Rutger might make a good interviewee for a PP podcast
Davos doesn’t like the “T” word…
https://www.theguardian.com/business/video/2019/jan/30/this-is-not-rocke…
And I did it with 3/4" formaldehyde free ply, and corrugated cardboard batts bagged in reflectix aluminized bubble wrap, sealing that end of the house. I can’t afford to do more in my current state. Maybe I could in fifteen years, but I’m expecting that by that time our family will be dispersed; our needs will be less.
And I likely will have the beginnings of senility, judging from family history.
The electric already is minimized, when you consider that it includes our heat. We did the LED bulbs long ago; the CFLs kept blowing capacitors and getting thrown out: not an environmentally friendly solution. And if you brought it to home depot or lowes, the recycling boxes break the bulbs right at the customer service counter. That’s not safe OR environmentall’ friendly. But the LEDs seem to work fine.
I don’t think we can do solar: no space for it.
The hot water pipes run through the subfloor, not under it.
The short-run pipes run ok; the long run to the kitchen is 1/2" poly but seems massively weak, but that also minimizes waste. I suspect corroded zinc from the old system blocked it up soon after we had redone it, but more work means more waste and expense, and we can live with it.
Of course, my lot rental is super-high: $400/mo for nothing. It goes to taxes and to Franklin management, a billion-dollar operation; so maybe a huge fraction of that money goes to jet fuel vacations, consumer products that are thrown out, and so on. If you were to cut all that out you might well cut my contribution to AGW by half. But I don’t realistically see that happening. Rather, when cuts are forced the costs are imposed on the weak and the poor, and they just go homeless and starve, while the depredations still go on up top.
As far as the gasoline goes, I live in the crime-ridden inner city, three miles from my job. The huge gasoline expenditure is regular needs from an older relative who lives 90 miles away, and has a standard of living way past ours: country pool, 3-story house, ponies, acreage, two cars, etcera. But not that isn’t something we are free to cut off, any more than we can cut off our lot rental.
I really dislike your death solution, especially because it encourages all-out war and doubled-down destruction. Yes, I understand you’re not encouraging it, you’re stating it. But let’s look at it, nonetheless.
So then the solution is for people to–like Glass in the movies–secretly murder their neighbors, and steal their shtuff? And Their solution is to secretly murder you? Or maybe in broad daylight? Or maybe for us all to get together and bomb some slums like the Philadelphia police did to the Afrika cult, for the sake of the children they were bombing? And what is the solution for them?
Thus murder devolves to war, and war to increased–not decreased–environmental destruction. And then when the population is already down past sustainable levels, nobody can trust each other, so the war continues. And then–read the Art of War-- the best strategy is to destroy your enemy’s environment, so that he starves.
That’s why I favor the solution of delayed-mating for the young, and voluntarily declining medical care for the old. Murder does not have to be, less so mass murder, less so war.
Michael, I don’t think Grover is saying he either wishes nor welcomes the inevitable “Malthusian solution” so much as he doesn’t see any viable alternative that is likely to be enacted at the national or global level. Change is possible from the ground up, not the top down, and the die-off of a large portion of the human population is inevitable, given our species’ penchant for resisting change until it is fully upon us (a notion confirmed by everything I know of psychology and sociology). There are countless examples of people and civilizations ignoring the obvious threats on their doorsteps until those threats were in the living room eating on the couch, with their feet up on the coffee table no less. The best solution, then, seems to be at the local community level. I don’t want to read too much into Grover’s thoughts, but I think he is essentially saying that focus should be put into that rather than some kind of national movement to enact systemic change; the former is doable, while the latter is herculean in the best of times.
While I can’t be certain if Grover is correct, per se, I can point out that there are literally dozens of examples in human history where even the slightest climate changes (temperature, precipitation, soil erosion, etc) have resulted in cataclysmic collapse of a civilization. Whether we’re talking early river valley civilzations, vast empires of the classical age, or post-Medieval Europe, climate shifts matter…a lot. Humans will survive this emerging shift in climate, but I have my doubts that our modern-day global civilization can, and when you factor in sovereign debt problems, dwindling resources and energy, and rising social tensions, those chances fall to levels lower than our current Fed Funds rate.
