Cont: Global warming discussion V

[dann]

I'm seeing a lot of bluster here but no answer as to whether or not you think an immediate fracking ban like the one Biden promised (but hasn't delivered) should actually be enacted.

When you leave out the documentation from my post, it's pretty easy for you to resort to nothing but bluster:

Federal data show the Biden administration approved 6,430 permits for oil and gas drilling on public lands in its first two years, outpacing the Trump administration’s 6,172 drilling-permit approvals in its first two years.
The Biden administration’s policy of fossil fuel expansion contradicts the clear climate science that fossil fuel growth must be stopped and governments must phase out fossil fuels to avoid the most catastrophic consequences of climate change.
“Two years of runaway drilling approvals are a spectacular failure of climate leadership by President Biden and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland,” said Taylor McKinnon of the Center for Biological Diversity. “Avoiding catastrophic climate change requires phasing out fossil fuel extraction, but instead we’re still racing in the opposite direction.”
The Biden-approved drilling permits will result in more than 800 million tons of estimated equivalent greenhouse gas pollution, or the annual climate pollution from about 217 coal-fired power plants.
Biden Administration Oil, Gas Drilling Approvals Outpace Trump’s (Center for Biological Diversity, Jan 24, 2023)

And from two previous very recent posts:

With climate change a top priority for Biden-Harris administration, here’s what that means for fracking (Boston University, Dec 9, 2020)
No, Biden didn't just ban fracking (CNN, Jan 27, 2021)
Update: Biden Promised a Ban – He’s Doing the Opposite (Food and Water Watch, Sep 15, 2021)
Biden Fracking Ban At A Standstill Amid Global Energy Crisis (Earth.org, May 8, 2022)
Joe Biden Broke His 2020 Pledge on Fracking. Good. (Washington Monthly, Mar 7, 2023)
Young People to Joe Biden: You Betrayed Us on Climate Change (BusinessInsider, Mar 16, 2023)

In the 2020 election, Joe Biden ran as a self-proclaimed climate-president. As summarized by CBS, he promised to "develop a clean energy economy ... to build more resilient communities, to reestablish America's global leadership on this issue, and to work toward environmental justice." (...) But a closer look will show that there are vast inconsistencies in the president's promises and policies.
Above all president Biden has revealed his lack of commitment to environmental justice through his acceptance and expansion of the production of fossil fuels.
Joe Biden Approved Drilling Projects, Now Young Voters Are Watching for 2024(TeenVogue, Aug 10, 2023)

Conservation groups sued the Department of the Interior in April to compel a response to the petition after the agency had ignored it for more than a year. As intended, the lawsuit forced that response. The Department’s only rationale for denying the petition was that it has “insufficient resources” to initiate the requested rulemaking.

Scientific conclusions reached since the petition was filed in 2022 show that wealthy countries must end oil and gas extraction by 2031 to maintain a likely chance of avoiding the harms of warming 1.5 degrees Celsius.

“Leaving the fossil fuel industry in control of the oil and gas spigot is an appalling abdication of climate leadership on public lands,” said Taylor McKinnon of the Center for Biological Diversity. “To claim that the Biden administration doesn’t have the resources to take real climate action on federal fossil fuels is vacuous and beyond hypocritical. This is the definition of lip service. The administration acknowledges the urgency to address climate change and meanwhile avoids every opportunity to take meaningful action on the fossil fuels under its control.”
Biden Administration Rejects Calls to Phase Out Oil, Gas on Public Lands by 2035 (Center for Biological Diversity, June 29, 2023)

But what about China and India?!!!

That you continue to believe in Biden's bluster isn't something I can help you with. I can point out the reality of his promises and what he actually did: the opposite. Not even in his recent speech about the heat wave (where he chose to focus on 'cooling centers') did he mention the real problem, anthropogenic global warming and the CO₂ emissions that cause it.
What I think should (!) be enacted is immaterial in this context. It is obvious what he is doing and what he has no intentions to do.

 

[dann]

Company directors in New Zealand are currently bound by the Companies Act 1993. A bill called the Companies (Directors’ Duties) Amendment Bill is working its way through parliament now. If passed it will add 'Reducing adverse environmental impacts' to the list of responsibilities. Until then...

Constitution of New Zealand: An Introduction

Yes.

