Sweating through summers

Unlike my life in the old country where I experienced only two seasons--hot, and rainy--my life here in the Pacific Northwest is defined by four seasons.  The changes are gradual at first, and then dramatic enough for us to wonder when the season changed.

Summer begins on the longest day of the year--June 20th--and the weather is forecast to reach a high of 97 degrees on the 21st.

97?

It is only a matter of time before we begin to complain about the bright sun and the heat.  And, of course, I will lead that chant!

I have acclimated to the temperate conditions in this part of the world. Every year, as the temperature rises, I wonder how it can be possible for a boy who played outside under hot and humid conditions to become a wuss who cannot bear even the much lower temperatures.

During my visits to India, it is always a struggle within when it comes to having coffee in the afternoon.  Should I have a hot drink when it is warm all around, or have something cooler?

Of course, such a question never came up when I was young.  Hot coffee or masala tea on a hot afternoon was what we had.  Was it because we didn't have a fridge for the longest time?  Or, is it because it really helps drinking something hot on a hot day?

While having hot coffee on summer afternoons might sound strange, it is not stranger than people licking ice cream on cones while walking on cold winter evenings here in my adopted home.  So, if having ice cold stuff in winter is ok, is there any benefit in drinking hot coffee in the summer?

This has been a matter of scientific inquiry, too.

There are all sorts of receptors in all sorts of nerves, but the nerves in the tongue have a lot of one particular receptor that responds to heat. It's called the TRPV1 receptor, if anyone wants to know.

So when you eat or drink something hot, these receptors get that heat signal, and that tells the nerve to let the brain know what's going on.

When the brain gets the message "It's hot in here," it turns on the mechanism we have to cool ourselves off: sweating.

Yes, the hot drink makes you hotter ... but it does something else, too.

"The hot drink somehow has an effect on your systemic cooling mechanisms, which exceeds its actual effect in terms of heating your body."

Aha!

But, what if the conditions are also so humid that the sweat doesn't vaporize and cool the body but instead sticks around?

This is the nightmarish scenario that Kim Stanley Robinson describes in the opening chapters of Ministry for the Future.   Robinson emphasizes the wet-bulb temperature, which translates the effect of the thermometer reading after accounting for evaporative cooling.  This cooling does not happen at 100% relative humidity. 

So, if the temperatures are rising in the old country, with humidity levels the same as they were when I was a kid, then sweat as a cooling mechanism doesn't really work as it once did.  Instead, sweating adds to the misery.  As Wikipedia puts it, "Even heat-adapted people cannot carry out normal outdoor activities past a wet-bulb temperature of 32 °C (90 °F), equivalent to a heat index of 55 °C (130 °F)."

Here in the Pacific Northwest, the summer months are practically drought times, and the humidity levels drop.  While we never experience terrible wet-bulb temperatures, we begin sweating at the first report of forest fires, which are becoming more and more frequent.

A nugget of life

In the summer of 2013, I blogged about meat that is grown in labs and bioreactors, which are essentially the prototypes of the factories of the future.  I wrote then: "It is only a matter of time before we perfect such techniques and produce beef or other animal foods without the animals."

It is not that I am a cave-dwelling carnivore.  Far from that.  As with any other development, this too fascinated me.  It interested me so much that I wove this news item into appropriate contexts in my introductory classes.  Student response was typically and overwhelmingly one-sided--meat that doesn't come from killed animals but is produced in factories is unnatural.

I would then nod along, and ask them if they eat pasta.  Of course they did.  "Isn't pasta produced in factories?  Have any of you tried making pasta?"

Once--and only once--a young woman's hand went up.  "Sometimes I make pasta with my grandmother," she said.  And then added that it was a lot of work.

My point was this: If students eat "factory-produced" pasta and hot dogs and whatever else, why should they view the lab-grown meat any differently.

I love this Socratic tradition, which I might not get to practice for too long though.

Seven years after that blog post, the world is now getting closer to making cultured-meat a reality in the marketplace.

The first lab-grown, or cultured, meat product has been given the green light to be sold for human consumption. In the landmark approval, regulators in Singapore granted Just, a San Francisco–based startup, the right to sell cultured chicken—in the form of chicken nuggets—to the public.

Just had been working with the regulators for the past two years and was formally granted approval on November 26.

You need a reminder on how this meat is produced?

Most cultured meat is made in a similar way. Cells are taken from an animal, often via a biopsy or from an established animal cell line. These cells are then fed a nutrient broth and placed in a bioreactor, where they multiply until there are enough to harvest for use in meatballs or nuggets.

There is no killing involved. "The cells for Eat Just’s product are grown in a 1,200-litre bioreactor and then combined with plant-based ingredients."   The fact that there is no killing involved makes all the difference to many millions. 

Of course, the killing is not the only issue, which is why there are many firms in the race:

Dozens of firms are developing cultivated chicken, beef and pork, with a view to slashing the impact of industrial livestock production on the climate and nature crises, as well as providing cleaner, drug-free and cruelty-free meat. Currently, about 130 million chickens are slaughtered every day for meat, and 4 million pigs. By weight, 60% of the mammals on earth are livestock, 36% are humans and only 4% are wild.

For now, as with any innovation, the costs are high, and the process is energy-intensive.  But, again as with most technologies, scaling will rapidly decrease costs and the demand for energy.

At some point, the US-based research/entrepreneur will go global--that's the plan: 

"We didn't work two years to get the approval just to sit on this," says Tetrick. "After Singapore we'll move to the US and Western Europe." But US availability won't be that simple: A regulatory process for cultured meat doesn't yet exist between the USDA and FDA

I imagine that tRump, who famously eats steak with ketchup, would have freaked out with this news story!

There are interesting parallels between the cultured meat and electric car sectors: Both are introducing a technology that can inspire initial resistance from consumers and existential alarm from conventional producers, both involve a major shift in infrastructure, and both need some degree of regulatory air cover to succeed.

It has been a long, long way from the African Savanna, and there is no going back.

Make vegetables great again!

Sure, there are 70 million fellow citizens who are in mourning.  I don't care.  

We have taken our country back from the sociopath and his followers.  I am ready to move on to pontificating about stuff like I usually do, even when I have no idea what I am talking about.

When I was a kid, cauliflower was rare.  I hadn't even heard of something called broccoli.  Chances are that if I had been asked what broccoli is, even into my teens I would have said it was perhaps a type of bacterium--like E. Coli.

After coming to America, it has been an introduction to a world of vegetables and fruits that I didn't know even existed.  Patty pan squash?  Come on!

Or strawberries and raspberries.  I had read about them, but didn't taste one until I came to California.  The first blackberries that I had were after I moved to Oregon.

Years ago, a neighbor gave me a small packet of quinoa and said that I might like to cook and eat it.  I had never heard of quinoa until then, and I certainly didn't know how to pronounce it either.