As I’ve stated elsewhere before, I hope - desperately hope - that I am wrong. But history is what I do, and while I’m not expert in most of the topics bantered around on PP, I am far more certain of my read of the story of humanity, and from that perspective I have to agree with Grover that Malthus’s vision is far more likely than any optimistic idea of systemic change I’ve seen yet.
I don’t like the repurcussions of that vision any more than you do, Michael. I’m still fighting for systemic change, but putting energy into local prep as well (probably failing at both).
“yes, I understand you aren’t supporting it, you’re stating it.” I agree that Grover isn’t intending it, he’s saying what he sees. I’m trying to promote an alternative future.
By the way, I just had to select all pics w/ crosswalks. One of them was NYC / manhattan. Umm, correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that entire area one giant crosswalk?
If you are not willing to put forth your solutions and debate them with the PP crowd then you are wasting your and our time. You have expended considerable efforts trying to justify your position on what is wrong but now you say you are unwilling to spend any efforts on debating solutions.
As I have always said to my staff, you get to complain but you have to bring solutions to your compaints as well. To do otherwise is to simply be a whiner…
Jan
Hmm… I could get a 30% reduction in bit usage if…nevermind.
Gun
Apologies if this has already been posted.
Venezuela’s collapse is a window into how the Oil Age will unravel - Nafeez Ahmed, Insurge Intelligence
Quote:
"For some, the crisis in Venezuela is all about the endemic corruption of Nicolás Maduro, continuing the broken legacy of Chavez’s ideological experiment in socialism under the mounting insidious influence of Putin. For others, it’s all about the ongoing counter-democratic meddling of the United States, which has for years wanted to bring Venezuela — with its huge oil reserves — back into the orbit of American power, and is now interfering again to undermine a democratically elected leader in Latin America.
Neither side truly understands the real driving force behind the collapse of Venezuela: we have moved into the twilight of the Age of Oil.
So how does a country like Venezuela with the largest reserves of crude oil in the world end up incapable of developing them? While various elements of socialism, corruption and neoliberal capitalism are all implicated in various ways, what no one’s talking about — especially the global oil industry — is that over the last decade, we’ve shifted into a new era. The world has moved from largely extracting cheap, easy crude, to becoming increasingly dependent on unconventional forms of oil and gas that are much more difficult and expensive to produce."
That’s my best guess but I would welcome any definitive explanation.
The way I figure it is that the greenhouse effect plays out something as is assumed when it comes to water vapour but even there has a modest ability to slow heat loss because you still get such a significant heat loss at night even where there is significant vapour plus CO2.
But over a desert with very little water vapour and only the usual CO2 level it is very different. With little water vapour to capture heat and CO2 because of it’s very limited bending and vibrating ability only able to capture a very small amount, that infrared radiation at night just passes unobstructed and rapidly up and out to space. It’s the only thing that makes sense to me and speaks to the very weak potential effect on temp of CO2. And if water vapour is present in any significant amount CO2 would be irrelavant as the vapour would capture anything CO2 could trap anyway and CO2 has no additive effect.
The contrast between the two scenarios is informative.
Quote:
I wouldn't post my solution on this site because it would make people's heads here exolode
westcoastjan,
You seem to have missed my point. People here are seeing a myriad of problems real or imagined but I wasn’t trying to debate the lot of them. I only made two assertions. One was that whatever the real problems may be, that climate has nothing to do with it as there is absolutely nothing unusual and climate is completely well within natural variability. The other point was that CO2 does not cause warming. I think that the data and science backs me up. I could post hundreds of links to scientific articles by credentialed people in support and when Obama was president over 31 thousand scientists signed and sent him a petition saying what I have just said but the media would not report that becuase it would ruin their narrative and agenda.
