Always interesting how holocaust analogies and racist comments are okay as long as you support the preferred narrative, but once you question it, then such analogies and racism are unacceptable and grounds for being cancelled.
But I digress,. When it comes to carbon tunnel vision, I think the larger problem is the reductive depiction of the carbon cycle solely to emissions as measured by a thermostat or scale. Some of the language used like "post carbon" and "zero carbon" further reinforces this reductive mindset. Especially since obviously, we can never be post or zero carbon seeing that carbon is essential for all life on earth. We basically live in a carbon based economy where the fixation, transformation and consumption of carbon is a never ending process. Carbon is the currency of life here on planet earth as so well noted in this great presentation by Keith Berns, Carbonomics: https://youtu.be/zq6FCvEAfh8
So when people take a more holistic, less reductive view, of carbon, the carbon cycle is interdependent on pretty much all the other parameters in your carbon tunnel vision graphic especially the water cycle, health, and biodiversity. The carbon, water and nitrogen cycles are all interdependent and interconnected. You don't have fixation or oxidation of carbon without photosynthesis or hydroxl radicals. You don't have photosynthesis or hydroxyl radicals without plants and their roots sourcing and leaves transpiring water and other phtyochemicals. , So desertification and soil health are also integrals parts of the climate equation.
Thus the real problem is overly facile thinking. Facile thinkers lack the capacity for nuance and tend to be agenda or profit driven rather than science driven. Many also tend to be zealots (eg vegans) who don't seem to realize that the simple obvious solutions to complex problems are more often than not WRONG.
Robb, listen to episode 1776 of Joe Rogin talking for 3 hours to a man named Steven E Koonin (Steven E. Koonin is an American theoretical physicist and former director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University. He is also a professor in the Department of Civil and Urban Engineering at NYU's Tandon School of Engineering). the intersection between the Covid authoritarianism and the climate change crazies ("you'll have to eat less meat; it's crickets for you while we jet off to the climate conference to decide your future") is that now the population has gotten accustomed to having their liberties curtailed if an "emergency" warrants. be prepared for sequential "emergencies" from now on.
two old friends refused to stay at our house for a week because we are not vaccinated. we also aren't sick but that point was irrelevant. one of them is HIV positive and should know a thing or two about being ostracized because of a medical condition. they both did, however, come over for dinner one night and were happy to eat our food and drink our wine. the non-HIV one recently told me i had gone to far for noticing the similarities between the political response to covid and the first steps of the Nazis leading up to the final slam of the oven door. i'm not Jewish but Naomi Wolfe has pointed this out too. so have several Holocaust survivors.
as HL Mencken said "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
They are focusing on the thing they can turn into a currency. Carbon credits. But the underlying motivation goal for all of it is eugenics and creating utopia.
It's part of the insanity of those who belong to the Climate Emergency Church. They've bought into the propaganda, just as covidians bought into the media barage regarding the Scamdemic. Once I read Patrick Moore's "Fake Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom" I realized what a bunch of zombies the Climiatites are. Anyone who knows you well and still calls you a Holocaust denier may be beyond help.
That was part of the....IDK, "HOLY SHIT" about that response. I'd worked with this person for years. On a lot of things. I'd say she arrived to extreme wokeism early, and what's interesting is she knew, instinctively I guess, how to weaponize this.
A former member of mine has with a PhD in some sort of plant sex from both Duke and MIT. She and I had a FB “conversation” about Covid and the 6 foot social distancing rule. I argued It was arbitrary. She then somehow turned that into racism. IDK. Maybe my lack of having a plant sex PhD from Duke and MIT prevented me from understanding the correlation. (Sarcasm.)
God bless the annoying, miserable, shitty people. We sure do learn a lot about ourselves from them.
The myopic vision on climate change / carbon emissions is the exact same myopic vision that governed the response to C19 the past two years. "It's just a mask, what's the big deal" is an awfully one-sided and narrow approach to psychological warfare, particularly for kids. That's just one small sample. The people modeling climate science are the same people who said orders of magnitude more people would die from the virus. Sorry, you have zero of my respect or attention.
