1781

The energy sector should be nationalized (ala Norway.) That should go over well hunh? =D
Here’s another Guardian piece on Wall Street and the drought in Brazil: http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/apr/10/brazil-megadrought-wall-st-investors-finance-drought-water

It’s hard to overestimate the appalling environmental and economic crisis that’s brewing in Brazil right now. The country is in the grip of a crippling megadrought – the result of pollution, deforestation and climate change – that deeply threatens its economy, society and environment. And the damage may be permanent: São Paulo, Brazil’s largest city and industrial center, has begun rationing water and is discussing whether or not it will need to depopulate in the near future.

But if Brazil’s drought is shocking, Wall Street’s shortsighted approach to the country is appalling. Institutional investors’ reports on the country – the seventh largest economy in the world – cite worries about inflation, government cutbacks and low consumer confidence. But I could not find a single analysis that mentioned the existential threat facing the country: the megadrought that is expected to last decades and could destroy the Brazilian economy. Not a single analysis cited the brutal global impact that this will cause.

In other words, a host of institutional investors have found worrisome things to say about Brazil, but none seem to be aware of – or, at least, willing to face – the country’s greatest threat.

Attempting to separate economies from environment – as many of these analysts seem to do – is like trying to separate mind and body. It simply doesn’t work.

We will never repair our business models and government policies to conform to the real environmental constraints of the 21st century until we repair this fundamental flaw in our economic system. Investors and analysts regularly review a host of factors – including national debt, inflation, currency devaluation and other financial considerations – when they formulate their economic predictions. Their decision to omit the environment as a fundamental economic consideration is willfully ignorant and negligent.

Should right wingers take over here next election cycle (and if the likes of Harper in Canada and Abbott in AU get re-elected) I might be alive to witness the end of the natural world. Sounds like hyperbole but really when looking at the big picture the world I was born in won’t recognize the one I die in.

1782

“Willfully ignorant and negligent” is an apt description for the entire financial sector.

1783

@Mr Grumpy, pretty much spot on in terms of identifying the ‘right wings’ role in the destruction of our one (once) good planet. They are the drivers to our destruction for sure, not always the only aspect, but a large slice of the pie. And here is another that is going to impact the euro-zone (uk too i suspect):

‘EU clears path for 17 new GM foods’:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/apr/16/eu-new-gm-genetically-modified-foods

Seventeen new genetically modified food products will be authorised for import to Europe before the end of May in a significant acceleration of biotech trade, the Guardian has learned.

An announcement could be made as early as next week, sources said, when a meeting of EU commissioners has been pencilled in to review adoption of new rules for approving GM imports.

Europe currently imports around 58 GM products from abroad, mostly US maize, cotton, soy bean and sugar beet.

But Greenpeace said that the US has raised the issue of a large logjam in biotech authorisations in talks over a free trade deal known as TTIP.

“With transatlantic trade talks ongoing, pressure has been mounting from the biotech industry and the US government to break open the EU market to GM imports and to speed up authorisation procedures,” Marco Contiero, Greenpeace EU’s agriculture director, told the Guardian. “The possible authorisation of 17 GM crops by the commission in the next few days is a likely result of this pressure.”

“The timing is still being discussed but it is just a question of internal procedure now,” a source familiar with the discussions told the Guardian. “It is clear that the 17 strains will be authorised at the same time as the review meeting or just after. I would say it will happen before the end of May for sure.”

Under proposed new GM import rules seen by the Guardian, future authorisations would automatically follow approval of new strains by the European Food and Safety Agency (Efsa). Individual countries would be given a similar opt-out to the one agreed for GM cultivation in a law passed earlier this year.

“It will be up to each member state wanting to make use of this ‘opt-out’ to develop this justification on a case-by-case basis, taking into account the GMO [genetically-modified organism] in question, the type of measure envisaged and the specific circumstances at national or regional level that can justify such an opt-out,” the draft said.

Opposition from some EU states to draft GM authorisations is “usually not based on science but on other considerations reflecting the societal debate existing in the country,” the commission argues. So opt-outs will not be granted to EU states who seek it on health or environmental grounds, after Efsa has deemed a product safe.

“The scope for the exceptions [opt-outs] will probably be less than in the cultivation proposal because we are talking about the internal market here,” an informed source said. “You will have to have a really solid reason. Otherwise it would be attacked as a disruption to the market.”

But biotech industry groups are opposed to the measure, fearing that it would prevent the free movement of GM imports in practice, as countries found ways to opt-out on technicalities, such as claiming trace residues of unauthorised strains in shipment containers. The 17 products include animal feeds as well as food for human consumption.

“This would be another licence to ban safe products,” Beat Späth, the director for agricultural biotechnology at the EuropaBio trade association told the Guardian. “We import to the EU over 33m tonnes of GM commodities per year, mainly to feed our farm animals. If countries impose unjustified bans on products that have been used by farmers for 15 years, where are our farmers supposed to get their feed from?”

