UN Production Gap Report

December 17, 2023

One of the most important documents for a long time, was released just before the current COP. I’ve only just seen it. It:

finds that governments plan to produce around  110% more fossil fuels in 2030  than would be consistent with limiting warming to 1.5°C, and 69% more than would be consistent with 2°C.

ibid.

This means that:

Taken together, government plans and projections would lead to an increase in global coal production until 2030, and in global oil and gas production until at least 2050.

Summary of Key Findings emphasis added

In other words despite 151 national governments pledging to achieve net-zero emissions, by 2050, governments and fossil fuel companies are working together to produce more fossil fuels, and hence more emissions. OR they are simply ignoring the emissions problem, and hoping it will go away.

As is well known the International Energy Agency has argued that if we wish to stay under 1.5°C all there can be no development of new oil and gas fields after 2021.

Beyond projects already committed as of 2021, there are no new oil and gas fields approved for development in our pathway, and no new coal mines or mine extensions are required. 

IEA Net Zero by 2050

It appears from the UN report that not one country has committed to cutting coal, oil or gas production to be consistent with a 1.5C target, and with this level of production, we are locked into a more than 2°C temperature rise.

This is despite the latest forecasts that coal, oil, and gas demand will peak this decade.

Indeed this action can be seen as an attempt to undermine the prediction and keep countries addicted to using fossil fuels and increasing fossil fuel company profits.

Whatever anyone says, Carbon Capture and Storage cannot deal with this excess of emissions. It cannot deal with even a small fraction of what we already produce. So the chance of it succesfully dealing with this excess is microscopic.

Again, if we needed to know, this shows the dominant power in the world, and that it does not care what happens to people, as long as it makes its profits.

Even the excuse that coal is being phased out faster than oil and gas is useless, because:

“We find that many governments are promoting fossil gas as an essential ‘transition’ fuel but with no apparent plans to transition away from it later”

 Ploy Achakulwisut quoted in Governments plan to produce double the fossil fuels in 2030 than the 1.5°C warming limit allows

UN Secretary-General António Guterres says:

Governments are literally doubling down on fossil fuel production; that spells double trouble for people and planet… We cannot address climate catastrophe without tackling its root cause: fossil fuel dependence. COP28 must send a clear signal that the fossil fuel age is out of gas — that its end is inevitable. We need credible commitments to ramp up renewables, phase out fossil fuels, and boost energy efficiency, while ensuring a just, equitable transition

Governments plan to produce double the fossil fuels in 2030 than the 1.5°C warming limit allows

However, if Governments have previously promised to cut emissions but are really supporting fossil fuel companies in increasing emissions, why would anyone trust them to really change, as opposed to saying they will change, at the COP?

These are graphs of the problem, showing the differenc between planned production and needed reduction:

Just before the COP28 meeting in the UAE, it was revealed that Adnoc, the UAE’s state oil company was going to use the conference “to jointly evaluate international LNG [liquefied natural gas] opportunities” in Mozambique, Canada and Australia, and that it planned to discuss fossil fuel deals with 13 other nations including Columbia, Germany and Egypt. The documents suggest that Adnoc would argue that “there is no conflict between the sustainable development of any country’s natural resources and its commitment to climate change.”

The president of COP28, Dr Sultan al-Jaber, is the head of Adnoc. In 2022, under his leadership, Adnoc announced they would invest $US150 billion to “accelerate” the growth of oil and gas development. “Adnoc’s ‘overshoot’ of the IEA net zero scenario is…. 6.8 BBOE [billion barrels of oil equivalent], the third largest worldwide.” [The Link in the Guardian article to the accelerated growth announcement, no longer works, but see the ABC].

“The UAE team did not deny using COP28 meetings for business talks, and said ‘private meetings are private’.”

The UAE also prepared talking points on commercial opportunities for its state renewable energy company, Masdar, ahead of meetings with 20 countries, including the UK, United States, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Brazil, China, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Kenya.

ibid

The UAE also failed to report its oil industry’s emissions of methane to the UN for almost a decade.

This can be seen as part of the fossil fuel company’s campaign to keep new fields opening and implies that it is rountine to put business before attempts to lower emissions.

While we are at it, the World Meterological Organisation released a preliminary finding that:

confirms that 2023 is set to be the warmest year on record. Data until the end of October shows that the year was about 1.40 degrees Celsius (with a margin of uncertainty of ±0.12°C )above the pre-industrial 1850-1900 baseline….. The past nine years, 2015 to 2023, were the warmest on record…. Greenhouse gas levels are record high. Global temperatures are record high. Sea level rise is record high. Antarctic sea ice is record low. 

2023 shatters climate records, with major impacts

My guess after seeing this result, is that we are going to sail over 1.5 degrees in a very short time, which means that cut backs in fossil fuel production, use and emissions have to start immediately. If we want a safeish planet. There is no later.

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Australian Community Energy Report

December 15, 2023

A group of us have just finished a community energy survey and report. We also wrote a small article for Pearls and Irritations which I reproduce here with a few modifications.

 Jonathan Paul Marshall, Kristy Walters, Adrian Ford and Eleanor BuckleyDec 15, 2023

With UNCOP a disaster, Community Energy is the way forward

About a month ago, the UN 2023 Production Gap Report revealed that Governments around the world, are helping to expand the fossil fuel industry so as to “produce  110% more fossil fuels in 2030 than would be consistent with limiting warming to 1.5°C, and 69% more than would be consistent with 2°C”.

As well, many of those watching the recent COP28, are probably thinking that governments and businesses cannot (or will not) solve the problem of emissions and climate change by themselves. Even when trying, and not freeloading on others for ‘justice reasons’ (“We produce less than 1% of the world’s emissions so its not fair to ask us to do anything” as the Australian Government has argued in the past), they face the difficulties of corporations taking land from local people, paying some people but not others and creating new inequalities, disrupting local social relations, despoiling established environmental aesthetic, or use, values, and so on.

There has to be a way forward, that does not involve repeating the overtly failure-generating actions that have been made for the last 30, or so years of official climate response.

Community Renewable Energy

The Community Power Agency and researchers from UTS and Melbourne University suggest that one way around this problem is to encourage Community Renewable Energy (CRE), as CRE projects can be sensitive to local concerns, can allocate money fairly and appropriately, can look after the land, reduce ecological destruction. and don’t involve freeloading on anyone. CRE projects can potentially link and distribute energy from RE farms and private rooftops, and develop political self-reliance and competency. Furthermore, they can keep money spent on energy in the local area, to develop new industries or support established ones. Critically, as climate change increases, CRE offers a more resilient energy system, less vulnerable to grid disruptions and supply challenges.

Community energy involves energy controlled, produced and possibly funded by a community organisation.

More formally, CRE occurs when community members are involved in energy projects through at least two of the following functions:

• As funders (be they owners, lenders or donors);
• As decision-makers (especially with respect to design. installation and delivery), and/or;
• As recipients of the benefits of local energy production (financial, social, environmental or others).