The real driver for all of this is oil, not climate change.
In 2019, it's very likely that the peak oil event happened. With 2020 lockdowns reducing oil consumption by abt. 6%, for the first time the unextracted oil reserves have stayed the same as previous year, and would have fell if not lockdowns. This means that from these years forward, the reserves are going to go down. New fields are not keeping up with consumption. At current usage about 50 years remaining.
This can easily be verified by latest BP outlook documents.
Climate change stuff is a politically safe narrative to drive reducing consumption and not killing economy which is driven by growth.
I buy some of that and push back on other elements. Energy IS the thing that makes the world literally "go around" so this is a critical piece, but there have been a lot of peak oil, peak cheap oil predictions that have come and gone due to innovation. I know that will not go on forever, i know the energy density we are seeing is getting worse (costing more and more to get a given unit of oil out of the ground) but some of this is driven by the government, stymieing oil exploration. And where is nuke in all of this?
I think there is truth to what you are saying, just not sure it's the whole enchilada. Now, if we start talking about the eminent collapse of the global financial system, and that being a driver for covid and climate change lockdowns.....now I'm fully signed up!!
I know what you mean regarding peak oil theories. People just need something to be afraid of, out of malice or nature. I'm not sure which yet. So much of it in the last 2 years...
However, oil demand DID catch up with what they call proven reserves in 2019 - I believe this is the factual peal oil definition. Whether things will change, we'll see.
This definitely means one thing, though - oil consumption can not continue to increase, and the resulting consequences from that. ~65% of oil goes to transport, and ~28% goes to products.
They'll probably come out with some alien reactors to maintain their status quo and milk oil while they can. So I'm not too pessimistic, because their greed is sustainable, whereas oil might not be.
Had to go look in the book to try and figure out who you were talking about. There are strangely lots of woke women in the paleo sphere. I unfollowed them long ago. Used to buy their books and listen to their podcasts, but couldn’t take it anymore. Thanks for speaking out, it helps to keep me sane! Praying for you and Nicki ;)
The irony there is many of these women were absolutely assailed by CrossFit, Greg glassman etc. They sere literally cancelled by these folks, yet did not appear to learn much.
Apocalypse Never was one of the best books on the environment I have read lately. I am far from an expert and did not agree with everything in the book but the author really makes the case that we already have everything we need to address climate change its just those "in charge" will not do it. With that book and Sacred Cow I at least have a lot of hope that this is a very solvable problem. Thanks for the great post Robb love your stuff.
He started that book off on energy and really (IMO) should have stayed in that track. His research in areas out of his wheelhouse kinda stopped at the wikipedia level. All that said, still a very valuable book, again, for the energy angle AND most importantly, what the climate science really suggests. Unsettled by Koonin is also great in this regard.
It’s incredible being in a country (New Zealand) where we derive most of our export $ from grass fed dairy and beef exports that there’s endless hand wringing and catastrophic predictions about methane emissions. Great upset ensues when I suggest that the carbon cycle is relevant or that maybe equating with fossil fuel methane is not applicable. All research is about emissions and none on sinks. It could be that transpired water from pasture is converted into enough hydroxyl radicals to offset the methane and more but even the farmers don’t fight for their corner. Maybe when a greenhouse gas levy is applied they will present a bill for their methane sinks rather than a charge for emissions.
Keep fighting for truth Robb. Nassim Taleb, probably the best expert on how humans generally misunderstand risk, wrote an entire book on the subject titled "Antifragile". This extensive discourse on risk confirms that when we try to reduce complex systems to simplistic notions we always end up exposing ourselves to more risk from unintended consequences. He shows that this is exactly what happened in the financial blow up in 2008, so your analogy is spot on. How anyone could infer that your very insightful analysis makes you a racist or holocaust denier is beyond me, although it does confirm they are incapable of rational thought.
Hi Robb, good post. You may want to check out Alex Epstein at the Center For Industrial Progress for a human flourishing centric approach to energy and climate change. https://industrialprogress.com/
Always interesting how holocaust analogies and racist comments are okay as long as you support the preferred narrative, but once you question it, then such analogies and racism are unacceptable and grounds for being cancelled.
