"But Global Warming is a HOAX!!!"

[dann]

The most insane part about it is that fossil fuels are killing people right now, so you are already a murderer.

Fossil fuel air pollution responsible for 1 in 5 deaths worldwide
1 in 5 deaths worldwide may seem like an impossible number, but it's actually a scientific fact. If you burn fossil fuels, you're murdering people.

Maybe not overtly, but by depraved indifference causing death. You burn fossil fuels and simply don't care that it's killing people (because if you did care, you would stop doing it). That makes you just as much a murderer as someone who fires a gun in a crowded room without caring where the bullet might go - only more so because when you burn fossil fuels the pollution goes up into the atmosphere and travels around the entire World.

Be careful with the generic you in this case. Most places in the Western world are based on burning a hell of a lot of fossil fuels. You can't not burn fossil fuels, directly or indirectly. And city planning was done intentionally and overtly with suburbs without good public transportation. It wasn't simply a case of not caring or not knowing.

The consumers are not the ones who asked for their electricity or cars to be based on fossil fuels instead of solar and wind. And when some consumers do now as part of the culture wars, Big Tobacco and Big Oil were the ones who started them down this road. People don't get this stupid on their own. They were nudged into the idiocracy. It took 30-40 years to get from the accusations that science about second-hand smoking and anthropogenic global warming was "junk science" whereas Big Tobacco and Big Oil represented "sound science" to where we are now where science as such (and thus global warming) has become suspicious in and of itself. This monster is the result of intentional breeding. It didn't evolve naturally.

People weren't born science deniers. And in most countries, science deniers tend to be a fairly small minority. In Denmark, they didn't really get traction till the current pandemic - with conservative 'think tanks' fanning the flames.

It is one of the many ways in which the USA is extreme. Most countries don't have an anti-science lobby. The irony is that there really is a 'deep state' and a 'swamp' that needs to be 'drained'. According to Wikipedia, 'draining the swamp' used to mean "reducing the influence of special interests and lobbyists," but nowadays lobbyists and the people they pay have managed to make it mean the opposite: anybody who wants to put a stop to lobbyism and corruption is the swamp.

Orwell never saw this coming.

 

[dann]

'The Era of Global Boiling Has Arrived'

Three from MSNBC. The first one is the best. Deespite her being the "senior vice president of the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center", manages to say what needs to be said - after the first nonsense about the importance of naming heatwaves the same way hurricanes are named. But it would have been nice to hear her address industry and politicians instead of telling ordinary people what to do on an individual basis:

July stands to be the Earth's hottest month ever with record heat baking cities coast-to-coast and making the water off the Florida coast feeling like a jacuzzi. Kathy Baughman McLeod joins Jonathan Capehart to discuss how naming heat waves like hurricanes could lead to a better response to this growing climate crisis.

- What's it gonna take to reverse the effects of climate change, or ar we too far gone?
- Well, we have gone too far to pull back on some of the effects. And the temperatures that we are experiencing now, we will see for 30 years, no matter what we do.
We need to stop burning fossil fuels. Period! Full stop! That's it! We have to get off of fossil fuels!
We are in an 'era of global boiling' as nearly half of all Americans are under heat advisories (MSNBC, July 29, 2023 - 6:37)

The ocean feels like a hot tub off South Florida. Jeff Corwin, wildlife conservationist and documentarian, spoke to MSNBC's Alex Witt about why it’s so bad for marine life.
The ugly truth about warming ocean temperatures (MSNBC, July 29, 2023 - 4:45 min.)

The month of July was planet Earth’s hottest month on record. In the U.S., blistering heat descended on the Northeast while the South and Southwest continue to wither under suffocating temperatures. With the onset of extreme heat, the threat of wildfires goes up too. Journalist John Vaillant joins American Voices guest host Michael Steele to talk about how climate disasters are connected and how one catastrophic wildfire in Canada in 2016 could serve as a warning of things to come.
How one Canadian wildfire in 2016 is a bellwether for more climate catastrophes (MSNBC, July 30, 2023 - 4:04 min.)

 

[newyorkguy]

A statement in the previous post illustrates precisely why some scientists -- at least in private -- believe we are headed for catastrophe, that the window of opportunity has closed. That human's fatal flaw turned out to be our inability to reach a political consensus on global warming in time to take effective action.

The temperatures that we are experiencing now, we will see for 30 years, no matter what we do.

Thirty years no matter what we do. Look at the chart below from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency.

[IMGW=400]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=1474&pictureid=13645[/IMGW]

How much longer if we take no effective action? How much longer if we continue increasing the CO2 pumped into the atmosphere?

 

[shemp]

Not much longer.