Community energy was not feasible with fossil fuels, because large continuing investment is required in both plant and fuel. However, renewable energy (particularly solar) can be cheap and modular. This enables it to be built at a rate which reflects the money available, and it does not require the costs of continual refueling as does fossil fuel or nuclear energy. This allows groups to undertake (and grow) smaller, economically feasible CRE projects. Indeed some local groups, like CEFE in the Bega region, are providing CRE one community rooftop at a time. Nation-wide local enthusiasm for renewables is also shown by the large take up of rooftop solar in Australia which is now approaching the levels of levels of coal burning energy. [1] [2]

We should perhaps also add that corporate renewables face the problem that Renewable Energy is basically free once the technology is installed, and that as a profit source it is not that great, precisely because the company does not have to sell a fuel source. The more RE is avaiable the cheaper and less profitable it becomes. This is a problem recognised by the International Renewable Energy Agency(IRENA)

The more renewable energy enters the system, the lower its remuneration becomes, reducing prospects for cost recovery and paralysing new investments, even when renewable energy is completely cost competitive

IRENA , World Energy Transitions Outlook: 1.5°C Pathway, International Renewable Energy Agency, Abu Dhabi 2021: 163)

This is considerably less problematic for CRE, where pricing can be decided by the community itself.

The CPA Survey

The CPA report involves the largest survey of Community energy organisations ever undertaken in Australia. The nation-wide survey suggests that there is considerable enthusiasm for CRE (over 142 groups, with 55 responses to the survey). Ninety four percent of responses suggested that people considered climate change to be a prime motivator for action. So CRE is, even now, enabling people to act on climate without waiting for governments or business.

However, CRE is being held back largely because of:

• A high dependency on volunteers who may experience burnout or frustration;
• Difficulties raising funds;
• Regulations and support designed for corporately provided power;
• Confusion over the help available, with insufficient organisational and expert support, and;
• Over the last few years, difficulties with Covid and climate conditions.

Despite these difficulties, the sector has grown significantly in recent years. Thirty of the fifty five responding groups were established after 2015. Groups self-reported over 44,000 supporters of various depth of connection, and were involved in 750 projects. They reported raising over $80 million dollars and producing 19,000 MWh of clean energy. Sixty four percent of groups reported being organised as incorporated associations.

While CRE is producing a small amount of Australia’s needs, this level of activity strongly suggests that with help, favourable regulation and clarity, more areas could self-supply, particularly in rural and regional Australia, where the costs of maintaining the grid is considerable.

Recommendations

In brief, the report recommends that:

• Governments set aside funding for community energy and capacity building hubs;
• Governments talk to community energy organisations, to find out the regulatory and other problems that they face;
• The Federal government establishes a nationally based Community Energy Collaboration Network to support community energy groups, and centralise information. At the moment, despite the best efforts of some organisations, helpful information is dispersed and hard to find;
• State governments set community energy targets;
• State governments help to establish a reasonable feed-in tariff, or other arrangement (such as P2P trading), whereby community energy does not lose all its profit to the grid, or town supplier.

Community Renewable Energy provides considerable hope for towns in Australia to participate in the energy transition, without waiting for others to act. It is also likely to increase community resilience, as it should enable communities to function when the grid has collapsed due to climate change provoked weather conditions.

It clearly is already possible to act now, but action would be even better and more common, if CRE received the recognition and support it deserves

Jonathan Paul Marshall

Jonathan Paul Marshall is a lecturer at the University of Technology in Sydney, researching the problems of energy transition. He has previously done research into transitions away from coal, and the effects of information technology.
https://uts.academia.edu/jonmarshall https://solvingenergyproblems.com/

KRISTY WALTERS

Kristy Walters became heavily involved in the Australian Student Environment Network from 2005 to 2011 organising around climate change and food co-ops. From 2008 she was involved in creating Six Degrees, the coal and climate collective of Friends of the Earth Brisbane. In 2017 she started with Solar Citizens as the NSW Community Organiser where she worked on engaging and training our supporters to become more active in campaigns. Walters is also an executive director of the Community Power Agency, and the chairperson of the Haystacks Solar Garden Cooperative.

ADRIAN FORD

Dr Adrian Ford is an Honorary Fellow in the School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at The University of Melbourne and is affiliated with Melbourne Climate Futures. Adrian’s research interests include community renewable energy groups and projects, and the political economy of sustainable energy transitions. He completed his PhD in sustainable energy transitions at the University of Melbourne in 2020.

ELEANOR BUCKLEY

Eleanor Buckley is a media and communications professional, specialising in environmental research. Previously she has worked in communications roles at the University of New South Wales in climate justice research and the University of Oxford in energy research. Currently, she works with Community Power Agency, working towards improving outcomes for communities in the shift to clean energy.

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Properties of complexity and wickedness

November 29, 2023

Some of this is opaque to me, and some of it is very clear. I’ll keep working on it, but apart from the idea that complexity can be easily ‘reduced’, and that approaches to problem solving can be integrated and aligned within complexity (assuming I read them correctly), this seems very useful. And showing that people may not want to fully recognise the issues around complexity is also useful – assuming again, that I have read them correctly.

It is taken from:

Claes Andersson, Petter Törnberg “Wickedness and the anatomy of complexity”. Futures 95 (2018) 118–138 with occasional comments in [ ]s

If this in anyway compromises intellectual property or is found exploitative, then please let me know and I will remove it.

Andersson & Törnberg begin:

We may now identify a number of general conclusions – to be read as a sequence of very short aphorisms – about the constraints that exist on understanding and intervening in wicked systems. We will offer suggestions about future pathways for developing such capabilities, as well as integration and confirmation of some existing pathways and insights.

1. Wicked systems are so strongly and heterogeneously connected that it is impossible to exhaust even small portions of them empirically to produce a “realistic picture”. [Complex systems are too multiply interlinked to comprehend completely.]

2. “Pictures” must therefore be perspectives, rarely subject to universal agreement. [‘Pictures’ is a term for a model, or a vision. The point is the standard one, that “the map is not the terrotory” and there is unlikely to be a shared realistic picture or undestanding.]

3. Even if we could obtain a “realistic picture”, this would frequently not help much since the system changes unpredictably over time – including as a direct result of us interacting with it. [Any model or understanding, not only carries only a small part of the possible information about the system, but it is likely to be out of date, being made sometime earlier. Furthermore, interaction with reality can change the workings of reality, and hence alter the accuracy of our models. Attention to what happens in interaction is vital.]

4. Uncertainty includes not only foresight but also e.g. what the problem consists in, what tools are available, what actors to include. [Uncertainty about almost everything is fundmental to our interactions with a complex world and they rightly point to uncertainties around understanding the nature of the problems, the set of tools we have available, and which actors should be including in solving the problem as some are likely to be invested in not solving, or ignoring, the problem. Interactions and models which insist on certainty, or insist that they are certain, are delusional and probably harmful. We should alwats be on the lookout for ‘unintended consequencs’ when complexity escapes us.]

