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Here, in the 18th year of the New Millennium, the 28th Year of Our Internet (delivering unlimited information to all), and the 30th year of the Great Harangue over Climate Change (dating it from James Hansen’s testimony to the Senate), this is where we are:
- The world’s emissions of greenhouse gases — the kinds of pollution that trap solar radiation like greenhouse windows and heat the climate — not only increased in 2018, but increased faster, setting a new all time record — despite the wildly hyped growth of “renewable” energy sources — according to two new studies published last week. Scientists said the emissions’ growth and the resulting acceleration of climate change, resembles a “speeding freight train.”
- The world’s people bought more cars, and drove them farther, in 2018 than in any year in history, driving oil consumption up for the fifth consecutive year despite the advent of hybrid and electric vehicles.
- In November the Trump White House published findings by 13 Federal agencies and hundreds of scientists concluding that climate change is well under way and will cost the economy hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the century. Never mind the millions of deaths, the migrations, the homelessness, the dislocations — we have to put a dollar value on it to pay any attention to it. Asked what he thought of the report, President Trump said “I don’t believe it.”
- In October the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued an alarming report warning that greenhouse gas emissions are rising so fast that they will cause widespread food shortages, wildfires, coastal flooding and population displacement, not by the end of the century, but by 2040. One of the latest studies — the “speeding freight train” one — says all those effects may be seen by 2030. That would be just over 11 years from now
- Last week, the Climate Change Conference meeting in Poland — this is among other things the conference of 200 nations that agreed to and is trying to implement the Paris Agreement on how to combat climate change — refused to adopt the October IPCC report on objections by the United States, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Kuwait. Thus what one major international UN organization had concluded about the facts of climate change were deliberately ignored by another major international UN organization working on climate change.
- Last week, France cancelled a planned increase in taxation of fossil fuels, part of a four year effort to reduce carbon emissions and slow global warming. Carbon taxes have long been advocated as one of the few effective things government could to to reduce emissions. The prospect of this tax ignited violent protests by thousands of so-called “yellow vest” demonstrators who threatened to destabilize the country, and continue to do so after the cancellation of the fuel tax.
The secretary general of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, told the climate change conference in Poland now in session, “We are in trouble. We are in deep trouble with climate change.” He went on to say, as hundreds of scientists and bureaucrats before him have said, that we are not doing enough. But he’s dead wrong about that. We are not doing anything. We are making it worse, faster. In part by jetting hundreds and thousands of people hither and yon around the world to conduct endless air-conditioned meetings on what we might think about doing, if we were ever going to do anything.
Here’s how I would put it: forget Brace for Impact, it’s way too late for that. What we need to do now, collectively, is bend over, take a firm grip on our knees, and …. well, you know the rest.
None of this comes as any sort of surprise to those of us paying attention. The pattern has been set for a while now, which is that we (or our proxies) investigate and prognosticate but then refuse (or more charitably, fail) to act meaningfully, or like our fearless leader, flatly refuse to believe. It boils down to insisting that the lives we are living right now are at all costs more important than anyone who follows. You acknowledge that many won’t make it. I wonder in my darkest moments if any will make.
yep… sad but true. the human way of life is “non-negotiable” even for my “environmentalist” friends, still living their entitled lifestyles of wealth, waste and luxury.
so, he only thing to do it to enjoy these remaining good days (in my tiny footprint way), because this “intelligent” human shitshow ends badly.
As long as the imperative of endless economic growth persists, we will never effectively address this problem. As long as policy makers don’t understand the full implications of Jevon’s Paradox, we will likewise not make any headway combating climate change. Who could ever be elected promoting an agenda of a managed economic contraction, and movement towards a global steady state economy? Until then we’re screwed.
As the late Michael Ruppert (peace be unto him) repeatedly said: until you change the way money works, you change nothing.
I have hope when the rich Democrat emits less CO2 than the poor Republican. Forget it, I have no hope.
Unfortunately, this pointless post has become the usual fare online. Posing as a false source of ‘news’ and information, this post is just another regurgitation of non-substance. Nothing enlightening, nothing elucidating, just more “nothing”. Why did you even bother?
And here’s the kicker – nobody else even noticed. Which is where the real problem lies. The StupidNet has become so incredibly stupid that posts like this will be read, liked and commented on. Nobody will call you out for wasting their time on yet another nothing post.
This is the problem now online, everywhere. It’s not worth it anymore. It’s just not.