My point here is this: In five decades, the varieties of fruits and vegetables that I consume has increased phenomenally.  There is more that I don't know about. 

Extrapolate from all these, and I could hypothesize that there are way more known-unknowns that we need to make a lot more people aware of.  Especially because of climate change:

The old strategies of improving size and yield are no longer enough. A couple centuries of human greenhouse emissions have caught up with us. With the world likely to get at least 2 degrees Celsius warmer, on average, by the middle of the century, and with extreme storms, rains, and drought already happening more frequently, growing conditions are changing faster than farmers and their crops can adapt.

Diversity is the key to our healthy future:

Solving the food-and-climate crisis will require going back to basics, finding ways to make our mix of crops broader rather than even narrower. ... We can do that again, adding overlooked crops to the mainstream food supply and working to broaden the agricultural gene pool after centuries of going the other way. That adjustment will help ensure that farmers will have crops suitable for the extreme growing conditions they are likely to encounter in the coming decades.

“We haven’t done a very good job of maximizing diversity,” Lippman says. “And diversity is what you need to win the battle of climate change.”

Like with orphan crops:

ones that are cultivated on a small scale in some parts of the world, but that have not benefited from breeding and research to the same extent that major crops have. Some of them are already suited to relatively hot or dry conditions. Because they have not gone through the same extensive breeding as corn, soy, and wheat, the orphans have more untapped potential.

Quinoa is an example of an orphan crop.  Though it was consumed for centuries in the Andes, the rest of us had no idea about it.  I knew about it barely a decade ago.  Once when visiting with a way-out-there in the extended family cousin, I was pleasantly surprised that the cousin's mother was making a quinoa uppuma.  Adapting a new grain or vegetable is not a big deal--coming to know about is the hurdle. 

Lippman’s research group at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory has been investigating orphans in the Solanaceae family, a diverse group that includes tomatoes, potatoes, eggplants, and peppers. At least 25 orphan crops exist in this family, and there are many other uncultivated wild relatives that have crop potential. Lippman is particularly interested in the domesticated African eggplant, grown for its fruit, and a wild relative, Solanum anguivi, whose leaves are eaten. Only local communities eat these species, because there hasn’t been much interest in developing them into mainstream food crops. “There are dozens of Solanaceae plants that have more widespread agricultural potential than we currently realize,” Lippman says.

The next time somebody tells you that we cannot feed more humans, ask them to explain their logic.  And then talk to them about the orphan plants.  Help them understand that not everybody on this planet eats the same stuff, and that all of us could benefit from a lot more diversified portfolio.  "We missed the chance to stop climate change, but Lippman believes we can still win the race to remake agriculture and safeguard the food supply for humankind."

The campaign is heating up

In school, back in the old country, when learning about deserts around the world, we came across a name that summed up what awaited one on a miserably hot day in the desert: Death Valley.

There is simply no way that I would have imagined then that I would live in the United States, and for a few years not far from Death Valley itself.

However, visiting Death Valley never happened.  It turned out that visiting Death Valley and staying at the historic inn during the couple of pleasant months required long-term planning and committing to the dates month in advance.

Death Valley is in the news today: It "hit a scorching 130 degrees on Sunday, marking what could be the hottest temperature on Earth since at least 1913."

130!

The World Meteorological Organization tweeted that this "would be the hottest global temperature officially recorded since 1931."

We can't merely shrug this off though, in a world in which we have been experiencing a warming trend.  A year ago, on July 2nd, Shahdad, Iran, registered 127.6 degrees on the thermometer.  Every year, we are told that it was hotter than the previous year.

Bill McKibben writes that we might be looking at a century of crises:

Because humans have fundamentally altered the physical workings of planet Earth, this is going to be a century of crises, many of them more dangerous than what we’re living through now. The main question is whether we’ll be able to hold the rise in temperature to a point where we can, at great expense and suffering, deal with those crises coherently, or whether they will overwhelm the coping abilities of our civilization.

We can't even console ourselves with the Casablanca line, "We'll Always Have Paris."  tRump withdrew from the Paris Agreement, remember?

So, what are we looking at?

McKibben quotes from the book by Matthew Lynas that he reviews in the essay:

If we stay on the current business-as-usual trajectory, we could see two degrees as soon as the early 2030s, three degrees around mid-century, and four degrees by 2075 or so. If we’re unlucky with positive feedbacks…from thawing permafrost in the Arctic or collapsing tropical rainforests, then we could be in for five or even six degrees by century’s end.

Keep in mind that the "degrees" are in Celsius.  One degree in Celsius is about 1.8 degrees difference in the Fahrenheit scale.

tRump does not want to "stay on the current business-as-usual trajectory"--he is bent on accelerating the process with his populist talk about coal (and oil and natural gas too.)   The Arctic is for drilling! So, we don't even need to wait for 2030!

The record-setting heatwaves of 2019 “will be considered an unusually cool summer in the three-degree world”; over a billion people would live in zones of the planet “where it becomes impossible to safely work outside artificially cooled environments, even in the shade.” The Amazon dies back, permafrost collapses. Change feeds on itself: at three degrees the albedo, or reflectivity, of the planet is grossly altered, with white ice that bounces sunshine back out to space replaced by blue ocean or brown land that absorbs those rays, amplifying the process.
And then comes four degrees

You don't want to know what happens!

While there is no vaccine to protect us from the warming and the effects, there are other things that are happening.  Like:

The price per kilowatt hour of solar power has fallen 82 percent since 2010—this spring in the sunny deserts of Dubai the winning bid for what will be the world’s largest solar array came in at not much more than a penny. The price of wind power has fallen nearly as dramatically. Now batteries are whooshing down the same curve.

There is hope.  Possibilities.  "The climate plan announced by the Biden campaign last month is a credible start toward the necessary effort."

Vote tRump out of office.  And unseat all the Republicans who continue to deny the science and reality of global warming and climate change.

And yet it moves.

63 million Americans were fooled by a con man and they don't even know it.  Their Dear Leader is fooled time and again.  If only all of them understood something that is fundamental: "nature cannot be fooled."

Scientists have always worried that nature cannot be fooled, which is why some of them spent a lot of their time, energy, and money worrying about the next global pandemic.  Viruses abound in nature--I read somewhere that there are more than 500 strains of viruses in bats alone!--and they cannot be easily fooled by humans.  They do what they do in order to survive and prosper, just like any other life form does.

But then the 63 million couldn't care about science.  They actively engage in denying the very science that has made their lives also fantastic.

They denied, and continue to deny, the global climatic changes that have happened because of human actions over the past 200 years.

They denied, and continue to deny, the natural selection and evolution, and, therefore, the idea of mutation that makes possible for a virus to jump from bats to humans.

Nature cannot be fooled.

Now, 7.8 billion humans are terrified of a virus that we cannot see.