5. “The game” and its rules frequently change dynamically on similar time scales. [The strong form of this proposition is Whitehead’s question, “do the laws of nature themselves, evolve?” In other words even if we understand the rules of the system correctly, we cannot say the rules will not change. As complex systems evolve, they almost certainly will change.]

6. The usefulness of models and theory hinges critically on whether, how, and to what extent it is realistic to decouple the game from its rules. [I think this means reality is more important than our rules for reality. There are situations in which people have to act, irrespective of their prospects for success as not acting appears lethal. We always risk decoupling the system from its real rules.]

7. Since this is more likely to be realistic for basic, slow-changing, features (e.g. physiology, logical dilemmas, strongly locked-in features, etc.), useful general regularities tend to be highly abstract [and thus not very useful 🙂 However, tipping points do not allow us to assume that apparent general regularities cannot change rapidly. Slow changing features may not be permanent. This prospect cannot be ignored in any succesful problem solving.]

8. Every wicked problem, however, is critically unique in its details. Interventions to address wicked problems must therefore be designed in the form of meta-solutions that scaffold the generation of actual solutions. [Wicked problems are defined in many different ways. They say “An attribution of wickedness to a problem illustrates a feeling that the problem almost seems to avoid resolution and/or that attempting to solve it keeps generating hosts of other and seemingly unrelated problems.” Other ways of looking at wickedness are as extensions of complexity. Wicked problems are problems in which there may be no agreed upon problem, no agreed upon cause, no agreed upon trends (limited predictability), and no agreed upon solutions. Wicked problems are complex problems, they may well be (apparently) new problems with no established technique of procedure, and uncertainty is fundamental.

[I’ve No idea what the second sentence of the above proposition means. It sounds over-optimistic]

9. Navigating innovation pathways in everyday sub-wicked systems is congruous with doing so in wicked systems: an iterative and reflexive process of alignment, integration and problem solving. [They define sub-wicked systems as “wicked systems that have not outgrown our capacity to design and govern them – a capacity that it is no coincidence that we possess: we are adapted specifically for dealing with sub-wicked Systems”. This could be hopeful more than probable. What evidence counts to suggest some wicked problems are not real wicked problems? It is safest to assume they are wicked/complex and work on them as if they were wicked (we cannot fully understand them, we are uncertain about them etc), and as if they are able to escape us. I’d suggest that we deal with wicked problems and complex systems all the time; from talking to our friends to getting the family out of the door on time, so this is not necessarily bad or impossible. Remember most succesful policies, such as neoliberalism, function because they reduce complexity to harmful simplicity, and hence have the bias towards ignoring complexity, even when it bites back – hence we have a bias towards determining problems are not wicked, or that they can be integrated, which may not be justified. It may just be a delusion.]

10. Policy can be formulated in the likeness of this capacity rather than of our capacity to design complicated artifacts (designed, assembled and launched). [I’m going to assume that this means negotiating wicked systems in an ‘ok manner’ can often be easier than designing working artfects, or solving the problem completely with technology, or othewise, but I don’t know if that is what they mean.]

11. Reducing wickedness to sub-wickedness is attractive since this preserves more of its ontological and epistemological features [Preserves more than what? What convinces us that the reduction is realistic and preserves the characteristics we need to face. Sure it might be easy to pretend we have done this reduction and don’t have to deal with uncertainty and unintended effects, but what checks are there, other than failure to process when it occurs?].

12. What we need to pay particularly attention to in such a reduction is:

  • Incomplete and biased perspectives on the wicked system from sub-wicked perspectives that reflect how we are embedded into the seamless web (culture, education, roles, interests, power).
  • Wicked systems exhibit more complexity than we can handle: we have an eminently poor – even outrightly misguiding – intuition for complexity. [These points seem to be implying that reducing wickedness to sub-wickedness might be prone to errors of optimism, which I can agree with, but lose any understanding of why they have been so focused on the possibilities of reducing complexity, or gaining alignment.]

13. The suggested response is to:

  • Prioritize the integration of different perspectives.
  • Integrate the use of models as crutches for understanding complexity. [No idea what this is supposed to meam. It sounds management gobble, or like prozac leadership, to me. It does not seem to deal with the fundamental issues of uncertainty, incomplete models or the social distribution of incomplete models]

14. Also sub-wicked systems are constantly under the threat of misalignment. We need cooperation for aligned and directed action and so alignment should also be prioritized [Alignment of what? People? Knowledges? Maybe it would be better to knowingly keep incompatbilities and rough edges in order to preserve remembrance of the complex reality, and to gain diverse viewpoints, rather than ignore it to make things more uniform.]

15. Alignment is also important normatively (deciding what we want to achieve) since, by contrast with engineering problems, goodness cannot be integrated uniquely at  a top level with respect to external functions. Wicked systems are good or bad in relation to the components that they contain – components that are, in many ways, in competition – and a “good arena” might have qualities such as sustainability (inequity and other problems do not amplify) and a balance between goodness from local perspectives that is acceptable to most. [Wicked problems are not evil, or deliberately malicious. Non-wicked problems are not good. This seems to be a misplacement of language]

16. Narrative and negotiation have strong aligning and integrating functions and can form the “glue” in iterative cycles of sub-wicked approaches. [They also have strong forgetting and misdirectional functions.]

17. Due to uncertainty and dynamics any propositions and goals should be treated as tentative. [Yes]

18. Dynamic exploration must include components that are actually or potentially part of the process:

  • We cannot know in advance what parties to include or leave out, nor what roles they should or will play. [True. However it might easily appear that some parties or policies seem harmful. what we do about those policies and the power of those advocating for them is difficult. It might appear that some people would rather suicide and take the system down with them. It is doubtful that helping them to kill the system without change is useful, Hence alignment is not always possible, and we need to be aware of cultural, or political, bias which keeps potentially knowledgable people out of the discussion all together.]
  • Components in a seamless web are subject to substantial uncertainty; they cannot be sufficiently declared in mission statements, CV’s etc. [Also social conflict]

19. Large black-box models (such as detailed predictive planning models) are hard to integrate into seamless webs: they cannot intermix with the viewpoints, knowledge and experiences of the participants (e.g. Klosterman, 2012).

20. Many wicked problems are so unique and contingent that modeling makes no sense. Complexity remains important, however, and simple, pedagogical models could be important for building a better intuition for complex dynamics [Yes. but this goes back to the problem. what is the way we should deal with a complex, conflictual mess?]