 

[newyorkguy]

Forgot to link to the NOAA website. Some highlights:

• Each year, human activities release more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than natural processes can remove, causing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to increase.
• The global average carbon dioxide set a new record high in 2022: 417.06 parts per million.
• Atmospheric carbon dioxide is now 50 percent higher than it was before the Industrial Revolution.
• The annual rate of increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide over the past 60 years is about 100 times faster than previous natural increases, such as those that occurred at the end of the last ice age 11,000-17,000 years ago.
• The ocean has absorbed enough carbon dioxide to lower its pH by 0.1 units, a 30% increase in acidity.

NOAA website

How about if we keep doing what we're doing? Keep pumping ever greater amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere? What will the weather be like in 2030? 2040?

 

[dann]

How much longer if we take no effective action? How much longer if we continue increasing the CO2 pumped into the atmosphere?

No sign of any effective action. 'We' do continue to pump CO₂ into the atmosphere - no sign of a turnaround - instead of back into the ground. Much of the energy from solar and wind will be needed for that process:

When combined with long-term storage of CO₂, DAC is known as direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS or DACS). It would require renewable energies to power since approximately 400kJ of energy is needed per mole of CO₂ capture. DACCS can act as a carbon dioxide removal mechanism (or a carbon negative technology), although as of 2022 it has yet to be profitable (!!!) because the cost per tonne of carbon dioxide is several times the carbon price.

DAC was suggested in 1999 and is still in development. Several commercial plants are planned or in operation in Europe and the US. Large-scale DAC deployment may be accelerated when connected with economical applications or policy incentives.
Direct air pressure (Wikipedia)

In other words, there are technical solutions to the problem, in principle, but they require much more energy than the energy from burning fossil fuels ever produced.
Let the fossil fuel industry pay! A 'Philip Morris solution': Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement (Wikipedia).

 

[dann]

Ebony Twilley Martin, the Executive Director of GreenPeace USA, criticizes Biden's speech and lack of action against the real problem:

This summer of extreme weather continues, as July is set to be the hottest month in recorded history. Nearly 200 million people in the US - or 60% of the population - are under heat advisories or flood warnings this weekend, according to the National Weather Service. Scientists have declared that the heat we are experiencing this summer is “virtually impossible” without human-caused climate change - most of which is caused by fossil fuel emissions. And while the Biden administration has made strides in addressing climate change, they also continue to invest heavily in new oil and gas projects. “You can't do subtraction while you continue to add,” says Ebony Twilley Martin, the Executive Director of GreenPeace USA
Two steps forward, two steps back. The Biden admin is sending mixed messages on climate. (MSNBC on YouTube, July 31, 2023 - 10:14 min.)

President Biden declares hazard over soaring heat temperatures as Democrats fight to help workers gain rights and heat protection as Republicans, such as Greg Abbott, fight to take away protections. John Iadarola and Sen. Nina Turner break it down on The Damage Report.
Biden Drops Devastating Hazard Alert As Resident Dangers SURGE (The Damage Report, July 31, 2023 - 6:41)

 

[dann]

This was last year.
Back then, it was also about coping with extreme heat and setting up "community cooling centres in schools" instead of doing something about CO₂ emissions:

Initiatives are aimed at helping salvage the president’s tattered climate agenda after Joe Manchin delivered a major blow last week
Facing the disintegration of his climate agenda as ferocious heatwaves hit large parts of the world, Joe Biden has unveiled a new plan to push billions of dollars to US cities and states to help them cope better with extreme heat.
The president stopped short, however, of declaring a climate emergency.
(...)
“Biden must declare a climate emergency, ban crude oil exports and halt new fossil fuel infrastructure, including pipelines and export terminals,” said Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch.
“The clock is rapidly ticking towards inevitable, irreversible climate catastrophe. There is no more time to lose.”Some Democrats have urged the president to declare a national emergency, which would allow him to block crude oil imports or direct the military to work on renewable energy production.
“For too long we have been waiting for a single piece of legislation, and a single Senate vote, to take bold action on our climate crisis,” a group of senators including the leading progressives Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, wrote to Biden this week.
“As a result, we urge you to put us on an emergency footing and aggressively use your executive powers to address the climate crisis.”
Biden unveils extreme heat plan – but doesn’t declare climate emergency (July 20, 2022)

Now:

Nearly 60 percent of Democrats say Biden “could be doing a lot more” on climate change, while nearly 40 percent say he “has done as much as can be expected,” according to a Pew Research Center poll released last month.
But, questioned differently, 51 percent of Democrats say Biden has handled climate change “about right,” while 34 percent say he’s compromised too much, according to the poll. Just 14 percent of Democrats say he’s compromised too little.
(...)
The liberal Sunrise Movement, for instance, a newer environmental group that demands aggressive climate policy shifts, has hailed the climate law that Biden signed but decried his administration’s approval of the Willow oil project in Alaska and other fossil fuel development.
(...)
Approval of Biden’s climate policies among Democrats is lowest among those ages 18 to 29, according to the Pew poll. Just 64 percent of them say Biden’s policies are taking the country in the right direction, and 34 percent say they’re taking it in the wrong direction.
What Democrats want to hear in Biden’s climate speech (WP, July 27, 2023)

