Climate Change/Global Warming

One of the reasons I'm rather pessimistic about the prospect for our world's beating the global warming/climate change problem is that not enough is being done about it. We hear the world's politicians talk about it but any action being taken is at some point going to be seen to have been too little, too late.

Americans (for one) don't appear to be changing their habits, and I don't really hear anyone urging them to. Where are the leaders urging people to drive less? To not buy big and thirsty SUVs? (The equation is simple: more fuel consumed = more greenhouse gases being emitted.) And who has—or would have—the bravery to discourage Christmas lights in the name of saving energy? Anyone who did so would be accused of being anti-religion or even anti-God (show me where in the Bible we are commanded to string electric lights upon our houses to celebrate the birth of Christ).

Electric vehicles are expected to do much to reduce production of greenhouse gases; but so far, in most countries, the penetration of EVs into the car market has been rather insignificant--on the order of 3% to 6% of car sales. One reason is that electric cars suffer from a serious price disadvantage. And, I do not see any great numbers of charging stations in my area. On the other hand, "range anxiety"--the fear of drivers that they will be traveling and their car's charge will be running out when they are not near any place where the car could be charged--might be diminishing because electric cars' range (on a charge, that is) has been increasing.

I myself have given some thought to getting an electric car. If I got one it would probably receive all or nearly all of its charging in my garage. But, to have and use only 110 V charging is very slow; and to install a faster, 220 V charger in my garage I'd have to buy a charger and pay an electrician to wire it into my house wiring--for a total cost of nearly $1000. 

I'm sure electric cars are the wave of the future, but it's going to be a while before they are truly common. Better, cheaper, lighter-weight batteries must be developed, and I don't think anyone is sure when that will  happen.

Another thing, on a somewhat different note: Rainforests, as we hear often, are a very important repository of carbon, and cutting down and/or burning these trees not only reduces the amount of carbon that can be absorbed from the atmosphere, but the burning of the trees releases carbon that has been locked up perhaps for centuries. Yet in Brazil, the trees of the Amazon rainforest, one of the most important on the planet, are being cut down and burned, to make room for pasture land or farmland (e.g., plantation of palm trees for the palm oil that is showing up in so much of our food)--not to mention that this process is depriving indigenous people of their land and homes. Yet Brazil's President Bolsonaro does nothing to stop this pillaging and destruction of the rainforests of his country.

In many nations there are conferences, there are speeches. But is enough being done, aside from talk? At least a few scientists warned of the problem decades ago. True, we have some renewal energy--wind farms, etc.--but they still are providing only a small percentage of energy consumed. We need "transformative" change, and it doesn't seem to be happening.

Copyright © 2022.

What's Wrong in America (at least in my opinion)

 

I haven't posted to this blog in a long times, so I thought it might be nice to start the new year with a blog posting.

So, here goes: What's wrong with the world (or perhaps mainly America), according to me.

1. The prevalence of guns. When everybody is carrying a gun, an argument or just one person getting very angry can result in a gun being pulled and then someone being shot. I think this is pretty obvious but the gun proponents (or anti–gun control types) doubtless would dispute it.

When I was younger, the term road rage was not in anyone's vocabulary (nor was school shooting). Nowadays an argument we call road rage my well result in someone being shot.

2. Social media companies fostering polarization of their users and the spread of disinformation--not to mention their near-destruction of any such thing as privacy because they exist to collect--and sell--information about you and me.

3. Growing social and economic inequality. The rich are getting richer, according to all statistics. You may say, "more power to 'em," but when wealth is concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer individuals that has to mean that some others are getting poorer It’s a zero-sum game. And, if nothing else, it is simply cruel and unjust that many people live in poverty.