So you and most people here don’t agree with me. OK, thats fine. I simply stated my take on the two above mentioned things and tried to give some reasons. How is that whining? And logically, how could I present solutions to things I specifically said I do not consider problems. I was in essence debating the issue of problem or not and we’ll just have to disagree on the points in question
As for that repeated question of “why are you here”, I find it peculiar. Does a person need a reason other than that he disagrees with something and is interested in expressing his truth. I spend a lot of time on blogs where I am in agreement with the prevailing messaging but rarely post. Why bother when everyone agrees with me and whatever I have to say has probably already been said.
As for my posting here, I didn’t intend to come here on a crusade. After reading the article I was motivated to make a post and thought maybe there might be a follow-up post but then I got sucked into replies to responses I was getting. I guess I ruffled a few feathers.
Snydeman wrote:
Michael, I don’t think Grover is saying he either wishes nor welcomes the inevitable “Malthusian solution” so much as he doesn’t see any viable alternative that is likely to be enacted at the national or global level. Change is possible from the ground up, not the top down, and the die-off of a large portion of the human population is inevitable, given our species’ penchant for resisting change until it is fully upon us (a notion confirmed by everything I know of psychology and sociology). There are countless examples of people and civilizations ignoring the obvious threats on their doorsteps until those threats were in the living room eating on the couch, with their feet up on the coffee table no less. The best solution, then, seems to be at the local community level. I don’t want to read too much into Grover’s thoughts, but I think he is essentially saying that focus should be put into that rather than some kind of national movement to enact systemic change; the former is doable, while the latter is herculean in the best of times.
Snydeman,
You’ve succinctly summarised my thoughts. Thank You! What will come will come. We all know that the oil age can’t last forever, yet we’re reluctant to discuss the coarser consequences. That is an understandable shame.
I remember Bill Clinton’s election mantra that it is all about the economy, stupid. The economy needs appropriate energy sources to function. Electricity can be generated using just about any energy source available; however, the machines that focus on a specific energy source can’t easily convert to another source - hydropower, nuclear, solar PV, etc. Imagine how effective shoveling coal into any system not designed to work with coal would actually function.
Economically, we’re at a comfortable plateau. Things aren’t superb, but they are good enough for a large enough portion of the populace. Could it be better? (When couldn’t it be better?) That gives us the luxury of contemplating the 3rd “E” - the environment. I’m sure anyone reading this can imagine how much focus you’d give the environment if a depression hit and you were out of work and worried about providing the basic necessities for your family. It’s easy to take that for granted now in this time of plenty. In bad times, concerns over the environment would take a distant back seat.
Hard times happen. The oil age will end. How will the average, unaware person respond? How will savvy politicians react? Wouldn’t it be smarter to just mothball the currently “unneeded” coal fired electrical plants rather than to completely dismantle them - just in case? Think ahead.
Grover
Mainstream climate reseach is massively funded by governments to the tune of billions of dollars a year. They give the output that is expected by their paymasters.
The so-called skeptics receive nothing from government or big oil. They are honest scientists who speak out at great risks to their status and careers. The number one most visited climate blog in the world wattsupwiththat.com which deals with the climate issue depends entirely on small donations from readers. Similarly, the most visited site in Australia joannenova.com.au depends on private donations and from time to time is financially sqeezed into asking for money.
Joanne Nova and her scientist husband who has several advanced degrees were actually employed by the Australian labour government and involved in inventorying CO2 output in Australia. They believed in CO2 caused warming and decided to research it to bolster their arguments against skeptics. What they found was the opposite of what they expected. Becuase of their present stated beliefs they are unemployable in government or acedemia.
Anthony Watts is a California based meteorologist who was so convinced by the meme that he organized tree planting efforts. He too researched the issue to bolster arguments against the skeptics but after research flipped his opinion.
The accusation of skeptics being funded by big oil is utterly false and is a propaganda smear device used by the warmists. The oil and gas industry actually gives money to environmental groups in what is known as “greenwashing”. They give money to avoid being specifically targeted. They also give money to anti-coal crusaders because if coal use is diminished you have diminished competition for natural gas power plants.