With a few exceptions, Republicans largely are no longer the party of full-on climate change denial. But even as temperatures rise to deadly highs, the GOP is also not actively addressing it. There is still no “robust discussion about how to solve it” within the party, said former South Carolina Rep. Bob Inglis, who now runs the conservative climate group RepublicEn, save for criticism of Democrats’ clean-energy initiatives.
“The good news is Republicans are stopping arguing with thermometers,” Inglis told CNN. Still, he said, “when the experience is multiplied over and over of multiple days of three-digit temperatures in Arizona and record ocean temperatures, people start to say, ‘this is sort of goofy we’re not doing something about this.’”
(...)
But the biggest and most enduring difference between the two parties is that Republicans want fossil fuels – which are fueling climate change with their heat-trapping pollution – to be in the energy mix for years to come.
(...)
“Regrettably, the issue of climate change is currently being held hostage to the culture wars in America,” Edward Maibach, a professor of climate communication at George Mason University and a co-founder of a nationwide climate polling project conducted with Yale University, told CNN in an email. “Donald Trump’s climate denial stance will have a chilling effect on the climate positions of his rivals on the right — even those who know better.”
Even if climate-conscious Republicans say Trump won’t be in the party forever, Inglis said even a few more years may not be enough time to counteract the rapid changes already happening.
“That’s still a long way away,” Inglis said. “The scientists are saying we can’t wait, get moving, get moving.”
Why Republicans can’t get out of their climate bind, even as extreme heat overwhelms the US (CNN, July 30, 2023)

So it's still, Don't Look Up!

 

[Myriad]

Not with the current players running the show, obviously!

Obviously. But the current players running the show are running the show. They seem inclined to want to continue doing so. And I don't mean the insignificant portion of them worldwide that are elected. What's the path to changing that? What's the first step?

Do you think it would have passed with a Democratic majority? A lot of people put their hopes in Biden, and look at his most recent speech!

It was a state measure. It would have passed if there had been a Democrat majority in the state legislature. Which there hasn't been for decades and will not be for the foreseeable future. Biden had nothing to do with it. You seem to think there's some point in these what-ifs, but I'm not seeing it. If carbon dioxide weren't a greenhouse gas, burning fossil fuels wouldn't cause climate change. If combines and semis ran on unicorn farts no one would need to burn diesel fuel. So what?

Be careful now because you have fallen for maybe the most common trick in the book: You take a society that is based on fossil fuels as your starting point and imagine what would happen if you suddenly removed the only available power source. Conclusion: Fossil fuels are necessary for our (!) survival, so what are we to do?!

The solution is much more obvious than you think, which is why I frequently point to the example of infrastructure changes to big cities. (I don't mention Copenhagen's success with limiting fossil fuel traffic or the increasingly wind and solar-based Danish power grid as examples because I'm a nationalist. I'm not. I use these examples to contradict 'but-what-would-happen-if...' objections. It actually can be done, and people are if fact better off when it's done. Sacrifices aren't need to accomplish it.)

You have fallen for a different false assumption. Two, actually. The first is the assumption that just because it's possible to conceive of, design, and describe a sustainable green industrial civilization, means it's possible to get from where we are now to that future configuration without major disruptions and upheavals. The second is that supposing a path for the first actually does exist, that something resembling collectively following it will actually happen.

"We can easily do X, all we need is the political will" means nothing if the political will isn't there. And it isn't. Do you know a way to conjure it up, that hasn't been tried and fallen flat on its face?

Your not being "willing to murder for the planet" objection is so insane that I'm not sure if you believe it yourself, but maybe you do. But you forget that other people are willing to murder for their profits - and not for the sake of the planet, on the contrary - and you come up with an argument to let them continue to do so.
"Sabotaging refineries" is obviously not the way to go, but sabotaging the business models of the ******** who are destroying the atmosphere and people's lives - right now and in the foreseeable future - is what needs to be done. Right now!

As absurd and wrong-headed as the concept of sabotaging refineries is, it's something I could at least imagine how it might be done by actual people taking actual physical actions in the material world. "Sabotaging business models?" What business models, how, by whom?

No illusions is a very good starting point. And kudos for not pretending that taking cold showers is something you do to limit CO₂ emissions when that is not the case. (And it probably is healthier both for the skin and the circulatory system.)

But you should follow through with 'no illusions' and give up on the idea that going green = sacrifices. You stick with your delusion that the elimination of fossil fuels = discomfort, something that "people will have to learn or change their minds about, for any change to happen." Where did you get that idea?! (Rhetorical question!)

Some people - and I am one of them - prefer hot showers, and I see no reason to give up on them. (I keep them short and end with cold water for some of the reasons you mention.)

