Is the Human Race on a Suicide Mission?

@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

You mean our children are gona fry, drawn and suffocate, but it's none of your business nor should it be your government's problem. Nothing can be done anyway. We should all just get used to the idea and go quietly into the night.

I guess that's useful, in the sense that it cynically articulates the covert US position on this matter since George W Bush: "Après moi le déluge".

First, I minimize my own carbon footprint and advocate others do it as well. I also advocate reducing economic activity and increasing the proportion of living/rooted soil to dead pavement and buildings to increase carbon capture/absorption.

Neither the corporate media nor academia nor government is advocating minimalism as a solution to climate and unsustainability because of their bias against it both culturally and from an economic standpoint.

Humans minimizing our impacts and maximizing our efforts to develop technologies and lifestyles that further enhance our ability to reduce our impacts are the only possible solution to the artificialization of the biosphere and its climate. Re-foresting/naturalizing the planet may still not reverse climate change, but it's the best hope we have.

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@livinglava,

You're all talk and no action.

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@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

so where we gonna make all these "bike parts" for an expected 8 Billion people??
And are we going to ship em back and forth by bicycle?

It would be good to design multi-level supply chains, so that one company makes machines that build bike parts, and then those machines are shipped to local areas/regions where they are used to make the parts semi-locally, where they can be distributed.

E.g. if you make wheel machines and wheel parts in Detroit, then you ship those around to cities where local people use the machines to build the wheels from the parts. This would require relatively little energy and/or other waste.

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BTW, fossil fuel fired "scooters" are actually more polluting than are larger modern engines.

I'm not a fan of two-stroke motors, and that problem shouldn't be ignored. However, the bigger concern I have is all the pavement for cars and trucks. Multilane roads and parking lots and sprawling urban layouts are the cause of most deforestation and reforestation should be taking place within the cities, not just outside them, if we want to harmonize the human population with the natural climate.

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Interesting debate. However if the global warming alarmists are to be believed then the political aspects of finding and implementing a solution based on reduced population, consumption, use of carbon fuels, and environmentally regulated use of land, are likely to be far greater than has been acknowledged here.

Early in the thread a poster somewhat presciently noted that, so far, national governments have not yet taken sufficiently effective steps to address the problem, and that a world government may be required to do it. The problem with this idea is, of course, that the proposed world government ( something that appears to me.to itself be an unattainable goal) would itself face all the popular political and economic issues attached to this problem, and on a much larger scale, now including all the cultural & level-of economic-development issues that beset the world today.

Indeed when one considers the now ongoing controversy in France, even modest government managed incentives for a greener economy can ignite intense internal political disruption. In this matter France is hardly unique - the forms of the disruption vary, but their political effects are much the same - the Government either backs down or is replaced in a Democratic , or other, process. Evidence of this can be seen across the world.

We are left with the conclusion that only an Authoritarian state with much increased powers, and a willingness to exercise its power to create desired change with, as a minimum, all the murderous and ruthless force that accompanied the growth of the Soviet and Communist Chinese States will be sufficient to meet the goals of AGW activists.

Even today such advocates call for programs to reduce population, economic activity and standard of living to contain their forecast temperature rise. A large fraction of these folks (here) are a good deal better off economically than their fellow citizens, and, perhaps imagine they will retain their relative status in the new world they advocate. They appear to assume that the larger unwashed population will accept the restraints they impose without disruption or retaliation, and that they will be able to live the bucolic green lives they imagine safely in their protected enclaves without intrusion or disruption. (Marin County north of San Francisco is an example.) History should teach them otherwise, but such follies on the part of elites are common in human history

My opinion is that there is no political solution to the problems attendant to implementing the programs AGW advocates propose. Instead we need a new, perhaps more ambitious model, one based on better science than that which attends the rather sappy and contradiction - filled theology of contemporary environmentalism.

A few illustrations ;

1. Most environmentalists also oppose nuclear power - a very odd conjunction from a rational, scientific perspective. It's very hard to imagine any transition to declining or even stable carbon emissions without it. Indeed European leaders have led the way to reducing or eliminating their nuclear power systems - and increased carbon emissions are an invariable result.
2. Most government actions to accelerate the development of "renewable" wind and solar power (tax exemptions, subsidies, quotas, etc. have among their direct effects the reduction of the economic incentives for investment in the technical improvement of of these technologies.
3. On a larger scale it's very hard to imagine the advances in technology, urgently required to meet AGW goals, actually occurring in the increasingly regulated and constrained bureaucratic environments that increasingly prevail in Western Nations. To a large degree the short term actions being advocated by AGW advocates, tend to inhibit the attainment of their long-term goals.

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I am reminded of a comment by a critic of organizations such as The Nature Conservancy, the Sierra Club, Green Peace, the World Wildlife Fund--that they basically wish all of those inconvenient poor people in Africa and Asia would just go off somewhere and die.