In this blog, and elsewhere, I have long been worried about the willful ignorance of the ideological crackpots who are adamant deniers of scientific understanding.  Every once in a while, some of those deniers have exhausted me (like here) by trying to debate on this issue--and this was not the kind of time-wasting that I like.

My faith in science is not like the blind faith that the 63 million--including this person--have in their Dear Leader.  My faith in science is based on logic and evidence.  The facts--not the alternative facts that the 63 million believe.

In my case, the faith is tested every day--the scientific method doesn't care for holy cows.

the word faith doesn’t mean “belief without good evidence,” but “confidence derived from scientific tests and repeated, documented experience.” You have faith (i.e., confidence) that the sun will rise tomorrow because it always has, and there’s no evidence that the Earth has stopped rotating or the sun has burnt out. You have faith in your doctor because, presumably, she has treated you and others successfully, and you know that what she prescribes is tested scientifically.

I wouldn't deny the evidence in front of me that the science-denying maniacs are in control of our lives.  But, this is not the first time that science-deniers have held the power.  It used to be way worse.

Thinkers like Galileo learnt from the experiences in the past and understood how important it was for scientists to be political in order to make sure that science trumps denial.

There’s an old belief that truth will always overcome error. Alas, history tells us something different. Without someone to fight for it, to put error on the defensive, truth may languish. It may even be lost, at least for some time. No one understood this better than the renowned Italian scientist Galileo Galilei.

Therefore, the "scientists putting their careers, reputations, and even their health on the line to educate the public can take heart from Galileo, whose courageous resistance led the way."

Those amongst us who have faith in science may have lost a battle or two, but we shall win the war against deniers.

Be the change you wish to see

When it comes to climate change, many of us who want to do something about it are often left asking ourselves and others, "What should I be doing as an individual?"

Mary Heglar responds to that very question in an essay that is simple and direct.  And her bottom-line is also simple and direct:

We don't know that special thing that you bring to the movement—only you know that. And we can't wait to see the magic that will happen now that you're part of our world.

Only you know that.  Yes, YOU!

But, it is complicated.  Four years ago, in this post, I wrote:

how would one go about convincing people that they have to make some serious lifestyle changes?
...
As that grand old man from the old country said:

If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. ... We need not wait to see what others do.

The following is a slightly edited version of the post from April 23, 2016.
********************

This opinion essay at the Scientific American explores what ought to be done:

Social science can point to effective ways communicators can help the public distinguish fact from untruth, and hopeful understanding of how science might sidestep contention in the first place.

Good luck on social scientists helping ways in which the public can "distinguish fact from untruth."

It is not as if the public is in the dark about the lifestyle aspects of climate change; Pew Research Center notes this from its global survey:

Even in the US.  Yes:

Even in the U.S., a country known for its technological advances, only 23% believe technology alone can solve climate change. 

If so, then how would one go about convincing people that they have to make some serious lifestyle changes?

Here's where things get complicated.  I suppose it can easily become a game theory scenario where people think it is a great idea--as long as others do it.  But then everybody waits around for others to implement changes!

As that grand old man from the old country said:

If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. ... We need not wait to see what others do.

Is climate change stressing you?

I did a quick check to spot my oldest entry relating climate change and the food that we eat.  Looks like this from 2014 might be it,  though there may be a few more from prior years--I don't have the patience to do a more thorough check!

Until I arrived in this land of the free and the home of the brave, I was a strict vegetarian. Even when my vegetarian friends and siblings talked about having tasted animal food--this was back in the old country--I remained steadfast in my convictions.

In the adopted land, I slowly drifted away from the staunch vegetarianism.  But, it was not as if I could not live without getting animal protein in me every single day. I could not care if I didn't have a piece of chicken or a burger. But, it certainly made things easier, logistically speaking, especially when traveling.

Over the past years, evidence relating the food we eat to climate change has been piling up. 

It is the same with many other aspects too.  Do we really need more evidence about the harmful effects of plastics, coal, ...?

We continue to gather evidence, however, perhaps with the hope that some day we will change our behaviors, and we will also change the societal decisions on these.

So ... "how can we begin to move the numbers?"

WRI’s authors provide some suggestions, including drawing on lessons from marketing, celebrity endorsements, packaging, and product display to change the cultural norms around meat. The government can also employ some powerful sticks and carrots, including taxes, subsidies, and the power to make buying decisions for schools, federal offices, and the military, the report states.

The government ... under this tRump administration couldn't be bothered with climate change.  Working through "alternative facts," the current government does not even care for evidence!

Maybe the market is the one that will have come to our rescue.  Mission Impossible!

In addition to the climate change angle, a plant-rich diet can also help reduce stress!

The collection of evidence is compelling that reducing food waste, increasing plant-rich diets, practising conscious consumption and improving food systems can help to improve mental and physical health and displace anxiety.

And, to top things off, vegetarian meals can be awesomely and pleasingly colorful; if only people understood that vegetarian food is simply fantastic!

In the bowl: Baked yellow beets and burrata with a white balsamic vinegar reduction (with honey and vanilla)
On the plate: Basque peppers--pan sauteed with olive oil--and crackers with muffaletta

Anger, anxiety, and adolescence

When I was a kid, then a tween, and then a teen, I was angry and anxious about a whole bunch of things.  There was one issue that was a non-issue.  It never even blipped in my radar.  There was simply no need to.  It is like asking me whether I was addicted to Instagram during my high school years.

That non-issue is a huge issue for many of today's kids, tweens, and teens: Climate change.

Young people, absorbing the gravity of these warnings, have become the defining face of the climate movement — marching, protesting and berating their elders for bequeathing them an uncertain, unstable future. Underlying their anger, though, is another a-word: anxiety. And it’s something they’re increasingly voicing. Teachers hear their students talk about panic attacks when wildfires break out, and psychologists face young patients weeping about their fear of never having a family.

I would think that most of these kids are not from Republican families--after all, their Dear Leader comforts them that there is nothing to worry about an issue that is nothing but a hoax!

As climate change continues unabated, parents, teachers and medical professionals across the country find themselves face-to-face with a quandary: How do you raise a generation to look toward the future with hope when all around them swirls a message of apparent hopelessness? How do you prepare today’s children for a world defined by environmental trauma without inflicting more trauma yourself? And where do you find the line between responsible education and undue alarmism?

For years, when I have discussed in my classes impacts on the natural environment, I have suggested to students that it will be an issue through their lives and not mine because I will soon check out.  I have also reminded them that the issue is not about the science but is all political, which is why students have a much greater responsibility in working on this outside of the classroom.  I often remind them about this:

Transportation (cars, buses, trucks, and planes) leads in greenhouse gas emissions, while electricity (coal and natural-gas power plants) is a close second. Industrial goods and services are third; buildings, fourth; and agriculture, fifth.
This way of measuring blame, however, misses something crucial: people. These industries are spouting carbon because customers demand their products: travel, electronics, entertainment, food, all sorts of stuff.

Almost always, I end up talking about carbon pricing.  But then, who listens to me, eh!

