Cont: Global warming discussion V
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dudalb
Penultimate Amazing
California issued it's first ever Tropical Storm Warning today for Southeren California on account of Hurricane Hilary.
About California's 'Hurricane Hillary': How climate scientists feel about seeing their dire predictions come true (L.A.Times, Aug 18, 2023)
Roger Ramjets
Philosopher
I have no reason to believe they are lying, so...
Sadly that isn't true. In the 1970's oil prices spiked as production in the US and other places peaked. This started a trend towards more efficient energy use, in particular smaller more fuel-efficient cars.
But 'skeptics' insisted that oil hadn't actually peaked, and they were right. As the price went up so did the incentive to extract 'tighter' oil, eventually leading to a glut that drove prices back down. Relieved consumers quickly forgot about it and returned to their old habits, economies picked up and fossil fuel use resumed its inexorable climb. This wasn't engineered by 'Big Oil', it was simple supply and demand. When supply isn't constrained the price stays low and consumers have little incentive to cut back.
In 2006 the film 'An Inconvenient Truth' documented Al Gore's attempts to warn us about the calamity we were headed for, dramatically raising public awareness of global warming. However this didn't translate into much action. Skeptics immediately jumped in to highlight the 'flaws' in the movie, and the public lapped it up because nobody likes an inconvenient truth.
Imagine a world where the oil companies - against their own interests - unilaterally held back supply and pushed renewable alternatives. The public outcry would be immense. Everybody would be talking about how the evil corporations were deliberately trying to drive the price up to reap obscene profits. Any government that didn't put a stop to it would be thrown out. If the government itself mandated it the outcry would be even louder.
The facts have been out there for anyone to view for decades. But the truth is way too much for most people to accept, so when 'alternative' facts are presented they lap them up. I've been discussing global warming with ordinary people for decades, and almost nobody - including scientists - recognized the gravity of it. Behind my back they called me an 'alarmist'. And these people vote.
Global warming should be the top issue on voter's minds this year, but it isn't. They are all worried about inflation, increased taxes and insurance bills - not even understanding why costs are going up. They should be looking at buying an electric car, and getting solar panels installed, and cutting down on consumption of dirty products, but they aren't. This isn't because 'Big Oil' hoodwinked them into thinking global warming is a hoax. The actual culprit is simply shortsighted selfishness.
My grid? Yes.
Transpower
Hawke's Bay Power Consumers' Trust
I'm guessing it's because 62,984,828 Danes didn't vote for the guy who said windmills cause cancer.dann said:
I don't know what you mean by that. Lying about what?
Do you know who paid those alleged skeptics to highlight the alleged flaws in the movie? It's not as if the documentary didn't have an impact, at first. I can recommend the chapter The Business Cards and the Straight Noodle about the diversion techniques used to take focus away from An Inconvenient Truth and discredit it.
You are resorting to the old trick: Let's pretend that a world built and adapted to using as much fossil fuel as possible suddenly loses access to fossil fuel. The consumers won't like that! (No, obviously not!)
As for the imaginary world and the imaginary public outcry: Imagine a world where oil companies were presented with strict dates, not just declarations of intent, for when renewables had to replace fossil fuels. Imagine a world where the public had access to clean alternatives to fossil fuels and where infrastructure had been adapted to the new circumstances.
Instead, you have to resort to a fairy tale where 'the public' is made to appear to be the culprits, and you make all the lies and astroturfing perpetrated by the oil companies appear to be an attempt to accommodate the wishes and needs of the consumers.
Why do we have to pretend that the oil industry, the auto industry and the politicians they pay didn't deliberately make people's transportation and consumption entirely dependent on fossil fuels - with a bit of nuclear on the side?
Why do you prefer fiction to reality?
The liars and astroturfers have been out there just as long, and their campaigns have been much more conspicuous because - unlike actual climate scientists - the oil industry has the money to pay for those campaigns - and the political campaigns of candidates who support those lies in practice even though they may tell the voters something else.
Don't forget that a majority of the people are against global warming and often vote for candidates who promise to stop global warming, and yet:
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)
You appear to be trying to make them do the exact same thing again, make the same mistake, which the oil barons won't mind at all. Why would they? They may prefer candidates who call anthropogenic global warming a hoax, but if politicians tell voters that global warming is a serious problem but present the oil industry with new opportunities to frack up the atmosphere, they take what they can get. Besides, they probably contributed the PACs of those politicians, too.
