Environment and Climate Change

Here's an interesting debate between Stewart Brand and Prof. Mark Jacobson about what power source to drive our society. Basically renewable energy versus nuclear power. A lot of great points here. The argument seems to center on "base load" energy required to maintain our society in the style to which we've become accustomed.

---------- Their discussion

That's right, bicycles with no fairings. People with no fairings, too. But darn it, here's an example of people with many different causes coming together with one approach, and one dress code. There's a video at the site you might not want to miss. Then again. . . .

Slogan. Let's see. . .I'd rather go naked than wear cloth--- nah. I got it. I'd rather go naked than use gas.

Because nudity is newsworthy, duh.
-Josh Loposer

Canadian scientist Bill Rees talking about some tendencies and directions which appear to be leading our society into a hugely warmed uninhabitable planet. The core is an "evolutionary weakness" in human brains and he spent most of the talk explaining it. I've quoted liberally from the transcript and you can play the audio via a player way down below. There is permission on the website to republish.

The latest Radio Ecoshock .. well, it's rather doom-focused. He's got pieces from several scientists discussing recent research documenting the human-driven releases of carbon (etc) into the atmosphere. One of the points is methane releases that scientists have documented in the arctic. Well, a methane release isn't directly causated by humans but the claim is that the methane release is due to higher temperature, and that higher temperature is due to prior human-caused releases of carbon into the atmosphere.

Over the history of the planet the atmosphere carbon levels have varied over time, of course. And of course the whole planet has been ice-free at times. The difference this time is that human activities are seeking out sources of high carbon materials (coal, oil, etc) and burning those materials for fuel releasing the carbon. It's been proved over and over there is a strong link between carbon levels and temperature.

The picture in my mind listening to this is - because businesses are incentivized to do more business - that means society is incentivizing itself to seek out fuels and use those fuels to drive business activity - and hence the forces driving business to drive fuel use are indirectly driving increasing release of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.

Just listened to this episode of Radio Ecoshock and found it very interesting, especially the second half of the show.

The first half is talking about South America, and how changes to the Amazon rainforest could impact the climate of the whole world. It's an interview with a scientist discussing the Amazon and how it might well dry out - and where would that leave us, with a planet whose lungs have turned into grasslands?

The second half was is very interesting however. It's another interview this time with Dr. Deirdre Barrett of Harvard, discussing her new book "Supernormal Stimuli." The idea is that we humans evolved in hunting-gathering and developed information processing which makes sense for hunting-gathering. But we're in a context which isn't hunting-gathering, quite far from it.

Some scientists have studied how animals (such as birds) can be fooled by decoys. For example a bird can be fooled to sit on brightly colored fake eggs rather than on real eggs. Butterflies can be fooled into mating with cardboard butterflies. etc..etc..

The implication is that humans can be fooled by ..er..

Okay, this is kinda obvious but really think about the gizmos surrounding us. The designers make sure that the gizmos appeal to gut levels of our psyche. There's all kinds of products in the stores that make us react in weird ways and then we buy the thing because of that reaction, and not from any real need for the thing.

It means the corporations are finding ways to manipulate us into buying stuff we don't need .. and a result of buying stuff we don't need is using up the planet's resources to make all that unnecessary crap. Well, Alex didn't say that in the recording but I think he would agree.

What they talked about is this kind of stimuli and its effect on our judgement. They talked about how it can be misused, or how it could be used to create positive results.

Another thing they talked about is how our information processing system is wired to recognize immediate threats (a tiger about to jump you) but not threats that take decades to unfold. The latter bit is likely a strong part of the climate denial people, because it's hard to recognize the threat from climate change.

You guys have that "golf" oil thread wound up pretty tight - hate to be a thread breaker, so I'll start this new post.

Imagine this gloomy scenario (highly unlikely, but just think for a moment)...

To help you with your advocacy of electric vehicles I created a wikipedia article on car pollution. Needs work but maybe you'll find it useful.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_pollution

The title isn't right either, but don't know what is better. :0)

Just listened to episode #101 of The Kunstler Cast http://kunstlercast.com/ and he has some really good things to say about the twin threats of peak oil and climate change (and the third one - economic instability). Both of these issues are a key part of why I am working on adoption of electric vehicles, and why we have this very site in front of us. In any case I really like what he has to say in this recording:

[swf file="http://media.libsyn.com/media/kunstlercast/KunstlerCast_101.mp3"]

'The global warming guerrillas' in the January, 6, 2010,edition of Spectator by Matt Ridley,( www.spectator.co.uk/essays/.../the-global-warming-guerrillas.thtml - )

I think a new thread is in order, since this is really a change of topic. For the purpose of this thread, let's make the simplifying assumption that the core climate science presented in the most recent IPCC report is entirely correct.

But more interestingly, I would be interested to hear your views on what could, if anything, be practically done to remedy the changes GW will create?