Textpattern CMS support forum
You are not logged in. Register | Login | Help
- Topics: Active | Unanswered
Re: Not All Doom And Gloom
zero wrote #319380:
I also just read a different perspective on climate change
Interesting indeed, thank you. I skimmed it and it seems thorough, even being nearly ten years old. But I’m not a scientist.
I fully expect that emissions and our meddling are only part of the problem. Perhaps the temperature rises and climate instability we are witnessing are caused by variations in solar activity, but the effects are exacerbated by the concentration of Greenhouse gases and absorption levels due to our unethical and unsustainable way of life?
Time of course will tell. But I still think that if we can reduce our emissions as aggressively as we can, we stand a fighting chance of surviving or at least coping with whatever radiation is thrown our way from the sun. And cutting back on deforestation (e.g. stop producing/buying fricking newspapers that tell us what to think about what happened yesterday!) will help slow the extinction rate of other species we are massacring at an alarming rate, some or all of which will also have an effect on the global temperature.
If we can combine that with finding better ways to manage food production without over-reliance on pesticides, along with revamping laws to curb the ridiculous amount of food wastage that occurs, things might improve for our species and whole host of others on this planet we call home.
The smd plugin menagerie — for when you need one more gribble of power from Textpattern. Bleeding-edge code available on GitHub.
Hire Txp Builders – finely-crafted code, design and Txp
Offline
Re: Not All Doom And Gloom
zero wrote #319380:
I also just read a different perspective on climate change by some Cypriot scientists that’s both confused me but also gave me yet more hope. And that’s also brought this beautiful song to mind too – Speck of Gold
That was before the gammons took over the world. With the USA, Brazil, and the UK opting out of their responsibilities but also increasing both the CO2 emissions and expanding the fossil fuel extraction locations. The Cypriot government is also guilty as they are currently fracking for natural gas but also re-opening the copper mines in order to re-establish the country as one of the world suppliers. The mining of copper heavylly pollutes the underground waters but also eventually the sea. Copper is now sought after as electric cars use 60% more of it than the normal ones.
I would highly recommend reading Jussi Parikka’s, A Geology of Media, which concentrates on the environmental pollution by our media technologies. Here’s a short quote from the book to get you engaged.
Humans leave their mark, and the earth carries it forward as an archive.
Yiannis
——————————
NeMe | hblack.art | EMAP | A Sea change | Toolkit of Care
I do my best editing after I click on the submit button.
Offline
Re: Not All Doom And Gloom
@ Bloke –
Yes I know she refutes it. Nevertheless, there is lots of troubling relationships, manipulation, etc. — most behind her back, though. On the other hand, she lost me with a her NY trip on an exclusive sailing yacht, financed by rather dubious interests behind the house of Grimaldi.
Watching the show the past few days, it is depressing to see how we went from the Kyoto protocol, downscaled under the enlightened guidance of the Obama-Clinton duo at the Copenhagen summit, and since further eroded to just … nothing ? The latest German plan, which is similar to what France’ Micron already has tried to put in place, would essentially amount to wealth transfer from the poor to the rich (an “eco-tax” on oil and gas consumption, which strongly negatively affect the less fortunate – see one of the triggers for Gilets Jaunes in France) .
@ colak – re Cyprus and copper
Is there that much left ? I was under the impression that it was mostly depleted. My information is certainly not recent, though. And yeah, gas, both through fracking and off-shore <sigh />.
Where is that emoji for a solar powered submarine when you need it ?
