by the new “catastrophists”. I guess the IPCC realized that no wrong prediction will ever discredit its authors, so they brazenly declared 2030 as the “end of the world”.
What amazes me is that we now know younger dryas happened, and around 12,000 years ago sea levels rose 400 feet. We don’t know the exact length, but that took from decades to 1,000 years at most. In the last 125 years we’ve seen sea levels rise about 8inches (total) or 0.063inches per year. Compared to the recent past we are in great shape!!
But yet, they keep working at it. Are they suicidal? If there is no more abundant food or energy, it won't be because industry can't do it, it will be because they have been prevented from doing so.
They’re suicidal for you and me not them
One of the benefits of getting older is we remember things like this. A lot of these people protesting will look back on these times and wonder, “How could I be so gullible?”
Gullible because they are stupid. I’m not old, I’m a millennial. I also realized in my very early 20’s most of the activists driven narratives were complete bs. It took me a decade to shed all the indoctrination, but the cure was easy. Actual knowledge. Learning about sun cycles, the little ice age, younger dryas where 12,000 years ago the seas suddenly rose 400ft. The fact is sea levels have risen about 0.063 inches per year since recordings began around 1900. That is in line with some of the calmest changes in the Earth’s climate in history. Storms are not increasing. The sea levels are not rising. Polar Bear numbers are doing great. So is the Great Barrier Reef - currently seeing one of its largest expansions in the 36 years it’s been recorded. What’s not doing great? The polluted waterways near left wing help holes (poverty is terrible for the environment), and once jungles in the Congo now toxic wastelands compliments of cobalt mining. The whole reason the “climate warriors” want mining off shore is to keep poor brown people around the world enslaved and the wastelands from producing batteries, turbines, and solar panels in someone else’s backyard.
Some will but many will move in to the next “impending” disaster without blinking. Look Ehrlich and Mckibben. They’re still at it despite their record of being 100% wrong.
The climate is wrong, not the forecasters. ;-)
Are you kidding? None of them will "wonder" that. The word "wonder doesn't exist in their universe.
GenZ= Narcissist. It's all about me, and I don't have to know anything. Certainly don't have to respect anything that existed before --- me.
This is always a great compendium of the various environmentalist hysteria contrivances -- all of it 100% wrong 100% of the time. And yet the fools still fall for it.
https://cei.org/blog/wrong-again-50-years-of-failed-eco-pocalyptic-predictions/
I've seen this blog, glad to see that someone is keeping track of all of the false predictions. If you're interested I recently published a piece on this topic in the American Spectator.
Sure. Link?
https://spectator.org/goodbye-science-hello-night/ Here you go.
LOL! There was no 'global cooling' hysteria. Global warming is real as our use of fossil fuels released greenhouse gases that trap heat. It's physics dimwit.
Your ignorance and your ad hominem tell us all that we need to know about you.
LOL! Whah, whah, little baby.
Yes, but Will Happer and others make the argument that increased CO2 levels have diminishing contribution toward heating. He draws the analogy of painting a barn red. After 2 coats, the barn can only get so much "redder." This is why the earth wasn't 300C degrees when CO2 levels on Earth were more than 15 times what they are now.
Will et al are stupid fucks, they haven't a clue about what they're talking about. CO2 is a greenhouse gas and it will increase temperatures as they did in prehistoric times, higher concentrations led to higher temperatures. Look at Venus. We have the hydrologic cycle to aid in constraining maximums, but they will increase far more than we evolved with and that means everything.
The difference between then and now is that life had evolved in higher CO2 concentrations and the resultant higher temperatures. Now, humans have already decimated wildlife populations and destroyed their environment, which hadn't been the case in previous climate change extinction events. Humans have made matters far worse as wildlife and plants have no where to go due to human encroachment and destruction of the ecosystems that did exist.
Understand this. When enough species go functionally extinct, the ecosystem collapses and so too civilization. We're done and that could happen very soon as wildlife populations are under extreme pressure already.
So what level of co2 would make you happy?
Um, not sure if you were around in the 70s but ehrich and mckibben were telling us the next I’ve age was imminent.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/on-this-date-51-years-ago-climate-scientists-predicted-a-new-ice-age-was-coming
When that failed they turned to global warming and starvation. Then it became climate change. What will it be next?
LOL! We're causing an extinction event and the effects are seen in all previous extinction events.
The Anthropocene extinction myth is junk science.
You claimed no one ever said there was global cooling. You were wrong.
Idiot troll
Substack requires a mute button for morons.
Steven Koonin, a Rogan guest and Obama's lead scientist on climate change, says the climate emergency is just a lot of hysteria. The impact of man made climate change has so far been negligible. He also thinks there is a high probability future impacts will be small and manageable. Certainly not enough to justify $150 trillion expenditure on windmills, solar panels and electric cars.
A lot of climate hysteria I think is meant to sell the public on shifting away from a fossil fuel driven economy, which TPTB want done for other political reasons.
I'll join in: Koonin is a crank and propagandist.
Respectfully disagree that Team Biden is trying to "sell" we plebs anything. They are signing executive orders and issuing "rules" just as fast as they can.
People like our cabinet post Energy Secretary are going to make money on the new transportation system. John Kerry's head is going to get even bigger with pride* --- while jetting to the coronation, because he says he is saving the planet. We aren't being invited or asked. We are being told, not sold.
*At the BBC broadcast of the coronation this morning, (yes, I watched) Kerry was there and was sporting several medals of some kind on his coat. Those must be Climate Medals. Didn't he throw his US of A 'Nam medals away or "in protest?" How much carbon was produced producing Kerry's coronation participation medals? Hilarious.
Steven Koonin was not "Obama's lead scientist on climate change". He was Undersecretary for Science and Energy at the Department of Energy and had an annual budget of about $200 million for climate-related research, which is a significant amount, but not the largest (NOAA and NASA each were larger). And the lead scientist would have been in OSTP at the White House.
Koonin does have a lot of high-level first-hand knowledge of climate science. He organized and ran the 2013 seminar for the American Physical Society, which had six of the leading climate scientists in the US speak and discuss the major aspects of climate science. https://www.aps.org/policy/statements/upload/climate-seminar-transcript.pdf
The slides used by each speaker are included in the transcript.
Koonin supervised preparation of the US government's by-annual climate assessment. That makes him as much a climate scientist as anyone.
What sort of hat did you pluck that $150 trillion figure out of?
That is a pure opinion piece. The writer says: "In an apparent quest for fairness when he led a committee of the American Physical Society (one of my professional organizations) to assess its statement on climate change, he recruited three scientists to represent the 97% consensus, and three contrarians, presumably to speak for the other 3%."
That is pure nonsense. There is no "97% consensus".
And the three "contrarians" were three of the top climate scientists in the country, with at least as significant accomplishments as the other three. John Christy developed and is in charge of the official NASA satellite atmospheric temperature database at the University of Alabama, Huntsville. Judith Curry was head of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech. Richard Lindzen was professor of atmospheric sciences at MIT.
There are many more statements in the essay that attack reputable scientists and ignore the fact that climate science is in fact unsettled, as Prof. Koonin's book title says.
There are no models that predict even just future temperatures. Every one of them overestimates the temperature change from 1990 to 2020 (the current standard) by more than 1 degree C. (many by much more). Knowledge of past climate is very limited, as satellite measurements don't start until just before 1980, and surface temperature measurements are very unreliable and VERY limited in how much of the earth's surface is covered. And we don't know many of the factors that determine climate very well, such as solar cycles or the role of aerosols.
That is a far-left anti-science web site. You can tell they are anti-science when they call people they disagree with "deniers" or "denialists". The first paragraph alone has the word 3 times. Thanks for pointing out the stupidity at these sites that attack highly reputable scientists.
Of course he is a climate scientist
He is a renowned physicist and climate science is ALL physics.
If you bothered to read his stuff you’d know GE doesn’t question the science just the false alarmism.
So many clowns in this circus.
"Rate of change" arguments are based on proxy data---tree rings, ice cores, isotopes, etc. which have profound limitations.
Recent “research” is clearly directed to eliminate obvious evidence for natural, fast climate variations such as the medieval optimum and the Little Ice Age. There’s a recent paper that claims the medieval optimum is just a local phenomenon in England, not seen in the rest of the world. Of course, we know it was present in Greenland, hence the settlements that later disappeared through starvation, when the climate cooled. The point is that you can have “scientific”, “peer-reviewed” papers published in “reputable journals” that are simply hit pieces on demand. As a scientist I’ve seen this countless times in the last 30 years, in topics that were nowhere near climate change in terms of political involvement and consequent pressure on scientists. Today, any of the few scientific papers contradicting climate orthodoxy get immediately flagged as “controversial” (at least) while doomsday drivel of the most obvious kind never has any problem.
“Peer review” is just a way for establishment scientists to police and enforce orthodox narratives.
That's bull shit. Peer review is exactly how scientific research is validated and protected from falsity- by ensuring that methodologies are consistent with accepted principles of research.
Lancet editor-in-chief Richard Horton: “The mistake, of course, is to have thought that peer review was any more than a crude means of discovering the acceptability—not the validity—of a new finding…We portray peer review to the public as a quasi-sacred process that helps to make science our most objective truth teller. But we know that the system of peer review is biased, unjust, unaccountable, incomplete, easily fixed, often insulting, usually ignorant, occasionally foolish, and frequently wrong.”
Peer review assumes unbiased opinions from highly qualified individuals who don’t have any vested interest. It was always rather idealistic; it has been severely compromised in the last decades when scientists have been under intense pressure to “publish faster than they think” to get funding, and since the woke zombie explosion it has become a joke, a tool to restrict scientific expression to whatever is acceptable to the establishment, from social sciences to climate studies to Covid directions.