To make these linked points easier to overview, we will now boil them down to three main themes:

  • 1. Uncertainty is intrinsic to wickedness and the issue should not primarily be how we reduce it but how we deal with it. Dealing with uncertainty is at the core of what dealing with wickedness is about. [italics added]
  • 2. Integration of interests, models, tools, viewpoints, expertise, capacities for action (e.g. authority), and goals is essential, both instrumentally and for normative reasons. [They never explain how all conflict can be intergrated away. I personally think this is unreaslistic and dangerous. We have to solve the problem despite the social conflict, or be prepared to recognise the irriducible problems]
  • 3. Alignment is tightly tied to integration and is essential for maintaining the direction and integrity of efforts. [It is nice if people agree on the problem and that it is necessary to fix that problem, but the point of wicked problems is that this unity is unlikely. Climate change is a classic example. some people want to pretend it is not a problem at all, and that nothing should be done which risks contemporary profit or order.]
  • 4. Dynamics/emergence is at the core of innovation and wickedness, giving rise to uncertainty and other wicked phenomena. Interventions must therefore be dynamically intermeshed with the unfolding dynamics. [A simpler way of expressing this, is that unintended consequences, unexpected results and suprises, will occur. Look out for them, and be prepared to change actions, by their observed results.]

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Odum’s model of growth, descent and collapse

November 7, 2023

Odum seems to argue that complex living systems (ecosystems) tend to have a surge model, they boom and then they collapse or withdraw once the resources required are consumed. Or in more detail they have a cycle:

  • Growth – different groups of organisms (or societies) compete and some outgrow the others and become more plentiful or dominant and hamper the others.
  • Climax – the system grows until nearly all important available resources are consumed and it reaches maximum development. It may also produce pollution at a level that kills off biologies or resources it needs. Some plants for example kill surrounding plants which support the biodiversity they need, if they are too succesful.
  • [Maturity – the system shifts from growth to maintenance and symbiosis, competition lowers, less resources are consumed for the outputs. There can be a degree of stability or conservation. Perhaps the societies do not consume more resources than they can replace. Maturity is not always reached]
  • Descent – assets, raw materials, energy decrease because growth has used up available stores of resources, or there is a surge of destruction at the climax of growth as more resources are used up faster than ever to try and maintain stability, or cyclical ecological conditions change (eg. autumn begins). The ‘higher’ co-ordinating functions of the society/ecology can fall apart as they don’t have the available energy to support them. “By one means or another, the developed system has to adapt to coming down… An unresolved question is when is it good policy to downsize gradually [and in an organised manner] and when should [downsizing] be catastrophic?” [for example some forests may require major burns to renew and regrow]
  • Low energy restoration – before another period of growth, resources have to be rebuilt up, usually naturally, as humans have few resources or little spare energy. Soil may need to be left fallow to rebuild itself etc. “Processes of environmental production must exceed consumption” for some while to rebuild. Some resources may have extremely slow periods of rebuild, such as fossil fuels and effectively not be largely available again, and some dispersed resouces may never accumulate together in a form useable in large quantities. For example phospherous or helium is not lost but dispersed, and it may be very hard to retrieve without much more energy than is available.

There is no reason to exempt human systems from these cycles, but it does mean that in human systems what is an appropriate policy in one part of the cycle “may be poor policy in another.”

The most likely result of our current growth is a collapse, “with dispersed smaller-population communities” living primarily on speedily renewable resources and energies, such as firewood or small cropping or, if we get it going, some surviving renewable energy technology.

Any relatively quick continuance. rebuilding or maturity will have to rely on renewable energy as fossil fuels are not only finite and are requiring more energy to extract, but they damage other needed systems for reaching some level of maturity.

Even worse, unless the energy generators and resources we currently use can be replaced or recycled, then the system will not have the pathways to start the regrowth phase, and we will stay at a low level after the collapse for a long time. This does not just mean limits to economic and population growth, but limits to social ‘development,’ social complexity and social comfort.

Such a cycle is probably inevitable. Regeneration systems almost certainly have limits. What is new, is that the cycle is likely to affect the whole planet, not just one ‘civlisation’ and its resource use. There will be few areas which will be immune and have the materials and energy to generate prosperity and start growing outward. People who are hunters and gatherers and slash and burn agrictulturists will probably do best.

It seems to be logically better to develop the way down now while we still have some, if lessening, slack than to wait until the crash.

Example

Simply because I was asked, this is a simple and unscholarly look at the collapse of Rome.

Rome develops an extremely effective citizen army and military technology – the best in the world. They were almost wiped out once or twice. But they survived. One basis that keeps this military going is the gifting of land to retiring or surviving soldiers and loot to victors. This is pretty standard. Pay can be small because of the promises of land and loot. However, that also forces the military to expand into new areas to provide loot and land for soldiers. It is locked into expansion.

The military technology is great enough that the expansion proceeds relatively smoothly for a few hundred years. However, changes in the political system mean that the Roman people become less involved in politics, or less identified with politics – they are excluded and it becomes dangerous to get involved. Rome also uses up its militarisable population and has to recruit military from conquered areas. These new recruits also have less involvement with the empire other than in terms of reward, and may require more consistent payment. Eventually the empire expands too much for the loot and land it occupies to be able to support the armies and centralised, or dispersed, control. The ruling classes tend to take what land they can to make large estates to cement their power and riches, which deprives soldiers and soldiers’ families of land or potential land. Supply lines became too long, people get bored. The looted became restless and look for opportunities to rebel. It takes more effort to maintain stability. Land becomes overused and became less fertile.

To keep functional, any empire has to either generate large amounts of energy and resources (which will eventually be used up), or plunder from its conquests more than it costs to rule those conquests, and keep expanding to get more plunder when they have stripped the conquered areas. That requires potentially infinte expansion, or calling off the empire and trying to become steady state, which is hard because so much power and wealth depend on expansion. Infinite explansion is always going to run against human and planetary limits. I have heard there is some evidence the Romans reached China! but they could not keep the outpost going. Once the expansion runs into limits you eventually can’t reward or pay the people who keep it up to those limits, and have to rely on having crushed the opposition, which is not going to stay stable for ever. Maintaining Empire requires more energy than unconquered peoples can provide if conquered, and it requires energy to keep it going. When that energy depends on agriculture and forestry, then you have the problems of using up the land’s fertility and using up the forests. You also need to keep up skills training and tech of conquest, administration and building, which takes energy and often peace to store the information accurately.

After the fall of Rome, it seems fertility of the land was problematic at best, and knowledge was destroyed, dispersed, or unretrievable. While the material and intellectual poverty of the European Dark Ages, can be exaggerated, it took a long time to get anything resembling even the city of Rome going again. Similarly, without oil, the remanants of the Islamic Empires and their collapse would probably still be in relative poverty from the same kind of causes.

Conclusion

Societies tend to consume the resources they rely upon faster than those resources can be replenished, or their mode of destruction exceeds the modes of production. If this is not realised, and massive reorganisation is not undertaken then the societies will collapse. We cannot rely on magical technolgy to save us. But more importantly, the modes of consumption and destruction tend to get entangled with modes of power, and people fight to keep them going, rather than risk uncertainty or loss of power and riches. People get distracted supporting the growth mechanisms instead of maturity mechanisms.