Source

"“Eco-anxiety” or “climate depression” is playing out in real terms among young people, sometimes in extreme ways":

Sarah Niles, an 18-year-old from Alabama, told me that her fears about climate change have simply become a part of her life. “I feel like in my peer group, you just go right from talking about polar bears dying to ‘Did you see what Maya posted on Snapchat?’ Nobody has a filter to adjust,” Niles says. “It’s like, the ice caps are melting and my hypothetical children will never see them, but also I have a calculus test tomorrow.”

Frankly, I have no idea how to be encouraging to kids, tweens, and teens!  I do my best to remind them that they have immense power to effect change--as consumers in the marketplace, and as citizens in the political domain that also has the power to regulate the marketplace.  But, like Sarah Niles, most students seem to operate along the same lines of talking climate change and Instagram and midterm exams all in the same breath.

As much as a cynic I am, and a decorated General Malaise I know I am, I am far from being an alarmist when I talk with students.  If anything, my faculty colleagues seem to think that I am one of those right-wing Republican nutcases who doesn't worry about social issues!  In my classes, I often point to a range of solutions. Not pie-in-the-sky ones, but feasible solutions.  Which is why I agree with this professor's approach:

This past fall, she added a second lesson about solutions, highlighting the drop in the cost of renewable energy and improvements in battery technology for storing clean energy. It’s a strategy Duffy says is necessary for any climate communicator, but especially one working with young minds. “There’s a danger in having the instruction emphasize climate catastrophe,” she says. “It’s tempting to say how bad things are, how much we need to stop it. But at some point you’ve accidentally said this is a foregone conclusion. We can overemphasize how scary it is to the point where people feel hopeless and panicked.”

Yep.  One of my favorites is to show them how rapidly the energy sources have changed in a mere 150 years.  I encourage them to extrapolate from those trends.  And boy that seems to change their frameworks!

The kids are alright.  We older adults are the ones who have created problems for them.  Especially the really old adults in one major political party here in America.  They will, forever, stand accused!

Slow cooking

Judging a post by its title would deceive you into thinking that this is yet another post on sanitas per escam.  It is not.

Instead, it is about CO2 emissions.

CO2 emissions were on course to rise 0.6 percent this year—slower than previous years but still a world away from what is needed to keep global warming in check.
In three peer-reviewed studies, authors attributed the rise to "robust growth" in natural gas and oil, which offset significant falls in coal use in the United States and Europe.

📈 411.48 parts per million (ppm) #CO2 in the atmosphere December 6, 2019 📈 Up from 408.21 ppm 1 year ago 📈 Mauna Loa Observatory @NOAA data & graphic: https://t.co/MZIEphYygh 📈 https://t.co/DpFGQoYEwb tracking: https://t.co/PTTkLiPGm2 🙏 View & share often 🙏 pic.twitter.com/O3lRViorBh

— CO2 earth (@CO2_earth) December 7, 2019

Where does the slow cooking come in then?

The new data shows that natural gas, which is less polluting than coal but still a fossil fuel, has become the biggest driver of emissions growth globally in recent years. ...
“Natural gas may produce fewer carbon emissions than coal, but that just means you cook the planet a bit more slowly,” said Dr. Peters. “And that’s before even getting into the worries about methane leaks” from gas infrastructure.

The fact that we are being slowly cooked, as opposed to a quick broiling, is not comforting, however.

India is key when it comes to further slowing down the cooking:

India, which is trying to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, was perhaps the biggest surprise in the new data. India’s emissions are expected to rise a mere 1.8 percent this year after an 8 percent increase in 2018.
Some of that slowdown, the researchers noted, can be explained by weaker economic growth and an unexpectedly strong monsoon season that allowed the country to generate more electricity from its emissions-free hydroelectric dams and less from its coal plants. But India’s government is also pursuing big plans to promote solar power and electric vehicles, and it remains to be seen whether those policies can help the country constrain future emissions.

But, we need to always keep this in mind:

The carbon footprint of fully industrialized nations remains far higher, however—both in terms of historic emissions and on a per-person basis. America’s per capita oil consumption, for instance, is 16 times greater than India’s.While these wealthier nations are now making a tiny amount of progress on emission reductions, they also relied on fossil fuels to drive their economic growth for more than a century. So these countries have a clear responsibility, as well as a greater financial ability, to cut emissions deeper and faster than emerging economies. They should also help those countries meet as much of their growth as possible with clean energy technologies, by providing low-cost financing, technological know-how, and other forms of support.

Try convincing tRump and his 63 million toadies about this!

Don't tell my heart, my achy breaky heart

I am acutely tuned into the weather.  All the time. It has been that way for many years. 

Maybe because right from my childhood, I was always listening to my great uncles and the people in the villages talk about the rains, water level in the canals, wind storms wiping out what would have been a bumper banana crop, ... So much so that I would get an uneasy feeling if there were reports that the monsoon had failed.  It felt personal.

It continues to be personal.  Acutely so.  There are times when I have had to calm myself down.

I am an environmental nutcase.

I have mentioned in plenty in this blog about what a paradise this part of the world is.  I often worry that climate change is messing up the paradise. 

The effects of a weirding climate are even worse in the old country; I have stopped reading news reports primarily because it aches my heart that we humans have made such a mess of life.

I can, therefore, relate to people writing and talking about climate trauma and eco despair--even though to most outsiders I don't ever come across as an environmental nutcase.

In the Red Hook workshop, which used the pioneering decades-old work of the environmental grief activist Joanna Macy, the facilitator, Jess Serrante, said something that hit me like a thunderclap.
“Our pain for what is happening is the other side of the coin of our love for the world,” she told us. “We feel such depths of despair because we love the planet so much.”  

I do. Which is why many times I have embedded in my posts Carl Sagan's moving, poetic, note about our pale blue dot--"a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam."

There is always an underlying panic, I think, that the paradise won't be a paradise for long.  The writer says it well for me too:

I found myself paying greedy attention to the rustling trees, the flutter of teeny birds. I felt a visceral thrum of gratitude for what still exists, for what has to be fought for, while it still can be beheld.

Roaches, monkeys, and man

The undergraduate years gave me the time and space for me to figure out how I viewed many aspects of life, including religion.  Like a pendulum that violently swings, suggesting instability and the entire structure falling apart, the violence within was also reflected in my words and action.  In retrospect, it is so clear that I could have either had a complete and total mental breakdown or I could have achieved clarity on how to move forward.  I am immensely glad, and relieved, that I did not suffer a breakdown.

All that was from thinking about what I had known from the years of brainwashing.  I had yet to start any serious reading and thinking about how screwed up other religions might be.  Graduate school provided me that opportunity too.

While I did not take courses on religions, many of the books and articles that I read, and the lectures that I listened to, gave me insights.  One of those was about the relationship between god, nature, and man.

