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Comments 5501 to 5550:

5501. nigelj at 07:39 AM on 22 June 2021
      The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
      

      Regarding Nick Palmers comments @80.

      I'm glad to hear I'm close to fully getting it, whatever 'it' is. Im still a bit hazy on things. His basic idea appears to be that oil companies launched a campaign to spread climate disinformation because of left leaning environmentalist policies including potentially shutting off fossil fuels, carbon taxes,  and regulations and if only they had focused on CCS and regenerative farming the oil companies would have desisted from their odious campaign.

      Well maybe the oil companies would have desisted. Its all rather speculative.  The trouble is CCS was never looking like a sufficient option, and is still not cost competitive. Its cheaper just to build renewables. And things like carbon taxes are actually neoliberal market mechanisms, so are they really left leaning ideas? But I suppose it depends on how you define "left leaning policies" and they could arguably include carbon taxes, subsidies for renewables, regulations etc,etc. Maybe Nick has a point that the oil companies were reacting against left leaning policies, but my reaction is so what? Those are still the only realistic options we have! CCS and direct air capture are still in their infancy and are expensive technologies.

      But for the sake of argument, lets say we used CCS and direct air capture and kept burning fossil fuels. We whould have to be doing this for many centuries until we run out of fossil fuels! Imagine the number of CCS and / or direct air capture facilities, and the horrendous costs of processing and sequestering all that C02! It looks like we need renewables and to phase out fossil fuels and things like CCS and direct air capture (which does have some appeal) would be used to help mop up some limited quantity emissions, if building renewables is going too slowly. So they are a "bit player.'

      Using regenerative agriculture as a carbon sink  is something else and does look useful. But obviously its not sufficient so that you could just go on burning fossil fuels. The numbers I've seen suggest it can sequester about 30% of our typical yearly emissions if fully scaled up globally. This is a very useful number and it doesn't have the costs of vast rows of direct air capture machines and their manufacturing processes which do have some environmental impacts. But it suggests regenerative agriculture is a serious mopping up exercise that compliments renewables. I'm pretty sure RB has said much the same.

5502. RedBaron at 07:03 AM on 22 June 2021
      The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
      

      @Nick Palmer,

      There is one important potential unintended emergent property of complex systems effected by industrial CCS that I don't think you or anyone else has fully taken into account, and it is actually beyond my capabilities to fully understand as well.

      Currently there is more carbon missing from our agricultural land and degraded ecosystems than extra CO2 in the atmosphere.

      Lets just suppose that full scale CCS and BCCS are implemented worldwide at the same time as dramatic reductions in fossil fuel emissions happen. This would be in effect the "best case scenario". I don't see the best case scenario happening any time soon, but that does seem to be the goal in the short to mid term to at least stop AGW for now.

      There might be a time when the monetary value of CO2 is so high that instead of a fight to reduce CO2 from the atmosphere, there could be a fight to extract CO2 beyond what is beneficial. There might also be some outgassing from the oceans or other sources that I cant begin to calculate.

      As it turns out complex living biological systems are self regulating. So the risk of problems with BCCS are pretty small I think. However, it would seem to me that we could slip right past that so called "goldilocks zone" you mentioned. If CCS is profitable, and it must be made to be profitable or it will never happen, then we could potentially find ourselves with a new climate war in the future, with those benefiting from CCS fighting to extract every dime they can, including denialist think tanks obfuscating the issue in much the similar way fossil fuel companies hired the merchants of doubt to obfuscate AGW.

      I personally don't trust the right decisions to be made from any  centralized player, government or industry, where such huge temptation is fostered by the huge amounts of money floating around. It is one of many reasons my Red Baron Plan focuses so strongly on local, and profitability with or without a carbon price at all. The economics of abundance that support regenerative agriculture are in direct conflict with the economics of scarcity used by almost all economic systems used in the world today, left or right.

      In either case though, this is a long term factor that needs addressed.

      Can you imagine the disaster of a potential future where the Worldwide soils and ecosystems that support all life on Earth (including us) were not restored yet, but where the atmospheric CO2 was already dropping past 300 ppm down to 200 ppm and lower? It's a very serious part of the system that must be at least considered along with contingency plans.