A general formula is that: “the processes that make a society successful eventually kill them when circumstances change, or resources start becoming limited”.

Roman military effectiveness and expansion destroyed the empire they made

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Economics and climate: Another defense mechanism? 02

November 6, 2023

Common economic models of Climate Change

Apparently the Economic models used to predict the damage of climate change are totally unreal. They essentially do not even start to recognise that economies depend upon working ecologies and fairly stable weather patterns. They do not realise that modes of production can be modes of destruction, or that the (dis)information systems cultivated by business can also disrupt understanding of the economy, leading to booms, busts and bailouts. Any model which assumes economic stability, and lack of self-disruption, is not an accurate model of an economy.

William Nordhaus apparently put together the basic types of climate economy models which are used by financial organisations, the US EPA and the IPCC. These are known as ‘Dynamic Integrated Climate Economy’ (DICE) models. The IPCC calls its similar models ‘Integrated Assesment Models’ (IAM).

The prime conclusion from these models is that social and economic adaptation to climate change is pretty cheap. Nordhaus predicted “damage of 2.1 percent of income at 3◦C, and 7.9 percent of global income at a global temperature rise of 6◦C”.

At this price, it may be so cheap that it is not really worth cutting back emissions, or doing anything that could potentially harm profits. He apparently even suggests that the global economy reaches an “optimal” adaptation with a temperature rise between 2.7 and 3.5 degrees Celsius. So that is what we should aim for…. much higher than climate scientists generally think is reasonable.

Apparent assumptions of the models

Nordhaus and others can only argue the lack of both severe costs and serious disruption at even 6 degrees, by assuming that:

  • Frictionless market adaptation can occur easily and that companies which are profitting from damage, will not try and delay change through political connections and information distortion so that people (in power and elsewhere) will not want to change. Resistance to change can accumulate and block change, until only violent and unpredictable change can occur,
  • Global temperature increases have no significant or disruptive outcomes, and that increases in temperatures produce smooth and linear changes in weather and ecology, as if the temperature increase only produced warming and did not have ‘side effects’ like increased storm damage, change in rainfall, increased frequency of fires, activation of trigger points, increased death rates in some parts of the world, and change in agricultural conditions.
  • Pollution and destructive extraction have no effect on the economy, are external to it, or can easily be avoided,
  • Energy supply can continue to grow and will not slow down the economy, and that,
  • GDP can continue to increase in an economy that is hitting planetary boundaries.

He also assumes that thereare no bad consequences from ‘just-in-time’ production and distribution which cuts down on storage costs, and has the capacity to reduce resilience in a disruption (supermarket shelves emptying in times of panic etc). If just-in-time can be abandoned, long term storage set up or local production engineered again, then maybe this would be a lesser problem, but it would drastically change patterns of cost.

Trivialising Damage from Climate Change

As Keen et al put it in their abstract:

Such relatively trivial estimates of economic damages—when these economists otherwise assume that human economic productivity will be an order of magnitude higher than today—contrast strongly with predictions made by scientists of significantly reduced human habitability from climate change.

Nonetheless, the coupled economic and climate models used to make such predictions have been influential in the international climate change debate and policy prescriptions

Keen et al 2021 Economists’ erroneous estimates of damages from climate change IDEAS Working Paper Series from RePEcrg

They continue. arguing that the models:

severely underestimate.. damages from climate change by committing several methodological errors, including neglecting tipping points, and assuming that economic sectors not exposed to the weather are insulated from climate change. Most fundamentally, the influential Integrated Assessment Model DICE is shown to be incapable of generating an economic collapse, regardless of the level of damages

ibid

Tipping points should be part of the models

Tipping points are part of current climate models and cannot be ignored in economic models of climate change. There is almost no likelihood of a completely smooth transition, and current predictions are that several tipping points will get started long before the end of the century and before the average temperature increases are greater than 2 degrees. It may be necessary to point out that completion of a tipping point may take years but will continue after it starts, so tipping points can start before they are noticed.

Keen et al point to the:

concept of “tipping cascades”, whereby passing a threshold for one system—say, a temperature above which the Greenland ice sheet irreversibly shrinks—triggers causal interactions that increase the likelihood that other tipping elements undergo qualitative transitions—in this example, freshwater input to the North Atlantic increases the risk of a collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC—also referred to as the ’thermohaline circulation’).

Such causal interactions can also be mediated by global temperature changes whereby tipping one system—e.g. the loss of Arctic summer sea-ice—amplifies global warming, increasing the likelihood that other other elements undergo a qualitative transition

ibid

The intial work by Nordhaus setting up the DICE denies the possibility of tipping points and cascades completely. According to Keen et al, Lenton et al:

calculated that including tipping points in Nordhaus’s own DICE model can increase the “Social Cost of Carbon” (by which optimal carbon pricing is calculated) by a factor of greater than eight [8], and proposed 2◦C as a critical level past which “tipping cascades” could occur [9,10,15]….

inclusion of tipping point likelihoods in DICE…. leads to much higher damages [8]

ibid

The economy is safe when indoors?

Using similar models to DICE, the 2014 IPCC report stated that “Estimates agree on the size of the impact (small relative to economic growth)” with a 2.3% increase in global income for a 1 degree C increase in global temperature over pre-industrial levels.

The Report summarised that:

For most economic sectors, the impact of climate change will be small relative to the impacts
of other drivers (medium evidence, high agreement). Changes in population, age, income,
technology, relative prices, lifestyle, regulation, governance, and many other aspects of
socioeconomic development will have an impact on the supply and demand of economic
goods and services that is large relative to the impact of climate change

Chapter 10 Key Economic Sectors and Services, p 662 In Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Part A: Global and Sectoral Aspects. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

This unlikely assumption appears to be based on another bad assumption that:

  • by far the majority of economc action is independent of ‘weather’ events, ecological destruction and resources depletion.

That is, again, that this climate economics does not consider the world the economy occurs within. It also appears to assume that air cooling technology and energy supplies will be able to cope with the extra loads. Again the models ignore the economic consequences of “potential loss of lives and livelihoods on immense scale and fundamental transformation and destruction of our natural environment” (Stern et al 2022). Not to mention agricultural collapse. While Economists apparently don’t eat, most people would recognise that the total economy is errected upon food supplies, no matter how much else goes on. Stern writes that 6 degrees increase is unlikely to give losses of 8.5% of GDP, but:

we could see deaths on a huge scale, migration of billions of people, and severe conflicts around the world, as large areas, many densely populated currently, became more or less uninhabitable as a result of submersion, desertification, storm surge and extreme weather events, or because the heat was so intense for extended periods that humans could not survive outdoors. It is profoundly implausible that numbers around 10 percent of GDP offer a sensible description of the kind of disruption and catastrophe that 6 C of warming could cause.