In the traditional approaches in the various strands of Hindu faith, there is plenty of nature worship.  Mountains are sacred as are rivers and trees.  And, of course, even killing the damn roaches troubled the really faithful ones.  But, apparently not so in the Judaeo-Christian framework.  Why?  The Bible said so:

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

God rules over man, who rules over nature.  A relationship that is very different from what the faith in the old country told me.

Of course, just because people say they are religious does not mean they truly mean it. Many devout brahmins, for instance, devour meat.  And there are nature-worshiping hippies among Christians.  But, the broad framework suggests that the faithful might look at nature differently because their views stem from what their religions instructed them.

Do evangelical Christians in the US then put into practice a view that man rules over nature?  And, therefore, do they think differently from many of us who are worried about environmental crises and climate change in particular?

The following excerpt should settle that, it seems:

Here, for example, is what a church youth minister had to say about environmental care: “If we have the opportunity we should help take care of this planet that we’ve been given. Having said that, I also believe that the value of human life is higher than the value of a whale, or a species of monkey.”
It’s not that evangelicals don’t care about the environment. It’s that they care about people more.

Of course, the people that evangelicals care about don't live in shitholes--but, that is a post for another day!

Meera Subramanian worked on a series to find the middle ground in these environment discussions.  In one, she talked to a bunch of students at the Harvard of the evangelicals--Wheaton College.

While many evangelicals are preoccupied with the long-term state of human souls and the protection of the unborn, Diego and the other students I met at Wheaton are also considering other eternal implications and a broader definition of pro-life. They are concerned about the lifespan of climate pollutants that will last in the atmosphere for thousands of years, and about the lives of the poor and weak who are being disproportionately harmed by the effects of those greenhouse gases. 

But, as much as I found the world a challenging place back when I was a teenager, these students also are in a tough spot:

It can be tough to be an evangelical who cares about climate change, Chelsey said, "because the environmental activists don't trust you and the evangelicals hate you." Or they could hate you

If only we could engage in serious and sincere discussions all over the world on the relationship between humans and the natural world that envelops us.  If only!

By reading this, you contributed to climate change!

Work emails from one sender always comes with this signature line: "Save a tree, don't print me."

Yep, the words are in green to convey the point in case it was not otherwise clear.

It sounds wonderful, doesn't it.

And then there is the reality: "our collective internet traffic contributes enormously to climate change."  Of course, this is not the first time I am blogging about our digital consumption and climate change.  We simply don't often think of our cyber-interactions as contributing to climate change.   For whatever reasons, it is beyond our imagination.

How huge is our collective impact?

Digital technologies have even surpassed the aerospace industry in terms of carbon emissions. While aviation's share of global CO2 emissions is estimated to be around 2.5%, and rising, nearly 4% of all CO2 emissions can now be attributed to global data transfer and the necessary infrastructure

More than aviation!

The largest share of that growth is now video traffic: 80% of all data transferred online is video data, with nearly 60% of that being online video, meaning streaming videos stored on a server and viewed remotely, via sites like Netflix, YouTube or Vimeo.

Raise your hands if you are willing to give up using Netflix, YouTube, ...

I am sure it is only a matter of time before somebody comes up with Netflix-shaming, similar to "flight-shame"

[Greta] Thunberg is the most celebrated of a small but expanding tribe of environmentalists who eschew air travel: “non-flyers,” as some of them call themselves. Non-flyers are not typically afraid of flying—at least not in the usual sense. They do not fear that a plane will malfunction but that it will function exactly as intended. If Thunberg had flown from London to New York and back, her share of the flight’s CO2 emissions would have amounted to roughly a ton: more than the average annual per capita emissions in fifty-six of the world’s countries

So, does it mean that we need to give up flying?  And give up our digital devices and the internet?  No more Googling?

I was reminded of a New Yorker cartoon from a few years ago in which two cave men talk about the clean air that they have.  I googled for it (ha!):

Source

Here's what I practice, and suggest:
1. Moderation (or, if you prefer, reducetarianism).
2. Vote.

Fire and Ice

Nope, this is not about Robert Frost's poem.  Though, it might be a good time--actually anytime is a good time--to read that.

Fire and ice--in addition to hate that tRump has been spreading--are very much defining the hell that we are currently in.  Glaciers and ice sheets are melting.  The Amazon is on fire.  The end of the world is nigh!

What if climate scientists had been underestimating the pace and impacts of climate change?

When new observations of the climate system have provided more or better data, or permitted us to reevaluate old ones, the findings for ice extent, sea level rise and ocean temperature have generally been worse than earlier prevailing views.

For a moment, set aside any views that you may have about climate change.  Do not pause to think about the science and the complexity of understanding climate change.  Ask yourself a simple question.  Over the years, have you read any news item that makes you feel that there has been deluge of good reports that the natural world around us is getting healthier and better?

What if the story is that scientists have been underplaying the climate change issue all along?  And not because of any conspiracy, but because the scientific methods compels them to be a lot more cautious and conservative in their estimates?

Almost four years ago, during the monsoon season, Chennai experienced rains like it never has.  The reservoirs filled up fast and water had to be released in order to prevent any damage to the dams.  This sent more water into the already flooded canals and rivers and the city was flooded.  Most of the city was cut off.

A few weeks after that, in the column that I wrote, I linked this to climate change, and that the Chennai flood was a result of climate weirding.  Pat came a response from an old high school friend, who is a climate scientist.  He wrote to me that scientists were working on this attribution and that they did not have conclusive evidence, yet. (Update: His reaction was to a column later--after the Cyclone Vardah that I wrote about.)

That is how scientists work.  While their personal feelings might allow them to make the leap similar to what I did, professional integrity requires them to seek the evidence first.

Which is also why I have always felt that maybe climate scientists have been underestimating the impacts.  In a class for freshman students this fall, I  planned to make them think about this aspect--that the news about climate change is telling a wrong story, and that it really is worse than what we think it is.

This is also why the Scientific American piece appeals to me.

Among the factors that appear to contribute to underestimation is the perceived need for consensus, or what we label univocality: the felt need to speak in a single voice. Many scientists worry that if disagreement is publicly aired, government officials will conflate differences of opinion with ignorance and use this as justification for inaction. Others worry that even if policy makers want to act, they will find it difficult to do so if scientists fail to send an unambiguous message. Therefore, they will actively seek to find their common ground and focus on areas of agreement; in some cases, they will only put forward conclusions on which they can all agree.

Primarily because the overwhelming majority of the population is not scientists and it is difficult for us to wrap our minds about ideas like statistical significance and confidence limits and probability and ... so, "The drive toward consensus may therefore be an attempt to present the findings of the assessment as matters of fact rather than judgment."