Big Oil and their shills have messed with our minds to the extent where even environmentalists (actual environmentalists, not the ones paid by Big Oil) equate environmentalism with austerity. And they do so with the argument mentioned above: Taking fossil-fuel society and imagining fossil-fuel society without fossil fuel.
Do you see the trick?

A society based on solar and wind doesn't require sacrifices. Why would it?! My hot showers won't contribute to the greenhouse effect if the water is heated by solar and wind. And the people we need to teach a lesson about austerity and sacrifices aren't the ones you have in mind. They are the ones who are currently profiting from the fossil fuels and the lies they have been telling us, all of us, to the extent where almost nobody doesn't believe at least some of those lies.

"The people we need to teach a lesson..." you're referring to are people who are impervious to being taught lessons, by virtue of being completely insulated from the consequences of their actions. So that's yet another variation of "we can solve this by using a square triangle to generate a reactionless force."

A society based on solar and wind absolutely requires no sacrifices? Are you joking? Maybe that's so in some imagined future, but we live in the present and getting to that future absolutely requires sacrifices, which by the way the lower classes already are and have already been making. Ask an average American 25-year-old working full time what their prospects for owning their own single family home is. Even in a nice livable community (which are scarce, overall), living in an urban apartment is less comfortable than in a suburban house. Even when there are well designed well maintained bike paths/lanes (which there aren't in most places), bicycling in all weather is less comfortable than riding in a climate controlled car. Public transit where it's available (which is, not most places) is less comfortable than private cars, especially when carrying stuff (like groceries) places (like home). Now show me a progress path where, when the rich person's luxury ICE car turns into a luxury electric car, the working poor person's car ICE beater car doesn't turn into a bicycle or public transit. Where when the rich person's McMansion turns into a passively heated solar paneled well-insulated all-electric McMansion, the working poor person's affordable starter home or trailer doesn't turn into an apartment.

I could make excellent use of an affordable electric car that's got an enclosed cabin (I can do without heat or AC, if the alternative is a bicycle), space for two passengers, a top speed of 50 mph, a range of 50 miles, and be road-legal. Can I buy such a thing in the US? Of course not; no one who matters would buy that or want to be caught selling it. It smacks of austerity, of sacrifice. Electric cars have to be able to out-race and out-range and out-luxury and out-crash-safety the ICE cars to be viable in the market. We must have progress! Can't afford one of those? Well, there's a proposal to form a committee to impanel a commission to study the possibility of hiring a planner to write a report on the pros and cons of adding some bike lanes. Be content with that, and remember, no sacrifices!

 

[MRC_Hans]

Obviously. But the current players running the show are running the show. They seem inclined to want to continue doing so. And I don't mean the insignificant portion of them worldwide that are elected. What's the path to changing that? What's the first step?




It was a state measure. It would have passed if there had been a Democrat majority in the state legislature. Which there hasn't been for decades and will not be for the foreseeable future. Biden had nothing to do with it. You seem to think there's some point in these what-ifs, but I'm not seeing it. If carbon dioxide weren't a greenhouse gas, burning fossil fuels wouldn't cause climate change. If combines and semis ran on unicorn farts no one would need to burn diesel fuel. So what?





You have fallen for a different false assumption. Two, actually. The first is the assumption that just because it's possible to conceive of, design, and describe a sustainable green industrial civilization, means it's possible to get from where we are now to that future configuration without major disruptions and upheavals. The second is that supposing a path for the first actually does exist, that something resembling collectively following it will actually happen.

"We can easily do X, all we need is the political will" means nothing if the political will isn't there. And it isn't. Do you know a way to conjure it up, that hasn't been tried and fallen flat on its face?




As absurd and wrong-headed as the concept of sabotaging refineries is, it's something I could at least imagine how it might be done by actual people taking actual physical actions in the material world. "Sabotaging business models?" What business models, how, by whom?




"The people we need to teach a lesson..." you're referring to are people who are impervious to being taught lessons, by virtue of being completely insulated from the consequences of their actions. So that's yet another variation of "we can solve this by using a square triangle to generate a reactionless force."

A society based on solar and wind absolutely requires no sacrifices? Are you joking? Maybe that's so in some imagined future, but we live in the present and getting to that future absolutely requires sacrifices, which by the way the lower classes already are and have already been making. Ask an average American 25-year-old working full time what their prospects for owning their own single family home is. Even in a nice livable community (which are scarce, overall), living in an urban apartment is less comfortable than in a suburban house. Even when there are well designed well maintained bike paths/lanes (which there aren't in most places), bicycling in all weather is less comfortable than riding in a climate controlled car. Public transit where it's available (which is, not most places) is less comfortable than private cars, especially when carrying stuff (like groceries) places (like home). Now show me a progress path where, when the rich person's luxury ICE car turns into a luxury electric car, the working poor person's car ICE beater car doesn't turn into a bicycle or public transit. Where when the rich person's McMansion turns into a passively heated solar paneled well-insulated all-electric McMansion, the working poor person's affordable starter home or trailer doesn't turn into an apartment.

