This is all very Malthusian. Someone get Dan and Glenn some Julian Simon.
We are not going to have to compromise on this. We can all live in a wonderfully rich and urban world without destroying the earth. We have technology today that can alleviate a large amount of carbon pollution, that can reverse the accumulation of carbon in the atmosphere, and can enrich the poorest to provide them with dignity, autonomy and a 130 year life expectancy.
Glenn, you should have on Roger Pielke Jr. He is a climatologist at University of Colorado. He can breakdown the IPPC report and speak to what it actually says. Would be helpful context for all parties, skeptics and otherwise.
I think I neglected to post this, what I've posted before several times now:
I use “M.” like the French do, for Monsieur but ALSO for Mesdames and Mademoiselle EQUALLY. ALL CAPS are ITALICS. :)
The "conversation" of all is so FASCINATING, that I'm tempted to make another appearance. However, 6.5 hours sleep makes it unlikely today. Tomorrow? I don't general plan something that far ahead until AFTER it's completed.
Could-a tore "Jane" or John a brand new one, for his arrogance. Too tired. Lucky guess because it would-a mainly been for MY benefit, not his.
A thought I had yesterday, but forgot when I was blathering: I don’t know if this is what it’ll TAKE for people to find meaning, or will be a RESULT when start to do so. Either Way, things will be different if/when people start to admire people according to how much money they GIVE AWAY as opposed to how much money they HOARD. IMHO.
TY (thank You) to all who replied. TYTY... Enjoyed!
Dr Bessner would be well served to ponder exactly where all those suburbs, exurbs, and red state population density can fit in India and China. It would have to be topography where people will actually have room to consume and travel like Americans do. I love counterfactuals and thought experiments in general, but without some basic subject matter expertise, the discussion becomes a contest of sentiments rather than reason.
I don't think it's capitalism, but rather technology, that has changed things so much. And technology is an extension of the growth of human knowledge through science, which ultimately is simply an expression of human intelligence -- this is what intelligence does. Blaming a political or economic philosophy is missing the point.
Furthermore, we really don't have a choice about this. If the knowledge exists to make certain technologies possible, someone will invent it, and they, and their society, will reap the near-term economic benefits of having developed it. If you decide that you're not going to do that because it would (or might) be bad for the world in some way, then the benefits will be someone else's, but the technology will still exist.
I don't think there's an example in history of a society that failed to develop some technology that was possible at the time, and continued to be successful in the long term unless they were simply isolated from the rest of the world -- and eventually that just makes the problem worse, because isolation may last for centuries or millennia but it won't last forever.
Now, of course, as we know now, technology often has nasty side-effects that can cause serious problems in the long term. I'm not suggesting otherwise. Anthropogenic climate change and microplastic pollution are only two examples. The thing is, though, abandoning technology, or refusing to develop it, is not a viable solution. The big problem is that there may not be a viable solution.
Unless and until we are given specific information about how, exactly, man has increased the warming in relation to various little ice ages we know about from the historic records, how, exactly, man has changed global temperatures in relation to various warm phases we know about from global records, and what, exactly, the appropriate targets to achieve to create, I only worry about global warming from the standpoint of how much damage the people espousing this religion will do to both the developing world and the developed world.
The earth is warming and having looked at California's records, it has gone up one-half a degree F in the last 100 or so years. That is so little of a climb that I am not worried about its effects in the slightest. Indeed, many feet that a warmer world would be better; food production would increase in what are now very marginal climate areas. Combine that with the Warmist's hatred of nuclear, refusal to stop jetting around the world, or to live a life that would show how important the measures they proclaim, well, it puts me on my back foot, so to speak. I don't believe them in the slightest at this point.
But in the end, what has always struck me was the anti-democratic nature of the reaction to climate change. The further we go along the path of listening to the doomsayers, it sticks me as more of a socialism stalking horse.
I'll get excited about climate change when people are marching in the streets, demanding nuclear power plants be built as quickly as possible. When we have an Operation Warp Speed for nuclear power plants.
After 50 years, last year the Dems finally removed opposition to nuclear from their party platform. About time, eh? And AOC's early release of her Green New Deal specifically banned nuclear. These people are not serious about climate change.