It's the shortsighted selfishness of people who have been duped by the campaigns of shortsighted industrialists. How could the not be duped by the oil industry? Even you, who claim to be kind of ... climate woke ... write yet another post blaming consumers' alleged shortsightedness and presented Big Oil almost as a victim of the shortsighted consumers and their needs.
And you entirely leave out of your consideration that the world created and adapted to using as much fossil fuel as possible will obviously leave people dependent on fossil-fuel burning cars - unlike cities in which public transport and bicycling have been made convenient and often even superior alternatives to cars.
Please tell us how the little people managed to persuade Big Oil, Big Auto and their bribed politicians to be so accommodating to their deep desires for cities where you can't get around without a car.
Big Oil did actually hoodwink "them into thinking global warming is a hoax."
Big Oil’s decades-long gaslighting campaign (MSNBC on YouTube, July 23, 2023 - 6:57 min.)
The Troll Army of Big Oil (Climate Town on YouTube, Jan 3, 2023)
I just rewatched these two videos. Excellent documentation! (And the one about the troll army is not just educational but also entertaining.)
Great! For some reason, I thought you were an American (West Coast), but New Zealand makes sense.
No, they didn't, obviously. They also didn't vote for Frackin-Eye Joe.
But as I have mentioned before, I don't think voting has much to do with it. It has to do with the big players of a capitalist economy, not the little people or whomever they vote for. I don't think that it is a coincidence that the country didn't really start its large-scale investments in wind turbines until it became clear that oil-and-gas extraction couldn't continue forever: About oil and gas (Danish Energy Agency).
As also mentioned before, when sea levels really begin to rise, we can't take to the hills: Map of countries coloured according to their highest point map (Wikipedia). At that point, I guess we'll be sleeping with the fishes.
I didn't remember where I had posted this one. Notice that A majority of adults view climate change as a major threat:
It may not "be the top issue on voter's minds," but still. To blame the voters as short-sighted and present Big Oil as the victim of ordinary people's energy addiction is hyperbolic, isn't it?!
Yesterday, we saw this one from Canada:
I wonder what made the percentage drop nine points. Is it possible that they now think that forest fires are a more likely reason?
NZ isn't even one of the bad ones, especially not in the group of English-speaking countries: Per capita CO₂ emissions (Our World in Data)
I think it's time for seriously looking into SRM (Solar Radiation Management).
Time is up. Humanity had it's chances in the last 40 years to transform, but most of it was just talk and some minor advances.
https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/on-climate-change-and-management/
I mean, WTF?
Most of it may have been just talk and some it, the lies from the fossil-fuel industry, was worse than that, but it is not as if he dismisses the accomplishments that have actually been made.
For instance, that switching to wind and solar actually works:
And he stresses that it is well under way, it is obviously already happening:
But as I have been pointing out again and again, it isn't happening fast enough, which is what makes him consider that "“Solar Radiation Management” is super cheap and can have rapid and significant effects"
But he is also well aware that this idea - unlike wind and solar, which are already being implemented - is nothing but an idea, i.e. not even on par with the 'CO2-sucking machines':
Indeed! So go ahead and investigate and do research.
Roger Ramjets
Philosopher
That series of RNZ articles is worth reading to appreciate how difficult it is for a government to get things done without support of the people involved. Not 'Big Oil' or 'industrialists' or 'corporations' - people.
Farmer sick of being labelled a 'climate vandal'
The really annoying part is that he's largely right. Sheep farming in New Zealand produces 13% of total warming effect from short life Methane, compared to 20% long life CO2 from fossil fuels used for transportation.
This guy isn't some king of industry selling out the World for corporate greed, he's just an individual working the land sustainably to provide us with high quality sustenance. Anyone who has done it can tell you that sheep farming is no 9-5 job - and that applies to dairy farming too. It's hard work with a large long term investment for little return.
The general public may say they are concerned about climate change, but what are they doing about it? It's quite depressing to see all the people around here still driving over-sized gas-guzzling SUVs, with the excuse that an electric car wouldn't suit them for 'reasons'.