I could make excellent use of an affordable electric car that's got an enclosed cabin (I can do without heat or AC, if the alternative is a bicycle), space for two passengers, a top speed of 50 mph, a range of 50 miles, and be road-legal. Can I buy such a thing in the US? Of course not; no one who matters would buy that or want to be caught selling it. It smacks of austerity, of sacrifice. Electric cars have to be able to out-race and out-range and out-luxury and out-crash-safety the ICE cars to be viable in the market. We must have progress! Can't afford one of those? Well, there's a proposal to form a committee to impanel a commission to study the possibility of hiring a planner to write a report on the pros and cons of adding some bike lanes. Be content with that, and remember, no sacrifices!

I agree in general, and to the highlighted part, that is one of the insanities: You could build an EV that ran on lead-acid batteries and would fill the basic needs of ... not knowing figures ... well over half the users. Then you could make long-range cars (but still no rocket acceleration) that people could rent when they needed to go far. We could have that up and running on two years.

Also, I'm now using an app that tells me when the electricity price is low because a surplus of green energy is produced (sunny, windy days), and then I try to defer my dishwasher and washing machine running to those times. But that could be automated with available technology in no time.

Hans

 

[dann]

This is going to be awfully long, sorry!

Obviously. But the current players running the show are running the show. They seem inclined to want to continue doing so. And I don't mean the insignificant portion of them worldwide that are elected. What's the path to changing that? What's the first step?

They are indeed running it, and they do want to continue doing so, but I am not sure what you mean when you mention "the insignificant portion of them worldwide that are elected."
I may be wrong, but I suspect that this is the whataboutist excuse that Americans (and Trump in particular) often come up with: 'But what about China? What's the use of it all if China continues with its CO₂ emissions?'

And China is definitely a problem - all countries with CO₂ emission above zero are, obviously - but China is far from the problem. Few countries emit more CO₂ per capita than the USA: Per capita CO₂ emissions, 2021 (Our World in Data)
(U.S. whataboutists prefer to look at this graph instead: Who emits the most CO₂? And it's true, "China is the leading emitter of greenhouse gasses, but has also become a major investor in green technologies." (And if we look at it historically, nobody comes close to the USA!)
All in all, China seems to be moving ahead at a much faster pace than the USA - but also not nearly fast enough, like most other industrialized countries.

As for the next step, I can't say what you should do in your part of the world, but since it is one of the worst in this respect, you do need to do something about those ********.

It was a state measure. It would have passed if there had been a Democrat majority in the state legislature. Which there hasn't been for decades and will not be for the foreseeable future. Biden had nothing to do with it. You seem to think there's some point in these what-ifs, but I'm not seeing it. If carbon dioxide weren't a greenhouse gas, burning fossil fuels wouldn't cause climate change. If combines and semis ran on unicorn farts no one would need to burn diesel fuel. So what?

They always come up with this excuse, and yet when they do have a majority, they also don't do it. Go to the The Parrot and the Igloo and its many examples. (See the chapter The Parrot, p. 451-71.) Not even Obama did it when he was the president. He came up with another excuse: He was forced to choose between health care and climate! (No, he wasn't, but it was a convenient excuse, wasn't it?!)

You have fallen for a different false assumption. Two, actually. The first is the assumption that just because it's possible to conceive of, design, and describe a sustainable green industrial civilization, means it's possible to get from where we are now to that future configuration without major disruptions and upheavals. The second is that supposing a path for the first actually does exist, that something resembling collectively following it will actually happen.

I have not only described, but also presented plenty of examples of how Denmark is at least on the way towards a zero-emission economy, and I haven't noticed any disruptions or upheavals along the way, not even minor ones. The only opposition comes from property owners who object to windmills spoiling their unobstructed view of the ocean and a few unfortunate woos who think that their ailments are caused by wind turbines, i.e. people like Chuck in Better Calls Saul, and there aren't many of those. (And unlike your fossil-fuel CEOs, they can't pay off any politicians.)

As for the second assumption, I have mentioned one of the reasons why it has been easier to achieve the changes in DK: We don't have a lobby of car manufacturers, fossil-fuel companies and grid investors to lie about it and make it seem to be a much more difficult transition than it has actually been. They and the politicians they pay to do their bidding are the ones you need to do something about.
So do it!

"We can easily do X, all we need is the political will" means nothing if the political will isn't there. And it isn't. Do you know a way to conjure it up, that hasn't been tried and fallen flat on its face?

The ones who say so are usually the ones who don't have the will, like the Democrats: 'We have the will, but the Republican majority don't, so what can we do?'
It's a dumb excuse, both from them and from you.