“…The “mass man,” as I understand him, then, is specified by his character, not by his numbers. He is distinguished by so exiguous an individuality that when it meets a powerful experience of individuality it revolts into “anti-individuality.” He has generated for himself an appropriate morality, an appropriate understanding of the office of government, and appropriate modifications of “parliamentary government.” He is not necessarily “poor,” nor is he envious only of “riches”; he is not necessarily “ignorant,” often he is a member of the so-called intelligentsia; he belongs to a class which corresponds exactly with no other class. He is specified primarily by a moral, not an intellectual, inadequacy. He wants “salvation”; and in the end will be satisfied only with release from the burden of having to make choices for himself. He is dangerous, not on account of his opinions or desires, for he has none: but on account of his submissiveness. His disposition is to endow government with power and authority such as it has never before enjoyed: he is utterly unable to distinguish a “ruler” from a “leader.” In short, the disposition to be an “anti-individual” is one to which every European man has a propensity: the “mass man” is merely one in whom this propensity is dominant…”
"...including being prepared to surrender to a 60-year life expectancy instead of a 90-year life expectancy, if that's what it came to..."
Let me get this straight. People are going to kill a lot of people with their carbon footprints so let's preemptively kill a lot of people so that people don't kill people. And we're going to need a very powerful government to force these people to act in ways that will kill them that way we're sure that they won't kill people with their carbon footprint.
How about this instead. We decrease the power of government and encourage people to make up their own minds about how to live. If our carbon footprints are as catastrophic as you think, a lot of people will die and the problem takes care of itself basically the same way as the intentional preemptive killing of people. If our carbon footprints turn out to be not so bad, we didn't intentionally kill a bunch of people...win, win.
Of course if the real agenda is to create a hugely powerful government well I'll let Michael Oakeshott have the last word:
“…But this condition of human circumstances [the right to live in a social protectorate which relieved him from the burden of “self-determination”] was seen to be impossible unless it were imposed upon all alike. So long as others were permitted to make choices for themselves not only would his anxiety at not being able to do so himself remain to convict him of his inadequacy and threaten his emotional security but also the social protectorate which he recognized as his counterpart would itself be disrupted. The security he needed entailed a genuine equality of circumstances imposed upon all. The condition he sought was one in which he would meet in others only a replica of himself. What he was everybody must become…”
Well, this is my last shot, and then I'm probably outta here. Contrary to popular belief, I don't write to hear myself think. I IMPROVE myself by reading, and trying some things, OTHER than writing. First, I push off HARD, so even if You were tempted to read what I write, You'll not take any of it in.
My Spiritual attainments are write (pun) up there with my writing abilities, and that's WOEFULLY deficient.
NOW!
I couldn't read to the end of M. Bessner's attack on capitalism. That's quaint. It's people, and I don't mean to be mean about it, but it's EXACTLY that kind-a thinking that got us INTO the mess where in.
You start with a conclusion, and work backwards from there. It was either Huntley or Brinkley (spelling) who said to a person, "You SIR, are riding on a horse facing backwards from conclusion to fact!"
I'd laugh, if it wasn't such a serious subject. The Progressive Religion is a cancer, if Ya wanna know the truth of it. And, yeah, You and I M. Loury, are being PROGRAMMED by EXPERTS. M. Bessner being one-a 'em.
I just got done copying the notes from a book i finished a couple days ago. 1400 lines in an Excel spreadsheet, that may come to naught. No matter. When I first thought of typing this shite in, I labored under the idea of summarizing a book of 450 pages on brain science, art, philosophy, and Religion among other things, down into a paragraph.
But I'm gamer, if I'm a lamer.
Although the conclusion was that the two hemispheres of the brain are basically the same, this poor guy sacrificed a career in the hot fields to investigate the phenomenon for 20 years. His conclusion? Yeah, they both do almost ALL the same things. But the view out the window is diametrically opposed to each other.
Left brain male? That's what made the subject verboten, back in the day.
His main point, I guess, can be summed up in a saying I first heard from the nincompoop Ram Dass. Or as his father would call him, Rum Dum. "The rational mind is the PERFECT servant, but a LOUSY master."
Going back to Plato and on through Western History, Iain McG says that starting with the Reformation and then even more in the Enlightenment, things have all gone the rational minds way. Industrialization in 1850 was a normal outgrowth of this domineering rational mind. The right hemisphere, the BIGGER one, shuffled outta the way.
There are an abnormally large percentage of scientists who believe that science is the ONLY way to find Truth, with a capital "T". Symptom of the rational minds inability to see beyond the nose on its figurative face.
Getting back to the spiritual side, I think the author would look on with disdain, just like I do, of people PAYING MONEY for Spiritual wisdom. THINK PEOPLE! If any-a them HAD any, they woudln't be charging money for You to get it. Let alone the discrepancy of trying to IMPROVE YOURSELF, by pretending to be Spiritual. That's all on that.
As far as finding meaning in life. Right hemisphere's JOB. Its raison d'etre.