Spoken like the “life-long (well, practically) dissident, activist for peace and environment , community organizer, group & campaign initiator/leader; seeker of justice” you claim to be.
"As a scientist..." You certainly don't marshal demonstrable facts or put forth coherent arguments like a scientist.
"...As a scientist I’ve seen this countless times in the last 30 years, in topics that were nowhere near climate change in terms of political involvement and consequent pressure on scientists. Today, any of the few scientific papers contradicting climate orthodoxy get immediately flagged as “controversial” (at least) while doomsday drivel of the most obvious kind never has any problem"
That’s a weird one! You want to know exactly in what my PhD is (Geology), my list of publications, workplaces and everything else? What exactly are the non-demonstrable facts and in-coherent arguments that have caused your ire? Are you part of the climate catastrophist religion or you just have a lot of bile against anybody who didn’t share your opinions on unrelated topics in the past?
"Today, any of the few scientific papers contradicting climate orthodoxy get immediately flagged as “controversial” (at least) while doomsday drivel of the most obvious kind never has any problem"
That's a difficult one to either prove or refute, wouldn't you say? Perhaps the "few scientific papers contradicting climate orthodoxy" are rejected due to bad science and unsubstantiated claims. And "doomsday drivel?"
That sentence of yours is meaningless.
All models have been so far off as to be meaningless. Can anyone explain how models in 2000 predicting glaciers in the northern hemisphere would be gone by 2020, when they were observed to have barely changed in reality by 2020, gives us any information supporting climate change hysteria? Can anyone point to a single climate model that both predicts doom and gloom but was somewhat accurate over a 10-year time frame?
The observed rate of sea level rise since recordings in 1900 has been 0.063 inches. Less than 8 inches in 125 years, and no evidence of consistent acceleration. Compared to 12,000 years ago when sea levels rose 400ft in less than 1000 years. Our temperature changes have taken place leas rapidly than going into and out of the little ice age only a few hundred years ago.
The Great Barrier Reef is thriving, as are polar bear numbers. What’s not thriving is the natural areas of the Congo which have been turned into a toxic wasteland chasing mathematically unachievable energy sources that are toxic as hell and so inefficient all they will power is the movement towards expanding poverty (which is terrible for the environment). The assertion that “profound limitations” is meaningless is itself nothing but a distraction from the discussions.
Our models don’t work. All evidence we have is that the Earth’s climate is fairly calm right now compared to what we think we know about the recent and distant past. If humans are having an impact on the climate, we haven’t the tools to have a clue what it is. The climate warriors are lazy communist nihilists. It’s why so many are also CRT loving racists and overt promoters of child genitalia mutilation, drug addiction, and general destruction of functioning society.
No climate models predicted that glaciers would be "gone" by 2020. The models did, however, predict that they would be disappearing at a rather alarming clip in there next 20 years and beyond. Fo you I provided the link below that contains a pretty picture that you might find helpful in understanding the problem.
And then there's this new-fangled search enginey thing called "google." Type in "disappearing European glaciers" and you'll be able to look at a whole lot more of the pretty pictures of melting glaciers that demonstrate the phenomenon "melting glaciers." There are even words accompanying the pictures that provide helpful explanations of what is causing the glaciers to melt.
But you do receive two gold stars for the last two sentences in your post:
"...The climate warriors are lazy communist nihilists. It’s why so many are also CRT loving racists and overt promoters of child genitalia mutilation, drug addiction, and general destruction of functioning society..."
Yes, ma'am. CRT loving racists, promoters of child genitalia mutilation, drug addiction, and lastly but certainly not leastly...busying hastening the destruction of functional society. These people well may be climate warriors and commie nihilists, but lazy? They sound more like go-getters and self-starters to me. Irritating busybodies, perhaps, but lazy?
https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/08/23/in-pictures-swiss-glaciers-have-shrunk-by-half-in-85-years-and-the-melt-is-speeding-up
Thanks.
My point: "profound limitations" is about as vague and opaque as it gets. And what doesn't have profound limitations? Earth is little else than a collection of "profound limitations."
Well not only do you understand my vague point then, you are expanding on it for me. Again, thanks.
Now I am concerned, since I read your sentence and thought it has meaning
It won’t let me respond below. There was literally a sign out up at glacier national park, circa 2004ish, warning visitors that the glacier would be totally gone by 2020. In 2020, the glacier having not receded, the park decided to take the sign down when it became a meme.
Yes, we were told that models indicated some glaciers would totally disappear by, well, now. There has long been movement in glacier coverage, and as far as the ice caps go, arctic ice caps melting don’t really pose a threat to ocean levels. Antarctic ice caps do, but the promises of gloom from those has also been hyped.
The earth’s climate and surface is always changing. We think we can reconstruct the past to observe what has happened, but we have shown zero ability to really predict the future - even a couple years. The only models which have any usefulness tend to depend on solar cycles and orbit wobbles and nothing to do with humans. The saddest thing is all this faux climate alarm is serving to justify knowingly polluting the environment. Almost 25% of the Congo is contaminated with toxic waste. Destroying the rubber tree forests apparently wasn’t enough. Now wokies want to ensure it’s a toxic wasteland so they can feel good about their electric car. Sad.
The problem for the believers is that their beliefs are based on cherry-picked and falsified data, which were cherry-picked and falsified for political reasons.
Oh, and the other problem is that the predictions by the climate doomsayers never seem to come true.
One other problem is that climate change has become a religion for the young and a very profitable one for their high priests such as Al Goer,
Our disastrous k-12 education system has been complicit in propagangandizing our children. They are scared shitless by the lies they’ve been told. They know nothing except the world is gonna boil over
I remember very clearly that one of my middle school yearbooks had a "Save the Earth" theme.
This was in the late '80s.
I was in school in the 70's during the oil shock and what was called the "energy crisis". We were inundated with "Peak Oil" propaganda and promises that the earth would run out of oil by the time we graduated high school. I'm looking to retire in a few years, meanwhile still waiting for that oil to dry up.
The only impediments to the flow of oil are purely political. In the 1970's it was the Arab Oil Embargo targeting the U.S. for its support of Israel during the 6 day war. Today it's Biden administration policies blocking production -- while selling off our SPR stockpile to China. Remember folks, carbon only matters when its produced by the West. Those belching oil and coal fired plants in China and India are excluded from the conversation.
The problem for the believers is that climate change is now a proxy for religion. “Believers” is exactly correct.
The White House Correspondence Dinner should be renamed The Muppet Show. That’s basically what they are, a bunch of muppets. Probably an insult to the muppets though.
Regardless, there has been no truly significant increase in temperatures in over 100 years according to NOAA. And the “Climate” is not a monolith, you cannot discuss it without referring to multiple climates around the world, where temperatures rise and fall all the time geographically. It’s asinine to discuss climate change as a whole. The hysterical elite know this, but they do it anyway at the same time as flying around the world in private jets and buying beachfront property.
Here’s some stats to cheer up everyone, you can easily check the veracity of them:
1) Great Barrier Reef at record levels since records began
2) Polar bear numbers five-times higher than in the 1950s
3) Antarctic sea ice increasing by 1% per decade since 1979
4) Since 1982, new tree cover has offset deforestation by the size of Texas and Alaska combined
And here’s a short list of things we’ll have to live without if we get rid of fossil fuels as the deluded barmy greens want us to do:
Forget smartphones/tablets, broadband/internet, wi-fi & the thousands of miles of fibre optic/copper cable, satellites, TVs, microwave ovens, dishwashers, washing machines, tumble dryers, hair dryers, showers, plumbing, bathroom fittings, glass screens, fridges, freezers, cookers, pots, pans, china, glassware, vacuum cleaners, sporting goods like lycra, plastic cycle helmets, light weight bicycles made of kevlar, plastic composites, aluminium & rubber tyres, canoes, windsurfers, climbing equipment, rucksacks, glasses/sunglasses, medical equipment, syringes, PPE, bandages, plasters, bricks, cement, RSJs, roof tiles, double glazing, satellite dishes, aerials, rubber car tyres (even for EVs!) , laminate car windscreens, paints, mains wiring, farming equipment, tractors, harvesters, milling, processing etc, etc, etc, etc.
Look, another amateur propagandist---and not a very careful one at that. Perhaps you should have limited yourself to commenting on DC traffic control.
https://www.verifythis.com/article/news/verify/environment-verify/polar-bear-population-thriving-population-rising-claim-misleading-misrepresents-data/536-0eb6146f-fb8c-437a-a97c-59625228187a
https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2023/02/antarctic-sea-ice-extent-sets-a-new-record-low/
https://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/feature/is-the-great-barrier-reef-making-a-comeback/
https://www.wri.org/insights/tracking-global-tree-cover-gain
https://www.globalforestwatch.org/
Hahahaha, resorting to name calling other posters doesn’t bolster your case.
As I said, things must be discussed rationally and reasonably because there is a plethora of misleading dueling information out there. Here’s some to refute yours:
Polar Bears:
https://polarbearscience.com/2021/10/27/fact-checkers-fail-to-refute-polar-bear-number-increases-despite-extensive-expert-rhetoric/
Even the New Scientist doesn’t exactly refute it:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11656-climate-myths-polar-bear-numbers-are-increasing/
Great Barrier Reef, Euronews, hardly right wing:
https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/08/04/australias-great-barrier-reef-shows-best-signs-of-coral-recovery-in-36-years
And even the hysterical Guardian have to acknowledge:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/aug/06/great-barrier-reefs-record-coral-cover-is-good-news-but-climate-threat-remains
And another:
https://www.greenmatters.com/climate-action/great-barrier-reef-recovery
Arctic Ice increase, which is as I said a complex subject not to be discussed irrationally or hysterically:
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/world-of-change/sea-ice-antarctic
And another:
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/understanding-climate-antarctic-sea-ice-extent
Tree cover:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0411-9
From the left wing UK, The Independent:
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/tree-cover-increase-world-deforestation-farming-rainforests-forests-a8486096.html
Thanks, but I'll take the science behind my links, which you clearly have not read or comprehended. And most of the links you have provided are either laughable propaganda organs or obvious unscientific blogs---some of them a little "clickbaitey."