4. More and more, minority groups such as Native Americans, Blacks, Asian-Americans and others are refusing--to put it in terms we used when we were kids--to be pushed around anymore. That's fine, I for one want to see them winning their rights and a fairer shake in our society. The problem arises when there are those--and these groups are growing, at least in number--who oppose all this, who want some real or imagined past order to remain or return. Groups like white supremacist groups. When people with 180-degree opposite opinions and goals get more and more vocal, it's not going to be just words hurled by one group at the other; and of course this has already occurred and there is no way this can be a good thing.

All this is not even to mention the problems which imperil our planet in perhaps a more physical way: global warming and climate change, destruction of the environment, extinction of plant and animal species, runaway world population--it's saddening and wearying even to get into this list.

Some of these problems certainly are not unique to America but are found in many other western countries, if not in the whole world. I've been hearing a number of voices who are pontificating on the direction we (often "mankind") are going. So many of them seem optimistic, and hold out hope of some sort or to some degree. I can't feel so optimistic because it seems to me that there is inertia which keeps us locked in the status quo--not to mention greed, corruption, and many other human failings which mitigate against change, or at least not change soon enough or fast enough. My crystal ball shows me that--for example, regarding action on global warming--it's going to be "too little, too late."

Copyright © 2020

The Future of Our World--Should We Be Optimistic?

Global warming and climate change; species extinction and loss of biodiversity; world population growth. These are all inter-related, and the experts keep warning us that unless we do the right things--and stop doing the wrong things--the world is headed for disaster.

Some people who have weighed in with their view of humanity's future have been optimistic, confident that the right things will be done, and done widely and in a timely manner.

I feel unable to share this optimism. We have seen how wealth and power--for example the fossil fuel industry--has used its power and money to try to undermine science and spread disinformation about climate change--not to mention politicians who in one way or another have an interest in the status quo, and religious institutions opposed to any efforts to control human fertility.

Copyright © 2021

Why More Americans Doubt Global Warming

Money--contributed money, that is--is not only driving American politics but also general American beliefs.

This is an age when corporations and very wealthy individuals can fund PACs (political action committees), Super PACs, and other types of entities that can indirectly support and fund candidates and even remain anonymous while doing so.

These funders generally support Republican candidates because the funders who are individuals have chiefly the objective of keeping taxes on themselves low. If they are corporations they may be concerned with corporate taxes but are perhaps more concerned with avoiding government regulation.

Thus both wealthy individuals and corporations mainly support Republican candidates--89% of corporate campaign spending goes to Republicans—because Republicans support these goals of theirs, and Republican-controlled houses of Congress will vote their way.

Pretty much as an aside, I want to get in the idea that political advertising—that is, campaign ads—make the implicit assertion that government regulations kill jobs. At the very least that is an exaggeration and overgeneralization and oversimplification. But then, whoever said that slogans—of any kind—contain qualifications or any nuances whatsoever?

But it's also alarming that these same monied political interests have been successfully influencing people's beliefs about what should be a matter of science—that is, the reality of global warming and the degree to which it is caused by human actions.

A report by the American Academy of Science said that 98 to 99% of scientists believe that global warming is real and is at least partly caused by human actions such as the burning of fossil fuels. The exact percentage of global warming which is the result of human action is difficult to determine, so there is room for disagreement about that, even among the scientists who accept both the reality of global warming and its causation by increased concentrations of so-called greenhouse gases, most notably carbon dioxide (CO2).

The anti–global warming forces muster scientists who support their position. Sometimes these scientists are of suspect objectivity because they receive funding from the people whose ideas they support. Or they are not experts in the field of climate. They have even taken data and manipulated it. (Example: You can take 10-year periods and show that global temperatures were actually slightly cooler at the end of the period than at the beginning. But if you look at a graph of the longer-term trend, the upward trend in global temperature is unmistakable.)

Their advertising slogans try to convince people that carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere is not harmful. Carbon dioxide is what plants breathe in. (True.) It is "plant food." Okay, you could say that, too; but that does not in any way refute the fact that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. (Another greenhouse gas is methane, which is added to our atmosphere in considerable quantities by our raising animals for food. To put it in everyday terms, methane is cow farts.) Greenhouse gases--just to remind you--trap solar radiation that hits the earth and turn it to heat.

