Decline of the Empire

110 Megawatts And Lots Of Salt

I was rudely awoken last night with alarms coming from the gas furnace in the house I live in. Apparently the girls living upstairs heard the alarms first and called 911, because by the time I became aware of the situation, there was a big fire truck in front of the house and all sorts of guys running around the house, including somebody from the gas department.

Long story short, the furnace was spewing carbon monoxide into the house and had to be shut down. If they hadn't shut it down, I might be dead now. Now I'm waiting for somebody to get back to me about when this fucking furnace is going to be operational again.

Fossil fuels, can't live with them, can't live without them. It's getting cold in the house. It's much better to die by freezing to death than by carbon monoxide poisoning, dontcha think?

But there's an alternative. The owners of this building could replace that gas furnace with solar panels and all the expensive equipment which comes with them. We could go green.

Unfortunately, that wouldn't work either because today, and for several days now, we haven't seen the sun.

Heavy cloud cover! Lots of rain! Fucked!

2015 Sucked, But 2016 Will Be Worse

It is not hard to find signs of America's decline, but grim statistics only tell part of the story. The deeper problem is that the United States is, psychologically speaking, a basket case. This is most evident in the presidential political circus which dominated the news during the latter half of 2015.

And yet not a single vote was cast by any citizen for any candidate this year. The first vote won't be cast until next month. For this reason alone, 2016 will be worse than 2015 because the craziness won't end until November of next year. Rampant political insanity will crowd out every other story, including those ongoing statistical measures of America's decline.

Andromeda

Sometimes when it's 4 o'clock in the morning and I am wide awake, I lay in bed and think about the nature of the Universe. Is it part of a multiverse? Do we live in a computer simulation? If we do, how could we possibly know that if there are no observable errors (reveals) in the program. What is an "error" in this context?

Source

Sometimes I wonder why there is something instead of nothing. Once the question arises, I can not think further about it. The mind boggles. No thoughts come. So I'll skip that.

The Meaning Of Life

I wrote this in December, 2015. Given the catastrophic and suicidal response to the COVID-19 pandemic, this might be a good time for you to read it. Here's a question you might ask yourself afterwards: how are humans going to explain away (rationalize) this monumental self-defeating fuck-up? You can be sure they will find a way.

— Dave

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It is two days before Christmas and it's 60 degrees (F) outside. I guess it's time to talk about the meaning of life.

My starting point is an essay by Roy Scranton in the New York Times called We're Doomed, Now What?  Roy starts off by noting the prevalence of "nihilism" in modern life, but I'm going to skip that part. Here's a simple definition of nihilism.

the rejection of all religious and moral principles, often in the belief that life is meaningless

The key word is "meaningless". The way humans give life "meaning" is Roy's theme.

We get to the heart of the matter in this text.

Scientific materialism, taken to its extreme, threatens us with meaninglessness; if consciousness is reducible to the brain and our actions are determined not by will but by causes, then our values and beliefs are merely rationalizations for the things we were going to do anyway. Most people find this view of human life repugnant, if not incomprehensible.

This is a nice summary of Flatland, at least in part. Those few who do not find this lack of free will incomprehensible find it repugnant. Yes. I too find it repugnant, but my disgust is not sufficient reason for rejecting it.

The New Merchants Of Doubt

Harvard professor Naomo Oreskes wrote an opinion piece at The Guardian called There is a new form of climate denialism to look out for – so don't celebrate yet (hat tip, reader Alex). Check this out.

After the signing of an historic climate pact in Paris, we might now hope that the merchants of doubt – who for two decades have denied the science and dismissed the threat – are officially irrelevant.

But not so fast. There is also a new, strange form of denial that has appeared on the landscape of late, one that says that renewable sources can’t meet our energy needs.

Oddly, some of these voices include climate scientists, who insist that we must now turn to wholesale expansion of nuclear power. Just this past week, as negotiators were closing in on the Paris agreement, four climate scientists held an off-site session insisting that the only way we can solve the coupled climate/energy problem is with a massive and immediate expansion of nuclear power.

More than that, they are blaming environmentalists, suggesting that the opposition to nuclear power stands between all of us and a two-degree world.

There are so many flatland fantasies and drives here that it's hard to sort them all out.

"I'm Mad As Hell..."