But I digress,. When it comes to carbon tunnel vision, I think the larger problem is the reductive depiction of the carbon cycle solely to emissions as measured by a thermostat or scale. Some of the language used like "post carbon" and "zero carbon" further reinforces this reductive mindset. Especially since obviously, we can never be post or zero carbon seeing that carbon is essential for all life on earth. We basically live in a carbon based economy where the fixation, transformation and consumption of carbon is a never ending process. Carbon is the currency of life here on planet earth as so well noted in this great presentation by Keith Berns, Carbonomics: https://youtu.be/zq6FCvEAfh8
So when people take a more holistic, less reductive view, of carbon, the carbon cycle is interdependent on pretty much all the other parameters in your carbon tunnel vision graphic especially the water cycle, health, and biodiversity. The carbon, water and nitrogen cycles are all interdependent and interconnected. You don't have fixation or oxidation of carbon without photosynthesis or hydroxl radicals. You don't have photosynthesis or hydroxyl radicals without plants and their roots sourcing and leaves transpiring water and other phtyochemicals. , So desertification and soil health are also integrals parts of the climate equation.
Thus the real problem is overly facile thinking. Facile thinkers lack the capacity for nuance and tend to be agenda or profit driven rather than science driven. Many also tend to be zealots (eg vegans) who don't seem to realize that the simple obvious solutions to complex problems are more often than not WRONG.
Well said and will check out that video.
Robb, listen to episode 1776 of Joe Rogin talking for 3 hours to a man named Steven E Koonin (Steven E. Koonin is an American theoretical physicist and former director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University. He is also a professor in the Department of Civil and Urban Engineering at NYU's Tandon School of Engineering). the intersection between the Covid authoritarianism and the climate change crazies ("you'll have to eat less meat; it's crickets for you while we jet off to the climate conference to decide your future") is that now the population has gotten accustomed to having their liberties curtailed if an "emergency" warrants. be prepared for sequential "emergencies" from now on.
two old friends refused to stay at our house for a week because we are not vaccinated. we also aren't sick but that point was irrelevant. one of them is HIV positive and should know a thing or two about being ostracized because of a medical condition. they both did, however, come over for dinner one night and were happy to eat our food and drink our wine. the non-HIV one recently told me i had gone to far for noticing the similarities between the political response to covid and the first steps of the Nazis leading up to the final slam of the oven door. i'm not Jewish but Naomi Wolfe has pointed this out too. so have several Holocaust survivors.
as HL Mencken said "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
I've read his book, it is fantastic, will listen to this ASAP.
They are focusing on the thing they can turn into a currency. Carbon credits. But the underlying motivation goal for all of it is eugenics and creating utopia.
It's part of the insanity of those who belong to the Climate Emergency Church. They've bought into the propaganda, just as covidians bought into the media barage regarding the Scamdemic. Once I read Patrick Moore's "Fake Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom" I realized what a bunch of zombies the Climiatites are. Anyone who knows you well and still calls you a Holocaust denier may be beyond help.
That was part of the....IDK, "HOLY SHIT" about that response. I'd worked with this person for years. On a lot of things. I'd say she arrived to extreme wokeism early, and what's interesting is she knew, instinctively I guess, how to weaponize this.
A former member of mine has with a PhD in some sort of plant sex from both Duke and MIT. She and I had a FB “conversation” about Covid and the 6 foot social distancing rule. I argued It was arbitrary. She then somehow turned that into racism. IDK. Maybe my lack of having a plant sex PhD from Duke and MIT prevented me from understanding the correlation. (Sarcasm.)
God bless the annoying, miserable, shitty people. We sure do learn a lot about ourselves from them.
you certainly learn who your real friends are and who you can count on. there are a lot of people who i wouldn't want on an island with me
The myopic vision on climate change / carbon emissions is the exact same myopic vision that governed the response to C19 the past two years. "It's just a mask, what's the big deal" is an awfully one-sided and narrow approach to psychological warfare, particularly for kids. That's just one small sample. The people modeling climate science are the same people who said orders of magnitude more people would die from the virus. Sorry, you have zero of my respect or attention.