Sand space – admin theme for Textpattern
phiw13 on Codeberg
Offline
Re: Not All Doom And Gloom
Piers Corbyn has the Weather Action website (Wow! What a design!) and neither he nor his brother Jeremy (leader of the UK main opposition party [Edit: but who does not deny Climate Change /edit]) do themselves any favours in their presentation of what they stand for. But I respect and admire Jeremy as a man of principle which is extremely rare amongst politicians, so perhaps Piers is similarly sincere in his stance on climate change – but I haven’t yet got past the awful design enough yet to find out :-(
It’s possible, however, that the increasingly popular Climate Change narrative is a bandwagon created by the powerful. But (like all of you?) I don’t think that should stop us doing our best for the environment. But what is best will probably change when we get more accurate facts. It’s sad that scientists (the word derives from to know) are taking sides, or allowing themselves to be pushed into taking sides, rather than passing on their true findings without outside influence, particularly from gammons (nice word, Yiannis).
What is the real truth behind 5G, smartmeters, chemtrails, vaccines etc? If the world is not up in arms about them, does that mean they are more conspiracy theories? Just how much is the media (social and otherwise) being manipulated to suppress all voices opposed to what the ruling powers want us to believe?
The thought crossed my mind earlier that the media for me is everything and everybody. You are all collecting and delivering information (increasingly so in this information age) and I am in the habit of receiving it from many more sources than I used to. I have enough media without TV or social media and I more regularly need to get away from it to recover and centre myself than I used to. So your recommendation of A Geology of Media was well-timed Yiannis, and I trust it will help my information overload rather than hinder it.
Last edited by zero (2019-09-24 14:06:41)
Dozy P My attempt at music
Offline
Re: Not All Doom And Gloom
michaelkpate wrote #319368:
What about people who only have $990,000? Is there a sliding scale of wickedness?
You’re right of course and my stats amount to nothing because we all have good and bad within us and it can be easily be pointed out that the poorest people are the ones committing more crimes, not bringing their children up properly or being part of the problem because of lack of education. But I need hope and there are times for all of us when hope is all we have. And when nothing is clear and we are hit by another argument that sends us spinning, I think we all fall back on personal experience. My personal experience is that 99% of the people I’ve met in my life have come across as good people. So I suppose I’ve used those stats to back up my personal beliefs and perhaps spread a little hope.
Dozy P My attempt at music
Offline
Re: Not All Doom And Gloom
bici wrote #319359:
Take it easy, take it easy
Don’t let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy
Lighten up while you still can
Don’t even try to understand
Just find a place to make your stand, and take it easy
More appropriate for me today than yesterday, now that I realise there’s even more I don’t understand. Thanks.
Dozy P My attempt at music
Offline
Re: Not All Doom And Gloom
zero wrote #319387:
Wow! What a design!
Holy whatnow?! One of the few sites where running it through the Geocitiesizer makes it look better!
It’s possible, however, that the increasingly popular Climate Change narrative is a bandwagon created by the powerful.
Certainly wouldn’t be the first time. Occupy Wall Street, Women’s Lib in the 60s, …
I don’t think that should stop us doing our best for the environment.
Absolutely. We just need to keep our wits about us because if the fat cats have their say, they’ll make us pay for it via some Eco Tax like Yiannis mentioned and we’ll just roll over and shrug and pay up because we’ve been told it’s “for the good of the planet”. Like the way they significantly hiked UK car tax for anyone who owns 2017+ vehicles that are not fully-electric.
Responsibility for the environment starts with us – consumers – and changing little habits en masse can, and does, make a difference. The best thing we can do is keep piling on the pressure to stop the corporations and politicians getting away with it. An example: pre-packaged supermarket “deals” on produce such as veg create tonnes of waste because if one carrot rots in the bag, the rest are unsalable and are thrown away.
Solution: don’t buy it like that. Bag it yourself by rummaging in the loose stuff. Visit the greengrocer. The butcher. Shop local if possible from people with a more ethical outlook. When demand for pre-packaged stuff drops, so does supply. If everyone did it from tomorrow, the results would be massively disruptive to the supermarket supply chain and they’d have no choice but to sell more loose stuff or risk throwing their precious money away on things people won’t buy, or lose customers.