The effect of the millions of dollars which have been spent on a public disinformation campaign is that they have convinced nearly half the American population that global warming is not real and is not a problem and is not anything we need to take action on.

Who is doing this, and why? Naturally we have to look for motivation, for self-interest. For one, the Koch brothers, who are or should be infamous to many Americans as they are huge donors to various right-wing causes. These two hugely wealthy brothers own very extensive oil and gas interests. Therefore, they want  you and me to go on burning fossil fuels—it's money in their pockets—rather than "going green" and developing more wind and solar energy.

And corporate interests don't want to see any regulations on their factories' emissions of CO2. The House passed a plan known as "cap and trade" which would have the effect of a net reduction in CO2 emissions from industrial sources. But these interests, alarmed at their defeat in the House, have ensured that this bill will not pass in the Senate.

Update, November 1, 2012
Here is another example of  money spent to influence public opinion--called public relations--that also has been successful yet detrimental to the general welfare. The sugar industry spent a lot of  money to counteract a bad image that sugar had been getting--particularly its role in causing obesity and chronic diseases such as diabetes. Here is a quotation from an article in Mother Jones:

The [sugar] industry's PR campaign corresponded roughly with a significant rise in Americans' consumption of 'caloric sweeteners,' including table sugar (sucrose) and high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). This increase was accompanied, in turn, by a surge in the chronic diseases increasingly linked to sugar. Since 1970, obesity rates in the United States have more than doubled, while the incidence of diabetes has more than tripled.

Here is a link to the full article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/01/big-sugars-sweet-little-l_n_2056731.html
Of course free speech allows lobbying and public relations efforts; and hopefully they are not all evil. But, where they are, the only antidote is public education and public information, and these are usually not supported by the same kind of money.
So in both these cases--climate change and the harmfulness of sugar--the equation is, money to spend (or money spent) = persuasion (public relations) = change in public opinion. In this age of media, persuasion is a vast and very influential industry.


© 2012 by Richard Stein

Giant Crabs Invading Antarctic

It's a function of global warming, and was predicted. The giant crabs are eating or driving out other animals.

It definitely sounds like a science-fiction scenario. Here are the last two paragraphs of the article:

The invasion of the long-legged critters doesn't come as a surprise to scientists, given three years ago they predicted the King Crabs would invade within 100 years.

Last month, a study published in the journal Science showed that climate change is driving animals to the poles in search of their more normal natural habitats. The Guardian called it "one of the clearest examples of climate change in action." In fact, the leader of the research, Chris Thomas, professor of conservation biology, told The Guardian that for the past 40 years, animals and plants have been "shifting 20 cm per hour, for every hour of the day, for every day of the year."

Link to the full article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/12/giant-red-crab-invasion-climate-change_n_956090.html?icid=maing-grid7|maing5|dl1|sec3_lnk1|94967

The End of the World? Or Just Our Sometimes Inhospitable Planet?

Earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, tsumanis. Wildfires, pipeline explosions. It seems like there are more of all of these going on, and I'm sure people are thinking, and asking one another, What's going on? Many people may see divine action here. For tens and hundreds of thousands of years, mankind has seen supernatural beings as being behind the actions of the forces of Nature.

In the last couple of years there have been earthquakes in Haiti, Japan, New Zealand, Peru; and in the US in California, Colorado, and Virginia—and one here in the Midwest, I believe (I forget where it was centered).

There are always earthquakes because the Earth is a geophysically active planet, with tectonic plates continually moving and shifting, colliding with and sinking beneath one another. I don't know whether statistics would show that they have been more frequent lately. If so, there is surely an explanation. Someone said that the Earth's poles recently shifted—which is not an unheard of occurrence, by any means—and that that is behind the recent earthquake activity.