As it happens, Younger-Sister TEACHES a course in Environmental whatever... Science, mebbe. I asked her about global warming. Given, she has the left-hemisphere NAILED. But right off she said it wasn't her specialty, which is geography, so she hadn't studied it thoroughly enough. So You can take this to the bank. "The planet is warming." I'm not even sure if she got INTO causes. She said the models were NOT concise. They may never BE concise. THere's a RANGE of predictions. But on LIMITED data coming in, it APPEARS we're trending for the high side.
Another conversation (or COULD-a been same one) she said she thought carbon sequestrazation (KNOW I spelled that wrong.) Problem is storing it safely, as escape of CO2 would be lethal to surroundings.
She probably said more that I didn't take in. Sorry.
Point is, yeah, people are gonna hafta dig deep into there pockets if there's to be a chance. But M. Loury, You got the realist cap on. These countries with BILLIONS? Likely they'll turn DOWN the comforts of life. (Nup.) You think WE will? (Same.)
Me? I don't claim to know. But after reading that book, which I don't think I named was "The Master and His Emissary?" Weeeel... I would say that China's notions of possibly CRUSHING the life outta the euphemistically called "Free World", economically and/or technologically and/or militarily and **TRANSHUMANISM** (not to mention the Black racists and the woke destroying democracy)... Well, AFAIK, which isn't that far... THESE THREE are EXISTENTIAL THREATS that will arrive before climate change works its worst. ICBW.
Probably am.
P.S. Suspect this is longer than usual. Sorry. No dinner, go to sleep at 6pm EDT, and there's a zoom from 5 to 6 on affordable shelter for the poor and the homeless. A new twist for me. Dunno. Obviously, zero time for ANY thought on this post, just things I've been thinking about past couple days.
This is all very Malthusian. Someone get Dan and Glenn some Julian Simon.
We are not going to have to compromise on this. We can all live in a wonderfully rich and urban world without destroying the earth. We have technology today that can alleviate a large amount of carbon pollution, that can reverse the accumulation of carbon in the atmosphere, and can enrich the poorest to provide them with dignity, autonomy and a 130 year life expectancy.
Glenn, you should have on Roger Pielke Jr. He is a climatologist at University of Colorado. He can breakdown the IPPC report and speak to what it actually says. Would be helpful context for all parties, skeptics and otherwise.
I think I neglected to post this, what I've posted before several times now:
I use “M.” like the French do, for Monsieur but ALSO for Mesdames and Mademoiselle EQUALLY. ALL CAPS are ITALICS. :)
The "conversation" of all is so FASCINATING, that I'm tempted to make another appearance. However, 6.5 hours sleep makes it unlikely today. Tomorrow? I don't general plan something that far ahead until AFTER it's completed.
I WAS able to do a little reading. I bought this woman's book a couple days ago: https://www.persuasion.community/p/undoctrinate-our-students
I thought her comment about the attempts to "collectivize" math pertained to "THE MASSES IN REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY." To M. Digregorio: Nice catch!
I thought Professor Loury's https://quillette.com/2021/02/10/unspeakable-truths-about-racial-inequality-in-america/ was unequaled. But I was sad to see https://glennloury.substack.com/p/im-in-despair-and-a-little-angry. Question to me is whether a person without a degree can even be HEARD in this country. Having read "The Tyranny of Merit: What's Become of the Common Good?" a year ago, I've learned that 2/3 of Americans are NOT heard because they don't have a four-year degree. Many probly in the bottom HALF of Americans who hold a whopping TWO percent of the wealth.
I was tempted to reply to this: https://glennloury.substack.com/p/im-in-despair-and-a-little-angry/comments#comment-1344920.
With this three-second clip from old SNL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=di4vv7MmRwc!
Could-a tore "Jane" or John a brand new one, for his arrogance. Too tired. Lucky guess because it would-a mainly been for MY benefit, not his.
A thought I had yesterday, but forgot when I was blathering: I don’t know if this is what it’ll TAKE for people to find meaning, or will be a RESULT when start to do so. Either Way, things will be different if/when people start to admire people according to how much money they GIVE AWAY as opposed to how much money they HOARD. IMHO.
TY (thank You) to all who replied. TYTY... Enjoyed!
;) = 😉
This is a natural for a discussion with Bjorn Lomborg. He is a well known political scientist, environmental economist and author.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bjørn_Lomborg
Dr Bessner would be well served to ponder exactly where all those suburbs, exurbs, and red state population density can fit in India and China. It would have to be topography where people will actually have room to consume and travel like Americans do. I love counterfactuals and thought experiments in general, but without some basic subject matter expertise, the discussion becomes a contest of sentiments rather than reason.