Stern 2022 A Time for Action on Climate Change and a Time for Change in Economics , The Economic Journal, 132, 644: 1259–1289

Likewise:

Climate change (either regional or global) has played a role in the collapse or transformation of numerous previous societies (37) and in each of the five mass extinction events in Phanerozoic Earth history (38). The current carbon pulse is occurring at an unprecedented geological speed and, by the end of the century, may surpass thresholds that triggered previous mass extinctions (39, 40).

Kemp et al 2022 Climate Endgame: Exploring catastrophic climate change scenarios PNAS

Even if you could allocate calculated risk and danger factors for events that could completely change the system, that still does not mean that an estimate of a 1% chance of collapse means collapse cannot occur.

The orthodox economists, their models and the politicians who use them, seem completely unaware that complex systems can collapse, or change very rapidly, and they depend upon the idea that free markets can always beneficially adapt to almost anything without much cost.

Importance of noting extremes, disorder and uncertainty

Kemp et al 2022 suggest that investigating the “bad-to-worst cases is vital” for improving resilience, and informing policy and emergency responses. “

First, risk management and robust decision-making under uncertainty requires knowledge of extremes. For example, the minimax criterion ranks policies by their worst outcomes (28). Such an approach is particularly appropriate for areas characterized by high uncertainties and tail risks….. Climate damages lie within the realm of “deep uncertainty”: We don’t know the probabilities attached to different outcomes, the exact chain of cause and effect that will lead to outcomes, or even the range, timing, or desirability of outcomes, (30). Uncertainty, deep or not, should motivate precaution and vigilance, not complacency

They propose 4 main questions: all of which point to the importance of considering disorder and the production of lack of resilience.

  • 1) What is the potential for climate change to drive mass extinction events?
  • 2) What are the mechanisms that could result in human mass mortality and morbidity?
  • 3) What are human societies’ vulnerabilities to climate-triggered risk cascades, such as from conflict, political instability, and systemic financial risk?
  • 4) How can these multiple strands of evidence—together with other global dangers—be usefully synthesized into an “integrated catastrophe assessment”?

“even simpler ‘compound hazard’ analyses of interacting climate hazards and drivers are underused. Yet this is how risk[/danger] unfolds in the real world. For example, a cyclone destroys electrical infrastructure, leaving a population vulnerable to an ensuing deadly heat wave”. They further suggest that IPCC reports do not spend large amounts of space analysing what will happen at 3 degrees or above warming, and have indeed shifted over time to considering 2 degrees or less which might be fine if there was evidence we will reach that target. However, the culture of climate science tends “to ‘err on the side of least drama’ (7), to not to be alarmists, which can be compounded by the consensus building processes of the IPCC.

Political and economic instability, feeds into the dangers, as does a teetering energy system, heavy illth production, technological lock-in, failure to face challenges, and a harmful (dis)information system. These are all observable current problems.

What do the models do?

The Optimism of these models, and their framing of easy social change within an unstable environment, without political opposition from anyone, is absurd.

The models seem out of touch with what we know about earth systems and social systems, they can only be seen in terms of being a defense mechanism, ideologies useful for protecting the business and political system as it is now and which actively halt adaptation and prevention measures. They help convince people that doing nothing is ok, and nothing bad can happen.

However, eco-and-climate system change changes will almost certainly spill through other systems and change almost everything, including the current market’s ability to function, and the powerful people who use these models will not be prepared for it…. and hence neither will we. They are part of a collective suicide and refusal to face challenges, which might cost some people profit.

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Economics and climate: Another defense mechanism? 01

November 5, 2023

We know emissions are still rising.

We know that temperatures are increasing faster than expected. We have just had several months in which global average temperatures were over 1.5 degrees warmer….

We know governments such as those of Australia, the UK, the USA etc are still authorising new fossil fuel fields that can be described as “carbon bombs” that will either lock us into even greater emissions, or be abandoned at a huge loss to fossil fuel companies – no prizes for guessing which is most likely.

We know that it does not matter which country the fossil fuels are burnt, whatever governments argue about measurements of emissions, the burning will increase climate change for everyone.

We know that this increase is likely to lead to tipping points being triggered (such as runaway ice melts, Amazon forests dying, oceans dying, release of methane from under land and sea ice), which are likely to trigger even more tipping points, leading to irreversible ecological and climate change.

These events are likely to trigger agricultural collapse in at least some parts of the world, which could lead to mass human death, and human population movement.

In other words, while the best solution is to install governments that will listen to scientists and to the signs of collapse, the most likely result is that we will break the 1.5 degree limit.

One of the apparent tools to allow this emissions increase is economic models.

Economics

John Stuart Mill explicitly excluded a large number of human and social factors from economic analysis, in order to make it simple. In somewhat convoluted terms (skip if its too much of a headache) he wrote:

“Political Economy” …. does not treat the whole of man’s nature as modified by the social state, nor of the whole conduct of man in society. It is concerned with him solely as a being who desires to possess wealth, and who is capable of judging of the comparative efficacy of means of obtaining that end…

Political Economy considers mankind as occupied solely in acquiring and consuming wealth; and aims at showing what is the course of action into which mankind, living in a state of society, would be impelled, if that motive, except in the degree in which it is checked by the two perpetual countermoves above adverted to [aversion to labour, and desire of the present enjoyment of costly indulgences,] were the absolute ruler of all their actions….

With respect to those parts of human conduct of which wealth is not even the principal object, to these Political Economy does not pretend that its conclusions are applicable. But there are also certain departments of human affairs, in which the acquisition of wealth is the main and acknowledged end. It is only of these that Political Economy takes notice….

Not that any political economist was ever so absurd as to suppose that mankind are really thus constituted, but because this is the mode in which science must necessarily proceed.

Mill On the Definition of Political Economy and Method of Investigation Proper to It

He admits to massively simplifying human psychological complexity. He also simplified other matters, but the problem is that on the whole, most neoclassical neoliberal economics, ignores vital factors of life and forgets they are doing it, making their economics the whole of life.

Mill admits to his economics ignoring the psychology of markets, the ways we engage in self destruction, fantasy, self-justification for harms and scapegoat others. He ignores the ways that markets and information might shape our psycologies in ways which sabotage our ability to take action on the challenges facing us, and even to use economics to distract us from real problems.

It ignores the way economic action is part of politics. Markets are also structured by power and politics, and power and politics structure markets. It ignores the fact that inequalities of wealth lead to inequalities of action and influence, and that inequalities of wealth can reinforce those inequalities through the State its laws, regulations and procedures. Established economics will tend to support established political and riches arrangements, as those forms of economics will receive the awards, the funding and promotion.

It ignores the effects of economic action on the ecology and climate, and the effects of climate and ecology on economic action. The pricing mechanism is supposed to mean that if prices go up, then people change their usages, or are stimulated to produce more. It does not assume that ecological effects can link together, or be suppressed by politics until they cascade or hit like a tidal wave. It ignores the politics and ecological ‘side effects’ of the struggle for resources. Economics is locked into viewing ecology as passive and endlessly giving – if something dies off somewhere, the same can be produced elsewhere. Economists can even argue that because agricultural production is a small fraction of the gdp (<4%) it is largely unimportant, while most people can figure out that without that production the rest of the contemporary world economy would crash.