You are wrong. The industry does manufacture affordable electric cars. Energy suppliers are shifting to wind and solar. They are not telling lies about global warming.

Government waste work programme

My city has a waste transfer station that takes all kinds of rubbish and separates it according to type - electronics, 'whiteware', batteries, greenwaste, plastic bottles etc. for recycling. They also sell stuff that may still be useful (furniture, building parts, bicycles etc.). 'General' rubbish that can't be recycled attracts a dumping fee. Roadside collection also goes through this system.

My city has built a network of over 100km of cycle paths that enable people to cycle to and from work even in the next city. This includes dedicated pathways across and under bridges so cyclists don't have to mix with road traffic. Most rural roads have a restricted speed limit of 80kph. I bike to work when I can. Very few others do though. Perhaps if they reduced speed limits to 30kph and raised the price of petrol to $20 per liter...

But 'ordinary people' love spreading contrarian information and complaining about how much the government 'wastes' on attempts to mitigate global warming. This is real grassroots stuff that propagates without any astroturfing.

I work with agricultural scientists who earn $70,000+ per year and are well aware of the global warming crisis, yet only 3 out of 80 employees at the facility drive an electric car - and I'm one of them. 2 or 3 bike to work, the rest drive mostly expensive SUVs. These people can't say they are misinformed or too poor to do the right thing. Most of them are actual scientists working in a field that is already being adversely affected by global warming. If even they aren't taking it seriously I hate to think what the attitude of the rest of the population is.

6% of our electricity is produced from wind and 1% from solar.

Opposition to Contact's proposed 50-turbine wind farm grows in SouthlandContact is my electricity supplier. I hope they they get consent despite the locals opposing the project, who no doubt will be voting for National hoping they win the election in October and reject the consent application.

Perhaps it's different where you are, but here it's not the government and energy industry that's ruining the climate.

Even though I know nothing about the climate debate in New Zealand, it didn't take me long to find these articles:
New Zealand Climate Science Coalition (NZCSC) (Wikipedia)
Heartland New Zealand (Wikipedia)
The NZCSC was founded in 2006 but went bankrupt in 2012, and in the meantime all the prominent members appear to have died. However, "In 2007, the Heartland Institute, which rejects mainstream scientific information about man-made climate change, granted the Coalition US$25,000 (NZ$32,000) sending the money to NZCSC member Owen McShane."

And I notice that this one, founded in 2020, appears to have taken over where the NZCSC left off:

At the time of its founding, it was backed by Hamilton entrepreneur Harry Mowbray, father of Nick Mowbray, a billionaire who, with his siblings, was on the 2019 NBR Rich List.
(...)
Heartland NZ seeks to form a coalition with other right-wing parties. The party has been critical of climate change and water restrictions and has opposed New Zealand's ban on oil and gas exploration. In 2023 it campaigned against the Labour government's Clean Car Standard, and against "wokeism" and political correctness.
Heartland New Zealand Party (Wikipedia)

I don't know if the Heartland name is a coincidence. Maybe it is. But I still think it might be a good idea to follow the money instead of insisting that ordinary people come up with these things all on their own.

An anecdote from Denmark:
When first passive smoking and later a ban on indoor smoking in indoor public places was considered in Denmark, Danish MD Tage Voss founded the organization Hensynsfulde Rygere (Hen-Ry), in English Considerate Smokers.
Its main idea was that the ban on smoking in indoor public places would be unnecessary if only smokers were considerate. I liked the guy. He was a public figure, and over the years, he had made many very sensible arguments against different kinds of superstition.
However, his new idea obviously didn't work: Smokers just weren't considerate, at least not as a group, and Hen-Ry didn't help make them so.
As a salsa dancer, I was very annoyed by people, usually the ones who didn't dance themselves but were only spectators, smoking indoors and always close to the dance floor. Considerate? No way! So I was quite happy when it was finally banned.