I don't think it's capitalism, but rather technology, that has changed things so much. And technology is an extension of the growth of human knowledge through science, which ultimately is simply an expression of human intelligence -- this is what intelligence does. Blaming a political or economic philosophy is missing the point.
Furthermore, we really don't have a choice about this. If the knowledge exists to make certain technologies possible, someone will invent it, and they, and their society, will reap the near-term economic benefits of having developed it. If you decide that you're not going to do that because it would (or might) be bad for the world in some way, then the benefits will be someone else's, but the technology will still exist.
I don't think there's an example in history of a society that failed to develop some technology that was possible at the time, and continued to be successful in the long term unless they were simply isolated from the rest of the world -- and eventually that just makes the problem worse, because isolation may last for centuries or millennia but it won't last forever.
Now, of course, as we know now, technology often has nasty side-effects that can cause serious problems in the long term. I'm not suggesting otherwise. Anthropogenic climate change and microplastic pollution are only two examples. The thing is, though, abandoning technology, or refusing to develop it, is not a viable solution. The big problem is that there may not be a viable solution.
Unless and until we are given specific information about how, exactly, man has increased the warming in relation to various little ice ages we know about from the historic records, how, exactly, man has changed global temperatures in relation to various warm phases we know about from global records, and what, exactly, the appropriate targets to achieve to create, I only worry about global warming from the standpoint of how much damage the people espousing this religion will do to both the developing world and the developed world.
The earth is warming and having looked at California's records, it has gone up one-half a degree F in the last 100 or so years. That is so little of a climb that I am not worried about its effects in the slightest. Indeed, many feet that a warmer world would be better; food production would increase in what are now very marginal climate areas. Combine that with the Warmist's hatred of nuclear, refusal to stop jetting around the world, or to live a life that would show how important the measures they proclaim, well, it puts me on my back foot, so to speak. I don't believe them in the slightest at this point.
But in the end, what has always struck me was the anti-democratic nature of the reaction to climate change. The further we go along the path of listening to the doomsayers, it sticks me as more of a socialism stalking horse.
I'll get excited about climate change when people are marching in the streets, demanding nuclear power plants be built as quickly as possible. When we have an Operation Warp Speed for nuclear power plants.
After 50 years, last year the Dems finally removed opposition to nuclear from their party platform. About time, eh? And AOC's early release of her Green New Deal specifically banned nuclear. These people are not serious about climate change.
Here's a bit more from Michael Oakeshott:
“…The “mass man,” as I understand him, then, is specified by his character, not by his numbers. He is distinguished by so exiguous an individuality that when it meets a powerful experience of individuality it revolts into “anti-individuality.” He has generated for himself an appropriate morality, an appropriate understanding of the office of government, and appropriate modifications of “parliamentary government.” He is not necessarily “poor,” nor is he envious only of “riches”; he is not necessarily “ignorant,” often he is a member of the so-called intelligentsia; he belongs to a class which corresponds exactly with no other class. He is specified primarily by a moral, not an intellectual, inadequacy. He wants “salvation”; and in the end will be satisfied only with release from the burden of having to make choices for himself. He is dangerous, not on account of his opinions or desires, for he has none: but on account of his submissiveness. His disposition is to endow government with power and authority such as it has never before enjoyed: he is utterly unable to distinguish a “ruler” from a “leader.” In short, the disposition to be an “anti-individual” is one to which every European man has a propensity: the “mass man” is merely one in whom this propensity is dominant…”
"...including being prepared to surrender to a 60-year life expectancy instead of a 90-year life expectancy, if that's what it came to..."
Let me get this straight. People are going to kill a lot of people with their carbon footprints so let's preemptively kill a lot of people so that people don't kill people. And we're going to need a very powerful government to force these people to act in ways that will kill them that way we're sure that they won't kill people with their carbon footprint.
How about this instead. We decrease the power of government and encourage people to make up their own minds about how to live. If our carbon footprints are as catastrophic as you think, a lot of people will die and the problem takes care of itself basically the same way as the intentional preemptive killing of people. If our carbon footprints turn out to be not so bad, we didn't intentionally kill a bunch of people...win, win.
Of course if the real agenda is to create a hugely powerful government well I'll let Michael Oakeshott have the last word:
“…But this condition of human circumstances [the right to live in a social protectorate which relieved him from the burden of “self-determination”] was seen to be impossible unless it were imposed upon all alike. So long as others were permitted to make choices for themselves not only would his anxiety at not being able to do so himself remain to convict him of his inadequacy and threaten his emotional security but also the social protectorate which he recognized as his counterpart would itself be disrupted. The security he needed entailed a genuine equality of circumstances imposed upon all. The condition he sought was one in which he would meet in others only a replica of himself. What he was everybody must become…”
Michael Oakeshott
“The Masses in Representative Democracy”
Well, this is my last shot, and then I'm probably outta here. Contrary to popular belief, I don't write to hear myself think. I IMPROVE myself by reading, and trying some things, OTHER than writing. First, I push off HARD, so even if You were tempted to read what I write, You'll not take any of it in.