Consider a case in which most scientists think that the correct answer to a question is in the range 1–10, but some believe that it could be as high as 100. In such a case, everyone will agree that it is at least 1–10, but not everyone will agree that it could be as high as 100. Therefore, the area of agreement is 1–10, and this is reported as the consensus view. Wherever there is a range of possible outcomes that includes a long, high-end tail of probability, the area of overlap will necessarily lie at or near the low end. Error bars can be (and generally are) used to express the range of possible outcomes, but it may be difficult to achieve consensus on the high end of the error estimate.

Underestimation happens.

And, therefore, this: "They may also consciously or unconsciously pull back from reporting on extreme outcomes."  Which is exactly how my friend responded to my column on the flood in Chennai and climate change.

So, in case nobody ever warned you ... lemme do this for you.  After all, I am General Malaise!  The pace of climate change is far worse than you think it is.

Where's the beef?

I first wrote about it six years ago, almost to the date.  There was no way that I could not appreciate the moment.  I was confident that it was going to be a big part of the future.

Later, I talked about it with students, even had them read news reports and commentaries. I talked about it with people whenever the topic came up.  A couple of times, I even bought it from the store and tried it at home.  I was sure that I came across as a madman, but I never wavered; so confident I was about it being the future.

What is it that I am referring to?

Meat that is not really meat.

I wrote six years ago:

It is only a matter of time before we perfect such techniques and produce beef or other animal foods without the animals.  All the old definitions on what foods can or cannot be consumed will have to be redefined.

And then Burger King introduced the Impossible Whopper--"100% Whopper, 0% beef."

The news today is that after the test marketing, Burger King is going nationwide with the Impossible Whopper.

The world’s second largest fast food chain is rolling out the Impossible Whopper nationwide at all of its 7,200 U.S. locations for the next month as it tests the potential demand for the meaty-tasting meatless patty.

When such a powerful company adopts the beefless beef, hey, we are well beyond the tipping point.  It, ahem, beefs up the market:

Burger King wasn’t the first chain to see the value in adding Impossible Burgers to the menu. Roughly a year ago, White Castle became the first major fast food chain to offer an Impossible Slider on its menu. The burgers can also be found at more upscale fast-casual restaurant chains like Bareburger, Applebee’s, Red Robin, and Five Napkin Burger joints.

Burger King going full-speed on meatless meat has its own downside:

For months, many restaurants across the country have been unable to stock the soy-based patties, which taste remarkably beefy. Impossible Foods, their Redwood City maker, couldn’t keep up with rising demand — and even restaurants that had previously served the burgers couldn’t get them. The reason, just possibly, was that the company had promised to supply Impossible Whoppers to 7,300 Burger King locations by the end of the year.
“It disappeared off our shelves and then showed up at Burger King across the street,” said Christian Gainsley, owner of the Bernal Heights restaurant Outer Orbit. “It felt like a betrayal.”

Success is a wonderful thing!

Impossible Foods’ recent wins come as its chief rival, Beyond Meat, is raking in piles of cash as a publicly traded company and building up a sizable war chest to conduct research and development for new products.
Impossible Foods has raised nearly $700 million to date as a private company. Its backers include  Khosla Ventures,  Bill Gates, Google Ventures, Horizons Ventures, UBS, Viking Global Investors, Temasek, Sailing Capital and Open Philanthropy Project.

These alt-meat products are derived from plants.  And then there is the other approach--growing meat in labs from animal cells, and R&D there has been on an accelerating path.

Why are these important?  For two reasons. One, the ethics of killing animals.  Second, the impact on the environment--our meat consumption is not sustainable in its current structure.

Livestock raised for food already contribute about 15% of the world’s global greenhouse-gas emissions. (You may have heard that if cows were a country, it would be the world’s third biggest emitter.) A quarter of the planet’s ice-free land is used to graze them, and a third of all cropland is used to grow food for them. A growing population will make things worse. It’s estimated that with the population expected to rise to 10 billion, humans will eat 70% more meat by 2050. Greenhouse gases from food production will rise by as much as 92%.
In January a commission of 37 scientists reported in The Lancet that meat’s damaging effects not only on the environment but also on our health make it “a global risk to people and the planet.” In October 2018 a study in Nature found that we will need to change our diets significantly if we’re not to irreparably wreck our planet’s natural resources.

If you are like me, it has been decades since you went to the Burger King, correct? Well, head on there, and check out the Impossible Whopper and be a part of the future!

Are you a Parrhesiastes

Record high day time temperatures. Record high night time low temperatures.

But, the damned Republicans won't even allow the two word phrase "climate change" to be uttered!  How fucked up are they?  Don't they have children and grandchildren whose futures they worry about?  Do they believe that they can somehow live in a bubble, like how they lead lives insulated from us browns and non-Christians?

Scientists being scientists, well, in their reports they don't use words like "fucked up."  Instead, they carefully phrase it like this: "natural causes are not sufficient from our data to actually cause the spatial pattern and the warming rate that we are observing now."  And what we are observing now is unparalleled.

The speed and extent of current global warming exceeds any similar event in the past 2,000 years, researchers say.
They show that famous historic events like the "Little Ice Age" don't compare with the scale of warming seen over the last century.
The research suggests that the current warming rate is higher than any observed previously.

If only the fucked up party, aka, the GOP, would read and listen!  And if only 63 million hadn't voted to power a mad sociopath!

Even if the sociopath is removed from the White House through impeachment, 2020 becomes a critical time:

The sense that the end of next year is the last chance saloon for climate change is becoming clearer all the time.
"I am firmly of the view that the next 18 months will decide our ability to keep climate change to survivable levels and to restore nature to the equilibrium we need for our survival," said Prince Charles, speaking at a reception for Commonwealth foreign ministers recently.

Why so?

One of the understated headlines in last year's IPCC report was that global emissions of carbon dioxide must peak by 2020 to keep the planet below 1.5C.
Current plans are nowhere near strong enough to keep temperatures below the so-called safe limit. Right now, we are heading towards 3C of heating by 2100 not 1.5.
As countries usually scope out their plans over five and 10 year timeframes, if the 45% carbon cut target by 2030 is to be met then the plans really need to be on the table by the end of 2020.

We all remember how the sociopath withdrew from the table, thanks to 63 million irresponsible people!

Speaking truth to power--which is where the big word in the title of this post comes in--has made very little impact.  Despite the track record of defeats, a few activists like Greta Thunberg soldier on.  Good for them, and for us.

Earlier this month Opec declared Thunberg, and with her the other young climate activists, the “greatest threat” to the fossil fuel industry. Thunberg tweeted them her thanks. “Our biggest compliment yet.” Hers is a voice totally unlike the world’s usual power-cacophony: clean, simple, inclusive, the voice of someone refusing to beguile. She talks ethics to politics without flinching. She cuts through the media white noise and political rabble-rousing to get to the essentials. This is a communal voice and Thunberg is its lightning conductor, and no wonder: when you hear her speak or you read her speeches you know you’re in the presence of the opposite of cynicism – of a spirit, in fact, that rebuffs cynicism and knows that the way we act, every single one of us, has transformatory impact and consequence. “The real power belongs to the people.”