At any rate, many of your links either refute many of your claims or provide inconclusive evidence one way or another to support you claims. Perhaps it's a reading comprehension thing.
So Nature magazine and NASA are “laughable” in your book. This conversation is going nowhere because the bedrock of a decent conversation is missing, that is reason and logic, plus a level of regard for the opinion of others.
There is a stereotype of so called environmentalists who willfully ignore any facts but their own. Your are not helping to debunk that stereotype.
This conversation is over for me. Goodbye, and all the best.
Sorry Tim C, peak climate change hysteria is over with. Humanity has serious environmental challenges ahead, but "climate change" ain't one of them..its been revealed as a scam to further enrich and empower the rich and powerful.
And by the way: this topic is never "beyond politics." So-called "scientists" these days are are as politicized as anyone, the response to COVID taught us that.
Then can we go home now?
Except what you claim about slow swings simply isn’t true. Sea levels rose 400ft at the end of younger dryas. The maximum time span for this rapid warming is 1,000 years, but if May have been as short as a few decades. We haven’t seen sea levels rise a single foot in 125 years, so compared to our ancestors we’re in good shape with a relatively calm climate.
Even if so there is no evidence it’s catastrophic nor that we or the planet can’t adapt.
75% of C19 deaths were in the 65 and older population, a group that according to the census makes up only 16.4% of the population.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-from-covid-by-age-us/
A total of 0.34% of the US population died from c19, remove the over 65 crowd and 0.085% of the population died from c19. Sorry but I’m not that worried.
“people like yourself willingly ignoring a impending catastrophe until it was too late. Events such as every financial crisis that ever happened, WWII, this extinction event, etc.”
Those are not “catastrophes as on the scale of mass extinction.
I’ll say again, people like you have claimed for all of mankind that the world was about to end for various reasons. The one thing they and you have in common is that all were 100% wrong.
“I have no kids. As for living sustainably, everyone is stuck in the reality that selfish people like yourself created through your selfish decisions. I have proposed a number of solutions that would end the use of fossil fuels forever and yet you ignore them.”
Actually you’ve proposed none. You must have me confused with someone else. As for the rest you are in control of yourself. You most certainly could live sustainably if you really wanted to. But for some reason you don’t and choose to blame others.
You missed one thing in your attempt to define Hunan nature several post ago. All species live their lives, only one though contemplates their death...humans. You should spend more time living and less worrying about dying. Take some advice from Jack London and live.
“The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.”
Last comment to you. If you think you are rational and those who disagree with you are not you should read “The Laws of Human Nature” by Robert Greene. You might learn a thing or two.
Also look up the “Morale case for fossil fuels” and expand your depth of knowledge.
Ta ta for now pooh bear
LOL! You're an idiot! The evidence are all previous climate driven extinction events. It's not that tough to do some reading.
Unlike other species we are able to adapt in ways they were not, in large part thanks to carbon energy. Despite the claims of climate catastrophist like yourself we have somehow managed to support ever increasing populations while using less land to do so for example. Perhaps you should take your own advice and do some reading.
No, we're not capable of adapting to totally dysfunctional ecosystems. If the economy couldn't handle the pandemic, which was mild, or the Russian invasion of Ukraine, then it will collapse when a few foundation species enter functional extinction. It's over.
The Permian Era extinction event took 60,000 +/- 48,000 years and we are collapsing wildlife populations at a far, far faster rate. It's over if we don't stop now.
Sounds great. Stop now, give up all carbon-producing products including the internet. Why don't you go first and show us how it's to be done?
“The Permian Era extinction event took 60,000 +/- 48,000 “
a) I think your numbers are vastly incorrect
b) so what you’re saying is we have between 12,000 and 108,000 years. I’m pretty sure we’ll figure it out.
“we are collapsing wildlife populations at a far, far faster rate.” -No we are not.
“It's over if we don't stop now.”- now you sound like ehrlich who is 100% wrong all the time
The Industrial Revolution, which is far from over, is the culprit, since it requires continuous massive energy transformations to power it. So far, fossil fuels are the only ones that have sufficient energy density and availability to do it. Any “alternative” will have the same issue; it might not be CO2, but some other manifestation of increased entropy, which ALWAYS accompanies any energy transformation. Guess we should’ve taken that into account before starting the Industrial Revolution. Activists tend to be ignorant people seeking an emotional outlet (but not always).
The answer is in nuclear power, such as developing a commercial scale integral fast reactor, the EBR II, that would provide enough baseload to also enable the hydrogen era that would end all need of fossil fuels.
Deniers tend to be stupid people, period.
This is the correct response. 40 years ago. Or rather, we may have sealed the deal (a bad one for us) 40 years ago by demonizing and abandoning nuclear. We'll find out.
We can see the result, abandoning nuclear was a very bad idea, we just refuse to acknowledge it. The integral fast reactor, the last phase of the EBR II, proved itself inherently safe and capable in 1986, yet funding was cut in 1994. Why? My guess is the stupidity of the public and the lobbying efforts of the fossil fuel industry that took advantage of the fear of nuclear. We could have had essentially free power for at least 10,000 years with that technology that would have been replace with fusion, if that becomes feasible.
You’ll get comments about storage, safety, etc. What no one wants to acknowledge is the act of transforming energy (like nuclear to electricity; or solar to electricity; or fossil fuel to kinetic energy)) always increases entropy, and it’s manifested in many ways. It’s the unavoidable cost of modernization, and billions of people not quite there would like to participate, too.
I don’t know how stupid they are. Ignorant and misinformed, yes. But look at the standard “information” they’re fed all their life. That’s one of the nice things about this Substack: it’s exposing one tiny fraction of the misinformation routinely spread, not just in “news”, but in the education system and elsewhere.
Yes. There's no entropy like entropy.
"That’s one of the nice things about this Substack: "
I find most posters to be rather ill informed. They see that this is alternative and well, that makes them think that anything goes, and it usually does.
Sure entropy is supposed to increase, but we can control the harm we do, such as going to the IFR and drive our population to a sustainable level that would result in a sustainable world in which everyone, including all nonhuman animals, would have more than enough resources to live comfortably.
Who is to determine what’s “sustainable”? There are 8 billion people-who is to determine who is to live and die?
I mention entropy, because it is at least a theoretically measurable quantity. I would agree there is a bit of a quandary, because the Industrial Revolution started before we knew anything about entropy. Without an objective way to judge what’s best (e.g. thermodynamics), we’re stuck with an elite deciding subjectively what’s best for the rest of us, usually in their favor.
And what's the plan for storage and maintenance of all the radioactive waste generated by an aggressive move to more nuclear power, which, btw, is totally dependent on massive subsidies to work?
I invite you to research the subsidies that fossil fuels receive. It will blow your mind.
Our "how will we pay for it" Congress hands out billions in subsidies to every big industry—Big Ag, Big Food, Big Pharma, etc., etc. It just handed Big Auto an nice paycheck "to facilitate the rapid transition to EVs", never mind the infrastructure to support such a transition is nonexistent but will require additional power generation, which means more power plants using more fossil fuels—well, need I go on? Never mind that all of Big Auto is already capable of moving to hybrids, which is the more sensible transition on the way to all-electric. I could go on.
The integral fast reactor is a breeder. It would use reprocessed existing nuclear waste as its feedstock and then make its own. As time goes by, the amount of long lived nuclides declines into nonradioactive materials and short lived nuclides. The use of such a breeder would essentially create over 10,000 years of fuel, without requiring the extensive mining required now nor the long term storage currently required.
Yet by your own description we would still need to store radioactive waste for X number of centuries, unless the reactor is designed such that the waste it produces is immediately recyclable in itself, with whatever preparation is necessary. And there's still the matter of such plants not being feasible in a for-profit economy without massive public subsidies. Expansion of nuclear power would require nationalization of the power grid.
you should include Roger Pielke Jr. in your investigations as well, as he provides some very data driven analysis. what’s most nuts about the environmental movement is how ass-backwards it is in its objectives. we have a zero-carbon consistent energy source available in nuclear today which they reject. of course, they favor the fantasy of intermittent renewable energy, where battery tech (even when available to the degree necessary) will damage the environment even worse just in the mining requirements and the energy needs of that mining equipment. that equipment needs the sort of energy that renewables will not soon provide not to mention that renewables themselves provide their environmental calamities (minerals for solar cells, turbines crapping out or being noisy messing w/animal kingdom, etc). it’s utterly maddening to see the shortsightedness of these people who believe themselves to be doing good w/no real plan for substitutes to what they’re trying to shut down. heck, Germany is now mining the dirtiest coal after shutting down their very efficient nuclear plants...progress 🤣. i’m also afraid that they’ve reached cult or religious status in their thinking and can no longer imagine that their renewable god(s) doesn’t exist w/o having their own identity collapse ☹️
Rather than reply to all of these people individually, and because I value my time, I'll just expand a little bit further:
* I do not subscribe to hysterical "end-of-the-world" Chicken Littleism. That said, a look at the Earth's record will show that "minor changes" of a couple degrees in either direction result in profound, long-term changes. These will not all be negative. Previously arid or unproductive areas of the planet, for instance, may actually benefit from warmer and wetter climates. It is hard to argue that anybody is going to benefit from rising sea levels, however, and the instability introduced into weather systems as the planet adapts is unlikely to be positive either.
