February 2017 – Forecast: partly sunny with a chance of cataclysms

How to Slow Global Warming, for Real

Failure and More Failure: Time to Get Real

If you are a typical reader of this blog, much of what you’ll see below is not news . But my hope is to frame questions about climate change and its remedies in a coherent way. . . and also to make the argument that. . . you’ll see.

As much as climate change believers have attempted to rein in the combustion of fossil fuels to reduce CO2 emissions, they have largely failed. It doesn’t matter what accord or protocol we’re talking about—Paris, Copenhagen, Kyoto—economic considerations (especially in India and China), and the slow development of zero carbon technologies are preventing us from meeting the goals.

That’s even without the worsening of U.S. emissions we can expect for the next four years—at least.

The good news is that CO2 emissions worldwide have ceased growing—we may be at a plateau with some promise of reduction.

Slowing CO2 Emissions

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Not So Fast with Public Lands Sell-Off: Sportsmen’s Hornets’ Nest

Jason Chaffetz Runs from Army of Hornets

Republican congressman Jason Chaffetz unleashed a storm of protest from sportsmen left and right when he introduced a bill that would direct the Bureau of Land Management to sell off 3.3 million acres of federally owned land.

The CEO of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, Land Tawney, warned: “Mr. Chaffetz, you’ve kicked the hornets’ nest, and the army is amassing. . . . The only thing you can do to make this right is to pull those bills back.” He was joined by the National Wild Turkey Federation, Pheasants Forever, Trout Unlimited, Remington Arms, as well as the National Wildlife Federation, who joined to circulate a petition that quickly gathered 46,000 signatures.

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“I Was Given This Information” (So I’m Not Responsible)

Will It Ever Stop?!?

Sorry for yet another political post, but it’s hard not to comment on the totally extraordinary. Trump’s press conference on Feb. 16 veered from paranoia to grandiosity in a way not unfamiliar to Trump watchers for the last 20 months except for a new, unsurpassed level of narcissism—a level that gets ratcheted up higher and higher the greater the pressure he is under. (I’ll note here that many of his followers were thrilled by his performance; they believe he speaks for them. We’ll see if they believe this in 2019.)

There are so many bolts of craziness shooting from the mouth of the Complainer in Chief, that most of us feel incapable of even enumerating them, much less think of a larger context beyond “I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS IS HAPPENING!”

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The Calculus of Fear

As of this writing the infamous Presidential executive order banning entry into the U.S. from seven predominantly Muslim countries has yet to get a final judicial ruling. But whether it succeeds or fails, its main purpose will have been achieved: to instill fear in those deemed undesirable by Trump, Bannon, & Co.

From that perspective, it’s all the worse if the ban is eventually determined to be constitutional. You can do more than just scare helpless undesirables, you can lawfully inflict pain on them. The undesirables could be any group—Muslims, Mexicans, Arabs, etc.—for which you can find some pretext to justify barring them from entry, throwing them out, or jailing them.

Much was made by Republicans that it was only a “temporary” ban. But of course once you have a “temporary” ban, what’s to keep it from being extended in the name of national security? The point is not about temporariness or permanence, the point is about power and intimidation.

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Why Court Russia? Look to the South China Sea.

If Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s belligerent approach toward China’s activities* in the South China Sea—as conveyed in his confirmation hearing—were to continue, getting on Vladimir Putin’s good side makes perfect Realpolitik sense: squeeze China between the U.S. in the Pacific Ocean and Russia on land.

It’s not clear if Tillerson’s tough talk was mainly to cheer up hawks in the Senate during the hearing. But there’s more than just strategic thinking going into confrontation with China in the area, namely, oil and gas.

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Holy Coal

Who would have known that fossil fuels are a special gift to humanity from the Divine?

Fred Palmer, that’s who. The Heartland Institute’s ~~holy warrior~~ senior fellow has revealed his elegant chain of reasoning: “Because it’s easy to get to, it’s here and more people live better and longer for it,” therefore “fossil fuels [are] part of a divine plan.”.

This is a guy who says that global warming science is “sophistry. It’s an agenda driven by lawyers who make their own facts. . . . ”

I ought to note here that if you are a Deist—which is the most minimal religious belief this side of atheism—of course all Creation is divine by definition. No argument here. But that’s not the sense in which Palmer makes claims about fossil fuels. He means to elevate fossil fuels above other objects of Creation, special gifts to humankind. Which seems to me a bit dismissive of stuff like oxygen (without which, incidentally, coal, oil, and gas would not burn; oh, but oxygen is used by other animals, so it’s not so special).

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Stop Pruitt, Zinke

If you’re reading this you’re probably a Democrat, and Senate Democrats are very likely to vote against the Scott Pruitt (EPA) and Ryan Zinke (Interior) nominees, but if you can give them a nudge to prevail upon their Republican colleagues to stop these enemies of environmental regulation, it might help.

I understand both of these characters are now out of committee and going to the Senate floor. Not sure when, maybe today.

“Due to the high volume of calls,” it’s difficult to get through to a senator’s phone at all today, much less speak to a staff member. But you can comment online. Find your senators’ websites by searching on their names. Use the official sites not something pushed on you by Wow or Yahoo.

Thanks!

Mark

Coping in the Data Ocean

Our Oceanic Data Environment and the Paradox of Choice

What is it like to be a bat? is the title of a paper by Thomas Nagel in the Philosophical Review in October 1974 that is widely quoted and discussed among philosophers. But you don’t have to be a philosopher to see that the question goes straight to the mystery of consciousness. Is the consciousness of a bat anything like ours? What about a wolverine, a gecko, a sea urchin?

How does an animal’s environment shape its consciousness? You’d expect that the consciousness of a wandering albatross, who spends months at a time on the wing without ever touching land, has to be wildly different from that of a mole who spends most of its time underground in the space of half an acre.

For more on wandering albatross flight, see this will blow your mind

It’s all very well to imagine yourself a wandering albatross. It sounds like a glorious life, untethered by our bonds to mere stationary places and to people who do not soar thousands of miles at a stretch.

But, what is it like to be a fish?

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