How many times have you been to a shop and not found something you’ve previously bought, asked and been told “there’s no demand for that so we stopped selling it”? It happens a lot. So I say create that demand vacuum by making one tiny change.
Then another.
And another.
And with each tiny change, we gradually take back the power and are more in control of our environment. It ripples up the chain. No pre-packaged veg = no need for manufacturing as much plastic wrap and tags and labels, which creates less waste, creates less burning of fossil fuels to recycle it, less landfill, less risk of polluting the oceans, and so forth.
So if the climate justice movement seeks anything, it should not be to wait for those at the top to change. The corporations and politicians and banks won’t do a thing that’s not in their own interest – regardless of political affiliation – all the time we’re lining their pockets. It should seek to mobilise those that hold the true power, us, into making changes that tip the balance in the planet’s favour.
EDIT: See Little Changes by Frank Turner and also Be More Kind
Last edited by Bloke (2019-09-24 13:01:42)
The smd plugin menagerie — for when you need one more gribble of power from Textpattern. Bleeding-edge code available on GitHub.
Hire Txp Builders – finely-crafted code, design and Txp
Offline
Re: Not All Doom And Gloom
Offline
Re: Not All Doom And Gloom
I think I found a new writer to follow in Mr. Hedges, there. He pretty much hit it all on the head as far as I’m concerned, if lacking some references for a finishing touch, but it is an opinion piece, after all.
I was going to drop another doom bomb of my own, but I’ll just tack some more food for thought on this piece out of Hedges’ article:
‘The mathematical models for the future of the planet have three devastating trajectories: a massive die-off of perhaps 70 percent of the human population and then an uneasy stabilization; extinction of humans and most other species; an immediate and radical reconfiguration of human society to protect the biosphere and make it more diverse and productive. This third scenario, which most scientists admit is unlikely, is dependent on a halt to the production and consumption of fossil fuels, converting to a plant-based diet to destroy the animal agriculture industry—almost as large a contributor to greenhouse gases as the fossil fuel industry—and greening the deserts and restoring rainforests. We know what we have to do if our children are to have a future. The only question left is how do we empower leaders who will save us.’
I don’t have an answer to his unanswerable enquiry, but I do offer more discouraging news, sorry, or a frustrating catch-22, if you prefer… Human society is now so dependent on fossil energy that even if we could kick the habit yesterday, society would collapse in an instant because there is no viable alternative available to support society’s current energy demands. (You will recall Kingsnorth pointed out the same thing in his interview/documentary.) We’re a species that is currently several billion too-many to survive without fossil energy. And our numbers are expected to increase another 4 billion in the span of one human lifetime.
And now the punchline, courtesy of Professor Aled Jones, Global Sustainability Institute, in Section 1 of the ISSA report, Climate Change and Natural Resource Scarcity (Oct 2014), where he’s talking about fossil energy availability: ‘. . . assuming an increase in future consumption based on [continuing] trends (over past 20 yrs there has been an average annual increase in consumption of ~1% for oil, ~2% for gas and ~2.5% for coal) . . . oil will run out in 41 years, gas in 38 years and coal in 53 years.’
It would be useful to have some more recent numbers on that, considering the US has been very busy fracking the world up. Then again, all that fracking might be due to those numbers being more or less accurate and the US is stock piling.
Whatever the case, which of Hedges’ reported three models does that situation suggest?
Offline
Re: Not All Doom And Gloom
Destry wrote #319398:
Whatever the case, which of Hedges’ reported three models does that situation suggest?
The third. They’ll continue with chemtrails, 5G, smartmeters, austerity programs and media brainwashing until there’s only the rulers left. They’ll eat and drink organic foods from their carefully protected non-GM fields (anybody know where they are located?), close all the corporations, super markets and industrial farming because they know how bad they are and won’t need them any more because they’ll all have enough land to live well with all the best farming practices they are keeping quiet about in order to keep us quiet.
