I was pleased to see your mention of Jerry Pournelle — specially because of your adaptation of his political chart... :)
I remember reading Hofstadter's "GEB: The Golden Braid" and being enthralled. So much so that I attempted to correspond with the author about matters mathematical. He did not actually reply... But he did send me a book — a screed against Nuclear Power!
What is it, I wonder, about leftist ideology that circumvents intelligence?
There are downsides to nuclear power. It begets yet more addiction to central utilities. I'd love to disconnect from the grid and just have solar with a standby generator. But the technology is not there yet.
And it will never be there for the American Northeast. Too much clouds, trees, snow, and people. (Solar might be viable in Dallas, TX. Lots of sun. Few trees. Tremendous sprawl with sunny rooftops.)
----
The big concern about nuclear power is that the technology can be adopted to make bombs. Nuclear power in the hands of Iran, Pakistan, the Biden Administration, or insane televangelists turned cannibalistic makes me nervous. But if global warming is a serious near term threat, nuclear power is probably our only viable option.
The Left cannot internalize this lesson: you cannot deterministically legislate your desired technology into existence. If you throw a bunch of money in the right direction you *might* get something you like. But it is by no means guaranteed. Developing high efficiency solar panels which are easy to manufacture is HARD. Useful fusion is double plus hard. Putting superconducting magnets next to a heat engine is no small feat.
It's worth keeping in mind that in the days of the Pepsi Syndrome and disco, global warming had not yet become a political issue. It WAS being discussed in science fiction magazines of the day. And it was featured prominently in the movie "Soylent Green."
But the Carter Administration was focused on peace, including peace through energy independence. Carter wanted to throw billions of dollars into tapping our immense oil shale reserves. The program went nowhere, but eventually the private sector figured out how to do it economically. Once again, technology has its own timeline...
I'm old enough to remember when they proposed spreading carbon black on the polar regions to prevent the looming ice age. Then they switched to warming. Now it's "climate change", so they are covered either way. Nobody else here sees this?
AGW is classic Hegelian problem>reaction>solution mind control.
The first order global warming effects are real -- but much smaller than what the popular press would have you believe. Read Judith Curry's blog.
Among the scientific community, concerns about global warming go back a century. If you watch "Planet of the Humans" cited above, the movie begins with some documentary footage from the 1950s. Or have a look at this article by John von Neumann from 1955.
At one point von Neumann was ready to preemptively nuke the Soviets before they could catch up to us. That's pretty anti-communist.
_____
It is indeed possible that our greenhouse gas emissions are offsetting an impending ice age. And maybe Patrick Moore is correct that we are saving life on the planet by releasing sequestered carbon. The science isn't settled.
But it is unsettling. We live in the test tube. Prudence suggests we at least be ready to shift energy sources and even do some geoengineering if we start seeing some serious feedback effects, such as burping permafrost.
I don't know what effect we have had on the climate. And to have a truly intelligent opinion, I'd have to hit the books for close to a year. As a theoretical physicist with a rusty PhD, I have and idea of what I don't know, which is quite a bit.
But what I do know is that we have already altered the atmosphere significantly. We have raised CO2 levels by a third over pre-industrial levels, based on Antarctic ice cores. Worrying about the effects is not illogical.
Thanks to bright white cloud cover, the surface of Venus gets the same amount of sunlight as Earth. Early science fiction writers weren't dumb when they placed swamps and jungles on Venus. Then the space probes found out that Venus is hotter than Hell, thanks to the greenhouse effect...
i still have to question how CO2 is so very bad for the environment, yet plants feed on it and in turn produce O2.
there was a video i saw recently (but cannot recall its name or how to find it) whereby some female scientist went on for a long time explaining how it's not CO2 that is causing any kind of so called "ice age" or "global warming" or "climate change" — how utterly ridiculous that the so called "scientists" and their politicians kept changing these terms until they settled upon one that IS factual to whatever degree (pun intended). ;-)
i cannot recall what she was advancing as the primary contribution to such environmental issues, but i remain convinced that geoengineering is definitely a factor. however, that is never even brought up among the so called "scientists" & their politicians.
regardless, it seems to many that most all of the "climate change" hysteria is simply hysteria. without there being any real trustworthy science any longer with most everyone cherry picking statistics which promote their agenda, and by example over decades of false environmental regulations imposed by the corrupt STATE, there is really no way to know with certainty how much anything is negatively contributing to environmental issues.