It ignores the effects of illth (pollution, dispersion, destructive extraction and harmful labour), rendering them externalities that do not have an effect on the economy or life. Essentially this leaves it to taxpayers to clean up the mess produced by business, and helps boost profit from destruction and the loss of vital materials. Economics ignores harms produced by its actions, as it tends to be about justifying riches and producing more riches.

It ignores the effects of technology and technological lock-in, other than through magical claims that needed technology will always appear through the market. Economics only considers technology beneficial if it makes money.

It ignores the importance of information systems for economies, and how those can be ‘corrupted’ or ‘distorted’ by politics, riches or over-plenty, so that the economy is functioning only at a level of fantasy, (and that the economics used to describe that action is also a consoling fantasy). Economics ignores the ways economic propaganda can create harms and fantasies to boost the wealth of people making the sales. This is because one of its fundamental assumptions is that only good information counts, every one has access to good information, or that the price system acts as a perfect information processor. Economics assumes that error is not normal, and that people will not buy rubbish like collateralized debt obligations, which will lead to economic harm.

Finally it assumes energy production is simple, and continuous with no harms or limits, dependent largely on money (which stores psychological energy to an extent), so that economies can grow forever. Economies can supposedly violate the laws of thermodynamics with ease.

There are undoubtedly other issues that mainstream economics dismisses or hides which are important.

It should be clear that by ignoring these factors economic models go about hiding the challenges of climate change and eco-destruction, and that is the subject of the next page.

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(dis)information and knowledge 3: (dis)information becomes symbolic

October 27, 2023

Saying that (dis)information can become symbolic, or serve symbolic functions, asserts that (dis)information can have other, often more important, values than its ‘accuracy’.

It can stand for, or express,

  • Something important that is known subliminaly or unconsciously,
  • Something socially censored (becoming unconscious to a degree),
  • Something which is important but not completely knowable, or
  • Something which is iniherently unknowable (such as the nature of the cosmos, existence, social complexity, the full nature of climate change, or God, and so on).

If what a symbol expresses is vitally important to a person’s sense of wider self, then it can appear numinous or ‘holy’, such that challenging it’s accuracy is almost impossible.

This can be true for (dis)information, even if that information is as accurate as it can be.

For example, climate change can easily become symbolic of a sense of personal and social collapse, of being ‘unmored’, of not being heard or taken notice of, and of living within processes which seem out of control or hostile.

For oil companies and their supporters, emissions perhaps become symbolic of, or express, profitability, survival, plenty, liberty and a good future for everyone. They could express desired human dominance over the world. With this symbology, it becomes more destructive to attack fossil fuels, than to recognise fossil fuels are destrutive. The symbolic status helps people not hear the evidence that might demolish the symbolic organisation of their lives and leave them vulnerable.

For people supporting Q-Anon, Trump, etc, then various improbable conspiracy theories also expressing their intuitive knowledge that the world is being run strangely and without regard for them; vast forces are opposed to listening to them, or dealing with the visible collapse and problems of their lives. Nothing official makes sense. Trumps’ legal troubles can become symbolic of the ‘persecution’ of the general populace by government, the private sector, conventional laws, the workplace etc., and fits in with the sense of general collapse and indifference. That “Trump is a persecuted victim” (perhaps like Jesus) appears validated by the reality of their own victimised, ignored and persecuted lives. So do claims of a faked election, as people have experientially played by the rules and lost – hardly anybody was rewarded for hard work. Election theft is symbolic of theft of their lives by the system.

Acceptable (dis)information, and interpretation, is chosen to express and reinforce the true realisation of growing collapse, which cannot be spoken without risk.

This is a normal human function. Unconscious and unspeakable knowledge, can often be ‘perceived’ through symbols, as in dreams, artwork, slips of the tongue, fantasy, and scapegoating. But taking symbolic information literally can lead to further misunderstandings of the world, just as refusing to accept the import of symbolisation can also lead to misundertandings and misperception.

Because, say, the Democrats did not, and do not take, take Trump’s symbolic role seriously (as “no one could trust him”, “What he says is gibberish”. “He’s obviously criminal” etc) they cannot listen to the real grievances of Trump’s supporters, or understand what people are going through which leads them to vote for his supporters.

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(dis)information and knowledge 2: Politics

October 27, 2023

Given that one of communication’s major functions is persuading others to perform, or not perform, actions (follow instructions etc), then communication, and (dis)information, is constantly ‘political’.

If an organisation can persuade people not to engage in climate action through misinformation or confusion, then they may benefit from that lack of action. For example, if you look at what oil companies have done they:

  • 1) Knew about climate change from their own research as early as the 1950s and 70s and later research by themselves and others simply confirmed what they already knew.
  • 2) Underplayed, or ignored that research in favour of increasing their business and profit.
  • 3) Cast doubt on the data, and the knowledge that CO2 emissions created climate change.
  • 4) Actively tried to inhibit actions and agreements at COP meetings.
  • 5) Initiated supposed climate schemes which increased business, profit and emissions with the hope that emissions could be reduced in the future rather than now – Carbon Capture and Storage for example
  • 6) Set up networks of think-tanks whose primary purpose was to promote denial and delay which was not completely associated with the fossil fuel companies, such as the Atlas Network etc.
  • 7) They currently spend more on new exploration and prospecting, than on emissions reduction.
  • 8) Even if we can think they are doing something about climate change now, they delayed action for at least between 30 or 40 years, increasing emissions in that period and encouraging lock-in to fossil fuels. This makes any transition much harder. But it did boost their profits and power.
  • 9) They are still amongst the richest and most powerful companies on the planet.

They have campaigned to make the situation safe for them and worse for others. Their riches helped them to promote information and communication to persuade others not to act.

For some reason the Right has seemed to be able to make much better use of this persuasive capacity of (dis)information – with climate denial, US election denial, economic denial, smearing oponents and so on. Perhaps they have learnt from corporate techniques. We could tritely say that truth is somehow less important to them, or less important to them than victory. What is relevant is the easy manufacture of distraction, misinformation and the audience selection of particular memes by their appeal. which then get repeated. Repetition is a major way of ‘proving’ (dis)information – “why would people keep saying this if it was not true”. That is, information is not judged by accuracy but by its reinforcement of already existing bias, proclivities and action as motivated by political allegiance to the ‘information group’ – and that political allegiance makes information from their own ‘side’ more acceptable than information from out-groups.

This partly occurs, not just because of the loyalty aspect of groups and building a self identity out of what is acceptable to our own group, but because of another property of human psychology, which is that information (as with most processes, such as technology, politics, animals or ecologies) can easily become symbolic. This is covered in the next post.

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(dis)information and knowledge

October 24, 2023

Pretty simple.

After all these years I am still reading about how knowledge is doubling every couple of years.