Not until all of this changes back again. Which it might, or might not. To something worth reading. Something worth writing. Something worth our time and attention, by authors, writers, readers and commentators. We all know that climate change is another “nothing” topic right now. Tell us something we DON’T KNOW. If you can. Or at least recommend someone that can.
That’s the only thing worth printing anymore.
Your post seems a case in point with respect to the worthlessness of online content.
So switch of your computer, come out from under the bridge and read a book. As you find the internet so unedifying it is you who wastes energy.
If just the prospect of a carbon tax was enough to trigger all those violent protests in France, imagine the prospects of even greater changes that would be required to ‘save’ the biosphere or wean modern humanity away from its current suicidal course.
I’m frankly wondering now if I should not get myself psychologically ready for the prospect of my own (untimely) death, seeing as I do the seeming hopelessness of our collective situation. In a tiny yet densely populated island nation like Singapore it’s difficult to see where one can ‘hide out’ and grow one’s food without being overrun by hordes of hungry people once SHTF. Indeed the whole island could be submerged by climate change.
Like any sales tax, a carbon tax is retrogressive, the poorer you are the more they hurt. No government or other leader will achieve anything around climate change unless they reduce their own lifestyle and that of the rest of the elite, first, significantly and visibly.
Churchill and the royal family demonstrated during the Battle of Britain that if you tell people its gonna hurt and then share the hurt fairly you can avoid revolt.
The best thing that might happen now is for some jackass to come along and piss off so many countries that global trade collapses, it would be a good first step toward re-localization, whatever the intention. If it made international travel too dangerous to do as recreation, that would be good too.
I’m hearing a little bit more in the news about the 4th Climate Assessment now, but it’s just not enough to get people concerned. Everyone seems so preoccupied with daily life that they can’t look up. Not until it’s too late (if it isn’t already). Our primate brains just can’t process “distant” problems.
There is a tendency, verging upon obsession, to forever address one, then another symptom of an underlying primary cause of problems associated with a planet overrun by hairless apes with enough brains to know what they want, but not enough to know what is best for them.
The only “answer” to our multiples of problem issues is to drastically reduce our numbers. That would only be the first step. Then, someone must somehow convince the rest of us that our numbers must remain low, or we will just do it all over again. Any volunteers for the reduction in numbers project? No?
There is the real problem; each of us is supremely important, each the center of our universe. We can lament our condition until we are all choking on our own pollution, but we are simply screwed by what we are. Because of what we are, we all share a destiny. You may not like it, but complaining about it will change nothing.
Fear not the vicissitudes of AGW for winter is coming… more precisely, nuclear winter. The NDAA is still, insanely, the “law” and I, at least, am fairly certain the Great Orange Turd WILL press the button long before he is held accountable for his life-long malfeasance. Alas, that “winter” will only persist for a decade or so THEN the real heat ensues. I suspect there will be some people in some locations “make it” to 2040, perhaps 2050, but I strongly doubt they’ll be feeling particularly “lucky.”
Solar engineering is coming soon, to a planet near you.
I’ve been writing that sentence in various comment sections since roughly 2012. That was the year when Rex Tillerson, while addressing the Council of Foreign Relations on the subject of climate change, famously said;
“We’ll adapt. It’s an engineering problem and it has engineering solutions.”
Could there have been, at the time, a better crystal ball on the subject of global warming – and what to do about it – than the CEO of Exxon/Mobile? No f-ing way, I thought. Rex was good enough for me.
So, I’m convinced that the people who matter have been considering only one course of action for a very long time, and I suspect, therefore, that everything we’ve been witnessing in the interim, on the “climate change front,” has been nothing but Kabuki theater – possibly dating as far back as Kyoto in ’92.
When the time comes, and it should come soon, the Masters of our Capitalist Universe are going to go for the ultimate, global dimming quick-fix, and they will spray the troposphere full of sulphate aeorsols, with the expectation of continuing on, with business as per usual.
Why rely upon something with such questionable results? They have had much experience applying the tools of economic warfare and that is where the stroke will be applied. Everything is in place, and all that is required is to pull out the last prop. Brace for impact!
The protests in France are about the poor taking the burden of ‘climate change action’ while the wealthy party on. If the government there really wanted to do something about climate change they would tax the wealthy and find ways to encourage lifestyle change in the jet-set.
If anything positive can be found in this maybe it’s time to drink up any of the booze that is taking up shelf space and then spend your money on the quality stuff before it is to late.Also this post is relevent in that those of us who pay attention to real news can at least take the satifaction in knowing there are other humans out there that at least have the human curiosity to understand the truth of whats happening most take this as something they have never heard of and must be fake news ,so thanks for the post!!