As absurd and wrong-headed as the concept of sabotaging refineries is, it's something I could at least imagine how it might be done by actual people taking actual physical actions in the material world. "Sabotaging business models?" What business models, how, by whom?

It is very easy to imagine. I can imagine shooting the CEOs of the fossil-fuel industry, too, but I don't see how it would do any good. There are several low-level executives waiting for their turn to take over, so what would be the point?
The current business model for fossil-fuel is obviously what it has been for at least the past 70 years: To come up with lies about the global warming, which their own scientists have been telling them was actually happening. Those lies were less to convince people, voters, that things could go on the way they did. It was more to provide their bought politicians with excuses for letting it continue: 'It is such a complicated issue and we need more time and more studies.'
It has gone on and on and has now got to the point where science as such has become dubious and is being presented as an interest group. (They've always been good at projection!)

"The people we need to teach a lesson..." you're referring to are people who are impervious to being taught lessons, by virtue of being completely insulated from the consequences of their actions. So that's yet another variation of "we can solve this by using a square triangle to generate a reactionless force."

According to the Collins Dictionary:

If you say that you are going to teach someone a lesson, you mean that you are going to punish them for something that they have done so that they do not do it again.

I know that you know that!

A society based on solar and wind absolutely requires no sacrifices? Are you joking? Maybe that's so in some imagined future, but we live in the present and getting to that future absolutely requires sacrifices, which by the way the lower classes already are and have already been making. Ask an average American 25-year-old working full time what their prospects for owning their own single family home is. Even in a nice livable community (which are scarce, overall), living in an urban apartment is less comfortable than in a suburban house.

You repeat the one basic mistake that you made in your previous post. The one that all your objections are based on: You imagine that your current society, based on fossil fuels as it is, all of a sudden lost fossil fuels! (It's the same argumentative trick that I always hear from anti-communists: But how would we be able to get hold of things without money? It's preposterous! How could the grocery stall function without it?!')

Let me repeat it again. At this point, more than two thirds of electric power comes from wind and solar, whether I charge my Tesla (which I don't have) or take a hot shower (which I do). And when it's a little windy, it's probably 100%. (That's when the Germans pay wind turbine owners to turn them off.) And those wind turbines are getting cheaper and more reliable all the time in spite of what Ted Cruz and the for-profit owners of the grid tell you when they blame their own lack of maintenance of the grid on wind and solar.
We don't have those problem. At all! Weird, isn't it?!

Why would I ask "an average American 25-year-old working full time what their prospects for owning their own single family home is"?
I know what you mean, but I think it would be more appropriate for you to ask an average 25-year-old Dane the same question.
You pretend that wind turbines and solar panels would somehow force your 25-year-old American to endure sacrifices, i.e. the lie that Ted Cruz has been telling you. There is no connection between the two things. (Or it's the opposite of what you think it is!)

You notice that "the lower classes already are and have already been making" sacrifices, and you are obviously right, but in the middle of your consternation, you forget for whom they have been making those sacrifices. It sure as hell hasn't been for installing wind and solar, has it? If it had, your current energy problems and catastrophic CO₂ emissions could easily have been lowered by more than half.

So I think it's time for you to consider why you are so fond of the argument about sacrifices because those sacrifices seem to have been made 1) involuntarily and 2) for the sake of the fossil-fuel CEOs and other capitalists, the one-percenters, who will continue to demand those sacrifices while blaming them om wind turbines, environmentalists, blacks, jews, the LGBTQ community, the Barbie movie and other scapegoats.

Even when there are well designed well maintained bike paths/lanes (which there aren't in most places), bicycling in all weather is less comfortable than riding in a climate controlled car. Public transit where it's available (which is, not most places) is less comfortable than private cars, especially when carrying stuff (like groceries) places (like home). Now show me a progress path where, when the rich person's luxury ICE car turns into a luxury electric car, the working poor person's car ICE beater car doesn't turn into a bicycle or public transit. Where when the rich person's McMansion turns into a passively heated solar paneled well-insulated all-electric McMansion, the working poor person's affordable starter home or trailer doesn't turn into an apartment.

I occasionally switched from biking to the subway if (for whatever reason) I didn't feel like biking. It it was only about the weather, I'd put on my rain gear. Biking in rain can be very refreshing if you don't get wet. If it was windy, I might bike one way, and bring the bike onto the subway with me the other way. Or not. (We have very few hurricanes and hardly ever winds so strong that I can't overcome them.)

But the main problem with your argument in this paragraph is that you imagine some kind of connection between poor people's sacrifices and rich people's luxury Teslas as if the calamity was somehow caused by environmentalism and not by capitalism.
Some people in this kind of society get rich by exploiting the working classes and the planet while blaming everything and everybody else, which is nothing but diversion tactics. The poor don't get poor because environmentalists are forcing restrictions on the unfortunate capitalists who would much rather pay poor people a living wage if it weren't for those restrictions.
The connection that you imagine isn't there! And you know the ones who placed this idea in your head! They paid consultants to come up with it.