* Zeroing in on any single scientist's opinion is unhelpful, whether they are in sync with the consensus or not. There are three things that the majority agree upon, and I have not been convinced by dissenting opinions that these are not true:
(1) Human activity is pouring massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere at an unprecedented rate.
(2) CO2 levels in the atmosphere have measurable, quantifiable, provable impacts on the average temperature of the Earth.
(3) Small changes in the Earth's temperature can have profound, large-scale impacts.
At this point, I am tired of people arguing about any of the above. The best evidence we have gathered to this point says all of this is true, and this evidence has been cumulative over the last several decades.
* There are vested interests in shifting economies to "greener" forms of energy, and not all of them are pure at heart. This is obvious because this is how humans operate. People are always trying to make a dollar off big projects like this. That said, it is foolish to ignore that vested interests currently exist and have been manipulating what should be rational discussion about this issue. Namely, rent-seeking coal, oil and gas companies and their associated parasitic lobbyists, and politicians who would like to turn it into a "culture war" issue that they can cynically try to get votes from.
* My own personal opinion is that I would prefer to have a house that can generate its own electricity from the Sun, store excess power in a battery, and recharge a vehicle that I'll never have to take to a petrol station again. Less pollution from combustion engines is a bonus to the financial gains here, in addition to smashing odious regimes (i.e. the Saudis) that hold us all hostage to their manipulation of fossil fuel markets.
I also think that the baseline load for the grid should be nuclear energy, but at least here in Australia, that ship sailed a long time ago with weak-willed politicians who preferred to just kick the can down the road rather than deal with the problem at the time.
Again, I encourage people to look at the weight of the evidence and the agreed-upon facts, rather than one preferred expert, no matter where your opinion on the matter is. (Joe Rogan will be the first guy to tell you not to listen to Joe Rogan on complicated subjects! Part of what makes him such a refreshing listen, IMO.)
Peace out everyone. Nice to see Matt's writing getting appreciated by such a diverse crowd.
“Again, I encourage people to look at the weight of the evidence and the agreed-upon facts, rather than one preferred expert, no matter where your opinion on the matter is. “
I would encourage you to do the same. Several good ones here in Substack to include Schellenberger, Epstein and Pielke to name a few
“Zeroing in on any single scientist's opinion is unhelpful, whether they are in sync with the consensus or not. “
When those scientists have undue influence on our politicians and policies and are consistently wrong it makes sense to zero in on them.
Agree the grid should be nuclear but it is hard to take the environmentalist seriously when they claim doom and gloom but refuse to include nuclear as a solution.
Regarding 'CL', you should consider that previous climate change events resulted in extinction events, this is no different except that humans have been the cause of extinctions and wildlife population declines faster than in those previous events. If we don't reverse direction now, it's over and that's not hysteria, it's a fact proven by the fossil record.
the younger drias temp swings of over 8 degrees happened in just a few years. maybe as few as 3 or 5.
Can you elaborate? Where is this information? Also what is your starting point for this claim of a meaningful increase in the rate of change? There is nothing concrete here. I am curious to learn more.
If you really want to know read Steven Koonin's book, "Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn't, and Why It Matters" He was Obama's lead climate scientist. Of course he was attacked by the climate "science" crowd for his views but everything he says is backed up by the IPCC's own data.
Read Steven Koonin, Unsettled, for an exposition of how it happens!
check out Randall Carlson podcast, Kosmographia
The idea that government could prevent that with enough money and power is laughable.
By the way it’s not Rogan’s opinion. He has supremely qualified scientists on who say we are being overly hysterical. Because we are.
As I posted previously, there is no significant global warming taking place over the last 100 years according to NOAA. We cannot possibly discuss “Climate” as a whole, it’s asinine, the world is made up of varying climates that rise and fall geographically. It’s a complex issue that the hysterical elitists don’t want to discuss in any rational meaningful way because then we’d be enlightened. And if they were truly worried we’d have nuclear energy.
Plus they never answer how we’ll make things. Here’s the shortlist of things we’ll have to live without if we get rid of fossil fuels as the muppet greens want us to do:
Forget smartphones/tablets, broadband/internet, wi-fi & the thousands of miles of fibre optic/copper cable, satellites, TVs, microwave ovens, dishwashers, washing machines, tumble dryers, hair dryers, showers, plumbing, bathroom fittings, glass screens, fridges, freezers, cookers, pots, pans, china, glassware, vacuum cleaners, sporting goods like lycra, plastic cycle helmets, light weight bicycles made of kevlar, plastic composites, aluminium & rubber tyres, canoes, windsurfers, climbing equipment, rucksacks, glasses/sunglasses, medical equipment, syringes, PPE, bandages, plasters, bricks, cement, RSJs, roof tiles, double glazing, satellite dishes, aerials, rubber car tyres (even for EVs!) , laminate car windscreens, paints, mains wiring, farming equipment, tractors, harvesters, milling, processing etc, etc, etc, etc.
And here’s some good news to cheer you up, go ahead and check the veracity:
1) Great Barrier Reef at record levels since records began
2) Polar bear numbers five-times higher than in the 1950s
3) Antarctic sea ice increasing by 1% per decade since 1979
4) Since 1982, new tree cover has offset deforestation by the size of Texas and Alaska combined
"...As I posted previously, there is no significant global warming taking place over the last 100 years according to NOAA."
This is demonstrably false and it would take 5-10 minutes of your time to understand why it is demonstrably false.
That depends on your levels of hysteria. If you find .8% - 1.1% too much then you’ll be screaming at the moon I’m sure.
The levels of my hysteria are completely untethered from the climate AND the weather.
Not long ago, the NYT, the flagship of climate catastrophism, published an article about temperate forests flora and fauna in N Greenland around 2 million years ago. The article was oblivious to the implications: just a very short while ago (in geological terms), the climate was much warmer, enough not only to allow the “northern passage” to be permanently ice free, but to grow forests so far north. Somehow, that wasn’t the end of the world.
Yes, the earth's climate has changed over geologic time scales. The last time atmospheric carbon dioxide amounts were this high was more than 3 million years ago, when global surface temperature was 4.5–7.2°F ( 2.5–4°C) warmer than the pre-industrial era. But such climate changes in the brief time period we are experiencing today are unprecedented- outside of major planetary disasters (such as asteroid strikes, major volcanism, etc.) that likely contributed to mass extinctions. What we are now seeing is the result of CO2 (and other industrial greenhouse gas emissions) that is itself unprecedented in planetary history.
We know that to prevent major sea rise - which would inundate most of the coastal areas of the globe, we must keep temperatures from rising beyond about 1.5 C higher than present. We're on a pace to exceed that. It won't be 'the end of the world' itself; but it WILL LIKELY be the end of human civilization such as we know it, and very many of the other species with which we co-evolved. Given that so many people are so willfully denying the obvious, I'm glad that I don't have children / descendants to worry about.
We are currently in a high-stand, where the relative sea-level rise of the last few thousand years inter-glacial interval is raising much slower but hasn’t flattened. It is highly dishonest - and always done by climate catastrophists - to claim that sea-level rise is necessarily due to anthropogenic melting of the ice caps. Not the mention the other commonly used trick, where pseudo-scientific articles ignore high local subsidence due to compaction of thick recent fluvial deposits, such as in the Louisiana coastal area. Even geoscientists like to keep it silent, to milk more money - I’ve seen that personally in action.
First question I always ask is: how do you know that atmospheric carbon dioxide amounts are the highest in three million years? From tree ring samples and (easily manipulated) mathematical models? There weren't accurate or consistent global CO2 or temperature measurements even 100 years ago.
Second, how is it possible that a 1.5deg C increase - such that the climate of 2100 New York City will be equivalent to the climate of 2020 Baltimore - will be the end of human civilization?
No, I didn't say what your statement, "Second, how is it possible that a 1.5deg C increase - such that the climate of 2100 New York City will be equivalent to the climate of 2020 Baltimore - will be the end of human civilization?" suggests I did.
Again, I didn't say that a rise of 1.5C would be the end of civilization. I see that reading comprehension is NOT your forte. That explains things. In any case, there's no point in attempting a dialogue where either you either can't comprehend or intentionally misrepresent my statements. Good luck, fella, I think you're going to need it.
Re. your 1st question, answers from some actual scientists: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide .
I didn't say that a 1.5°C increase would be the end of human civilization. No one could possibly say at exactly what increase a tipping point will complete the destabilization of climate control systems; any more than one can accurately predict the entirety of the consequences from the perturbation of that complex system. But it is fairly certain that, because a significant percentage- perhaps most of the larger, and many keystone species can't adapt to the rapidity of changes in their ecosystems, the current mass extinction already underway can be expected to accelerate.
Even humans, even with all of our wonderful technologies, are still interdependent on very many. Take pollinators, for instance- already in many cases facing extinctions. How will you eat? If more of the world is aridified (it's already beginning in many places), how will food be grown in those places?
And of course, even if the worst that happened was the predicted sea level rises (it's already underway... but watch out if the major Antarctic glacers break loose!), just think of how many hundreds of millions (or billions?) of refugees will be created... and what will ensue in geopolitical terms once they're afoot? We can rightly be concerned with the growth of government repression now, but just wait 'til the refugee waves destabilize things!
You’ve got to like that: “answers from some actual scientists”. Of course, actual scientists wouldn’t post here, right ?