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@georgeob1,

georgeob1 wrote:

that the proposed world government ( something that appears to me.to itself be an unattainable goal) would itself face all the popular political and economic issues attached to this problem, and on a much larger scale, now including all the cultural & level-of economic-development issues that beset the world today.

'World government' happens by means of cooperation among national governments and other global players. If such cooperation was identified as 'a global government,' it would only draw resistance from global nationalism, which by its very nature as nationalism opposes supernational sovereignty.

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Indeed when one considers the now ongoing controversy in France, even modest government managed incentives for a greener economy can ignite intense internal political disruption. In this matter France is hardly unique - the forms of the disruption vary, but their political effects are much the same - the Government either backs down or is replaced in a Democratic , or other, process. Evidence of this can be seen across the world.

Right. This type of aggressive resistance to good government goals is why less and less governance will happen through recognizable (overt) government policies. Instead, more covert policies will be undertaken so that the public will not have anything visible to rebel against. This is an utter undermining of democracy, but without democracy, who will be able to stop them and how?

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We are left with the conclusion that only an Authoritarian state with much increased powers, and a willingness to exercise its power to create desired change with, as a minimum, all the murderous and ruthless force that accompanied the growth of the Soviet and Communist Chinese States will be sufficient to meet the goals of AGW activists.

Why would you assume it would take the form of a state? Why wouldn't people just organize covert operations without identifying themselves as a state?

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Even today such advocates call for programs to reduce population, economic activity and standard of living to contain their forecast temperature rise.

Whoa, who said anything about population reduction? That would undermine real progress toward sustainable solutions, i.e. because reduced population numbers would allow people to continue to engage in activities that will eventually prove unsustainable again once the population returns to pre-reduction levels, which always happens.

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They appear to assume that the larger unwashed population will accept the restraints they impose without disruption or retaliation, and that they will be able to live the bucolic green lives they imagine safely in their protected enclaves without intrusion or disruption. (Marin County north of San Francisco is an example.) History should teach them otherwise, but such follies on the part of elites are common in human history

The only question is how much war and destruction happens before peace is attempted again. That is always the question when people resist peaceful progress.

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1. Most environmentalists also oppose nuclear power - a very odd conjunction from a rational, scientific perspective. It's very hard to imagine any transition to declining or even stable carbon emissions without it. Indeed European leaders have led the way to reducing or eliminating their nuclear power systems - and increased carbon emissions are an invariable result.

Nuclear power is unsustainable. It is just a way of procrastinating reductions in per-capita energy use that are ultimately inevitable if sustainability is to be achieved. People just need to bite the bullet and pick a couple rooms to super-insulate so they can cut way down on artificial heating and cooling.

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2. Most government actions to accelerate the development of "renewable" wind and solar power (tax exemptions, subsidies, quotas, etc. have among their direct effects the reduction of the economic incentives for investment in the technical improvement of of these technologies.

Subsidies have the side-effect of paying people to go on consuming liberally. You can manufacture solar panels, collect the subsidy money, and use the money to pay for your grid electricity - the same as if you'd gotten the money by mining coal.

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To a large degree the short term actions being advocated by AGW advocates, tend to inhibit the attainment of their long-term goals.

Nonsense. What is inhibiting the long-term goals of sustainability are all the people who just don't care. They will go on destroying the future of the planet because they just don't care what happens after they die.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

I am reminded of a comment by a critic of organizations such as The Nature Conservancy, the Sierra Club, Green Peace, the World Wildlife Fund--that they basically wish all of those inconvenient poor people in Africa and Asia would just go off somewhere and die.

Nobody should die. They should reform their activities to be sustainable.

But when they don't, what happens then?

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In addition to the ignorance in which you gleefully wallow, it appears that irony is foreign to you.

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@livinglava,

livinglava wrote:

Setanta wrote:

Nobody should die. They should reform their activities to be sustainable.

But when they don't, what happens then?

Setanta's question above is a central issue on which most of your points above are implicitly based, but one which you have evaded so far. Lenin found a way: he called it "The elimination of the irreconcilables" Historical data is a bit variable here but, counting executions, forced starvation and exile to various Gulags the total in the Soviet Union was about 20 Million and in Mao's revolution in China about 40 million.

What do you propose? "What happens then?"

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@Setanta,

Quote:

--that they basically wish all of those inconvenient poor people in Africa and Asia would just go off somewhere and die.

But that's not their reflected in their policies. Yet.

The unprecedented growth of the population of sub-Saharan Africa is further complicated by the lack of economic development which might afford people work in more developed societies. Much of Africa is experiencing a real squeeze in arable land ownership. Traditionally plots of agricultural land were passed on to a farmer's children. But with the arrival of modest vaccination campaigns and access to modern medicines, after a few generations many more children survived than had previously been the case. Children are inheriting smaller and smaller plots of land and can no longer farm profitably or secure enough food for subsistence.