I hope that we the people will quickly and decisively demonstrate that we have the power.

Source

Armed and dangerous ... and headed into the shit

A few months ago,  I participated in a march to express my worries over climate change and to urge action.

Very few young people were in the march.  We were a bunch of geezers.

The march went past quite a few apartment buildings where young people were partying.  A couple of them waved out to us from a balcony where they were partying.

Here we were, middle aged and older, marching to make the world a better place for young people, but the youth didn't care enough to protest!

Beer, sex, and Instagram beat climate change protests!

If that's how it is here in liberal, progressive, and green Oregon, then should we be surprised that the US has not done any damn thing about climate change?

We witnessed yet another regression in this when the fucked up party skipped town, skipped state, and went into hiding in nearby Idaho all because their elected officials did not want to do anything about climate change and were, therefore, opposed to the cap-and-trade bill that was up for vote.

Having killed the climate crisis bill, the Republican senators said they would return to their jobs on Saturday. “Our mission was to kill cap-and-trade,” said senator Herman Baertschiger “And that’s what we did.”

Source

These young people are thanking the Republicans for screwing up their own futures?  How can this be?

When you have guns, everything is possible, it seems.

Joe Lowndes, a political scientist at the University of Oregon who researches rightwing politics, said: “If the Oregon Republican party were a European political party it would be an authoritarian far-right party. It really has that character, that extraordinary truculence,” he said.
During the standoff over climate crisis, Lowndes said, Republicans “were essentially gloating about having an armed wing of the party. That’s when you cut into the structure of constitutional democracy”.

The fucked up party, not only here in Oregon but throughout the country, has become the most powerful far-right country in power anywhere in the democratic world!

the Republican Party lies far from the Conservative Party in Britain and the Christian Democratic Union in Germany — mainstream right-leaning parties — and closer to far-right parties like Alternative for Germany, whose platform contains plainly xenophobic, anti-Muslim statements.

It is frightening to think that this is now the mainstream party!

The difference is that in Europe, far-right populist parties are often an alternative to the mainstream. In the United States, the Republican Party is the mainstream.
“That’s the tragedy of the American two-party system,” Mr. Greven said. In a multiparty government, white working-class populists might have been shunted into a smaller faction, and the Republicans might have continued as a “big tent” conservative party. Instead, the Republican Party has allowed its more extreme elements to dominate. “Nowhere in Europe do you have that phenomenon,” he said.

Will leave it to David Roberts for the last word:

Basically, this is future-of-the-species stuff, getting decided through a spectacle that's barely even able to break into the daily news cycle. And the next time around, there may not even be the pretense of democracy. We are truly headed into the shit. 

There is no good news

Of course, only bad news makes news.  If it bleeds, it leads.  But still ... the bad news about the natural environment and climate change is not merely because such bad news sells.  It is not fake news either.

The bad news is for real.

So real that it has become surreal even here in Oregon.  The state that the rest of the country and the world imagines is populated only by tree-huggers and hipsters, is unable to move forward with a bill that would modestly address climate change.  We--even those of us who are not hipsters or tree-huggers--are being held hostage by the GOP!

Even when we think we might be able to do something, however small it might be, well, we are stuck going nowhere.

In my old country, the city where my folks live is running out of water.  Polar bears are rummaging for food in urban dumps.  The Sahel is now facing serious climate-change problems.  And then there is plastic.

The official tRump-toady #1--the Vice President--engages in some fantastic political verbal dance about all these:

Mike Pence declined repeated invitations to say the human-induced climate crisis is a threat to US national security.

He doesn't think it is a threat to anybody.  In fact, those of us who are alarmed by it all are the threat, according to him and his party of idiots:

“What I will tell you is that we will always follow the science on that in this administration,” the vice-president said, in answer to CNN State of the Union host Jake Tapper’s first posing of the question.
Tapper responded: “The science says it is.”
“But what we won’t do,” said Pence, “and the Clean Power Plan was all about that, was hamstringing energy in this country, raising the cost of utility rates for working families across this country.”
Tapper interjected: “But is it a threat?”
Pence did not answer the interjection

When the country's executive leaders don't care, and are actively involved in spreading incorrect and misleading narratives, what can one do?

Saving the planet requires not racing to the moon again, or to Mars, but to the White House and up the steps of the Capitol, putting one foot in front of the other.

It is a long, long way to walk one foot in front of another until it is November 2020!

"ABC’s World News Tonight spent more than seven minutes reporting on the birth of royal baby Archie in the week after he was born — more time than the program spent covering climate change during the entire year of 2018." https://t.co/FZldGxo4xS

— David Wallace-Wells (@dwallacewells) May 21, 2019

Climate change and American consumerism

In a commentary that was published back in 2007, I wrote about a strange way of life here in the US, which I referred to as "an American solution to an American problem."  I wrote then:

Well, a few weeks after I came to this country for graduate studies, it was nearing Thanksgiving and the television ad for Alka-Seltzer that I watched then is what I refer to as American solutions to American problems. In this ad, the audio commentary and the pictures presented all the wonderful foods that the viewer would end up eating at Thanksgiving, which then resulted in stomach aches and heartburn. And, presto, Alka-Seltzer to the rescue! My reflexive thought was simple: if the problems came from overeating, then why not simply advise the viewer to eat less? Of course, as I have come to realize, to consume less is not American. (Yes, I, too, am an American!) Instead, the American way is to consume more, and then when problems develop savvy entrepreneurs provide solutions to facilitate further consumption.

It doesn't take any smarts to figure out that we consume a lot in the US.  I mean a LOT.  And I don't mean just about food. Anything. Everything.

This consumption is a problem. A big problem.  It is our consumption that is the cause of climate change.

Think about it for a minute.  And you will soon arrive at this framework:

Transportation (cars, buses, trucks, and planes) leads in greenhouse gas emissions, while electricity (coal and natural-gas power plants) is a close second. Industrial goods and services are third; buildings, fourth; and agriculture, fifth.
This way of measuring blame, however, misses something crucial: people. These industries are spouting carbon because customers demand their products: travel, electronics, entertainment, food, all sorts of stuff.

We like to travel. We like the latest smartphone. We like air conditioning. We like Netflix. We like stuff. A lot. We consume. A lot.

We demand, and the market delivers.

So, why are we always pointing at Exxon and Walmart and China as villains?  Maybe because it lets us off the hook?

There will be little incentive for businesses and governments to make these changes, however, if the people who support them—with dollars and votes, respectively—aren’t also making change a priority.
“Individual consumers cannot change the way the global economy operates on their own, but many of the interventions proposed in this report rely on individual action,” the report reads. “It is ultimately up to individuals to decide what type of food to eat and how to manage their shopping to avoid household food waste. It is also largely up to individuals to decide how many new items of clothing to buy, whether they should own and drive a private car, and how many personal flights to take.”