Normally I would post the video at the end, but today let's start off with it. I fear that many readers are too young to remember this seminal moment from Paddy Chayefsky's Network (1976). If you've never seen this classic movie, you owe it to yourself to watch it. It has never been more relevant than it is today.

 

Bill Moyers and Michael Winship are mad as hell too.

Climate Deal? What Climate Deal?

This is a short follow-up to yesterday's post. Reuters reports today that Japan and South Korea stick to coal despite global climate deal.

Less than a week since signing the global climate deal in Paris, Japan and South Korea are pressing ahead with plans to open scores of new coal-fired power plants, casting doubt on the strength of their commitment to cutting CO2 emissions.

Even as many of the world's rich nations seek to phase out the use of coal, Asia's two most developed economies are burning more than ever and plan to add at least 60 new coal-fired power plants over the next 10 years.

Here's my favorite quote from the report.

Japan, in particular, has been criticized for its lack of ambition — its 18-percent target for emissions cuts from 1990 to 2030 is less than half of Europe's  — and questions have been raised about its ability to deliver, since the target relies on atomic energy, which is very unpopular after the 2011 disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant...

... Mutsuyoshi Nishimura, a former climate negotiator for Japan, said Japanese industry and the government had been caught napping by the Paris agreement and were "awfully reluctant to visualize the coming of the 'non-fossil world'".

"They were too caught up in the belief that industrialization and economic growth would entail such huge CO2 emissions in developing countries that China, India etc. would oppose any notion of decarbonization," he said.

To be sure, China uses vastly more coal and has nearly a thousand more such plants in various stages of planning and construction.

That belief those Japanese and Koreans were "caught up in" is correct! China and India will indeed oppose de-carbonizing their economies if such measures threaten further expansion of those economies.

But, in 2015 it is politically expedient ("correct") to go along with a toothless non-binding climate deal. So Japan and South Korea are guilty of totally misreading the global politics of climate change. They should have dramatically upped their meaningless INDC climate commitments and then quietly reneged on the deal later. That's what China will do. (India doesn't give a shit.)

And of course those INDCs don't kick in until 2020, so strictly speaking, Japan and South Korea are entirely within their "rights" under the Paris deal.

Oh, you ambition-lacking Japanese and Koreans — shame on you!

Every God-Damned Day

As Brad Plumer notes over at Vox, we're nowhere close to the end of the fossil fuels era. That didn't stop climate scientist Michael Mann from asserting that

I think we are witnessing the end of the age of fossil fuels and the beginning of a new age of a clean global energy economy.

Brad included the big energy graph.

That nearly invisible yellow sliver at the top ("other renewables") is the current contribution of wind and solar to global energy (in millions of tons oil-equivalent).

Climate Bullshit Flying Thick And Fast

This is an open thread. Post your favorite post-Paris bullshit here. I'll get us going with these quotes from The Guardian report.

Economist [Nicolas] Stern added: “This is a historic moment, not just for us but for our children, our grandchildren and future generations. The Paris agreement is a turning point in the world’s fight against unmanaged climate change which threatens prosperity.

It creates enormous opportunities as countries begin to accelerate along the path towards low-carbon economic growth.”

And then there's this, also from The Guardian.

Bill McKibben, founder of environment movement 350.org, said: “The power of the fossil fuel industry is reflected in the text of the agreement, which drags out the transition [to clean energy] so far that endless climate damage will be done.”

It's a big day in Flatland, that's for sure. And don't worry about those future negative emissions

 

Planet Of Weeds

The climate deal is done in Paris. 

The agreement, which was publicly released Saturday morning (ET), sets the goal of limiting the world's rise in average temperature to "well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius."

I have many options here. I could, in agreement with James Hansen though for different reasons, say the deal is bullshit and explain why.

“It’s a fraud really, a fake,” [Hansen] says, rubbing his head. “It’s just bullshit for them to say: ‘We’ll have a 2C warming target and then try to do a little better every five years.’ It’s just worthless words. There is no action, just promises. As long as fossil fuels appear to be the cheapest fuels out there, they will be continued to be burned.”

We can certainly agree that fossil fuels, cheaper or not, will continue to be burned. But that's not the direction I want to go in today. Let's put things in perspective. Let's take the long view. 

For perspective, I am going to reprint some stuff by science writer David Quammen, who had a profound influence on my own thinking many years ago.