Condescendence is the trade mark of climate catastrophists; after all, how could you display your “luxury beliefs” and enjoy being holier-than-thou without a thick dose of condescendence?
As to the “actual scientists”, ask yourself how many have sold their souls during the pandemic supporting ideas that caused widespread harm? Oh, but I forget, when it comes to climate change “the science is settled”.
Actually you did:
"...we must keep temperatures from rising beyond about 1.5 C higher than present. We're on a pace to exceed that. It won't be 'the end of the world' itself; but it WILL LIKELY be the end of human civilization such as we know it".....
The no.1 trick used by climate zealots is to push a Manichaean view, where EITHER you’re a pure believer, from exclusively man-made climate change to “attribution” of each and every weather disaster to climate change to forcing people to buy EVs and banning gas stoves, or you’re a filthy “denier” who deserves to be silenced because “science is settled” and you don’t care about the fate of your grand-children, who by the way the zealots would like to live back in the pre-industrial age to “save the planet”.
Yes, ice cores from the last few thousand years show significant increases in CO2, and we should be concerned about that, although declaring that past increases have not been fast has no basis, since we don’t have ice cores or similar high-resolution measurements for CO2 for two million years ago, let alone the Jurassic. We don’t want to find out how much CO2 and how fast it would be released by a Yellowstone-like mega-vulcanic eruption. My original point was not to discard a man-made component to climate change, but that the whole thing has turned into a cult involving massive scale indoctrination and intolerance; given that it would be ridiculously naive to imagine that climate scientists come up with results dictated only by honest analysis of data.
I love it when people cite a media celebrity as an authority about a topic like climate science.
And I find it remarkably tragic when, judging by comments, so many people are content to form opinions and conclusions about such things as climate from the statements of their media heroes; ignoring the facts and even their own senses. Perhaps they live in a bubble, where no changes have been noticeable; though I'm lost to think of any such place. Where I live, the climate is rapidly changing: longer and more severe drought, warmer / shorter winters; unmistakably/remarkably hotter summers, more wind, and most remarkably, much wilder swings in temperatures from day to day. The changes are so evident that I think deniers of the anthropogenic climate forcing must be willfully blind.
There's some weird mimetic basis of the human brain. You can tell when people are full of shit when they say the same thing over and over but from different people (all the posts about Koonin for instance -- this is like someone from MSNBC telling me about how they are an expert on "anti-censorship").
There are two things: the earth climate is changing. Anthropocentrism or not, we will have to deal with that at some point, because uh, look at the geological record?
The other thing: if it's like how COVID worked, every parasite will want their piece of the pie. This is "climate science" as a political object, essentially, who will desperately use the object to gain as much power and resources as possible.
So, we can either grow up and deal with both of these issues, or we can foster our social media / ideology addiction and continue to listen to the bullshit stories that leave the reality of these unchecked and we can continue to sit around and be self-righteous about how great our opinions are.
Perhaps the mimesis is just an aspect of the general tribalism of which we see seemingly endless examples. Much of it is almost cult-like in nature; i.e. it relies upon 'authority' figures who are often elevated to almost holy stature.
This goes in all directions, of course: a Fauci, for example, can be at once hero to many and demon to many others. Nuance, perception of shades of gray, is lost.
OF COURSE, in a capitalist society, and especially where concentrated capital has so much control over both electoral and policy politics, parasites will abound. I mean, why let any disaster go wasted when it can be capitalized upon? So of course big Pharma profiteered from the pandemic! Of course corporations will use climate change concerns for marketing! Of course some players will persuade the steering of more public moneys to their particular businesses!
That some then take these facts of profiteering as 'proof' that the issues in question are faked is just another example of that loss of critical thinking and inability to perceive nuance; and I conclude that it is a societal-wide problem now. Maybe those who used to say, rather jokingly, that "it must be in the water" , were unwittingly on to something.
It's Rogan's guests that are being cited, not Rogan himself---but you knew that.
When, exactly, was humanity not enslaved?
Over 10,000 years ago indeed. The last mass extinction, at the end of the Cretaceous, was about 65 million years ago.
Yeah, right, Climate Change isn’t real. The Earth is not in Jeopardy. Whatever makes you happy!
And what was the world's global population when those other swings happened? That's the question those who keep tossing out this factoid as if it demonstrates there's no need to change anything apparently don't stop to ask themselves. How many people are you willing to sacrifice so you can keep consuming at the absurd levels required to maintain global capitalism?
if you want to stop growth and consumption, your goal should be the elimination of the federal reserve and a legal system that prohibits fractional reserve banking and counterfeiting and punishes it by death. if human ecology is out of sync with nature, it is directly attributable to this.
She won’t understand that
You stop consumption by not doing it.
Climate change is a reality, whether you think so or not, and it will, and it is affecting life on this planet with rising sea levels and glacial melt, etc. They have been concerned with this issue since the industrial revolution. It's a reality that needs to be addressed, and all industrialized nations, including China needs to address it since they produce three times the crap we do, and California gets a lot of it's fall out on it's west coast. Think of how sane it would have been if this issue were addressed in our schools in the 20th century, the century often called the century of the environment, with Teddy and conservation, then preservation, putting aside natural lands, and Rachel Carson and Silent Spring that advanced the environmental movement, but for the most part is wasn't. Now people think it's all new, and that it's bullshit. It's not. What is bullshit is Biden's timing in addressing climate change in the middle of a pandemic. Then you have climate change activists trying to turn the tide by blocking traffic, throwing paint at pictures, gluing themselves to walls and being an overall pain in the ass. Educating people as there growing up and learning I think is the best way to make a difference and had we done that we wouldn't be reading articles like this in the 21st century.
Humanity's effect on climate is almost irrelevant and is demonstrably so compared to normal and extraterrestrial processes of the past. If humanity has any united mission, it would not be trying to prevent a 0.2 degree celsius increase on temp. it would be space improvements that can deflect comets and meteors.
Climate change is a reality, but I have no desire to force that truth down your throat. Read up on it and choose sources you feel are unbiased. That's all I suggest if you are really interested. Unfortunately this has become a very politicized issue , so put that aside and judge it on it's own merits. You can't compare volcanic eruptions and rises in temperature to the continuous non-stop out put of CO2, and it not just that gas, it's nitrous oxide and methane. Too often this issue has become a political football. There is big money in the oil industry, not to mention who trusts Biden and anything he has to say. His tactics were really stupid in this regard, since it's not a good idea to talk climate change, and shut down the Key Stone pipeline in the middle of a pandemic when hundreds of thousands of people are dying from a virus that I think was made in a lab funded by us.
Anyone considering Rogan's opinion regarding global warming is an idiot. What deniers, or rather idiots, don't understand, or choose to ignore, is that climate change, which is what AGW is, results in extinction events when they occur too fast for living things to either adapt to the new conditions or can't move to climate zones that they can tolerate.
Humans are THE problem and have been driving an extinction event over the past thousand years or so with an increase starting in the 1970s that is faster than that seen in the Permian Extinction. When enough species enter functional extinction, it's over and so are we.
Deniers have weaponized greed, Ayn Rand's "selfishness is a virtue" bullshit ideology, to promote selfishness and greed. We change now or it's over.
You make a great argument for killing yourself, but don't do it----Matt's comments section needs trolls.
No, I make a great argument for people to stop having kids. There are too many people, we should be well below 2 billion.
I encourage people to have more kids because of people like you.
Stupid. There are already far too many people than the planet's ecosystems can support. We're a virus and we're destroying the only host that can support us. Not Mars, Earth.
tell you what. you go first. everyone else will follow.
I don't have kids, and used to think that was an important contribution to all of the problems we are facing, but if you listen to Elon, or Peter Zeihan, it is population collapse, particularly in the developed world, that we are facing. Once we get to 9 or 10 billion in world population, we are headed in reverse quickly.
Populations are already declining in Europe, China, and North America. India's population is set to decline in another 20 years or so. Really the only continent with large expected growth is Africa.
Elon and Zeihan are idiots. They either refuse to accept the fact that humans decimating wildlife populations is an extinction event that will result in our destruction or they are too stupid to have even considered the obvious signs.
If we were at less than 2 billion with a sustainable economy based on closed-loops, we'd be set. But no, we listen to stupid people like Elon and what's his name and other religious zealots.
"Almost no one who has fervent ideas has a good epistemic basis for the amount of certainty they have. There is a disconnect, between the amount of certainty they have, and the amount of certainty they SHOULD have, through right process."
you should tune into Rogan. he has all kinds of guests, some experts, some just opinionated. always pretty interesting. it might cure you of that arrogant and ignorant attitude to some degree.
There's no real reason to listen to his show. He has too few competent people on. There are valid science and fact based shows, so there's no valid reason to get his overall stupid guests' stupid opinions. You should try that, such as listening to This Week in Virology (at microbe.tv/twiv). A better educated public would lead to a better world, but here we are.
RFK is a climate grifter himself. Look up Brightsource, the Mojave desert solar project that got billions from the government.
Fools. Won’t be so cute when prime farmland is covered in solar panels, when they freeze in the winter because the grid can’t handle the load, when they go hungry, and the devastation to third world countries because of horrible mining practices. Guess these kids are for slave labor and eco-imperialism that denies third world countries the energy they need to feed the people.
They don’t know what they don’t know...you’re right, they’ll understand later.
I wish they thought through the ramifications of this. I wish they knew all the predictions of the world burning up didn’t come through. I wish the read perspectives like Alex Epstein, Bjorn Lomborgh Sp? I wish they questioned what they learned in college or what the media tells them. They want meaning and something to push against, maybe volunteering to make their local community better might be good.