“It is ultimately up to individuals to decide."

I have joked forever that I am yet to meet an environmentalist who refuses a pay-raise.  Environmentalists also want the pay raises in order to travel. To get the latest smartphone. For air conditioning. To stream Netflix. For stuff.

In order to fight the Nazis, Americans sacrificed. With blood, sweat, and tears. Through rations. Fighting climate change will require different kinds of sacrifices.

We will have to fly less, drive less, Uber less. We will have to eat less red meat, drink less dairy, waste less food, and generally buy less crap that we don’t need.
A lot of Americans won’t want to do this!

We won't. But, we will, however, talk about climate change. A lot.

Nowhere to hide :(

I try my best to avoid all things tRump.  But, it is impossible.  He and his actions stick around like how the toilet paper strip clung on to Dear Leader's shoes!

Like this headline: "Trump Administration Hardens Its Attack on Climate Science."  How can one avoid such news reports?  Every single day is another bucket-load of bad news!

What's he now up to with climate science? Haven't tRump and his toadies done enough damage already?

But then I forget that enough is never enough for these sociopaths for whom cruelty is the point!

In the next few months, the White House will complete the rollback of the most significant federal effort to curb greenhouse-gas emissions, initiated during the Obama administration. It will expand its efforts to impose Mr. Trump’s hard-line views on other nations, building on his retreat from the Paris accord and his recent refusal to sign a communiqué to protect the rapidly melting Arctic region unless it was stripped of any references to climate change.
And, in what could be Mr. Trump’s most consequential action yet, his administration will seek to undermine the very science on which climate change policy rests.

How so?

Like so:

The administration’s prime target has been the National Climate Assessment, produced by an interagency task force roughly every four years since 2000. Government scientists used computer-generated models in their most recent report to project that if fossil fuel emissions continue unchecked, the earth’s atmosphere could warm by as much as eight degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century. That would lead to drastically higher sea levels, more devastating storms and droughts, crop failures, food losses and severe health consequences.
Work on the next report, which is expected to be released in 2021 or 2022, has already begun. But from now on, officials said, such worst-case scenario projections will not automatically be included in the National Climate Assessment or in some other scientific reports produced by the government.

And, of course, there will be a new climate review panel:

That effort is led by a 79-year-old physicist who had a respected career at Princeton but has become better known in recent years for attacking the science of man-made climate change and for defending the virtues of carbon dioxide — sometimes to an awkward degree.

You want to know what a comparable stable genius this tRump appointee is?

“The demonization of carbon dioxide is just like the demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler,” said the physicist, William Happer, who serves on the National Security Council as the president’s deputy assistant for emerging technologies.

Yep, demonizing CO2 makes you, dear reader, a Nazi!  Poor little defenseless CO2!

Meanwhile, a response from a scientist in the country that continues to apologize for Hitler and the crimes that were committed:

“It is very unfortunate and potentially even quite damaging that the Trump administration behaves this way,” said Johan Rockström, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. “There is this arrogance and disrespect for scientific advancement — this very demoralizing lack of respect for your own experts and agencies.”

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote to my department colleagues:

Back--way back--President Carter and California's Gov. Brown tried to rally the people. Brown was ridiculed as Gov. Moonbeam. Carter's solar panels were taken down by the Republican who succeeded him.
In dedicating those solar panels, Carter noted that it was the beginning of a moment, a road not taken kind of moment. He looked at a goal of 20% renewables by the year 2000! Who knows if ever the GOP will abandon its carbon in its various forms as a vote-winning strategy. I am not counting on it.
Meanwhile, the market--which the current GOP has abandoned in favor of protectionism--is betting on anything but carbon as an energy source in the future. At some point, the GOP base will find out the truth. But we will be all be burnt toast by then ;)

Doesn't tRump care about leaving the world a better place for his own grandkids, or is he so much a narcissist that he simply couldn't care?

I suppose those 63 million voters don't care because they are ecstatic that they are merely accelerating their travel to meet with their creator!

"The ultimate challenge"

I have been a fan of carbon tax.  I have blogged about it, talked about it, discussed it with students.  And I followed with interest the ballot initiative in the neighboring state.

It is, therefore, depressing to agree with David Leonhardt about the political reality of pricing carbon--won't happen.

What is the political reality?  As I quoted in that blog-post, "any Republican Presidential candidate who supported a carbon tax or regulations “would be at a severe disadvantage in the Republican nomination process.”  This Republican reality has become a nightmare in this hyper-partisan tRump time:

The G.O.P.’s radical turn means that climate activists can no longer search for a compromise between the two parties, in the hope that their leaders will try to sell it to skeptical voters. Republicans have made clear that they will instead stoke the skepticism for their own ends. Doing so pleases the oil and coal industries, which are generous campaign donors. It also helps win elections.

Win elections.  Win them at any cost.  Screw the damn liberals!

Why then don't initiatives succeed, even in blue states like Washington?

Carbon pricing puts attention on the mechanism, be it a dreaded tax or a byzantine cap-and-trade system. Mechanisms don’t inspire people. Mechanisms are easy to caricature as big-government bureaucracy. Think about the debate over Obamacare: When the focus was on mechanisms — insurance mandates, insurance exchanges and the like — the law was not popular. When the focus shifted to basic principles — Do sick people deserve health insurance? — the law became much more so.

Which is how tRump also won, right?  While Hillary Clinton talked like an expert on the mechanisms to make things better for Americans, tRump merely provided flashy simplistic slogans and rhetoric.  She, for instance, talked to coal miners, about how she will support programs to re-train them, while he even mimed a cartoonish version of coal-digging.  And he won!

This reality is also driving a new way of looking at the climate change issues--the Green New Deal:

Rhiana Gunn-Wright, a 29-year-old Rhodes scholar, works for the think tank New Consensus and helped design the Green New Deal. When I spoke with her, I was struck by her sense of political realism and how different it was from the old definition. For a long time, environmental activists have shown an almost compulsive — and in many ways admirable — honesty. They have chosen policies, like carbon taxes, that emphasize the downsides: Energy prices will rise. The Green New Deal and the recent clean-energy ballot initiatives do the reverse. They emphasize the benefits of clean energy and minimize the downsides. “There is a lot of anxiety and uncertainty in America today,” Gunn-Wright said. “Any solution that is tied to tangible economic benefits is going to have a better chance of passing.”

The truth, but not the whole truth.  Which is any day infinitely better than tRump's and the GOP's bullshit.

Leonhardt sums it up well:

The sad truth is that climate politics are probably not going remain as they are today. The future will almost certainly bring increasing harm, through more extreme weather. Eventually, some Republican politicians, especially in coastal states, may be willing to break with party leaders on the issue. Eventually, Americans may decide to punish politicians who deny or play down climate change. By the time a price on carbon took effect, it might not be so unpopular anymore. But we can’t wait for the politics to change to begin taking action.