Gloria Gabellini, deputy secretary general of the Coceral grain importers federation added: “We fear that this approach would reverse the achievements of European customs union and the single market. We have a single market so if you import a product, it must be entitled to free circulation.”

Greenpeace also opposes the review proposal, arguing that this constitutes an assault on the ability of democratically-elected governments to protect their environments and peoples from potential risks, where the science is contested. Efsa has never refused a GM authorisation.

The campaign group also said that the proposal breaks a promise by the EU president Jean-Claude Juncker last year that the review would focus on “laws that oblige the commission to authorise genetically modified organisms, even when a majority of national governments is against this.”

The trigger for this was a vote in February on the GM maize strain known as 1507, opposed by 19 countries and supported by five. France and other countries were angry that the commission could have given 1507 a green light for cultivation regardless, under existing qualified majority voting rules.

“The proposal undermines Juncker’s plan to bring the EU closer to its citizens,” Contiero said. “It fails to address major opposition to GM crops among public opinion and ignores concerns raised by national scientific bodies on the safety of GM crops.”

Greenpeace are not always in the wrong.

1784

What is your skeptic score? http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/04/16/the-paris-paradigm-the-what-is-your-skeptic-score/

Interesting list of the things that must be true about climate change in order to rationalize the latest treaty proposal:

1. [B]That there has been unprecedented global warming caused by humans both in rate and magnitude. [/B]Since 1850 due to mankind, the earth has warmed faster and to a higher temperature than at any other time in the last 1,000 years, if not longer.

2. Accelerating warming. The rate of temperatures increase will accelerate resulting in the period from 1850 to 2100 having an increase in temperature from 2.0° to 4.5°C; or perhaps more.

[B]3. Very harmful. [/B]This warming has had a significant net harm to the world causing more deaths, economic loss, hurricanes, tornados, droughts, flooding, growth in deserts, increases in malaria, heart attacks, loss of food supply, forced human relocation, wars and deforestation among other harmful effects. The increase in the warming rate mentioned in Belief 2 will cause even greater harm to the world.

4. CO2 to blame. The prime cause of all of this is CO2 emissions by humankind.

5. Can be controlled. By reducing human emissions of GHG’s (primarily CO2) through a global treaty, warming and its bad effects can be avoided.

[B]6. Better than the alternative[/B]. The solution will be less harmful than doing nothing or any other proposed solution (adaption or geo-engineering).

[B]7. No cheaters[/B]. All major emitting countries and regions will comply with the treaty or if they do not, they can be forced into compliance.

Advocates for radical change tend to do a reasonable job of presenting the case for 1 and 4, although sometimes too smugly. A less convincing job at 2, especially since the models didn’t predict and still can’t explain the lack of warming over the past 18 years - but still this point at least gets addressed and there are various theories in different stages of development.

What’s less satisfactory are the cases made for #3 and #5, and #6 is so ignored and inadequately addressed that advocates often seem to not be interested in being constructive since they generally ignore the extremely high cost of deindustrialization that results from reducing accessibility to affordable power and other industrial changes, and comparative mitigation costs and the benefits of warmer temperatures are ignored . And #7 is obviously a fundamental problem, but not in itself reason to justify inaction unless the other points are inadequately addressed.

1785

The issue of ‘affordable power’ is a modern capitalism one. We could all have affordable ‘green’ energy IF we stopped following the amercian model on capitalism. But the global pressures to ‘carry on as before’ are huge as pretty much the whole world has been designed to run on these particular principles of capitalism, that give no (as in zero) consideration for anything other than profit generation.

1786

Can you Translate whatever that means into specifics and how it relates to the prior post? ie are you saying people should need less power, or be willing to pay more for it, and how that would help humanity.

1787

I think (2) is a reasonable conclusion if we continue increasing the rate of emissions. The system has a lot of momentum, so there is no particular reason to believe that it has reached equilibrium with our current gas mixture. Add to that that we are currently increasing concentrations and at an accelerating rate, accelerating warming seems like a reasonable outcome. Of course, I am not a climate scientist, but I think that is very roughly the consensus. Lack of warming in the past 18 years is mostly the result of cherry-picking the start date.

I think how the question is framed is very interesting. “Advocates for radical change” are indeed advocating a radical change in our emissions trendline. On the other hand, advocates of the status quo are proposing that, having significantly modified earth’s atmosphere outside the range that has existed since the dawn of human civilization, we should accelerate the rate at which we modify the atmosphere until we run out of reachable hydrocarbons. This without regard for very worrisome projections and our lack of knowledge of what feedback loops may exist outside the range with which we have historical experience. Looking at it this way, one man’s “advocates for radical change” could be characterized as people who wish to slow down the rate at which we depart from an atmosphere that we know is compatible with human flourishing.