The real driver for all of this is oil, not climate change.
In 2019, it's very likely that the peak oil event happened. With 2020 lockdowns reducing oil consumption by abt. 6%, for the first time the unextracted oil reserves have stayed the same as previous year, and would have fell if not lockdowns. This means that from these years forward, the reserves are going to go down. New fields are not keeping up with consumption. At current usage about 50 years remaining.
This can easily be verified by latest BP outlook documents.
Climate change stuff is a politically safe narrative to drive reducing consumption and not killing economy which is driven by growth.
I buy some of that and push back on other elements. Energy IS the thing that makes the world literally "go around" so this is a critical piece, but there have been a lot of peak oil, peak cheap oil predictions that have come and gone due to innovation. I know that will not go on forever, i know the energy density we are seeing is getting worse (costing more and more to get a given unit of oil out of the ground) but some of this is driven by the government, stymieing oil exploration. And where is nuke in all of this?
I think there is truth to what you are saying, just not sure it's the whole enchilada. Now, if we start talking about the eminent collapse of the global financial system, and that being a driver for covid and climate change lockdowns.....now I'm fully signed up!!
I know what you mean regarding peak oil theories. People just need something to be afraid of, out of malice or nature. I'm not sure which yet. So much of it in the last 2 years...
However, oil demand DID catch up with what they call proven reserves in 2019 - I believe this is the factual peal oil definition. Whether things will change, we'll see.
This definitely means one thing, though - oil consumption can not continue to increase, and the resulting consequences from that. ~65% of oil goes to transport, and ~28% goes to products.
They'll probably come out with some alien reactors to maintain their status quo and milk oil while they can. So I'm not too pessimistic, because their greed is sustainable, whereas oil might not be.
Good points and it IS fairly clear we are getting less energy out vs what we are putting IN...that's a big problem.
Had to go look in the book to try and figure out who you were talking about. There are strangely lots of woke women in the paleo sphere. I unfollowed them long ago. Used to buy their books and listen to their podcasts, but couldn’t take it anymore. Thanks for speaking out, it helps to keep me sane! Praying for you and Nicki ;)
The irony there is many of these women were absolutely assailed by CrossFit, Greg glassman etc. They sere literally cancelled by these folks, yet did not appear to learn much.
Apocalypse Never was one of the best books on the environment I have read lately. I am far from an expert and did not agree with everything in the book but the author really makes the case that we already have everything we need to address climate change its just those "in charge" will not do it. With that book and Sacred Cow I at least have a lot of hope that this is a very solvable problem. Thanks for the great post Robb love your stuff.
He started that book off on energy and really (IMO) should have stayed in that track. His research in areas out of his wheelhouse kinda stopped at the wikipedia level. All that said, still a very valuable book, again, for the energy angle AND most importantly, what the climate science really suggests. Unsettled by Koonin is also great in this regard.
It’s incredible being in a country (New Zealand) where we derive most of our export $ from grass fed dairy and beef exports that there’s endless hand wringing and catastrophic predictions about methane emissions. Great upset ensues when I suggest that the carbon cycle is relevant or that maybe equating with fossil fuel methane is not applicable. All research is about emissions and none on sinks. It could be that transpired water from pasture is converted into enough hydroxyl radicals to offset the methane and more but even the farmers don’t fight for their corner. Maybe when a greenhouse gas levy is applied they will present a bill for their methane sinks rather than a charge for emissions.
Keep fighting for truth Robb. Nassim Taleb, probably the best expert on how humans generally misunderstand risk, wrote an entire book on the subject titled "Antifragile". This extensive discourse on risk confirms that when we try to reduce complex systems to simplistic notions we always end up exposing ourselves to more risk from unintended consequences. He shows that this is exactly what happened in the financial blow up in 2008, so your analogy is spot on. How anyone could infer that your very insightful analysis makes you a racist or holocaust denier is beyond me, although it does confirm they are incapable of rational thought.
Hi Robb, good post. You may want to check out Alex Epstein at the Center For Industrial Progress for a human flourishing centric approach to energy and climate change. https://industrialprogress.com/