I was part of an activist group that won good limits on wind and solar in our county, but Illinois has taken away counties’ rights to make ordinances. People will be so sorry when beautiful farm fiends become brownfields and they freeze in the winter. Oh and electric rates will become unaffordable.
This is nonsense. Renewable energies are already competitive with natural gas, price-wise, and potentially could become much more so. We certainly don't need to take farm fields out of agriculture to do it. Indeed, most renewable energy advocates are pushing for decentralization of energy generation and the ability of all to generate their own / distributed / local energy systems. Lomborg is an idiot, by the way, and simply wrong on most of his conclusions because many of his assumptions are false.
Price-wise, or cost-wise? There's a significant difference, especially when governments can put their thumb on the scale to make one type of energy "cheaper" than the other.
Seems like every time renewables enter the picture energy bills rise. They are an inefficient way to produce electricity.
It's hard to have a conversation with someone who uses sweeping generalizations that are usually at odds with reality. OF COURSE energy costs rise- as they do regardless of the source. Prices have risen on about every commodity and service for as long as I've been alive- and that's a hell of a lot longer than wind, solar energy has been around. As for your 2nd claim about comparative efficiency, there is no factual basis for your thinking. Just ideological belief. But reality doesn't care a whole lot about what you (or I) think.
Except the sun doesn’t shine 24/7 and the wind either blows too hard or doesn’t. The turbines in the North Sea were quiet last winter. They froze in Texas a year or so ago.
The NAACP was up in arms about how expensive energy had gotten because of renewables in California.
I am very in touch with reality with regards to this. Perhaps you’re the ideologue.
Both price-wise and cost-wise. And you're right, governments can (and do) put thumbs on the scale. It is still heavily weighted for fossil fuels- which is of course do the fact that concentrated capital controls both electoral & policy politics - and fossil fuel companies own very many politicians.
I would hardly characterize thousands and thousands of acres of industrial soybeans and corn, not to mention their deleterious effects on the soil and atmosphere, as "beautiful."
As a person who lives in those thousands of acres of beans, wheat and corn I beg to differ. Watching the seeds grow from straight lines of green to plants as tall as one story buildings through drying and harvest keeps a person in touch with the cycle of growth and rest. Sunlight on bean leaves is as beautiful as sunlight on water. And yes I know we’ll the smell of the spray in the spring and summer. It’s more healing to the eyes and soul than thousands of acres of solar panels would be. And renewables can’t carry the base load.
Do you really
This is a topic in my wheelhouse.. Biden made a campaign promise that many knowledgeable people thought was illegal. Offering leases is required by pesky old Congress. Sure enough he tried not to offer them and the courts got after him (note: separation of powers was working). I honestly don’t know what these folks wanted him to do.
At a recent Society of Environmental Journalists panel at their annual conference I attended, Secretary of the Interior Deb Harland stated the obvious..
“Interior Secretary Deb Haaland defended her department's approval of the contentious Willow oil project on Friday, saying that despite President Joe Biden's campaign promise to end new drilling on federal lands, "We're not going to turn the faucet off and say we’re not drilling anymore.''
Speaking to the annual conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists, Haaland said the Biden administration is "following the science and the law when it comes to everything we do, and that includes gas and oil'' leases considered by her agency, which oversees U.S. public lands and waters.”https://www.ktvb.com/article/tech/science/environment/deb-haaland-defends-willow-says-us-wont-end-oil-drilling-society-of-environmental-journalists-conference-boise/277-d89fcd3a-88bd-44be-bf47-4490628850c2
Obviously, it ain’t happening. And plenty of campaign promises have been broken. So what is this really about? It’s not about climate change.. it seems to be about closing off domestic production.. and whom does that benefit? Is this a Russian-funded disinformation effort? Just kidding.
If you want to see the the Sec’s comments, they are posted here.https://www.sej.org/calendar/sej2023-interior-secretary-deb-haaland-keynote-and-qa
All of the usual phrases from the handbook are presented in the video, and after listening-through our secretary of the interior to the point of her quote at the ~16-minute mark, “if only humans would get out of the way and let nature take over”, I have decided hereafter to cede my personal sovereignty to the secretary of the interior and to the Biden-Harris administration non-disinformation fountainhead, equally righting every injustice with discerning, non-previously-available-historic, generational justice. We’re all gonna pay big with our lives and like it. I hear and I obey.
A very useful comment, Sharon F.
Seems your "wheelhouse" could use a bit more width and length. Either that or you're having difficulties with the breaking balls and hard sliders.
The people responsible for "closing off domestic production" are the oil producers themselves. U.S. oil companies haven't increased production for a simple reason and it's financial, not political: U.S. oil companies have come under immense pressure from their shareholders to stop investing in new oil production due to high costs and low returns, and to start using the billions in earned profits to pay dividends to shareholders and, of course, their CEOs.
The fracking boom in the U.S. is winding down. Great while it lasted for U.S. oil. Fracking is not like conventional oil production---it requires an enormous number of wells and drilling them is an expensive proposition, and when the oil extracted from these wells doesn't cover costs they get shut down. And investors, for obvious reasons, are reluctant to drill new wells---when oil prices are low, new wells are likely to be unprofitable. Most of the easy to find oil---the low hanging fruit of the Bakken field---has been recovered.
There are currently 25,000 oil drilling permits in the hands of U.S. oil companies that have been issued by the U.S. government that are going unused because oil companies perceive that they can't make money drilling. Simple.
There's an acronym for this in the oil business: EROI.
"Energy Return on Investment (EROI) is a ratio for describing a measure of energy produced in relation to the energy used to create it. For instance the ratio would illustrate how much energy is used to locate, extract, deliver, and refine crude oil relative to how much useable energy is created. Additionally, oil companies have begun to take a hard look at the economic feasibility of drilling in the Arctic for the same reason. High production costs that outpace the price on world oil markets."
That American presidents possess more than a smattering of control over oil production in the U.S. is one of the more irritating shibboleths of the American electorate in general and partisan know-nothings in particular.
It will take you less than a minute to google any number of websites devoted to oil and energy that will confirm this. Extra work in the batting cage is therefore advised.
Seems your "wheelhouse" could use a bit more width and length. Either that or you're having difficulties with the breaking balls and hard sliders.
The people responsible for "closing off domestic production" are the oil producers themselves. U.S. oil companies haven't increased production for a simple reason and it's financial, not political: U.S. oil companies have come under immense pressure from their shareholders to stop investing in new oil production due to high costs and low returns, and to start using the billions in earned profits to pay dividends to shareholders and, of course, their CEOs.
The fracking boom in the U.S. is winding down. Great while it lasted for U.S. oil. Fracking is not like conventional oil production---it requires an enormous number of wells and drilling them is an expensive proposition, and when the oil extracted from these wells doesn't cover costs they get shut down. And investors, for obvious reasons, are reluctant to drill new wells---when oil prices are low, new wells are likely to be unprofitable. Most of the easy to find oil---the low hanging fruit of the Bakken field---has been recovered.
There are currently 25,000 oil drilling permits in the hands of U.S. oil companies that have been issued by the U.S. government that are going unused because oil companies perceive that they can't make money drilling. Simple.
There's an acronym for this in the oil business: EROI.
"Energy Return on Investment (EROI) is a ratio for describing a measure of energy produced in relation to the energy used to create it. For instance the ratio would illustrate how much energy is used to locate, extract, deliver, and refine crude oil relative to how much useable energy is created. Additionally, oil companies have begun to take a hard look at the economic feasibility of drilling in the Arctic for the same reason. High production costs that outpace the price on world oil markets."
That American presidents possess more than a smattering of control over oil production in the U.S. is one of the more irritating shibboleths of the American electorate in general and partisan know-nothings in particular.
It will take you less than a minute to google any number of websites devoted to oil and energy that will confirm this. Extra work in the batting cage is therefore recommended.
New headline: Preening Hypocrites Inconvenienced by Useful Idiots.
I thought the point of this post was not about if you agree or disagree with the climate activists (which I do not), but rather the fact that it was not covered by the mainstream media. I believe if it were a republican president who had broken a campaign promise, any protest against him/her would be big news.
Matt has had an influx of conservative readers who are not interested in censorship in general, only censorship of conservatives, and they seem to think Racket is a conservative publication which would only publish an article about environmentalist protestors to dunk on them.
A green agenda by corporate interests with profit the only motivation. While the true problems , mainly industrial pollution , are completely disregarded and poverty continues to grow because they really only care about the bottom line; profits at any cost. Suicidal madness.
If I had kids that behaved this way, I would kick them out of the house and cut off their money to force them to work. No wait! The government would finance them and give them a tent to live in. Basic cultural mechanisms don't work in a socialist environment. I guess that means socialism is unnatural and dehumanizing.
They are not socialists. I suggest you look up the definition of Socialist. They are at best Social Democrats.
Every time I hear of one of these protests I go out of my way to do something that would be considered "high emissions". In fact me and friends have even started a (joke?) of who has the highest carbon footprint. I hope the idea goes viral
Witty, very.
Idiots
If they "heat" things up enough they can all just replace fossil fuels by being human batteries like in The Matix. Sounds as plausible as the plan to power our energy juggernaut of a society with windmills & solar panels.
Oh wait, I forgot electric cars. Well that changes everything doesn't it?
Utopia is just around the corner. Joe said it's so and we all know Joe doesn't lie.
Although Vlad's defeat has been just around the corner for about 6 months now so that "corner" might be farther away than we think. Sort of like a liberal optical illusion.
Yeah, that's it, an optical illusion. No doubt. So there's no reason to go all Negative Nora on Joe.