This isn't 'Big Oil' calling the shots, it's ordinary people like us. If everybody bought an electric car it would send a powerful message to car makers and oil companies. If they avoided buying dairy products that weren't produced sustainably it would give Fonterra pause. But they don't, because it's not just corporations who are blinded by short-term selfishness.
Dave Read says he knows how much GHG he's emitting and is happy to do 'do his bit' to reduce it. If I was in charge I would build on that. But people like me don't stay in charge for long, because everybody has their own ideas that they refuse to compromise over.
There was a time not long ago when everybody set aside their differences to face an existential threat together. That time has passed. We have two political parties that want to fight global warming, two that don't, and one that only cares about what's in it for themselves. If the people voted for 'green' parties then progress would be made, but that doesn't generally happen here. The next general election is in October, and the right-leaning National party is almost certain to get a majority. National is the 'farming' party so you know what they will do about about global warming once they get into power.
This will happen because the people don't really care that much about climate change, they only care about themselves. How do I know? Because almost everybody I know is less concerned about it than I am. They gleefully point to news articles like the one you quoted as as proof of an evil incompetent government and the futility of fighting climate change - if they even think it's that big a deal. That's not the message the article is trying to send, but it's what they get from it because that's what they want it to be. far easier to put the blame elsewhere than do anything themselves.
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I know all about how people react to the kind of news you mention. I knew a (not very bright) baker whose response to research showing that sugar wasn't as harmless as we had been made to think: 'Sugar comes from plants and plants are healthier than meat, so ... '
His reaction wasn't very different from when a girl I dated in the late 1980s heard that cattle contributed to global warming. Nobody else I knew thought much about it at that point. My cattle-raising uncle had died in the mid-'80s. But this girl happened to be the daughter of a family who owned a chain of steakhouses with "Beef" in its title, and she thought that this new piece of research was an abject attempt to put a stop to her family's business, and they were now considering how to counter it. I don't know if they took any actual steps to do so, like bribing journalists or something. The chain still exists.
A person who considers human consumption in general to be evil and has high hopes that global warming will put a stop to shopaholics reacts in a similar way to the 'news' that a much more elegant and already practiced solution to global warming exists, one that doesn't require sacrifices, and in this case the reaction isn't even due to any material interests but is only ideological.
However, how people are affected and what they are told about theses things depend very much on the interests of industries and nations. As for the former, did you ever watch the documentary The Corporation (Wikipedia)? Corporations are psychopathic entities, interested only in the bottom line. Screw everybody else, including humanity and the planet.
Did you watch The Troll Army of Big Oil?
Or the more recent Big Oil’s decades-long gaslighting campaign?
I transcribed most of it for post 244 in the 'hoax' thread.
Gaslighting is a trick of the trade for psychopaths and even more so for big corporations acting like psychopaths. Unlike corporations, ordinary psychopaths don't usually have the money to pay researchers and influencers to come up with claims that support their gaslighting. They can't bribe politicians to make decisions in their favor.
This is how you get the "support of the people" that you pretend is something that exists independently of government and industry and their campaigns. I am well aware that even among ordinary people like your farmers, there are special interests, and that people don't like it if policies conflict with their interests. Farming is big in Denmark, too, and their organizations are powerful.
However, I also know that the state can pass laws that farmers don't like and often does so, for instance to prevent the contamination of drinking water. And we recently had this case in DK:
Were the farmers happy about this? No, they weren't. Some of them resisted, and the police had to get involved to make them comply. But cluster 5 was eradicated. And the farmer were compensated, which tends to make a difference.
Would it have been possible if the mink industry in Denmark was as powerful as the fossil-fuel industry in the USA and in the rest of the world? I very much doubt it.
As I have stressed a number of times in this thread: The 'greening' of Denmark, faster than in most places, probably wouldn't have happened at the pace it did and is doing if Denmark had had a powerful fossil-fuel and/or auto manufacturing industry. The association of Danish car owners isn't influential enough to put up much of a fight against more bike lanes and better public transport, i.e. the convenient alternatives to cars in cities with a proper infrastructure.
