Jan, you are quite right and I beg both your pardens. I've been reading and rereading both of you postings and got things muddled up.
John
Hello Grover,Thank you, I will check out your posts.
There is no hijack intended for this thread. I was just correcting some misinformation that you had presented.
Your response indicates that you are confusing 'problems' with 'predicaments'. Chris covered this well in the Crash Course (pages 53-56) and John Michael Greer has also discussed the distinction between the two (link).
Problems beg for solutions. Once the solution is found then everyone can just forget about whatever the problem was.
Predicaments have no solutions, only outcomes. They are situations that need to be managed in order to achieve a more desirable outcome versus a less desirable one if nothing is done. Think diabetes. You can pretend it doesn't exist and eat whatever you want, for a while. Of course you will likely go blind, lose your feet, and end up in a coma or dead if you refuse to manage the situation. The alternative of eating carefully and exercising doesn't 'solve' the diabetes but it does manage the problem so that you can live a longer more productive life.
Whether we are talking about the global financial crisis, peak oil, dwindling resources, human populations, or climate change, we are discussing hosts of predicaments. There are no magic 'solutions' that will allow our societies to go on doing what we have been doing. We must either manage the issues to try to minimize the fallout or else we can extend and pretend until we are left with no options whatsoever other than worst case scenarios.
It is a combination of wishful thinking by a populace that doesn't want to change or sacrifice their way of life and the self-serving suggestions by certain industries who are profiting from the status quo that keep trying to frame climate change and every other issue in the Crash Course as 'problems'. If it is a 'problem' then it is up to somebody else to solve it and we do not have to change what we are doing now, because that somebody else is going to come along soon and make the big bad problem go away. Just delay little longer. One of the most effective Siren's songs ever sung.
Alas, there are no 'credible solutions' to climate change because it is not a problem. It is a predicament that presents us with many management options to choose from at every level from individual action to local community, to state, federal and global possible actions to mitigate or adapt to the actual problems that will be spawned by the growing predicament.
In line with this thread, I have read The Fourth Turning, and there is a lot of interesting pattern to be seen in the interplay between the generations, however, we must realize that the generations do not actually exist as physical manifestations. They are comprised of the many people who are born into each given cohort. There may be central tendencies for generational groups but there is also a wide range of variability within them. You yourself are not some average tendency, individual choices still matter. Most of the people reading these boards have already made individual choices that set them outside of their 'generational mainstream'. All generations are apt to deal better with our current situation if more of us within each generation would point out that we have major issues that need to be managed proactively so as to reduce and minimize the future problems that will have to get fixed.
Cheer,
Mark
and went straight to dilemma! 'All generations are apt to deal better with our current situation if more of us within each generation would point out that we have major issues that need to be managed proactively so as to reduce and minimize the future problems that will have to get fixed.'
Cheer,
Mark
Mark, in theT4T arena, not sure what that means, in practical terms. I know many consider the accuracy of each turning throughout time to be not exact enough to trade on so not real or relevant enough to believe - same folks who likely don't believe in a higher power I'm guessing - but your post, I mean, I get it - but what are you really saying…'cause its brushing up against 'world peace' and stuff leaving me with no real take-away. Who gives up what, and how much…and who takes it? I think we're past such teachable moments and doomed to grind lower and slower and worse. But, being an optimist - I'd like to hear about a way out. Anyway, could you succinctly shine some light on that?
TreeMagnet,I get your drift. We have dithered so long and let the issues get so big that there really is no easy way out. People are going to lose. What most people don't realize is that we do not get the choice of participating. At present in our predicament we are, for the most part, being bled dry. Most people have less and less year after year while others are working harder and harder just to stand still. A relative few are making out like the bandits that they are while trying to mesmerize and placate the populace with bread and circuses, telling us to hang in there a little longer until the 'recovery' picks up speed.
Managing a growing pie is easy, managing a shrinking one is not. There are lots of hard decisions to be made. The more equitably they are made the fewer people will like them because the pain will be spread evenly. An unfair distribution of bonuses sucks, but an unfair distribution of penalties is a different beast. Would you like one cookie now or two in and hour becomes would you prefer one root canal now or two in an hour?
More to the point is that individuals of all generations need to take their noses out of their navels and start contemplating time lines longer than quarterly profits. We also have to stop trying to maximize our own personal wealth at the expense of others, especially if they can be foisted off onto the unborn.
We do not have to wait for the entire economy to come to a screeching halt in order to start doing something to make ourselves and our communities more resilient. You can downsize your home before going bankrupt. You can start growing food before the super market shelf is empty. You can pull your money out of the no-so-free market. You can try to get your town to make sensible investments that will be sustainable in the future.