I think (6) deserves a lot more thought and research, but I think it leaves out the sense in which we are in the midst of a giant experiment in geoengineering right now. Conservatives historically (and I think this is admirable) pay a lot more respect to the law of unintended consequences than liberals. I expect that we will engage in large-scale geoengineering, but it does represent a further departure into unknown world climate dynamics. I’d hope that by curtailing our emissions, we can minimize the risks by minimizing the forcing that we will have to do in the other direction.

Another thing that bothers me about the framing is that 2100 is often taken as the end of the story. I doubt climate change would stop at that point, so what does the world look like in 2200? 2300? I think we need to adopt a much longer-term perspective, and our current discount rates don’t reflect our underlying resource limitations.

1788

Really? You know what i’m going to post surely? It’s quite a large and complex topic, but i’ll look to address it if you actually want me to, just in case you’ve missed the kind of stuff i post in general? Mostly it’s a time issue as i’m full into spending time preparing the new fallout 3+mods thread, and that sadly will take priority for now. But i will respond to this eventually if you need me to :)

1789

Energy has gotten much more affordable. Reread Dickens for how power and light have gotten cheaper. Being cold and without power sucks and is fatal. Is why developing nations are investing in power quite fast even in carbons. And we can’t blame them. Being greener is a luxury for wealthy countries.

I look forward to your outline. Right now power is much more affordable to a broader class of people than before. That is a very good thing and curious to how it can be made greener and more affordable.

1790

Well for now here is something i can just post a link to, not related, but quicker than going into why we don’t have to have hugely expensive energy (Big Energy control is a large part of that) at the users end, and it could be greener too. In fact many new simple cheap green energy solutions are being used in developing countries where you can have an electric bulb via a simple stored solar option or using low tech like old plastic water bottles in the roof to create light indoors etc (i posted about these things before in this thread). But anyway, something not on that subject:

‘University offering free online course to demolish climate denial’:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2015/apr/21/university-offering-free-online-course-to-demolish-climate-denial

Starting 28 April, 2015, the University of Queensland is offering a free Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) aimed at “Making Sense of Climate Science Denial”.

The course coordinator is John Cook, University of Queensland Global Change Institute climate communication fellow, and founder of the climate science myth debunking website Skeptical Science. Cook’s research has primarily focused on the psychology of climate science denial. As he explains, 97% of climate scientists agree that humans are causing global warming; however, less than half of Australians are aware of humanity’s role in climate change, while half of the US Senate has voted that humans aren’t causing global warming.

This free course explains why there is such a huge gap between the scientific community and the public. Our course looks at what’s driving climate science denial and the most common myths about climate change. The course includes climate science and myth debunking lectures by the international team of volunteer scientific contributors to Skeptical Science, including myself, and interviews with many of the world’s leading climate science and psychology experts.

Making Sense of Climate Science Denial is a seven-week program featuring interviews with 75 scientific experts, including Sir David Attenborough, Katharine Hayhoe, Richard Alley, Michael Mann, and Naomi Oreskes. The course incorporates lessons in both climate science and psychology to explain the most common climate myths and to detail how to respond to them.

Research has shown that myth debunking is most effective when people understand why the myth originated in the first place. For example, cherry picking (focusing on a small bit of convenient data and ignoring the rest) is one of the most common fallacies behind climate science myths. The lectures in the University of Queensland MOOC not only explain the science, but also the fallacies underpinning each myth. This is a unique and important feature to this course, because understanding their origins effectively acts to inoculate people against myths.

1791

Yes to things like solar powered lanterns. But things like plastic bottles in a roof are very suboptimal solutions.

1792

But cheap, and work really well in the vast shanty towns the third world lives in.

1793

How does a plastic bottle roof provide light after sunset?

1794

It’s full of gasoline.

1795

I actually have no idea what you’re referencing and how it relates to the post you replied to.

1796

Solar Bottle Bulb.

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Obviously it does not work at night.

1797

For that you need Mt Dew and baking soda.

1798

Nothing says “civilization” more than a plastic soda bottle through your living room roof. Close all the coal plants!

1799

For that problem, it helps to do actual statistical analysis, rather than cherry-picking the data. The typical ways of doing so by climate skeptics being by doing trends with the local temperature peak of 1998 as a starting value (or 2005 or 2010 which were also record years - in 10-15 years the year 2014, hottest on record ever, will probably figure heavily in climate skeptics attempt to prove that there is a cooldown), ignoring that short term trends are statistically irrelevant (sadly, public discourse is unable to look past this), and ignoring the holes in the observation data. The latter is particularly significant, since we lack accurate observations of the Arctic, which has seen significant warming increases in the past two decades.

A proper takedown of the so-called warming pause, by actual climate scientists:

1800

Ny times piece on developing countries looking to China over Us for development. It even cites solar panels in thatched huts! But mostly because people in thatched huts somehow prefer a different type of energy like a power plant that Chuna is offering than US solar panels.