Without those alternatives having been established, I assume that car owners would have been less docile when car lanes were reduced from two to one to make room for busses and bikes. And in your arguments and the arguments of others, what I hear is the eternal: But what would happen if? - Based on nothing having been done to establish infrastructural alternatives to the transition possible. And yet you always blame ordinary people as the ones who prevent the good change - and never the people who made sure that the infrastructural changes never happened.
I don't know what you need to or can do about farmers in NZ. In general, farmers everywhere tend to be a pretty reactionary lot. I've kind of lost touch with the farming side of DK since my uncle died, and I know absolutely nothing about sheep farming, but I get the impression that farmers tend to listen to agricultural science whenever they can benefit from it, for instance by Keeping Fertilizer in the Ground and Out of the Air, where it doesn't do the farmers as little good as it does the rest of us.
Initiatives like that seem to have an effect: 19 percent less greenhouse gas from agriculture, forestry and fishing since 1990 (Denmarks Statistik, Oct 5, 2022).
Otherwise, there's the option to pay farmers for their losses. Subsidizing agriculture isn't exactly a brand new idea invented by people thinking outside the box, is it?!
Let Exxon-Mobile pay!
His reaction wasn't very different from when a girl I dated in the late 1980s heard that cattle contributed to global warming. Nobody else I knew thought much about it at that point. My cattle-raising uncle had died in the mid-'80s. But this girl happened to be the daughter of a family who owned a chain of steakhouses with "Beef" in its title, and she thought that this new piece of research was an abject attempt to put a stop to her family's business, and they were now considering how to counter it. I don't know if they took any actual steps to do so, like bribing journalists or something. The chain still exists.
A person who considers human consumption in general to be evil and has high hopes that global warming will put a stop to shopaholics reacts in a similar way to the 'news' that a much more elegant and already practiced solution to global warming exists, one that doesn't require sacrifices, and in this case the reaction isn't even due to any material interests but is only ideological.
However, how people are affected and what they are told about theses things depend very much on the interests of industries and nations. As for the former, did you ever watch the documentary The Corporation (Wikipedia)? Corporations are psychopathic entities, interested only in the bottom line. Screw everybody else, including humanity and the planet.
Did you watch The Troll Army of Big Oil?
Or the more recent Big Oil’s decades-long gaslighting campaign?
I transcribed most of it for post 244 in the 'hoax' thread.
Gaslighting is a trick of the trade for psychopaths and even more so for big corporations acting like psychopaths. Unlike corporations, ordinary psychopaths don't usually have the money to pay researchers and influencers to come up with claims that support their gaslighting. They can't bribe politicians to make decisions in their favor.
This is how you get the "support of the people" that you pretend is something that exists independently of government and industry and their campaigns. I am well aware that even among ordinary people like your farmers, there are special interests, and that people don't like it if policies conflict with their interests. Farming is big in Denmark, too, and their organizations are powerful.
However, I also know that the state can pass laws that farmers don't like and often does so, for instance to prevent the contamination of drinking water. And we recently had this case in DK:
Were the farmers happy about this? No, they weren't. Some of them resisted, and the police had to get involved to make them comply. But cluster 5 was eradicated. And the farmer were compensated, which tends to make a difference.
Would it have been possible if the mink industry in Denmark was as powerful as the fossil-fuel industry in the USA and in the rest of the world? I very much doubt it.
As I have stressed a number of times in this thread: The 'greening' of Denmark, faster than in most places, probably wouldn't have happened at the pace it did and is doing if Denmark had had a powerful fossil-fuel and/or auto manufacturing industry. The association of Danish car owners isn't influential enough to put up much of a fight against more bike lanes and better public transport, i.e. the convenient alternatives to cars in cities with a proper infrastructure.
Without those alternatives having been established, I assume that car owners would have been less docile when car lanes were reduced from two to one to make room for busses and bikes. And in your arguments and the arguments of others, what I hear is the eternal: But what would happen if? - Based on nothing having been done to establish infrastructural alternatives to the transition possible. And yet you always blame ordinary people as the ones who prevent the good change - and never the people who made sure that the infrastructural changes never happened.