If the next generations of 'heroes' are going to be thrust into the mess we have made then at least we can start making the sacrifices of time and resources needed to prepare and arm them for the coming trials. In practical terms, take a look at someplace like Arizona and much of the arid west. They already are running too tight on water. They need to drastically drop per capita water use. If they start now they can use things like incentives and infrastructure planning to allow the region to more slowly and efficiently adjust year by year. The alternative would be waiting for the next serious drought that leads to rationing and the collapse of various agricultural and industrial businesses. Maybe unpleasantness with neighboring states. The region has a limited and shrinking water budget. Proactive efforts to reduce waste and increase efficiency will prevent a lot of very inefficient unpleasantness. Building permits and regional population plans should reflect these known limits.
We need to create systems that rewards sensible resource use and that penalizes foolishness or profligacy. At present we are doing the opposite and getting the world we deserve.
Mark
Life is a proccess. A verb, not a noun. We cannot go backwards, that door is closed to us because we have too many mouths to feed.
Beware the Death Drive! (Freud). I will not go contentedly into the night of extinction. I encounter the Death Drive whenever I find either fatalistic stoicism, denial or outrage whenever I present possible weaknesses in the prevailing meme.
There are three improbable things we have to do simultaneously.
- find a substitute for carbon energy
- curb the urge to breed uniformly across all human populations
- create more lebensraum.
Mark,
I didn't want to pollute this thread. It has been 2 weeks since anything has been posted. I'm guessing the thread has run its course. I originally responded to jdye51 to give her another perspective. Obviously, the thread set up for all the hand wringing wasn't quite big enough for all the angst. I quoted this statement from her:
It gives us something to DO which feels better than facing what could be our demise as a species.That statement scares the living crap out of me. If there is nothing that can be done, nothing is the appropriate response. I'll talk more about this later in this message.
You tried to "enlighten" me. We really didn't say too much different. I'm wondering if you really read my post before responding. You brought out the constant solar irradiance (+/- 0.1%) and therefore discounted the sun's effect on climate change. If that were all the sun did, you would be absolutely correct.
The sun is a dynamo that provides the majority of earth's energy budget. As you noted, every 11 years or so, it switches polarity. The magnetic north pole switches to the south pole while the south pole migrates northerly. The next sunspot cycle it reverses again so that magnetic north is north and magnetic south is south. Sunspots are the manifestation of the pole switching process. At the beginning of the cycle, sunspots start forming nearer the poles. As time progresses, the sunspots form closer and closer to the sun's equator. At the sunspot peak, sunspots mainly form near the equator. As the cycle continues, the spot genesis migrates toward the poles.
Sunspots can and often have very dynamic magnetic mixing that can actually propel matter outside of the sun's gravity - solar flares. These are called coronal mass ejections (CMEs.) Ejecta can travel in any direction from the sun's surface, but the predominate direction is nearly orthogonal to the sun's surface. Given that the earth is 93+ million miles from the sun, it is a relatively small target. CMEs that originate near the equator (ie sunspot maximum) have a greater chance of intercepting earth than those that originate near the poles. Here is a Wikipedia article about one of these that impacted earth, the Carrington event that occurred in 1859. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_event
As you know, the sun also changes its electormagnetic properties over the course of the sunspot cycle. This Wikipedia snip says it better than I could:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycleThe earth intercepts the sun's output at various levels of the atmosphere. From the same Widipedia article:The Sun's magnetic field structures its atmosphere and outer layers all the way through the corona and into the solar wind. Its spatiotemporal variations lead to a host of phenomena collectively known as solar activity. All of solar activity is strongly modulated by the solar magnetic cycle, since the latter serves as the energy source and dynamical engine for the former.
Even though it only accounts for a minuscule fraction of total solar radiation, the impact of solar UV, EUV and X-ray radiation on the Earth's upper atmosphere is profound. Solar UV flux is a major driver of stratospheric chemistry, and increases in ionizing radiation significantly affect ionosphere-influenced temperature and electrical conductivity.More interesting (to me) is what happens during solar minima. The energetic sun gets quiet and its influence diminishes. Here, from the same Wikipedia article, is a description of cosmic rays entering our solar system less impeded.
The outward expansion of solar ejecta into interplanetary space provides overdensities of plasma that are efficient at scattering high-energy cosmic rays entering the solar system from elsewhere in the galaxy. Since the frequency of solar eruptive events is strongly modulated by the solar cycle, the degree of cosmic ray scattering in the outer solar system varies in step. As a consequence, the cosmic ray flux in the inner solar system is anticorrelated with the overall level of solar activity. This anticorrelation is clearly detected in cosmic ray flux measurements at the Earth's surface.And from this Wikipedia article:Some high-energy cosmic rays entering Earth's atmosphere collide hard enough with molecular atmospheric constituents to cause occasionally nuclear spallation reactions. Some of the fission products include radionuclides such as 14C and 10Be, which settle down on Earth's surface.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_variationThere is quite a bit more involved than the 0.1% variation you alluded to. Researchers still don't have a complete handle on the sun-earth interaction. Is it just a coincidence that the earth was warmer during the medieval maximum, that we had the little ice age during the Spörer, Maunder, and Dalton minima, and that we had warmer conditions during the recent modern maximum? This last sunspot cycle was the least active in the past 2 centuries. What does it mean if we're heading for another minimum?Changes in ionization affect the abundance of aerosols that serve as the nuclei of condensation for cloud formation.[46] During periods of low solar activity (during solar minima), more cosmic rays reach Earth, potentially creating ultra-small aerosol particles which are precursors to cloud condensation nuclei.[47] Clouds formed from greater amounts of condensation nuclei are brighter, longer lived, and likely to produce less precipitation. It has been speculated that a change in cosmic rays could cause an increase in certain types of clouds, affecting Earth's albedo.