This story really helped:

I 2000 afslørede Jyllands-Posten, at Tage Voss stod på tobaksgiganten Philip Morriss lønningsliste fra 1987 til 1993 med mindst kr 200.000 årligt, udbetalt i schweizerfranc.[4] De 1.500 medlemmer af Hen-Ry betalte kun 100 kroner om året i kontingent, hvilket langtfra dækkede udgifterne i foreningen, som også modtog et årligt bidrag på kr 150.000 fra tobaksindustrien i Danmark. I 1992 indkasserede Hen-Ry betydelige sponsorindtægter ved afholdelsen af en stor verdenskonference i København for rygerorganisationer med Hen-Ry som officiel arrangør - mens Philip Morris' egne papirer viser, at konferencen i hemmelighed blev detaljeret planlagt og finansieret af tobaksindustrien selv
Tage Voss (Wikipedia)

Google translate: In 2000, Jyllands-Posten revealed that Tage Voss was on the tobacco giant Philip Morris' payroll from 1987 to 1993 with at least DKK 200,000 annually, paid in Swiss francs. The 1,500 members of Hen-Ry paid only DKK 100 per year in dues, which by no means covered the expenses of the association, which also received an annual contribution of DKK 150,000 from the tobacco industry in Denmark. In 1992, Hen-Ry raked in significant sponsorship revenue by holding a major world conference in Copenhagen for smokers' organizations with Hen-Ry as the official organizer - while Philip Morris' own papers show that the conference was secretly planned in detail and financed by the tobacco industry itself.

I can't say that something similar to this is what's happening to the climate debate in New Zealand, but I'll be surprised if it isn't. Nowadays, the astroturfing is probably carried out by twitterbots to give the impression that 'ordinary people' are the ones who run the show, "real grassroots stuff that propagates without any astroturfing."
Follow the money!

 

[dann]

The melting of Greenland:

The Greenland ice sheet contributes more to sea level rise than any other ice mass — including Antarctica
Melting sea ice doesn’t contribute to sea level rise, because it is already in the ocean. Think of an ice cube floating in a glass of water — the amount of water it displaces while frozen is roughly equal to the amount of liquid it adds as it melts, so the overall water level doesn’t change.
(...)
When all that land ice melts, it flows into the ocean, raising sea levels by about three-quarters of a millimeter per year. Greenland is losing mass at twice the pace of Antarctica, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
(...)
Joerg Schaefer, a climate geochemist at the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory and the lead investigator for the drilling project I wrote about, called the Greenland ice sheet “the sickest patient in the climate system.”
(...)
And melting from Greenland is on track to get a lot worse. Even if the world stopped emitting greenhouse gases today, a study published last year found the ice sheet will lose more than 110 trillion tons of ice by 2100 — triggering nearly a foot of global sea level rise.
What Arctic ice tells us about climate change (Washington Post, Aug 29, 2023)

 

[dann]

Applying taxes to beef products could be one way to reduce CO2 emissions, says the Danish Government
At the Flammen restaurant in Copenhagen, Denmark, chefs cook steaks from cattle raised on the other side of the planet.
It is something the chef of the Flammen restaurant in Copenhagen seems to be proud of.
“Then there is our beef cuvette," he explained. "It comes from Uruguay or Argentina respectively.”
This is not a trivial matter when it comes to the health of the planet; beef accounts for 55 per cent of Denmark's food-related emissions and it's not just because it is carried thousands of kilometres away from home.
Henrik Wenzel is a professor at the Southern University of Denmark.
'Tax beef' - Denmark finds ways to tackle climate change (EuroNews, Aug 29, 2023)

It remains to be seen if an actual law is passed.
I could do without beef entirely, but I'd miss dairy.

 

[dann]

Ramaswamy continued:

It’s worth unpacking Ramaswamy’s debate comments in greater depth. He started by declaring, brashly, that the “the climate agenda is a hoax” and then followed up saying that the “anti-carbon agenda is the wet blanket on our economy.” He concluded arguing that “the reality is more people are dying of bad climate change policies than they are of actual climate change.”
Ramaswamy makes clear from the jump that he opposes climate policy, but nowhere does he actually deny that human behavior is contributing to climate change.
(...)
In short, for many voters, fear of a weak economy will outweigh fears over climate change. By branding climate policy as an economic downer, he and others can poison the well for any future climate policy.
There's More Than Meets the Eye to Ramaswamy's Climate Comment (Time, Aug 28, 2023)

 

[Hercules56]

Sadly it appears that we do indeed need to see a massive climate disaster for all the world to see before people in the USA and other Western countries will decide to really do something. Something dramatic and incredible needs to happen, like a hurricane that destroys an entire city, or massive tornadoes during the winter, or sudden dramatic sea level rise. Basically Hollywood style disaster. Otherwise we will continue to deny and kick the can down the road until it's too late.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

Sadly it appears that we do indeed need to see a massive climate disaster for all the world to see before people in the USA and other Western countries will decide to really do something. Something dramatic and incredible needs to happen, like a hurricane that destroys an entire city, or massive tornadoes during the winter, or sudden dramatic sea level rise. Basically Hollywood style disaster. Otherwise we will continue to deny and kick the can down the road until it's too late.