My Spiritual attainments are write (pun) up there with my writing abilities, and that's WOEFULLY deficient.
NOW!
I couldn't read to the end of M. Bessner's attack on capitalism. That's quaint. It's people, and I don't mean to be mean about it, but it's EXACTLY that kind-a thinking that got us INTO the mess where in.
You start with a conclusion, and work backwards from there. It was either Huntley or Brinkley (spelling) who said to a person, "You SIR, are riding on a horse facing backwards from conclusion to fact!"
I'd laugh, if it wasn't such a serious subject. The Progressive Religion is a cancer, if Ya wanna know the truth of it. And, yeah, You and I M. Loury, are being PROGRAMMED by EXPERTS. M. Bessner being one-a 'em.
I just got done copying the notes from a book i finished a couple days ago. 1400 lines in an Excel spreadsheet, that may come to naught. No matter. When I first thought of typing this shite in, I labored under the idea of summarizing a book of 450 pages on brain science, art, philosophy, and Religion among other things, down into a paragraph.
But I'm gamer, if I'm a lamer.
Although the conclusion was that the two hemispheres of the brain are basically the same, this poor guy sacrificed a career in the hot fields to investigate the phenomenon for 20 years. His conclusion? Yeah, they both do almost ALL the same things. But the view out the window is diametrically opposed to each other.
Left brain male? That's what made the subject verboten, back in the day.
His main point, I guess, can be summed up in a saying I first heard from the nincompoop Ram Dass. Or as his father would call him, Rum Dum. "The rational mind is the PERFECT servant, but a LOUSY master."
Going back to Plato and on through Western History, Iain McG says that starting with the Reformation and then even more in the Enlightenment, things have all gone the rational minds way. Industrialization in 1850 was a normal outgrowth of this domineering rational mind. The right hemisphere, the BIGGER one, shuffled outta the way.
There are an abnormally large percentage of scientists who believe that science is the ONLY way to find Truth, with a capital "T". Symptom of the rational minds inability to see beyond the nose on its figurative face.
Getting back to the spiritual side, I think the author would look on with disdain, just like I do, of people PAYING MONEY for Spiritual wisdom. THINK PEOPLE! If any-a them HAD any, they woudln't be charging money for You to get it. Let alone the discrepancy of trying to IMPROVE YOURSELF, by pretending to be Spiritual. That's all on that.
As far as finding meaning in life. Right hemisphere's JOB. Its raison d'etre.
As it happens, Younger-Sister TEACHES a course in Environmental whatever... Science, mebbe. I asked her about global warming. Given, she has the left-hemisphere NAILED. But right off she said it wasn't her specialty, which is geography, so she hadn't studied it thoroughly enough. So You can take this to the bank. "The planet is warming." I'm not even sure if she got INTO causes. She said the models were NOT concise. They may never BE concise. THere's a RANGE of predictions. But on LIMITED data coming in, it APPEARS we're trending for the high side.
Another conversation (or COULD-a been same one) she said she thought carbon sequestrazation (KNOW I spelled that wrong.) Problem is storing it safely, as escape of CO2 would be lethal to surroundings.
She probably said more that I didn't take in. Sorry.
Point is, yeah, people are gonna hafta dig deep into there pockets if there's to be a chance. But M. Loury, You got the realist cap on. These countries with BILLIONS? Likely they'll turn DOWN the comforts of life. (Nup.) You think WE will? (Same.)
Me? I don't claim to know. But after reading that book, which I don't think I named was "The Master and His Emissary?" Weeeel... I would say that China's notions of possibly CRUSHING the life outta the euphemistically called "Free World", economically and/or technologically and/or militarily and **TRANSHUMANISM** (not to mention the Black racists and the woke destroying democracy)... Well, AFAIK, which isn't that far... THESE THREE are EXISTENTIAL THREATS that will arrive before climate change works its worst. ICBW.
Probably am.
P.S. Suspect this is longer than usual. Sorry. No dinner, go to sleep at 6pm EDT, and there's a zoom from 5 to 6 on affordable shelter for the poor and the homeless. A new twist for me. Dunno. Obviously, zero time for ANY thought on this post, just things I've been thinking about past couple days.