It’s worse than you think. Solar and wind energy are not constant and reliable and are usually far far away from where the electricity they produce is used. Therefore; they must be backed up by inefficient “fast spin” gas generators close to the cities.
This means that actually, deployment of solar and wind power generators burns 50-100% MORE gas and oil than if we had just stuck with gas generators to begin with.
Yep. The only realistic way to get off of oil is with nuclear power.
I agree to some extent; except that nuclear power generation is just a fancy steam powered turbine, and can not be "fast spin" like gas and oil generators can. Also, nuclear material needed to run and maintain nuclear power plants is also a very limited resource (not everyone has some). The entire amount of refined nuclear material in the world would fit on a football field about 3 feet high.
Sorry to be a buzz-kill on this, but nature does not allow for free lunches and there is no solution to this game. Just know that everytime someone says they have "figured out a way" to produce more energy out than goes in...they are lying. And if they also say that they have figured out a way to produce energy without waste product (exhaust of some sort)...also a lie.
The activists are not encumbered by knowledge of how the universe actually works. They only know how to disrupt and destroy.
At current consumption rates there is an estimated 230 years of uranium left. And I don't think it is unreasonable to assume that if necessary other sources of radioactive fuel are viable alternatives. Uranium was chosen partially because one of the waste products is plutonium, which can be used in military applications. But hopefully fusion generation will get figured out one day...
I think we just disagree on some things, but happy to have the conversation :)
“At current consumption rates there is an estimated 230 years of uranium left.”
Uh yeah…about that…and who is making that prediction and based upon what information?
“if necessary other sources of radioactive fuel are viable alternatives”
Really? you sure about that? Please elaborate. I want to hear all about pebble reactors, thorium cooling, and sodium reactors…please cross-reference with viable data about current state of fusion reactors and breeder technology and how much fresh water and waste storage will be needed.
“Uranium was chosen partially because one of the waste products is plutonium”
Incorrect. Uranium was chosen because it is in greater supply, easiest to refine, and easiest to crack. When Fermi & Oppenheimer chose Uranium to develop the 1st atomic bomb, I doubt very seriously they were concerned with the future use of plutonium for future military needs.
Actually, the world's first nuclear explosion, at the Alamogordo test site, was a plutonium bomb. The bomb that was later dropped on Nagasaki was also a plutonium bomb. The Hiroshima bomb was a uranium bomb.
Oppenheimer and his team had calculated that the plutonium bomb, due to particularities in it's firing mechanism absent in the uranium bomb, was more likely to fail than the Uranium bomb, and thus the need to build two of them and use one of them for the all important test in New Mexico.
With regards to 230 years:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-global-uranium-deposits-last/
Do I trust the NEA? I dunno, about as much as any other government agency. But at least they provide a ballpark estimate. If you know more than the NEA please provide us with your information.
With regards to liquid thorium:
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Chinese-molten-salt-reactor-cleared-for-start-up
Liquid Sodium cooled reactor:
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/New-Brunswick-fast-reactor-operational-within-the
There are other fast breeders under construction right now such as the PFBR in India and the CFR-600 in China (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CFR-600).
The point is, it's not pie in the sky technology like fusion.
Sounds like another optical illusion. Maybe if we squint while we look at the map the windmills will move closer to our outlets & our furnaces.
I understand your point and its funny but It doesn't matter because...entropy and resistance.
The only difference between an internal combustion engine (ICE) and a plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) is the distance to the tailpipe. The same amount of oil and gas are burned to power both. These are nature's laws, not mine. (see: 1st Law of Thermodynamics)
The illusion is one of control. If you have a gallon of refined oil (gas/diesel fuel) you are in personal possession of over a hundred million years of the collection by plants of solar energy refined into a gallon of pure potential. If you go all electric, you are trusting someone else to provide you with the very energy you need to live; regardless of your political views or religious beliefs or race...etc.
Totally your call, but if I were you, I'd go with the fossil fuels and autonomy over my life.
They say that Western democracies and specifically The USA has freed billions of people around the world, lifting them from poverty and authoritarian governments. But it was really fossil fuels that allowed this. Don't be so quick to bite the hand that feeds you.
Your comparison of gas and electric is nonsensical. You are reliant on someone else, probably a bone saw wielding Saudi, to produce that gallon of gas every bit as much as for the electricity. Let's not get some kind of emotional attachment to frigging petroleum.
“Your comparison of gas and electric is nonsensical.”
I disagree, of course. ;) They are two sides of the same coin, but one is easy to obtain and decentralizes control of energy; whereas the other requires the 1st (petroleum) and then has astronomical investment in generation plants and infrastructure to distribute and can be cut off instantly by any central command and control. Once I have gas/oil in my possession, you can not stop me from using it. Can you say that about a computer controlled electronic car networked to the world wide web? Whole house heat pump? Water pump?…
“You are reliant on someone else, probably a bone saw wielding Saudi, to produce that gallon of gas every bit as much as for the electricity”
Incorrect.
“Bone saw wielding Saudi”?? WTF??
Petroleum reserves are spread all over the world, and we in the USA have more of it than anyone else. Yes, we are dependent upon professionals and skilled laborers in all sorts of fields of endeavor to provide us with all sorts of things we need to survive like fresh water, electricity, gasoline, food…etc. but at least with petroleum, once it is delivered into our personal possession, we are free to do with it whatever we want. If you centralize control of a distributed resource like electricity, you are completely dependent upon the central authority that controls it for your very existence.
“Let's not get some kind of emotional attachment to frigging petroleum.”
Oh, we are attached at the brain stem to “frigging petroleum” and have been for over 100 years now. Or did you think we went from 1 Billion people to 8 Billion people practically overnight for some other reason?? Look I am not emotional about any of this. I’m just an engineer and thought I would add some of what I have learned over the years studying this subject. I am not emotional about mathematics. The equation is the equation. I am just the messenger.
Post-collapse, if you have the wherewithal to service and repair the oil tank in your basement and overhaul your vehicle's transmission and engine, then you're good to go with oil and gas. If not, what fossil fuel reserves you do have in your possession are best marshaled for oil lanterns and Molotov cocktails.
Unless you have you have a strategic reserve underneath your house, you probably will run out of gas pretty quickly.
I'm not arguing with you. There isn't an EV anywhere in my future unless Joe hands me one free of charge. Even then I'd probably just sell it on Ebay & then use the money for something else.
I bought one because I think they are cool and they have instant-on torque power curve...addictive as hell! But as a practical matter, no, just a rich guy toy and completely useless in most real world crisis scenarios. My "go-to" vehicle is a diesel truck, and an old one at that. :) Funny thing about diesel engines, not dependent on the oil companies if push comes to shove. I ran my truck for 5 years on waste vegetable oil converted to biodiesel in an old water heater I keep in my backyard. It can run on regular vegetable oil too. When diesel exceeded $6/gallon here in Cali last year, I just ordered pallets of vegetable oil from Costco at $4.90/gal 😂
sound common sense, Eric G.
If they really wanted to get anywhere, they'd be arguing for the suppressed technologies, like 100mph carburetors or any number of patents that have been classified by the military related to energy. For people to simply protest that we need to not have carbon emissions puts us in a position of being a medieval society (with fireplaces only for the rich folks). You're begging for a 60% reduction of human population.
Economist Jeff Currie of Goldman Sachs (Global Head of Commodities Research in the Global Investment Research Division): “Here’s a stat for you, as of January of this year. At the end of last year, overall, fossil fuels represented 81 percent of overall energy consumption. Ten years ago, they were at 82. So though, all of that investment in renewables, you’re talking about 3.8 trillion, let me repeat that $3.8 trillion of investment in renewables moved fossil fuel consumption from 82 to 81 percent, of the overall energy consumption. But you know, given the recent events and what’s happened with the loss of gas and replacing it with coal, that number is likely above 82.” … The net of it is clearly we haven’t made any progress.”
At present, these are a set of facts not well-known to the general public. In another decade, they will be very well-known facts to the general public.
"let me repeat that $3.8 trillion of investment in renewables moved fossil fuel consumption from 82 to 81 percent, of the overall energy consumption."
I'm sorry but that's funny.
Currie must be a nazi.
Or a racist.
Or a MAGA head.
He's at least an anti-vaxxer.
He needs to get with the program & stop questioning the zeitgeist.
Does he want the Democrats to look bad?
Does he want another Trump?
More importantly, does he want Greta Thunberg to superglue herself to the bumper of his Mercedes?
Again that's funny.
But I'm kind of a dick.
"What the government is good at is collecting taxes, taking away your freedoms and killing people. It's not good at much else." - Tom Clancy
Vlade's defeat is just one Iraq away. (An Iraq being defined as something that's perpetually six months away)
As a veteran protestor over many decades, one thing that jumps out in the video is that about 100% of the protest signs look professionally printed. That has not been true of any real grassroots protest that I have ever seen. To me this is a sure sign that top-down money was behind the organization of this event meant to demonstrate criticism of the Biden administration by left climate militants.
Sure signs are rarely sure signs.
if the climate fascists spent as much time and money planting trees and investing in devices that can harvest CO2 as they do trying to shut down and enslave others, we'd have this so called problem licked.
Climate Death Cult
Boy, the stupid deniers are out in force. Morons with no redeeming qualities. The fact is that we either end our use of fossil fuels, replace our extractive economy with a sustainable one and reduce the human load to a sustainable level, well below 2 billion, or we collapse every ecosystem that exists.
Deniers should read about previous extinction events and understand that humans have been driving extinctions at a faster rate than seen at the end of the Permian Era. AGW is but the final straw that will end life on earth as we know it and collapse civilization.
Talk about morons.