Water isn't CO2, we're not even remotely near toxic levels of CO2, and human activity will never achieve this, even if we devoted 100% of our resources to that outcome
Given that the establishment have proven themselves inveterate liars, and there was proven fraud in promulgating AGW, and the prediction of these fraudsters changed 180deg, why on God's green Earth should anybody believe a word they say about anything?
Case in point: read the gold bug literature from the 1980s. All sorts of predictions of economic catastrophe. Had you followed their advice you would have missed out on the greatest bull market in history. Doug Casey's predictions are hilarious in the light of what actually happened. Yet he has the temerity to continue predicting.
But inflation did happen. The dollar has lost a lot of value. And a small fraction of Doug Casey's predictions have come sort of true.
Ditto for James Dale Davidson, who did disappear after giving terrible financial advice. Davidson did correctly foretell the decline of the American Rust Belt and the potential for geo-arbitrage which made Tim Ferris famous.
perhaps methanal might be the best short term plan. you certainly gave it a great sell! 8-)
personally, i'm thinking it won't matter all that much because i'll be surprised if everything doesn't collapse before any such technological remedies are made available. to put it bluntly, i don't believe there is even enough time for a "short term plan".
while some apparent recent advances in fusion have occurred, and how i've been longing for "Mr. Fusion" ever since its concept was made privy to me in the movie Back to the Future, i'm thinking that the ONLY means of mechanical movement which might be available when everything collapses and possible EMPs (natural or manmade) take out everything with electronics, mechanical steam engines which can run on ANYTHING burnable are going to be the #1 solution for transportation and power in our very near future.
"surrender"? in my perspective, incorporating sustainable plans — like steam power — when we all know by now that this fraudulent system will collapse is anything but "surrender". or do you think God will actually allow this satanic nonsense to go on indefinitely?
so yeah, it's great to come up with good ideas that might work for humanity in the long run, even if there's not going to be one. however, the reality is that if folks need heat and/or power to survive, then a modern steam engine seems to be a good backup plan for winning — and i call survival "winning"! ;-)
this is a very good interview, worthy of watching in its entirety. with regard to our discussion about Climate-gate, please pick it up around the 49 minute mark or so and listen through around the 55 minute mark. Dr. Bush advances a completely different possible cause i've never heard before which is also worthy of consideration.
regardless of all opinions on the subject — "opinions", because no one can trust the so called "science" — it very well could be that there are several causes for climate fluctuations: deliberate geo-engineering, "inadvertent" geo-engineering (my label for what Dr. Bush advances), and whatever amount of CO2 gases have tipped the scale (according to the so called "experts").
anyone that asserts there can be ONLY ONE contributor to the problem (if it even IS a problem) is pushing religion, not science... just as with the PLANdemic. ;-)
I would argue that getting rid of zoning, or at least making it way, way more logical, would be about the greenest (in a good way) thing you could do for the United States.
I need to read some Chesterton. My education is lacking.
Zoning is a thorny issue. Businesses can impose externalities on nearby residents. But you
need businesses close to residences in you want pedestrian and bike friendly communities.
I deal with zoning a a bit in Rule 6. Break up cities into urban villages and zoning becomes a local issue. Let those with business next door get the advantage of the tax base increase.
I'll be digging more deeply on green issues in Rule 11.
I think zoning is a huge issue, and it has levels upon levels. It isn't just a city vs village issue, but includes the way people think about property. Issues such as the ADA... which is at root kind of a zoning issue... are also involved. There are even medicare rules which affect it.
Sounds like you have been thinking on such things more than me. Feel free to drop a link to anything you have written on the subject, especially when I get back to writing on green issues.
I have some bad news for you. The UK conservatives tried to triangulate on the Green issue over a decade ago. That's how they went from the party of Margret Thatcher to the WEF puppets we know them as today.
Frankly, "Republicans are the real environmentalists" will work about as well as "Democrats are the real racists" and for pretty much the same reason. "Environmentalism" like "racism" is a term that means whatever the left wants it to mean.