Climate change, and specifically the warming of the planet, means that there is more energy—that is, heat—in the atmosphere, and that very simply means that, when there are storms, there is more energy available to those storms and they are going to be more violent.

So, I don't think that we are seeing signs of "the last days" or Armageddon, as some people may think.

Update, September 3, 2011
Here is an interesting article on the recent prevalence of natural disasters, with comments from meteorologists:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/03/disasters-in-us-an-extrem_n_947750.html?icid=maing-grid7|maing5|dl3|sec3_lnk1|92672

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

Bad News on Greenhouse Gases

The news a couple days ago said that targets for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions have not been met. On the contrary, they've risen, rather than fallen. The figures for greenhouse gas emissions for 2009 were 5 percent higher than the figures for 2008. And thus the "tipping point," the time by which something has to be done before there is an irreversible problem, is coming sooner than had been thought (I think the original date was 2020).

So it looks like Mankind has not been taking this problem seriously enough. This calls into question, in my mind, whether Man is going to prove to be smart enough to avoid wiping himself out.

Well, actually, we do not really know what the consequences of global warming will be, beyond the simple fact that ocean levels will rise and that will cause flooding of coastal areas (and even of whole nations in the case of some small Pacific island nations). Of course that will be a disaster, and clearly we have not even been looking closely at just what that scenario will involve, because we haven't seen anything that would scare us enough, that would jolt us into more energized (or maybe I should say "panicky") action.

I wrote, in another posting, that I was reassured, in my view of humanity, by the fact that we have thus far not blown ourselves and each other up with atomic and hydrogen bombs. The statistics are that the US has produced 70,000 nuclear bombs—which could have destroyed the world several times over. Currently, "The USA and Russia each have 2,000 to 2,500 nuclear weapons on hair trigger alert right now." That sounds encouraging, as to our having enough wisdom to avoid destroying each other; but (to go on to give the bad news): first, the same article (http://www.rense.com/general47/global.htm) also says that's only the number on hair-trigger alert.

The five major nuclear powers currently have more than 20,000 nuclear warheads in their arsenals. . . . But this does not include a number of intact Russian nuclear warheads of indeterminate status--possibly as many as 10,000. Of the more than 30,000 intact warheads belonging to the world's eight nuclear weapon states, the vast majority (96 percent) are in U.S. or Russian stockpiles. About 17,500 of these warheads are considered operational.

Also,

There have almost been accidental nuclear wars several times in the past. There can be an accidental nuclear war anytime.

I suggest reading this article (link above). To include more of it would be getting off my subject. Maybe my bottom line vis-à-vis nuclear weapons is that the jury is still out. So maybe even there we should not heartily declare "Well we were sensible enough to avoid disaster"; and it's less clear that we're going to do the right and necessary things to avoid a global climate crisis.

Copyright (c) 2011 by Richard Stein

My Verdict on Mankind--After 68 Years

Regular readers of my blog, if they happen to be very thoughtful people (or if they have the leisure and curiosity to do so), may have thought about what view of humanity is implicit in much of what I write.

If so, it's probably pretty clear to those people that I have a somewhat cynical view of human intelligence and rationality. For example, in the recent political season I was complaining about how easily people allow themselves to be manipulated by slogans--which always oversimplify issues—and other superficial, simplified, or downright wrong ideas. I feel that critical thinking is in short supply.

But we've somehow survived some major crossroads situations. When I was a young child in school, the Soviet Union had recently developed atomic bombs, and—remember, this was the Cold War, and a time of hysterical fear of Communism at home and abroad—the U.S. truly believed that the Soviets might attack the U.S. with nuclear-armed missiles. So our grade-school classes had bomb drills. In my school, we all moved into the corridors—away from windows, I guess. Evidently in some other schools it was "get under your desks and tuck your head down."

Well, at least for 60 years, mankind has managed to avoid mutual nuclear annihilation. To put it mildly, that's reassuring, and helps improve one's view of human rationality.