I could make excellent use of an affordable electric car that's got an enclosed cabin (I can do without heat or AC, if the alternative is a bicycle), space for two passengers, a top speed of 50 mph, a range of 50 miles, and be road-legal. Can I buy such a thing in the US? Of course not; no one who matters would buy that or want to be caught selling it. It smacks of austerity, of sacrifice. Electric cars have to be able to out-race and out-range and out-luxury and out-crash-safety the ICE cars to be viable in the market. We must have progress! Can't afford one of those? Well, there's a proposal to form a committee to impanel a commission to study the possibility of hiring a planner to write a report on the pros and cons of adding some bike lanes. Be content with that, and remember, no sacrifices!

Now you are talking! The two kinds of people! The ones who can ride around in their luxury cars pretending that they are doing something for the environment while spending more on heating their pools than it takes to pay for heating in 10 blocks of flats. And the ones who are told that they shouldn't be so damn entitled and that their consumption is not affordable for environmental reasons.

But it's a lie! Don't buy into it!

And an important point I almost forgot: If "bicycling in all weather is less comfortable than riding in a climate controlled car," it's time to make riding in a climate-controlled car a ******* nuisance. As I have mentioned before, bicycling in Copenhagen works because it's convenient and often faster than driving a car. So is the subway, and as mentioned above, we can combine the two things.

Many car lanes have been turned into bus-and-bike lanes, which has slowed down driving even more.
See a few stats here: https://radkompetenz.at/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Copenhagen-Mobility-facts-and-figures-2021.pdf
More bicycles than cars in Copenhagen for the first time (ClimateAction, Nov 30, 2016)
Copenhagen Plans Greater Restrictions on Car Use as Cycling Surges to 49% of Commuter Journeys (Forbes, May 28, 2019)
Copenhagen’s cycling success: Make cars pay their way, not just bike lanes - Promoting biking requires ending the big, hidden subsidies to car ownership and use (CityObservatory.org, Nov 11, 2019)

My point here is: The USA has made driving comfortable and the alternatives uncomfortable. You should turn that around. There are many ways of doing this as an individual and even more as an organization. Enforce sacrifices on the rich. It's high time, both for your own sake and for the rest of the planet.

 

[Myriad]

I'll delve into specifics later. What I see here overall is "don't do specific things that you can do, because they won't really help. Instead, do vague things that are impossible, because that would help." I point out that the rich and powerful are immune from consequences, and you remind me that "teaching a lesson" means enacting consequences (punishment). Surely you're not hinting at personal violence by individuals or mobs, which I've already stated I'm not willing to engage in. You keep repeating "do something about X, Y, and Z" but you never get around to saying what.

 

[varwoche]

They always come up with this excuse, and yet when they do have a majority, they also don't do it. Go to the The Parrot and the Igloo and its many examples. (See the chapter The Parrot, p. 451-71.) Not even Obama did it when he was the president.

A slim majority in the senate is insufficient. At the bare minimum, a president would need 60/40 to avoid fillibuster. More like 62/38 what with Manchin and Sinema.

The only alternative is presidential orders. They're limited in scope, and they tend to get overturned either by the courts or the next republican POTUS.

 

[bruto]

I agree in general, and to the highlighted part, that is one of the insanities: You could build an EV that ran on lead-acid batteries and would fill the basic needs of ... not knowing figures ... well over half the users. Then you could make long-range cars (but still no rocket acceleration) that people could rent when they needed to go far. We could have that up and running on two years.

Also, I'm now using an app that tells me when the electricity price is low because a surplus of green energy is produced (sunny, windy days), and then I try to defer my dishwasher and washing machine running to those times. But that could be automated with available technology in no time.

Hans

I agree somewhere in between. I live out in snow country, and need a certain degree of amenities and range. But that is, and was, the kind of amenities and range one could get with a 1960 VW bug. Or we could even go way into the later years, and get something like my '85 Honda Civic - manual everything, good performance, high mileage, and a surprising amount of room.

Update something like that, with LED headlights, a preheat option that warms it up while charging, and you don't need some one of those little plastic pseudo-cars. Just a plain economy car with an electric motor. So yes, I need a bit more highway speed than a top of 50, and more range than 50 miles, and a heater, a roof, and wipers and lights. But I don't need tire-scorching performance, and I don't need power windows and AC, and I don't need a touch screen and a constant feed to the internet and all that stuff. 200 honest miles would likely be a cinch with a no-frills car that doesn't need to win a drag race.

Such a thing would still need a fair amount of battery, and consequently a bit more beef in the suspension than that old Beetle or some other little car of the 60's, but it wouldn't have to be a feature for feature competitor to a luxury car either.

 

[MRC_Hans]

Actually, power windows and advanced electronics (except AC) are of little impact, climate-wise and could well be the frostting that might make an otherwise dull cake go down. In fact, something like a good navigation system will likely save some energy. .. but otherwise, agreed.