The problem is that while ‘accurate (as best it can be) knowledge’ may be doubling, information is increasing even faster, and information (as we should know by now) is not always the same as reasonably accurate knowledge. It is easier to be wrong than to be right, hence it is likely that more inaccurate, than accurate, information is always being produced.

I use the term (dis)information to try and capture this ambiguity. Information is often wrong, often deliberately, often propaganda, often misunderstanding or misleading. And its hard for a normal person, not a specialist in the field, to decide which is which.

As there is so much (dis)information it can hide the best knowledge we have and make that more accurate knowledge unavailable.

We also choose what (dis)information we accept by largely irrational processes such as:

  • The (dis)information is accepted by our ‘information group’ and the corporate media which support that group.
  • It fits with our predetermined biases and the other (dis)information we have accepted.
  • It cements our loyalty to the information group, our networks and friend groups. We don’t have to fear expulsion.
  • It looks like acting on that (dis)information gives us a better and more socially approved life.
  • It avoids the pain of thinking that the people and political actors we usually support by default are actually not that good.
  • It looks like acting on that (dis)information allows us to continue as normal, and keeps the meaning we have given our life, in our life
  • It avoids anxiety and discomfort.
  • Even worse we can accept (dis)information because our declared outgroups reject it.
  • Or we can use the (dis)information to attack the outgroups and keep up the pretence they are evil.

(Dis)information and knowledge are tied in with social processes. The more you can increase the hostility between groups, the easier it is to get them to accept falsity rather than (relatively accurate) knowledge.

  • The first step in authoritarianism is increasing polarisation between opposed groups.
  • The second step is to promote the (dis)information that people identified with the outgroups can be blamed for a large portion of the problems faced or imagined by one’s own group.

We live in Borges Library of Babel in which there are infinte numbers of books composed of random sequences of letters.

This conceptual library includes all the books that have ever been written. It includes the lost wrItings of Shakespear, Sappho and Heraclitus. It also includes books mixed up with other books, books with spelling mistakes, books with occasional sentences leaping out of the random texts. But mainly it contains gibberish, and who can check the sensible passages with the ‘real’ books that were actually written? How do we tell a garbled but plausible Heraclitus from the real thing? Indeed, given the number of possible texts, it is highly likely that we will only ever, at best, encounter incorrect copies of what he wrote.

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Science and climate denial a dialogue

October 1, 2023
  • The claims of anthropogenic climate change are fraught with outlandish claims that never materialize, most likely due to narrative pushing and a desire to instill fear, to effect political control…

The claims may be outlandish, but they are also real, even if you are not hearing the realities. We are having ‘unprecidented’ temperatures, runs of high temperatures, wild fires, floods, ocean warming etc, all over the world. In many cases the damage already seems to be exceeding our capacity to repair, and people are being left homeless and farms have been close to destruction. However the MSM rarely bother to report this. If we are going to be allowed to make explanatory political hypiotheses, this may be because they want to reasure people so that the establishment can maintain its political and priofitable control, rather than risk everything in the uncertainty of major change.

  • Only the truly insane would claim that climate doesn’t change

People do claim climate is not changing now, or that the change is out of our hands. Some claim it is too late to do anything. However, the claim that climate changes all the time, is a deliberate minimalisation. The current climate seems to be changing rapidly, and permanently, by normal geological standards. The rapidity of change increases climate and weather destablisation, and this makes a considerable difference to the ability of creatures and civilisations to adapt, and the system to revert to previous normal. That is why scientists are talking about a possible “6th great extinction”. World-wide extinction on the scale we seem to be heading towards is unsual to put it mildly. That’s why we only recognise 5 previous such events.

  • The question is ultimately “how will climate change affect us”?

Yes, and the evidence suggests badly. Secure stable placed civilisation expects repetative conditions so as to adapt. When destabilisation occurs that does not happen. We need to stop disrupting the climate, so it can settle down.

  • Are we headed into “hot climate” or “cold climate”? As far as I can tell, the science and observational data show strong evidence that this current interglacial period is about to end, and we will see a return of ice-age (increasing polar ice caps) conditions.

You are possibly right. Some people have argued (particularly in the 1970s) that the world should be heading towards an increasingly cold period, but we are not. No current data implies that. Temperatures are steadily rising. Glaciers and ice sheets are melting and declining. There is no evidence to suggest that a new ice age will happen anymore. If the ‘natural’ cycle was heading towards an ice age, it has been broken by increasing Greenhouse gas emissions. I don’t know of anyone in the climate sphere who is arguing that a new ice age is now likely. That was a hypothesis which has been abandoned. Although this hypothesis is often brought up to discredit scientists by showing they change their minds. Which we might hope would be the case when theories are not born out by evidence.

  • Science theory MUST be reviewed against actual observational data. When observations fail to support a theory, we should assume a problem with the theory, and look deeper at the assumptions made. This is actually how scientific divides are closed. The end result should be either the abandonment of a false assumption, or improvements to the theory to achieve more realistic results.

Absolutely correct. The theory of climate change must be checked against observational data all the time. As you say that is basic to science. This observation has led to a considerably better understanding of the global climate system. For example, few people expected that the Oceans could absorb so much heat, so we now understand the ‘slow down’ in expected temperature rises. This is now back to expectations..

If the data was not matching expectations there would be a lot of relieved and excited scientists. Relieved becauset their observations would tell them we are not headed for eco-disaster (because of lack of approprate action by governments and corporations), and excited because their theories need to develop and there would be massive new research and publication opportunities. They might also be delighted that they don’t have to face interminable attacks for proposing that we are in danger.

  • Climate science is not open to refutatory evidence, as can be seen by the way they dismiss objectors to the consenus.

My problem here is that the anti-climate change people in general do not seem to proceed by scientific method. Every prediction that I’ve seen them make, such as temperatures would return to normal, reef bleaching would stop rather than spread, has proven false so far. However there is no change in their ‘theory’ or rather assertions. Indeed they keep bringing points back which have been falsified repeatedly. I have never seen a climate change skeptick give an outline of the progress of skeptical science, explaining why they have been wrong, and how they have modified their theories. Not saying it does not exist, but I’ve never seen it. Whereas I see that in Climate science quite regularly.

When observations fail to support a set of assertions, like the propositions that climate change is no big deal, we should assume a problem with the assertions, and look deeper at the assumption that everything is fine. This is actually how scientific divides are closed, if everyone is playing by idea of being as accurate as possible about the world. If they are playing, a different game, such as maximising profit, there is nothing much can be done about resolving an argument. Ideally the end result should be either the abandonment of a false assumption, or improvements to the theory to achieve more realistic results, but that is rarely seen in climate denial.

Its easier to generate bullshit than argue for truth, because there need be no consistency.

Even the most highly regarded scientific theory may be falsified with observational data, or it may appear to be continuingly fruitful as with climate change theory and observation. But anti-clinate change does not care about falisification. It’s not about Truth but protecting the establishment from its own destructiveness..

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