Now, however, we face a new set of challenges, like global warming. It remains to be seen whether nations can collectively move to preserve our planet from disaster this time. So maybe the jury is out on some questions.

Has there been progress? I think that nowadays we have higher standards, in some respects, for how we treat one another. On the other hand, remember that World War I was supposed to be "the war to end all wars." Then, after we had another world war, the United Nations was established to end armed conflict between nations. But we've failed, in almost a century since the First World War, to end war. We haven't had another conflict on a global scale in the 65 years since WW II, but the count of wars that have occurred worldwide in the last 50 years is astonishing. One problem there is that one thing has not changed: I feel that military, Pentagon types are overgrown boys who like their toys (they call them "weapons") and always want more and more destructive toys. But that is starting to go off on another subject.

I think that, in more general human affairs—how nations govern themselves, what wars are waged and what wars averted, what persecutions and genocides occur—humanity will manage to muddle through as it has for thousands of years. That is, we as a species will survive, but in the course of things there will be a lot of misery and killing caused to humans by humans.

So that is where my thinking has arrived, after a few decades of my life--not that I'm really quite old enough to be talking like a bona fide elder. I'm confident my perspective on things does not seem way out of step, or irrational. For another man's very thoughtful and thought-provoking view, read An Essay on Man (1773 - 1774) by Alexander Pope.

Update, September 9, 2011
I have to admit I get saddened and maybe discouraged by the innumerable and unceasing examples of human greed, selfishness, stupidity--and Man's capacity to lie. Think what a different world it would be if human beings could not lie, and you knew you could believe everything anyone said! Of course that's not going to happen.

But just now, if you look at the political situation in the US, it looks as though we've got plenty of obstacles in the way even of our being able to govern ourselves intelligently and effectively. And, as to global warming, I expect the planet to become a less and less habitable place as the consequences of global warming march on unchecked.

Copyright © 2010 by Richard Stein

Which Is More Hot Air, Global Warming or Rush Limbaugh?

Rush Limbaugh recently pointed to the extraordinary and even record snowfall events on the East Coast and in Texas and said these events are "driving a nail in coffin of the global warming theory"—or words to that effect.

Mr. Limbaugh is not a meteorologist or other weather or climate scientist. When he does not know what he is talking about, he should keep quiet—not that he's ever adhered to that principle before. In fact, he makes his living sounding off when he is all opinion and no fact.

The reason he is wrong this time: Meteorologists are telling us that these snow events were the result of warmer Arctic air.

Copyright © 2010 by Richard Stein

Science Fiction Becomes Science Fact; or, The Next Arms Race

I recently viewed a History Channel program about the development of a new class of weapons called Directed Energy weapons. These are "Star Wars"-type laser weapons and "death rays"—extraordinarily high-power lasers that not only could kill an individual from a distance but destroy an airplane or tank or much more.

It's not clear to me why we need these awesome devices, and, as the TV program admitted, the deployment of such weapons is likely to usher in another arms race. Have we learned, yet—in thousands of years—that every new development in weaponry is matched or even exceeded by the results of countering efforts on the other side?

We must always have newer and more dreadful weapons because the Pentagon boys love their toys—and their toys are destructive. These are people who have never outgrown their boyhood fascination with blowing things up. This viewpoint was beautifully and satirically put forth in the 1964 film Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

I was very saddened by this TV program. These weapons are being developed in my name and, supposedly, on my behalf, and I certainly don't want them. Over the years and decades, we've had a rubber-stamp Congress that gives the Pentagon whatever they want, and Congressmen, a White House, and a public who will rationalize any new weapons, no matter how horrible, as needed for "national defense" or security. And there is the question that was raised after the development of the atomic bomb: Should scientists lend scientific research and knowledge to destructive aims? I think they should not, but it seems we always have plenty of scientists who will work on weapons with few or any qualms of conscience. As an example of their lust for advancing science while, with ivory tower aloofness, shutting their eyes to any real-world implications of their work: I learned from another TV program—no, I do not want to be perceived as having learned all I know from television—that a German Jewish scientist in the Nazi era, incredibly, allowed his research to be used in the development of the Nazis' atomic bomb.