Today's Republicans aren't the real environmentalists. I wish to fix this or create a Conservation Party to replace the Republicans in areas where people take Green seriously.
What can be said easily, is that there are some serious environmentalists who are disgusted with the Narrative. Watch "Planet of the Humans" or read Michael Schellenberger's Substack.
You cannot legalize shoplifting or let bums poop on the sidewalks and have a bike friendly city. It is possible to be conservative and greener than today's Democrats. But you cannot always comply with Republican talking points, as the Republican Party is largely a rural and suburban party. It is not the party of Calvin Coolidge.
Shellenberger doesn't try to brand himself as "more Green than the Dems".
> You cannot legalize shoplifting or let bums poop on the sidewalks and have a bike friendly city. It is possible to be conservative and greener than today's Democrats.
Being "Green" means suffering, or making others suffer for Gaia, and having to deal with bums while cycling means one is suffering even more for Gaia.
Somewhere I read his bio. It was either an early Substack post or in Apocalypse Never. I forget which. He has an environmental activism resume in the same league as Bill McKibben. He's the kind of guy you'd find featured featured in magazines at Whole Foods Market.
Schellenberger spent enough time in the rainforests and whatnot to realize that stopping fossil fuel use would condemn billions of people to perpetual poverty. And that a lot of green energy is very brown compared to fossil fuels -- at least in the near term. So he's enthusiastic about the richer countries going nuclear and letting the developing world have its fossil fuel era.
I was pleased to see your mention of Jerry Pournelle — specially because of your adaptation of his political chart... :)
I remember reading Hofstadter's "GEB: The Golden Braid" and being enthralled. So much so that I attempted to correspond with the author about matters mathematical. He did not actually reply... But he did send me a book — a screed against Nuclear Power!
What is it, I wonder, about leftist ideology that circumvents intelligence?
There are downsides to nuclear power. It begets yet more addiction to central utilities. I'd love to disconnect from the grid and just have solar with a standby generator. But the technology is not there yet.
And it will never be there for the American Northeast. Too much clouds, trees, snow, and people. (Solar might be viable in Dallas, TX. Lots of sun. Few trees. Tremendous sprawl with sunny rooftops.)
----
The big concern about nuclear power is that the technology can be adopted to make bombs. Nuclear power in the hands of Iran, Pakistan, the Biden Administration, or insane televangelists turned cannibalistic makes me nervous. But if global warming is a serious near term threat, nuclear power is probably our only viable option.
The Left cannot internalize this lesson: you cannot deterministically legislate your desired technology into existence. If you throw a bunch of money in the right direction you *might* get something you like. But it is by no means guaranteed. Developing high efficiency solar panels which are easy to manufacture is HARD. Useful fusion is double plus hard. Putting superconducting magnets next to a heat engine is no small feat.
It's worth keeping in mind that in the days of the Pepsi Syndrome and disco, global warming had not yet become a political issue. It WAS being discussed in science fiction magazines of the day. And it was featured prominently in the movie "Soylent Green."
But the Carter Administration was focused on peace, including peace through energy independence. Carter wanted to throw billions of dollars into tapping our immense oil shale reserves. The program went nowhere, but eventually the private sector figured out how to do it economically. Once again, technology has its own timeline...
Are we still pretending AGW as a real thing?
I'm old enough to remember when they proposed spreading carbon black on the polar regions to prevent the looming ice age. Then they switched to warming. Now it's "climate change", so they are covered either way. Nobody else here sees this?
AGW is classic Hegelian problem>reaction>solution mind control.
The first order global warming effects are real -- but much smaller than what the popular press would have you believe. Read Judith Curry's blog.
Among the scientific community, concerns about global warming go back a century. If you watch "Planet of the Humans" cited above, the movie begins with some documentary footage from the 1950s. Or have a look at this article by John von Neumann from 1955.
http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~kite/doc/von_Neumann_1955.pdf
At one point von Neumann was ready to preemptively nuke the Soviets before they could catch up to us. That's pretty anti-communist.
_____
It is indeed possible that our greenhouse gas emissions are offsetting an impending ice age. And maybe Patrick Moore is correct that we are saving life on the planet by releasing sequestered carbon. The science isn't settled.