Hans

 

[dann]

I'll delve into specifics later. What I see here overall is "don't do specific things that you can do, because they won't really help. ...

What doesn't help is things like taking cold showers while letting the billionaires take weekend trips in private jets, i.e. pretending that the things that ordinary people can do mininize their own personal 'carbon footprint' while the big-boot owners are trampling all over them.

You know that, and yet you come up with this strawman:

... Instead, do vague things that are impossible, because that would help."

What is the vague things I suggest that are impossible?!
You are the one who claims that nothing can be done about the main perpetrators in this case:

I point out that the rich and powerful are immune from consequences, and you remind me that "teaching a lesson" means enacting consequences (punishment).

Yes, I do have to remind you when you pretend that lesson was meant literally:

"The people we need to teach a lesson..." you're referring to are people who are impervious to being taught lessons, by virtue of being completely insulated from the consequences of their actions.

You are the one who is painting a picture of a monster that it's impossible to do anything about, as if you didn't know that the consequences of those people's actions are what is ruining the planet for human habitation.

Surely you're not hinting at personal violence by individuals or mobs, which I've already stated I'm not willing to engage in.

No, unlike you I'm not hinting at personal violence. In fact, I specifically warned against it. These guys are not like the Nazis preaching on street corners that you can walk up to and slap in front of rolling cameras. You are the one who is so obsessed with the idea of "personal violence" that you read it into what I wrote even though it's nowhere to be found.

You keep repeating "do something about X, Y, and Z" but you never get around to saying what.

What is the point of telling somebody what to do if that somebody is busy creating a monster that's "impervious to being taught lessons, by virtue of being completely insulated from the consequences of their actions"?
Did you miss this post, which was not specifically directed at you?

No sign of any effective action. 'We' do continue to pump CO₂ into the atmosphere - no sign of a turnaround - instead of back into the ground. Much of the energy from solar and wind will be needed for that process:

In other words, there are technical solutions to the problem, in principle, but they require much more energy than the energy from burning fossil fuels ever produced.
Let the fossil fuel industry pay! A 'Philip Morris solution': Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement (Wikipedia).

Is it not specific enough for you? Does it imply the use of "personal violence by individuals or mobs"?
It's far from the only thing that needs to be done, primarily because it takes time, which is of the essence in this question, but I'll leave you to your pastime of coming up with excuses for why nothing effective can be done.

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

... and?



Are you telling me dead trees aren't fossil fuels, or that they weren't recently plants?

ETA: what difference does it even make what the source of c02 emitted hydrocarbons is? If you are implying god, or aliens, put them there it doesnt matter.

My guess is the spoofer is trying to push the abiotic oil myth.

 

[Myriad]

What is the vague things I suggest that are impossible?!

Here's one:

No sign of any effective action. 'We' do continue to pump CO2 into the atmosphere - no sign of a turnaround - instead of back into the ground. Much of the energy from solar and wind will be needed for that process:

In other words, there are technical solutions to the problem, in principle, but they require much more energy than the energy from burning fossil fuels ever produced.
Let the fossil fuel industry pay! A 'Philip Morris solution': Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement (Wikipedia).

Tell me more about how to pump CO2 into the ground. What kind of pump should I buy? How deep in the ground should I dig? Should I buy CO2 as bottled gas, or dry ice, or can I use natural gas from my home supply lines? How about if instead of using a pump, I buy some charcoal and bury it in my yard; would that suffice?

Then when I want the fossil fuel industry to pay for the expenses I've incurred, what name and address should I invoice? What are the account and purchase order numbers? What office should I mail it to?

I'm doing the math on how much time I can realistically spend digging and how much of my yard I can dig up before the neighbors complain, and it still seems to me that using less fossil fuels personally (such as, cold showers and less travel) would be more effective at reducing the net amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. So either your advice is faulty, or there's something about it, as it applies to me individually, that you're failing to clearly communicate.

 

[varwoche]

What doesn't help is things like taking cold showers while letting the billionaires take weekend trips in private jets, i.e. pretending that the things that ordinary people can do mininize their own personal 'carbon footprint' while the big-boot owners are trampling all over them.

What a load of nonsense. While it's true that changes need to occur above and beyond the small measures that we peons can take, your dismissal of those small measures reeks of rationalization for your own selfish choices. Sure, most of us make selfish choices such as flying for pleasure, pet ownership, etc. But at least be real about it and spare your readers the stream of self-serving BS.

 

[dann]

What exactly are my "own selfish choices," which my alleged "rationalization" "reeks of"?
It is such a comforting idea that taking cold showers helps stop CO₂ emissions, but it doesn't if those cold showers serve as an excuse to do nothing whatsoever about the fossil fuel industry.
I won't apologize for spoiling your delusions, i.e. your "stream of self-serving BS."