Combined with climate change, civil strife, and exploitation of resources by countries like China the whole teeming continent is rapidly developing into an ecological basket case, its forests depleted, its iconic mega-fauna hunted and poached to extinction, and a steady stream of desperate refugees trying to reach Europe.

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@hightor,

The Chinese (and the various African Nations) may have their own ideas about what's good for them. How do we go about "persuading" them that our ideas and plans on this matter should also be theirs? So far the various (mostly European) advocates of International agreements to "enforce" reform, have simply given them a pass (mostly, in my view, so they wouldn't be laughed off the stage.)

President Macron of France had quite enough trouble with the relatively ( to them) rich French rural population in his efforts to force reductions in petroleum consumption, while he simultaneously launches a program to wind down France's historical dependence on emissions free nuclear power ( a remarkably illogical and unscientific juxtaposition).

I believe a central point here is that AGW zealots appear to have a fixation on a prescription of forced abandonment of carbon fuels, no matter what may be the effect on the lives of those subject to their views. This is hardly either scientific, or consistent with basic humanistic values. Moreover the political implications of this fixation on an already unruly world are widely ignored. The implied, but unacknowledged requirement for an authoritarian tyranny, with vast powers to impose its will, is only recently becoming evident in events such as those recently occurring in France.

All people, including the unwashed common folk that various elite figures like Macron believe need their rule and guidance, are quite good at figuring our for themselves what's good for them, and as history shows, highly resistant to external forces applied to them.

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@hightor,

The remark was not mine, and it had to do with "green" NGOs, not governments.

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@Setanta,

Well yes. You stated that it was someone else's comment directed at some of the environmental organizations. I never suggested differently.

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@georgeob1,

Quote:

The Chinese (and the various African Nations) may have their own ideas about what's good for them. How do we go about "persuading" them that our ideas and plans on this matter should also be theirs?

We don't. We won't. We can't.

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All people(...) are quite good at figuring our for themselves what's good for them...

No, I don't agree that there is some vast latent repository of common sense awash in the bowels of humanity. People and governments continually and repeatedly make bad, ill-informed, or short-sighted decisions. That's why we have environmental problems to begin with.

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...and as history shows, highly resistant to external forces applied to them.

Good luck resisting steadily rising sea levels.

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@hightor,

I was just emphasizing that, for the record. My personal opinion is that many people in the environmental NGOs care about trees and animal species first and foremost, and humans not at all.

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@hightor,

Yeah, Bangladesh is screwed with sea level rise. Same-same for Miami, Tokyo, southeastern England, most of Indonesia's and Malaysia's prime farm land . . . the list goes on and on. In other threads, the conservative usual suspects are busy saying "Nuh-uh."

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@Setanta,

How would you propose to induce China, and India, or even Bangladesh to take restrictive action to reduce their current levels of emissions? The arguments I put forward earlier about the required power and authority of the authoritarian governments required ( even if you could persuade one to arise in these countries) still apply.

Actual average sea level rises over the past two decades are about 2.7 inches total, or close to 1/8th inch per year. That rate has been slowly rising for the past few decades. Projected catastrophes arising from a postulated sudden melting of land-based glaciers world wide are a bit like Al Gore's hockey stick - now forgotten embarrassments. In the same vein most of the many national climate models - nearly every nation has one - err more or less continuously on the high side of actual data. Interestingly it is the Russian Model that has the best long-term record for accuracy , and it generally yields estimates well below the IPCC reports. However the IPCC has over the past two years acknowledged errors in the construction of the model they use (they say they have implemented upgrades). The largest was their failure to adjust their model's forecast growth rates for CO2 absorbing green plants, to reflect the greater abundance of CO2 in the atmosphere; the other was to adjust the assumed thickness of the oceanic mixing layer for carbonic acid, formed from the absorption of CO2 in the air, from about ten feet to about 500 feet. Neither initial estimate indicates much physical understanding on the parts of their modelers. One can hope they've got it right now.

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@georgeob1,

Did God die and leave me in charge, without bothering to leave a note? What obliges me to propose anything about this?

Continental glaciers are hardly the problem. Do a little research on the Arctic ice cap, if it any longer deserves the title. Look at the tabular ice berg, nearly the size of Delaware, and containing more water than Lake Erie, that broke off the Larsen ice shelf in Antarctica just a year ago last summer. Continental glaciers are hardly the potential danger. Bleaching of coral reefs from fresh water being introduced into sea water is already a problem. Sea level rise has already overtaken several islands in the Pacific, and threatens many other populous islands of Micronesia.

What's your solution, George? "Screw 'em, it ain't my problem."

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The problem has nothing to do with Africa or even Asia. The only country that has constantly lied about climate change and rejected calls for action is the US. They are the problem.

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@georgeob1,

minimization is next to denial. At last the deniers arent trying to sound like they are analyzing the data

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Is the Human Race on a Suicide Mission?

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