But it is unsettling. We live in the test tube. Prudence suggests we at least be ready to shift energy sources and even do some geoengineering if we start seeing some serious feedback effects, such as burping permafrost.
I don't know what effect we have had on the climate. And to have a truly intelligent opinion, I'd have to hit the books for close to a year. As a theoretical physicist with a rusty PhD, I have and idea of what I don't know, which is quite a bit.
But what I do know is that we have already altered the atmosphere significantly. We have raised CO2 levels by a third over pre-industrial levels, based on Antarctic ice cores. Worrying about the effects is not illogical.
Thanks to bright white cloud cover, the surface of Venus gets the same amount of sunlight as Earth. Early science fiction writers weren't dumb when they placed swamps and jungles on Venus. Then the space probes found out that Venus is hotter than Hell, thanks to the greenhouse effect...
i still have to question how CO2 is so very bad for the environment, yet plants feed on it and in turn produce O2.
there was a video i saw recently (but cannot recall its name or how to find it) whereby some female scientist went on for a long time explaining how it's not CO2 that is causing any kind of so called "ice age" or "global warming" or "climate change" — how utterly ridiculous that the so called "scientists" and their politicians kept changing these terms until they settled upon one that IS factual to whatever degree (pun intended). ;-)
i cannot recall what she was advancing as the primary contribution to such environmental issues, but i remain convinced that geoengineering is definitely a factor. however, that is never even brought up among the so called "scientists" & their politicians.
regardless, it seems to many that most all of the "climate change" hysteria is simply hysteria. without there being any real trustworthy science any longer with most everyone cherry picking statistics which promote their agenda, and by example over decades of false environmental regulations imposed by the corrupt STATE, there is really no way to know with certainty how much anything is negatively contributing to environmental issues.
Too much water can kill plants. Too much fertilizer can kill plants.
And the issue here isn't about plants per se. It is about effect on the weather.
Interest has been detected. I will go deep on the subject in my next post.
Water isn't CO2, we're not even remotely near toxic levels of CO2, and human activity will never achieve this, even if we devoted 100% of our resources to that outcome
Given that the establishment have proven themselves inveterate liars, and there was proven fraud in promulgating AGW, and the prediction of these fraudsters changed 180deg, why on God's green Earth should anybody believe a word they say about anything?
People exaggerate when they get fired up.
Case in point: read the gold bug literature from the 1980s. All sorts of predictions of economic catastrophe. Had you followed their advice you would have missed out on the greatest bull market in history. Doug Casey's predictions are hilarious in the light of what actually happened. Yet he has the temerity to continue predicting.
But inflation did happen. The dollar has lost a lot of value. And a small fraction of Doug Casey's predictions have come sort of true.
Ditto for James Dale Davidson, who did disappear after giving terrible financial advice. Davidson did correctly foretell the decline of the American Rust Belt and the potential for geo-arbitrage which made Tim Ferris famous.
Fraud isn't exaggeration. It's fraud.
perhaps methanal might be the best short term plan. you certainly gave it a great sell! 8-)
personally, i'm thinking it won't matter all that much because i'll be surprised if everything doesn't collapse before any such technological remedies are made available. to put it bluntly, i don't believe there is even enough time for a "short term plan".
while some apparent recent advances in fusion have occurred, and how i've been longing for "Mr. Fusion" ever since its concept was made privy to me in the movie Back to the Future, i'm thinking that the ONLY means of mechanical movement which might be available when everything collapses and possible EMPs (natural or manmade) take out everything with electronics, mechanical steam engines which can run on ANYTHING burnable are going to be the #1 solution for transportation and power in our very near future.
You may be correct.
But preemptive surrender is unappealing to me.
I'd rather play for the possible win even if I end up losing.