I don't know what you need to or can do about farmers in NZ. In general, farmers everywhere tend to be a pretty reactionary lot. I've kind of lost touch with the farming side of DK since my uncle died, and I know absolutely nothing about sheep farming, but I get the impression that farmers tend to listen to agricultural science whenever they can benefit from it, for instance by Keeping Fertilizer in the Ground and Out of the Air, where it doesn't do the farmers as little good as it does the rest of us.
Initiatives like that seem to have an effect: 19 percent less greenhouse gas from agriculture, forestry and fishing since 1990 (Denmarks Statistik, Oct 5, 2022).
Otherwise, there's the option to pay farmers for their losses. Subsidizing agriculture isn't exactly a brand new idea invented by people thinking outside the box, is it?!
Let Exxon-Mobile pay!
Vivek Ramaswamy appears to the GOP's most enthusiastic global-warming candidate: "This isn't that complicated, guys. Unlock American energy. Drill. Frack. Burn coal. Embrace nuclear."
He wants to go to war "on the federal administrative state that is a source of those toxic regulations acting like a wet blanket on the economy."
So if he becomes the GOP nominee, the election will be a choice between Frackin' Joa and Frackin' Vivek.
Unlike Trump, he doesn't even mention wind and solar. No anecdotes about how they kill birds and cause cancer.
He wants to go to war "on the federal administrative state that is a source of those toxic regulations acting like a wet blanket on the economy."
So if he becomes the GOP nominee, the election will be a choice between Frackin' Joa and Frackin' Vivek.
Unlike Trump, he doesn't even mention wind and solar. No anecdotes about how they kill birds and cause cancer.
Researchers discover another way tropical forests could suffer due to climate change (ABC News, Aug 23, 2023)
Kudos to The Nation for at least being aware that ordinary people aren't the ones who make the decisions as long as they let the elites make those decisions on their behalf.
It is obvious that the current elites have no interest in the survival of civilization - not that there is much civilization left to save - only in the survival of the elite. See the Vivek Ramaswamy quotation in the previous post.
Two of the authors of the withdrawal study "were named as signatories of the World Climate Declaration, a text that repeated various debunked claims about climate change, an AFP fact check article found."
I guess there is reason to assume that this is another example of fraudulent science paid for by Big Oil.
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Roger Ramjets
Philosopher
That would be a WAG, not evidence.
Putting all the blame for stuff like this on Big Oil is a mistake, because it ignores that fact that a lot people would be anti-global warming anyway. We saw this sort of contrarianism with Covid vaccines - which attracted widespread opposition but not from 'Big Pharma' or other corporate giants with an interest in it. In fact the contrarians were against it in part because Big Pharma was for it!
There are contrarian scientists in every field, and they are not all lackies being secretly paid off by big whoever. Having research like this published is good because challenging the consensus helps to confirm it - or if it doesn't shows up issues that should be addressed. Even if such studies were funded by 'Big Oil' they should be welcomed, and thoroughly reviewed to identify their flaws.
Roger Ramjets
Philosopher
They spend what the people who voted them in want them to. What are people most concerned about right now? The economy, or more specifically how much they are paying for stuff. Any government that doesn't look after their (short-term, selfish) interests risks getting the boot in the next election.
In New Zealand the government temporarily reduced the excise tax on petrol. I wasn't happy with that, but it's back on now and fuel prices are 50% higher than before the pandemic. That has put pressure on consumers - most of whom are responding not by buying an electric car or driving less, but by demanding wage increases and indicating they will vote for the party which promises to keep fuel prices down.
Higher Fuel Taxes Will Make Food More Expensive
Labour says they will remove the 15% tax on fruit and vegetables, which more than compensates for a minor transport cost increase. Furthermore the National Party said it would not extend the road user charge exemption for electric light vehicles beyond March 31 next year, while the Labour government says they have no plans to scrap the exemption.
The road user tax electric car owners face might be small, but will be a big hassle because we will have to record distances traveled and pay the tax periodically, whereas it is automatically included in the price of petrol - another reason not to buy an electric car.
No doubt Petrol heads will love this change when National gets into power. Already smarting from high gas prices, they are incensed by all the smug electric car owners who don't have to pay for the upkeep of our roads. It might be less than 2% of the fleet, but that's no reason for them to get away with not paying their fair share. It's almost like the government wants people to switch to electric cars!