Only a fascist uses the term denier to shut down debate
Denier is accurate. You deny facts because you're wrong as are all deniers. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, it traps heat in the atmosphere and thus changes the climate and as we have been causing a steep decline in wildlife populations, we are driving an extinction event that will collapse them because they have no where to go due to human destruction of habitat and cannot evolve fast enough to adapt to where they're stuck.
My last comment to the troll.
The use of the term denier is an attempt to shut down debate by associating people with the concept of holocaust denial, hence its use in climate, Covid, gender, race, everywhere the woke want to suppress debate.
It’s a fascist tactic.
Finally, I think all that use the term should be locked in a room with a bunch of old Jews with number tattoos on their forearms and iron bars in hand, and beaten until they learn manners.
Co2 emissions are tied to human civilization and cannot be decoupled any time soon. If you believe it’s a problem, stepping off the planet is the only solution so don’t let the door hit you in the ass as you step off the planet.
Your continued presence here shows you have no belief.
Don't be so incredibly dim. We are THE cause of all of our problems, the on-going extinction event being the most pressing. We could end our use of all fossil fuels if we a) developed a commercial scale integral fast reactor that would provide plentiful baseload power that would (b) enable the hydrogen era that would end the need for oil while (c) we close all loops from waste back to production and (d) develop policies to get people to stop having kids and (e) end the animal-base meat industry.
Personally, I wouldn't call you a denier but also wouldn't hesitate to call you a moron.
Always good to understand who and what we are dealing with.
Quick study if you know all that from a single-sentence comment---a formidable foe!
I have read some of your other comments.
I try not to get too involved with those who hide behind an alias.
It sounds like you're breaking up with me.
Please consider the following:
"Almost no one who has fervent ideas has a good epistemic basis for the amount of certainty they have. There is a disconnect, between the amount of certainty they have, and the amount of certainty they SHOULD have, through right process."
-Daniel Schmachtenberger
Please consider that I'm spot on regarding this. What we're doing, driving an extinction event culminating with AGW will result in total ecosystem collapse. It happened in the past due to natural causes and will now due to us.
"Almost no one who has fervent ideas has a good epistemic basis for the amount of certainty they have. There is a disconnect, between the amount of certainty they have, and the amount of certainty they SHOULD have, through right process."
I use the evidence, you post phrases to avoid that evidence. The fossil record provides the certainty, although as we have choice, we could avoid the otherwise inevitable. Accept this reality, before it's too late, otherwise you're simply living on the slopes of Vesuvius ignoring that it will erupt.
"Almost no one who has fervent ideas has a good epistemic basis for the amount of certainty they have. There is a disconnect, between the amount of certainty they have, and the amount of certainty they SHOULD have, through right process."
OK, incel, you're wrong.
We saw all this coming more than a decade ago.
It was no accident we launched when we did. All we needed was the Substack platform.
It is fair to say that among the group pictured in this post and doing this generally worldwide, there are some folks who mean well and truly believe that climate change is an existential crisis. A few (very few) are actually well or even highly informed. It is also fair to say that those who fit such a description are likely in the minority.
None of this is surprising to us as environmental industry veterans. Ayn Rand's "Return of the Primitive: The Anti-Industrial Revolution" predicted this, and why and from where it would emanate. The only thing surprising for us is that it has taken citizens of the Western world this long to recognize the malevolents hiding among the well-intended.
I think part of the belief draws from the fact that the environment WAS polluted badly in the 1960s through 1990s.
I remember acid rain and smog. These were real. Federal clean air laws cleaned a lot up. So the provenance for “global warming” includes truly beneficial science-based legislative remedies for cleaning up autos and power plants that did a lot of good.
According to the comments here, the glaciers aren’t melting at an alarming rate, there is no sea level rise causing people to relocate, the jet stream is functioning normally, etc. You scientific geniuses can continue to delude yourselves all you want. Nature bats last. There is no planet B.
The a$$holes at this dinner and after party don’t give a shit if the planet burns so long as they maintain their privileged status to the end.
Insults to this post expected. I won’t waste my time answering them. I don’t have all day to monitor them. Have a nice day.
Better to let the insults come from you and let your statement stand on its own.
It is actually a shining example of why we love free speech and hate censorship.
Rather than insult you we'll surprise you - we agree that "the a55holes at this dinner party and after party don't give a 5hit if the planet burns so long as they maintain their privileged status to the end". And, we'll add, the same could be said about certain "environmentalists" with regard to human prosperity. They don't give a 5hit if humanity suffer and even perishes, as long as the institutions and systems they hate get burned to the ground in the process. Once you understand this, and them, you realize that self-immolation is the price they expect to pay (and you to pay with them), then you may understand both sides of the battlefield and consider the situation with greater clarity and objectivity.
A fun read of both crazy and condescension. So both the elites AND environmentalists are radical nihilists, next-step anarchists eager to see their programs through AND sit back and watch the "institutions and systems they hate get burned to the ground in the process." (With an aside, that was my very nihilistic thought re: high school a few months before graduation. Execute the plan to graduate, and then sit back and watch the whole place burn to the ground. Never made it to the planning stage, though.)
It's funny---these sprawling, bedrock conspiracy theories hugged tightly by both the left and right are easily encountered over and over in precincts such as these, far and wide, though I have yet to encounter or be presented persuasively with any real or lasting evidence that such plans exist. From either the environmental nihilists or the nihilists of the WEF and Davos set.
Whatever happened to the "ego" as both conscious and unconscious impetus and motivating factor in the affairs of men? "Ego" as defined by Oxford: "...the part of the mind that mediates between the conscious and the unconscious and is responsible for reality testing and a sense of personal identity."
From my experience, and certainly as it pertains to such grand programs as the ones under discussion, it can be reliably said, I believe, all other motivating factors aside, that the ego is always at the wheel.
Hi Peacelady. Peace. :-)
I respect your opinion and agree for the most part. Warming due to human CO2 and other air pollutants is real and is a problem. There is room for reasonable debate about the degree, timing, and appropriate policy response.
What has unfortunately occurred with the climate change debate is that some of the first episodes of seriously bad cancel culture occurred within the scientific community 10-20 years ago, when scientists who did not advance a narrative of impending catastrophe got attacked and mobbed by political activists representing themselves as honest scientists. There were a few “scientists” who were more interested in politicking and personal aggrandizement than in doing quality work. Good scientists lost their careers for the crime of being objective. Michael Crichton even wrote a sci fi novel with that toxic situation as a main premise. Also look into the climategate scandal. Consequently a too large amount of the literature in climate science is some of the worst in the physical sciences. There are people such as myself and the above poster EnvironMental who saw this situation from inside the scientific community, and it is/was not a healthy scene.
Also the tactics of many climate activists is appalling, and they tend to have an intolerance that doesn’t help the cause at all. Defacing renaissance art only sends a message about the activists and debases any argument or cause they think they are promoting. The result of these problems is that a large part of the public is completely turned off to hearing about the realistic degree of climate change and some cost-effective ways to minimize the problem. I think an understandable response to that stuff is what you are seeing in these comments.
Thank you for your educated response. What I saw mostly in the comments before responding was flat out denial of the problem. That’s not understandable. It’s frightening. Common sense tells us there is no such thing as infinite growth on a finite planet. That is indisputable. This is not a normal cycle as some prefer to believe. Humans are changing the climate in a way that threatens the continuation of most life on the planet. Denying it, won’t solve it. We’ve become accustomed to a way of life that’s not sustainable. There’s no question that those who have caused the majority of the problem, (greedy psychopaths) intend to use the upheaval they created to their own advantage. I get that. It’s how they maintain their grip on power. Trouble is, some people take that to mean the whole issue is fake. Nuance is dead.
With all do respect, going from "there is no such thing as infinite growth on a finite planet," which is hard to dispute, to "humans are changing the climate in a way that threatens the continuation of most life on the planet" which is highly debatable, is quite a stretch.
Here is a quote you probably won't like:
"Almost no one who has fervent ideas has a good epistemic basis for the amount of certainty they have. There is a disconnect, between the amount of certainty they have, and the amount of certainty they SHOULD have, through right process."
-Daniel Schmachtenberger
Put another way
“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.” Bertrand Russell
Provide any examples supporting the above assertions? Must be dozens, if not hundreds, given that scientists "were mobbed by political activists representing themselves as honest scientists." Other than a novel by Michael Crichton?
NOT ANYTHING SPECIAL HERE. This is a NORMAL “CLIMATE CYCLE”. PERIOD. There is NO climate change-it’s all FICTION. Do you think Glaciers have never melted? Do you think they’ve NEVER calved? There’s NOTHING to worry about except BILL GATES, GEORGE SOROS, KLAUS SCHWAB, CHELSIE CLINTON, HILDEBITCH CLINTON & OBLABBA (who’s currently enjoying his 3rd Term in Joey’s ear!!)
Bill Gates is making himself useful at the moment by shepherding 4th-generation nuclear power out in Wyoming. And I just played 18 holes with both Soros and Schwab and from what I understand that's all they intend to do in their dotage---as long they can walk. Can't speak for the others.
Sigh
The glaciers are not melting at an alarming rate, a large percentage are growing
Because it’s about precipitation not temps.
Many have been melting continuously for 200 years, long before co2 could have contributed.
That’s science whether you like it or not
Same with sea level rise, it increases and decreases but has been a steady ~2mm/year for as long as measurements have been taken.
I truly feel sorry for you, so many are swallowing this stuff whole
Science according to Pat Robinson, for what it's worth, which is equal to a bucket of warm spit.
Not according to me
According to data
All you have to do is read and decide you want to know
It’s not hard.
For some