It's a huge, unsupported assumption that any response will automatically be a positive, proactive one, but instead just a mad dash by wealthier nations to secure their own prosperity while strengthening their borders from increasing masses of climate refugees.

Acceptance of the reality of climate change does not mean people will suddenly accept the need for international cooperation to implement climate change mitigation strategies.

 

[Hercules56]

It's a huge, unsupported assumption that any response will automatically be a positive one, proactive one, but instead just a mad dash by wealthier nations to secure their own prosperity while strengthening their borders from increasing masses of climate refugees.

Acceptance of the reality of climate change does not mean people will suddenly accept the need for international cooperation to implement climate change mitigation strategies.

So we're screwed.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

So we're screwed.

Not necessarily, I'm just pointing out that these things won't fall into place on their own.

The current system will need to be directly confronted. I'm not a pessimist, I firmly believe that the monster can be slayed, but the public will have to do the slaying.

 

[Hercules56]

Not necessarily, I'm just pointing out that these things won't fall into place on their own.

The current system will need to be directly confronted. I'm not a pessimist, I firmly believe that the monster can be slayed, but the public will have to do the slaying.

For too many wealthy and middle class people in the world, the cure seems to be worse than the disease. Significant disruption of their capitalist and consumerist lifestyle is too scary a thought for too many people to bear. Ugg not sure how we overcome this without smacking people in the back of the head, and forcing them to think about the greater good and the future of the planet and humanity.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

For too many wealthy and middle class people in the world, the cure seems to be worse than the disease. Significant disruption of their capitalist and consumerist lifestyle is too scary a thought for too many people to bear. Ugg not sure how we overcome this without smacking people in the back of the head, and forcing them to think about the greater good and the future of the planet and humanity.

There's a great deal of precarity even in wealthy countries that is breeding discontent. The system has been very negligent in ensuring that enough of their people were happy and invested in the continued uninterrupted operation of the status quo to adequately buffer the rowdy masses of people who see there is a problem. In the US we have a neoliberal party whose best promise is that they are most responsible party to manage the decline our society is clearly on, and a right wing party that promises to reverse this decline by doing a big racism. Things aren't exactly flying that smoothly in the wealthy West.

[Obama voice] Uh, let me be clear. The contradictions are, uh, heightening.

 

[Myriad]

Not even in his recent speech about the heat wave (where he chose to focus on 'cooling centers')...

Addressing the immediate danger to people's lives from a heat wave, he told people in need to go to cooling centers. When he could have been telling them to change the energy sources used by the manufacturers of the consumer products they use, get rid of representative democracy, and move to Denmark! How irresponsible of him!

 

[dann]

Yes, let's pretend that Biden just didn't have the choice to even mention anthropogenic global warming, CO₂ emissions and his own frackin' energy policies.
Myriad's attempts at misdirection have reached a new high.

 

[dann]

Sadly it appears that we do indeed need to see a massive climate disaster for all the world to see before people in the USA and other Western countries will decide to really do something. Something dramatic and incredible needs to happen, like a hurricane that destroys an entire city, or massive tornadoes during the winter, or sudden dramatic sea level rise. Basically Hollywood style disaster. Otherwise we will continue to deny and kick the can down the road until it's too late.

I don't think that will do it.
Footage of somebody robbing a store, preferably somebody black, is all the misdirection it will take to make people forget about a city destroyed by a hurricane.
Remember Katrina?!

 

[dann]

For too many wealthy and middle class people in the world, the cure seems to be worse than the disease. Significant disruption of their capitalist and consumerist lifestyle is too scary a thought for too many people to bear. Ugg not sure how we overcome this without smacking people in the back of the head, and forcing them to think about the greater good and the future of the planet and humanity.