Remember that once upon a time the United States government Executive Branch included a War Department? Instead of that more honest name, now it's euphemistically called the Defense Department, supposedly to manifest the myth that the United States only wages war as defense. (To digress a bit, to see an example or two of how that is not correct, look at how the U.S. acquired some of its territories, especially those from Spain and Mexico: it was simple conquest.)

We probably would have a more peaceable world, as has been suggested, if the world were controlled by women. Men are definitely more aggressive and more prone to war and conflict. A friend of mine has coined the lovely term "testosterone poisoning."

And this can only get worse as a generation raised on video games matures and becomes the new population of the Pentagon. They will have already been well schooled in vicious things to do to your "enemy."

Copyright © 2009 by Richard Stein

People = Polution

Humans are killing the planet by their sheer numbers.

As we all know, global warming is caused by greenhouse gases from our cars and from power plants. Pollution of the air, land, and sea is caused by chemical plants and other industrial sources that generate toxic chemicals, and the use of pesticides and fertilizers, and so forth.

There's also destruction of the environment and extinction of plant and animal species due to increased farming, which sometimes means removing the tropical rainforests that absorb CO2 from the atmosphere; and increased "development" to make shopping malls and housing tracts. There's depletion of the oceans' fish due to over-fishing.

The real and ultimate cause of all these things is not "industry" or some abstract entity; it's people. Individually and collectively, we are destroying the Earth. It's people that cause pollution and destroy the environment.

Small human groups typically have a small impact on the environment. Hunter-gatherer societies usually harvest only sustainable amounts of plants and animals, meaning not more than can be replaced by those organisms' natural reproduction. But it's a very different situation when human societies number in the billions.

The human species has been too successful, and population growth is the ultimate threat to our species' own survival. When we pave over our land for parking lots and deplete the oceans of fish for our tables, this should make us think about the consequences of uncontrolled growth of human populations. Even a bacterial colony will multiply and grow until all its nutrient resources are gone; and then it will completely die from lack of available food.

The solution to this problem is to be found in virtually every home, every human habitation on the planet. The human species needs to control its own fertility.

China has gone from a country perennially threatened by mass starvation to a very prosperous country. How? By limiting population growth. Chinese families are not allowed to have more than one child.

By contrast, in America, we value individual rights and choices. It's inconceivable to Americans that the government should ever dictate how many children a family has. And we feel, "If I can support my family, I have the right to have all the kids I want." But those kids will need more houses, more refrigerators, more cars, more schools, more roads, more parking lots. But heck, America is a big country, we still have lots of room.

Well, very much of all that "room" or space in America is not good for anything (well, to be more accurate, it's good for whatever nature is adapted to living there, and it should be left that way). Have you seen the vast emptiness of the West? Humans have already invaded the deserts and made huge efforts to make them habitable. We have, with incredible massive irrigation projects, made desert areas like Los Angeles and Las Vegas habitable. But it's been at a price. To supply Los Angeles with water, we divert rivers, we use up lakes and completely destroy them—all with tragic ecological impact. The water must continually be brought from farther and farther away.

We need to change the ethos by which we give positive approval to families with many children. Politicians running for office list, as if a credential, the number of children they have (at least where I live, maybe just to demonstrate to the voters—heavily Irish or Polish and Catholic--that they have a "good Catholic family").

We cheer and applaud and congratulate people for having children, even if it's the fifth or sixth or seventh. We have to stop doing that. Any couple who have more than three children should be met with disapproval, not approval.

Also, the U.S. federal income tax system subsidizes having children by giving parents a tax break—a deduction—for every "dependent." If we were ever to get serious about addressing population problems, I think even this would have to be examined.

Copyright © 2009 by Richard Stein.