It doesn't really matter. None of us has any influence on the sun. It will do what it will do. I really don't think I have substantial influence on the carbon cycle. Fossil fuels will continue to be burnt as long as it is economically advantageous. (More about this at the end of this post.)
Problem or Predicament?
I've never felt comfortable with the special definition for predicament that this site attributes to it. Apparently, problems have solutions and predicaments have outcomes. I'm sorry, but that is a bit too simplistic. I prefer to think of them as points on a spectrum. On the simple end, there are uncomplicated mathematical problems: 2+2 = ?. Once you get to problems associated with humans, there really aren't any uncomplicated problems. For example, is life a problem or predicament? After all, it ends in death for all of us. There is no escaping it. That is the outcome. Perhaps, life is just life.
In my work, problems that have solutions are no longer problems. These are handed to the entry level staff. Predicaments are problems without a clearcut solution - that have potential secondary or tertiary benefits. We're not solving the problem, but we are mitigating its impacts. (It gets complicated.) Isn't that better than just thinking there is nothing to be done and acting like flotsam?
Since I don't like your definition for predicament, I really ought to suggest a better alternative. I thought I would start with the definition from www.dictionary.com.
I don't see anything that says it would be a problem were it only solvable. I do see perplexing and situation. So, let's look up those.pre·dic·a·ment
/prɪˈdɪkəmənt for 1, 3; ˈprɛdɪkəmənt for 2/ Show Spelled [pri-dik-uh-muhnt for 1, 3; pred-i-kuh-muhnt for 2] Show IPAnoun1. an unpleasantly difficult, perplexing, or dangerous situation.2. a class or category of logical or philosophical predication.3. Archaic. a particular state, condition, or situation.
per·plex
/pərˈplɛks/ Show Spelled [per-pleks] Show IPA ,verb (used with object)1. to cause to be puzzled or bewildered over what is not understood or certain; confuse mentally: Her strange response perplexed me.2. to make complicated or confused, as a matter or question.3. to hamper with complications, confusion, or uncertainty.
I think we're getting somewhere. Look at #3 "condition; case; plight: He is in a desperate situation." Let's look up plight:sit·u·a·tion
/ˌsɪtʃuˈeɪʃən/ Show Spelled [sich-oo-ey-shuhn] Show IPAnoun1. manner of being situated; location or position with reference to environment: The situation of the house allowed for a beautiful view.2. a place or locality.3. condition; case; plight: He is in a desperate situation.4. the state of affairs; combination of circumstances: The present international situation is dangerous.
I think "plight" is a better word to describe an unsolvable situation. It has the proper connotations; although, to me, it is escapable. I'm open to other suggestions.plight
1 /plaɪt/ Show Spelled [plahyt] Show IPAnouna condition, state, or situation, especially an unfavorable or unfortunate one: to find oneself in a sorry plight.
Conclusion:
As I said earlier, I have no influence on the sun and an insignificant influence on the earth's atmospheric carbon dioxide. I really worry when I read/hear people say that we have to "do something." I can imagine that "something" involves government coercion, simply because one person's changes are as insignificant as mine; however, if we can get government to force this change on the rest of the world … Once there is enough support, politician(s) will use this message to further his/her own agenda. Does it do any good to limit our output if China pollutes more? Not really. In order to limit worldwide CO2 production, anything less than a One World Government would be futile. Think life is bad with a collapsing ecosystem? It would be worse with One World Government.
I'm glad there are threads on this site that encourage people to explore the science and sociology of carbon dioxide levels increasing in our atmosphere. I really don't care what gets discussed there. Unless it relates directly to another thread's topic, it shouldn't be broached on the other thread. (I'm violating this rule here because this post doesn't relate to T4T.We wouldn't have gotten here if the errant climate post hadn't been posted.)
I'm not interested in discussing how much worse the climate is going to get. I can't change that. I am interested in hearing of strategies to mitigate the impact. I listened to your podcast and appreciate that you connected the dots and suggested stockpiling more supplies. As I heard your suggestions, I was trying to imagine doing this for everyone in the world. It doesn't work. There aren't enough commodities available for everyone on earth to stockpile more supplies. It doesn't really work at the country/state level. Can all the people in Miami, FL move to higher ground? If so, who will buy the property and at what price? It doesn't work for more than a small percentage.
Each of your suggestions were more appropriate for individuals and small communities. When I read between the lines, it tells me that population will need to come down to sustainable levels … and those levels will fluctuate wildly. Without adequate supplies, the lowest levels will determine what sustainable means. Now, that's a plight.
Grover