And your perception of the role of media is compltely skewed. Where did most people get their belief in man-made global warming? The meme has been relentlessly pushed in the media as has been the push into renewable energy. Skeptics have been almost totally excluded or given token time Outlets such as The LA Times a couple of years ago publically announced that they will not publish dissenting opinions on the issue even in the comments section. NBC just announced a couple of weeks ago something similar And that has been the policy of the BBC in Britain and the ABC in Australia. The media have been a tool in the forefront of aggressively pushing the meme for many years. If you didn’t first hear about it there then you first heard about it via the politicized curriculum in the schools.
First, many thanks to Doug for his analysis of Old Guy’s assertions. Well worth reading.
Second, in OG’s post #72, he rubbishes the Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s ACORN-SAT data series. In support of this stance he cites a single name, Jennifer Marohasny. Unknown to me.
Wikipedia tells me that she trained as a biologist, not a meteorologist, and is associated with the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA).
The IPA is a conservative, right-wing, privatise-everything, climate-change sceptical, free trade advocate. See Wikipedia. Get the picture?
In 2017 she wrote a paper for GeoResJ denying climate change which has received strong criticism from reputable sources. As one example,
Unexplained and selective use of proxy temperature records – only six were used and no reason was given for their choice,[3] when a recent paper showed that there are at least 692 available.[25] Their approach was criticised as "extremely unscientific" by Benjamin Henley of the University of Melbourne for making no attempt to compare their approach with actual temperature data. With results that are interpreted incorrectly and which do not support the conclusions, Henley stated that the paper should never have been published and should be withdrawn by the journal.[3] Henley made harsher comments directly to Marohasy on Twitter, describing the paper as "an absolute pile of rubbish" that "reads like a D-grade high school lab report and is utterly flawed."[26]Read the Wikipedia article before it is disappeared. In my view the 3% of scientists who deny climate change represent an increasingly desperate set of outliers, some of whom appear to support the BAU crowd whose growthism would not be served by facing up to climate change reality. In support of the BoM, I trust my meteorologist. He is ethical and honest. On another website some months ago we had another denier whose M.O. was to ambush us with cherry-picked data series and observations. As one example, he adduced a data series from Rutgers University showing the depth of the snowpack somewhere in the US has increased over time. He made the mistake of giving its source. I went to the same database and found another data series which clearly showed that the duration of the snowpack has been decreasing over about the same time. I am bored with this fruitless debate. I will not respond any further.
If you say in your application for grant money that you will research the effects of increasing CO2 on declining butterfly populations, you will almost certainly get your money. But if you say you want to research the effects of rising CO2 on enhanced vegetative growth, receeding deserts, and improved animal habitats, you definitely will not get the money.
Thats how it works.
Good folk here, PPr’s, are wasting time with old guy(might be a fine fellow). Settle your mare, live a rewarding bucolic life and let suburbtopia get it when and “if” it comes.
Quote:
over 31 thousand scientists signed and sent him a petition
Quote:
I think that the data and science backs me up.
https://skepticalscience.com/OISM-Petition-Project.htm
And, for a laugh, google OISM. (Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine)
https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Oregon_Institute_of_Science_and_Me…
https://www.skepticalscience.com/scrutinising-31000-scientists-in-the-OI…
Founder: Arthur Robinson
Quote:
In his monthly newsletter "Access to Energy", Robinson argues that nuclear radiation can be good for you, advocates for a revival of nuclear power, attacks climate science as a "false religion" that will enslave mankind, and condemns public education, instead favoring home schooling.[2] The institute also publishes material relating to civil defense and disaster preparedness.[21][24]
By Tom Harris and Dr. Tim Ball
Headlines around the world are reporting exceptionally frigid conditions and unusually high levels of snowfall in recent weeks. They tout these events as records, but few people understand how short the record actually is – usually less than 50 years, a mere instant in Earth’s 4.6-billion year history. The reality is that, when viewed in a wider context, there is nothing unusual about current weather patterns.