I read somewhere that the population will peak at 11 billion in not many years’ time, btw. Then deaths will be more than births for a long time after that.
Dozy P My attempt at music
Offline
Re: Not All Doom And Gloom
Someone just shared this 2019 BP statistical review of world energy with me in the f’verse in response to my enquiry about more recent fossil energy rates/limits. It doesn’t talk about ‘run out’ amounts or dates, that I can find, but it makes it pretty clear that consumption rates have skyrocketed, as well this confirmation that I already knew from when the 415.26 ppm atmospheric CO2 concentration was reported last June: ‘Global primary energy consumption grew rapidly in 2018, led by natural gas and renewables. Nevertheless, carbon emissions rose at their highest rate for seven years.’
When big oil admits bad news, you know it must be true, and really bad.
And this catches my eye right on the first page:
‘Decarbonizing the power sector while also meeting the rapidly expanding demand for power, particularly in the developing world, is perhaps the single most important challenge facing the global energy system over the next 20 years. Renewable energy has a vital role to play in meeting that challenge. But it is unlikely to be able to do so on its own. A variety of different technologies and fuels are likely to be required, including extensive coal-to-gas switching and the widespread deployment of carbon capture, use and storage (CCUS).’
I’ve seen the CEO of Shell also talk strongly and favourably of Carbon Engineering’s ‘Direct Air Capture’ technology. All of big oil is on board with this converting coal to gas and recycling CO2 to gas. Microsoft has also endorsed it. Or rather, Bill Gates has. I’m pretty sure this is what governments will opt for and we’ll see this happening in the coming years.
Yes, it’s more of the same techno-economic B.S. that got us in this mess, and it will probably end up the same as Hedges’ models 1 or 2 eventually, regardless. Just buying a little more time to keep the industrial fires burning and making that cash, yo!
Offline
Offline
Re: Not All Doom And Gloom
bici wrote #319404:
now this column
Nice find. Thank you!
This is spot on, and especially with regard to scientists and other expected thought leaders in the domain…
‘The gross error in all of this are all those who cannot countenance this conversation.’ — David Spratt
At this point in time, any softening, PR-filtering, or outright distorting of the grave threat just ahead of society is sabotage of life on Earth. It’s hard to believe that ‘scientists’ are still out there that can’t see the numbers from the fables. More likely they can’t afford to lose their jobs under the existing regime and act accordingly. The wrong accordingly.
Offline
Re: Not All Doom And Gloom
bici wrote #319404:
never heard of Hedges until this week. now this column
It mentions hope (and Hope for the Future:) but that hope is not what I understand as hope. Hope from the mind is variable and useless. Hope from the heart is pure, strong, motivating, tenacious, patient, long-suffering, beautiful and inseparable from peace and love.
Dozy P My attempt at music
Offline
Re: Not All Doom And Gloom
On the contrary, a candid investigation of these subjects, accompanied with a perfect readiness to adopt any theory, warranted by sound philosophy, may have a tendency to convince them, that in forming improbable and unfounded hypotheses, so far from enlarging the bounds of human science, they are contracting it; so far from promoting the improvement of the human mind, they are obstructing it: they are throwing us back again almost into the infancy of knowledge; and weakening the foundations of that mode of philosophising, under the auspices of which, science has of late made such rapid advances. The present rage for wide and unrestrained speculation, seems to be a kind of mental intoxication, arising, perhaps, from the great and unexpected discoveries which have been made of late years, in various branches of science. To men elate, and giddy with such successes, every thing appeared to be within the grasp of human powers; and, under this illusion, they confounded subjects where no real progress could be proved, with those, where the progress had been marked, certain, and acknowledged. Could they be persuaded to sober themselves with a little severe and chastized thinking, they would see, that the cause of truth, and of sound philosophy, cannot but suffer by substituting wild flights and unsupported assertions, for patient investigation, and well authenticated proofs. – Thomas Robert Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population, 1798
Offline