Start with these people! And aim for the wallet, not the back of the head.

 

[Hercules56]

Start with these people! And aim for the wallet, not the back of the head.

I think and I'm sure other people think that part of the problem is that most of the solutions we are working on today, are to find ways to generate energy from renewable and other sources in order to maintain our current economy and current levels of industrial production. Nobody seems to talk about the possibility of dialing back production of goods and raw materials and other things that require a lot of energy. We are trying to find a way to maintain our current consumerist lifestyle and fight climate change. It may not be possible to do both, and our politicians need to really start preparing the people for that. The question is how do we dial back industrial and commercial production I'm really not sure how we do that without basically government taking control of literally everything.

And which industrial production do we reduce or completely remove? Which products do we stop producing how do we decide which production is sustainable and which production is simply not workable?

 

[lomiller]

And which industrial production do we reduce or completely remove? Which products do we stop producing how do we decide which production is sustainable and which production is simply not workable?

If you have regulation to control market failures the free market excels at answering these types of questions

 

[dann]

I think and I'm sure other people think that part of the problem is that most of the solutions we are working on today, are to find ways to generate energy from renewable and other sources in order to maintain our current economy and current levels of industrial production. Nobody seems to talk about the possibility of dialing back production of goods and raw materials and other things that require a lot of energy. We are trying to find a way to maintain our current consumerist lifestyle and fight climate change. It may not be possible to do both, and our politicians need to really start preparing the people for that. The question is how do we dial back industrial and commercial production I'm really not sure how we do that without basically government taking control of literally everything.

And which industrial production do we reduce or completely remove? Which products do we stop producing how do we decide which production is sustainable and which production is simply not workable?

Be careful when you talk about "we," or at least specify whom you're talking about. These guys aren't part of any we trying to come up with solutions to any problems that we have in common with them. And you seem to forget that a lot of people don't have anything remotely similar to what can be described as a "consumerist lifestyle."

We are not the ones who currently make any decisions about what to reduce, remove or stop producing. The factories that produce stuff as well as the oil wells used to generate energy for that production are private property. The people they belong to don't intend to reduce, remove or stop producing any of the stuff they profit from producing.

And the politicians have no intentions to make them do so.

 

[dann]

Governments are not the only interested parties — wealthy individuals and philanthropic bodies have also been backing research into SRM. Harvard University has set up a solar geoengineering research programme, with financial backing from Bill Gates and a host of philanthropic trusts and funds.*
(...)
There are uncertainties, Keith adds, over how much the sulphur dioxide might damage the ozone layer or human health, and whether it would influence extreme weather events. Scientists have, for example, looked at models that suggest aerosols released in the northern hemisphere could cause severe droughts in sub-Saharan Africa.
Gupta argues that there are “things we cannot know through small scale experiments . . . we’re looking for a planetary scale effect, so we need planetary scale experiments”.
“In essence this is an untestable technology, because to test it would be to deploy it,” she concludes.
Climate engineering: a quick fix or a risky distraction? (Financial Times, Sep 1, 2023)

Yes, it's not as if something couldn't go horribly wrong here, but why not try it if it will let the fossil-fuel industry continue its business - instead of making sure that energy will be supplied by solar and wind in the future?

Another worry is the involvement of tech entrepreneurs acting on their own agendas. To some scientists and global governance experts, people like Iseman — with his DIY approach to trying to cool the Earth — are the planet’s worst nightmare.*

Yes, guys like Musk will no doubt know how to solve the problem!

 

[dann]

A climate psychologist explains how we’ve moved beyond hope, anger, and complacency toward something more promising.
I really think that’s the big question. Are people unrealistically hopeful? There’s talk of collective delusion, and obviously, the Don’t Look Up movie was more or less about being ridiculously, overly optimistic and ignoring this risk at our own peril.
If you talk to scientists, they are much more worried than the public. That suggests that people are perhaps unrealistically optimistic and that it’s not yet clear how much will have to change, how serious the risks are, and how quickly those risks are accelerating.
There’s been a shift in how we think about climate change (Vox, Aug 31, 2023)

I guess Ramaswamy and the audience that applauded him are in the category of people who are being ridiculously, overly optimistic and ignoring the risk of global warming at their own (and everybody else's) peril, but I doubt that they will start listening to (real) climate scientists any time soon.