Despite this fact, the media – directly, indirectly, or by inference – often attribute the current weather to global warming. Yes, they now call it climate change. But that is because activists realized, around 2004, that the warming predicted by the computer models on which the scare is based was not actually happening. Carbon dioxide (CO2) levels continued to increase, but the temperature stopped increasing. So, the evidence no longer fit the theory. English biologist Thomas Huxley commented on this dilemma over a century ago:
“The great tragedy of science – the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.”
Yet, the recent weather is a stark reminder that a colder world is a much greater threat than a warmer one. While governments plan for warming, all the indications are that the world is cooling. And, contrary to the proclamations of climate activists, every single year more people die from the cold than from the heat.
A study in British medical journal The Lancet reached the following conclusion:
Cold weather kills 20 times as many people as hot weather, according to an international study analyzing over 74 million deaths in 384 locations across 13 countries.
How did this bizarre situation develop? It was a deliberate, orchestrated deception. The results of the investigation of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) were deliberately premeditated to focus on the negative impacts of warming. In their original 1988 mandate from the UN, global warming is mentioned three times, while cooling is not mentioned even once. The UN notes that:
[C]ontinued growth in atmospheric concentrations of “greenhouse” gases could produce global warming with an eventual rise in sea levels, the effects of which could be disastrous for mankind if timely steps are not taken at all levels.
This narrow focus was reinforced when the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, a body the IPCC is required to support, defined climate change as being caused by human activity.
When Is a Climate Model ‘Useful’?
IPCC Working Group 1 (WG1) produced the evidence that human-created CO2 was causing global warming. That finding became the premise for Working Group 2 (WG2), which examined the negative impact, and Working Group 3 (WG3), which proposed mitigation policies and actions to stop the warming. The IPCC did not follow the mandatory scientific method of allowing for the null hypothesis; namely, what to do if evidence shows CO2 is not causing warming.
As MIT professor emeritus of atmospheric meteorology Richard Lindzen said, they reached a consensus before the research even began. The consensus “proved” the hypothesis was correct, regardless of the evidence. To reinforce the point, the UK government hired Lord Nicholas Stern, a British economist, to produce an economic review of the impact of warming. Instead of doing a normal cost/benefit analysis as any non-political economist would do, he produced what became known as the 2006 Stern Review – which only examined the cost.
If Stern and the IPCC did a proper study, they would find that the impact of cooling is much more deleterious to all life on Earth, especially humans. Anthropologists tell us two great advances in human evolution gave us more control of the cold. Fire and clothing both created microclimates that allowed us to live in regions normally inaccessible. Consider the city of Winnipeg, with three technological umbilical cords: the electricity from the north, the gas from the west, and the water pipeline from the east. Three grenades set off at 2:00 a.m. on a January morning with temperatures of -30°C would render the city frozen solid within hours.
Between 1940 and 1980, global temperatures went down. The consensus by 1970 was that global cooling was underway and would continue. Lowell Ponte’s 1976 book The Cooling typified the alarmism:
It is cold fact: the global cooling presents humankind with the most important social, political, and adaptive challenge we have had to deal with for ten thousand years. Your stake in the decisions we make concerning it is of ultimate importance; the survival of ourselves, our children, our species.
Change the seventh word to warming, and it is the same threat heard today. The big difference is that cooling is a much greater threat. To support that claim, the CIA produced at least two reports examining the social and political unrest aggravated mainly by crop failure due to cooling conditions. The World Meteorological Organization also did several studies on the historical impact of cooling on selected agricultural regions, and projected further global cooling.
The sad part about all this is that there was a strategy that governments could, and should, have adopted. It is called game theory, and it allows you to make the best decision in uncertain circumstances. It requires accurate information and the exclusion of a biased political agenda. The first accurate information is that cold is a greater threat and a more difficult adaptation than to warming. After all, if you prepare for warming, as most governments are now doing, and it cools, the problems are made ten times worse. However, if you prepare for cold and it warms, the adjustment is much easier.
The current cold weather across much of the world should prompt us to re-examine climate realities – not the false, deceptive, and biased views created and promoted by deep state bureaucrats through their respective governments.