"surrender"? in my perspective, incorporating sustainable plans — like steam power — when we all know by now that this fraudulent system will collapse is anything but "surrender". or do you think God will actually allow this satanic nonsense to go on indefinitely?
so yeah, it's great to come up with good ideas that might work for humanity in the long run, even if there's not going to be one. however, the reality is that if folks need heat and/or power to survive, then a modern steam engine seems to be a good backup plan for winning — and i call survival "winning"! ;-)
The ROOT CAUSE Of Disease & How To PREVENT IT | Dr. Zach Bush
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=vyiLRxUw5Vs
this is a very good interview, worthy of watching in its entirety. with regard to our discussion about Climate-gate, please pick it up around the 49 minute mark or so and listen through around the 55 minute mark. Dr. Bush advances a completely different possible cause i've never heard before which is also worthy of consideration.
regardless of all opinions on the subject — "opinions", because no one can trust the so called "science" — it very well could be that there are several causes for climate fluctuations: deliberate geo-engineering, "inadvertent" geo-engineering (my label for what Dr. Bush advances), and whatever amount of CO2 gases have tipped the scale (according to the so called "experts").
anyone that asserts there can be ONLY ONE contributor to the problem (if it even IS a problem) is pushing religion, not science... just as with the PLANdemic. ;-)
Funny you didn't mention Chesterton :)
I would argue that getting rid of zoning, or at least making it way, way more logical, would be about the greenest (in a good way) thing you could do for the United States.
I need to read some Chesterton. My education is lacking.
Zoning is a thorny issue. Businesses can impose externalities on nearby residents. But you
need businesses close to residences in you want pedestrian and bike friendly communities.
I deal with zoning a a bit in Rule 6. Break up cities into urban villages and zoning becomes a local issue. Let those with business next door get the advantage of the tax base increase.
I'll be digging more deeply on green issues in Rule 11.
I think zoning is a huge issue, and it has levels upon levels. It isn't just a city vs village issue, but includes the way people think about property. Issues such as the ADA... which is at root kind of a zoning issue... are also involved. There are even medicare rules which affect it.
Sounds like you have been thinking on such things more than me. Feel free to drop a link to anything you have written on the subject, especially when I get back to writing on green issues.
I don't have anything linkable at the moment, but definitely an idea for an article :) Looking forward to chatting more later.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/snp-admits-to-felling-16-million-trees-to-develop-wind-farms/ar-AA1e4Tno
Have you seen B.F. Randall's Mining Atoms Substack? At least for countries that aren't tribal, the case for nuclear is mighty strong.
https://bfrandall.substack.com/
(DEI and safe nuclear don't mix. Being greener than the Greens is rather easy.)
I have some bad news for you. The UK conservatives tried to triangulate on the Green issue over a decade ago. That's how they went from the party of Margret Thatcher to the WEF puppets we know them as today.
It has to be done right. Mixing in the Left's really bad environmentalism is a no-go.
Wait for Rule 11. I will go into great detail.
Frankly, "Republicans are the real environmentalists" will work about as well as "Democrats are the real racists" and for pretty much the same reason. "Environmentalism" like "racism" is a term that means whatever the left wants it to mean.
Specificity is important.
Today's Republicans aren't the real environmentalists. I wish to fix this or create a Conservation Party to replace the Republicans in areas where people take Green seriously.
What can be said easily, is that there are some serious environmentalists who are disgusted with the Narrative. Watch "Planet of the Humans" or read Michael Schellenberger's Substack.
You cannot legalize shoplifting or let bums poop on the sidewalks and have a bike friendly city. It is possible to be conservative and greener than today's Democrats. But you cannot always comply with Republican talking points, as the Republican Party is largely a rural and suburban party. It is not the party of Calvin Coolidge.
> read Michael Schellenberger's Substack.
Shellenberger doesn't try to brand himself as "more Green than the Dems".
> You cannot legalize shoplifting or let bums poop on the sidewalks and have a bike friendly city. It is possible to be conservative and greener than today's Democrats.
Being "Green" means suffering, or making others suffer for Gaia, and having to deal with bums while cycling means one is suffering even more for Gaia.
Somewhere I read his bio. It was either an early Substack post or in Apocalypse Never. I forget which. He has an environmental activism resume in the same league as Bill McKibben. He's the kind of guy you'd find featured featured in magazines at Whole Foods Market.
Schellenberger spent enough time in the rainforests and whatnot to realize that stopping fossil fuel use would condemn billions of people to perpetual poverty. And that a lot of green energy is very brown compared to fossil fuels -- at least in the near term. So he's enthusiastic about the richer countries going nuclear and letting the developing world have its fossil fuel era.
Then there's Patrick Moore, who was a founding member of Greenpeace. That's some pretty green cred.