5503. MA Rodger at 04:04 AM on 22 June 2021
      The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
      

      Nick Palmer @80,

      Would I also be "waaay" off if I were to suggest that your habit of throwing your dead cats at us pidgeons (rather than explaining yourself properly) is entirely incompatible with somebody who is "one of the very few climate science denier fighters who can actually beat them," an ability you tell us (amid the self-trumpeting @31 upthread) that you possess. I see no sign of any such ability within your comment down ths thread, none whatever.

      Due to the high wordage, I havdn't properly read your input up-thread until now. Having now done so, I must say it does not make for pretty reading. Thus you kick off @1 by blaming Joe Public for AGW. Big Oil are just doing what the public want, so don't blame them for AGW. "Whatever concerns the great mass of the ordinary public may have had and now have is clearly outranked by their desire to continue using the products and services more or less as usual."

      And your contributions continue from there peppered with similar denialist nonsense all the way to the latest serving #80 where we are boldly informed that "back then [20 years ago] it was an entirely reasonable position for a corporation to take to assume technological progress would be delivering the CCS magic machines in time to do the job of nullifying emissions to atmosphere" although you "think the business risk they took twenty years ago will not pan out for them." A business risk? Do explain the risks those nice Big Oil companies took which they hoped would ensure their lucrative FF extraction were compatable with a stable cimate!! (Persumably this would not be an anachronistic risk given, as you argue @18 the scientific findings "at the time were just not solid enough to mandate massive corporation change without a lot more scientific work.")

5504. Nick Palmer at 03:44 AM on 22 June 2021
      The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
      

      Using their figures of $100-232/tonne CO2 that equates to about between  28c - 65c per US gallon.

5505. Nick Palmer at 03:26 AM on 22 June 2021
      The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
      

      Here's a paper on Carbon Engineering's proposed 1 Mtonne/year plant
      
      A Process for Capturing CO2 from the Atmosphere
      
      Excerpt:
      
      Detailed engineering and cost analysis for a 1 Mt-CO2/year direct air capture plant
      •
      Levelized costs of $94 to $232 per ton CO2 from the atmosphere
      •
      First DAC paper with commercial engineering cost breakdown
      •
      Full mass and energy balance with pilot plant data for each unit operation
      
      BTW, as some of you are using exactly the same insinuative style as hardline denialists do, let me state that just as I've had to frequently 'deny' to them that I'm a watermelon (green on the outside, red on the inside), I am hereby stating that I'm not a shill for 'Big CCS', I'm just someone who wants to solve excessive global warming using any safe methods which work unhandicapped by outdated and manipulative dogma dictating the solutions that political and activist forces favour, even though those methods might not enable the optimum suite of solutions to be assembled and deployed.
      
      In fact, so far, CCS has cost me money! I've sponsored Scott's (Red Baron's) controlled scientific experiment to get some hard figures which are sorely needed in a field (sorry about pun...) that has many 'gee whiz!' anecdotes and tales of incredible success, but precious little peer reviewed science

5506. Nick Palmer at 02:41 AM on 22 June 2021
      The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
      

      Yet again there are too many, in my view flawed, responses to give answers to all. I still think none of you are fully getting what I am saying. Nigel J is closest to 'getting it', MAR is (waaay) furthest away (his comment #72 in particular is a mirror inage of the sort of toxic denialist misrepresentation of someone's position that we see too often when fighting said denialists).
      
      I'll try and restate things later, if I get time, and will try to clarify the bits where peoples' defences are causing then to bounce off. In the meantime, remember that all this sponsoring of think tanks, who used denialist rhetoric as part of their lobbying for corporate clients, took place quite a long time ago when carbon capture and sequestration seemed a lot more promising than it has proved to be (until recently) a couple of decades later. Back then it was an entirely reasonable position for a corporation to take to assume technological progress would  be delivering the CCS magic machines in time to do the job of nullifying emissions to atmosphere. The coal industry, for obvious reasons, were most hoping for this get-out-of-jail-free card. I think it was BP or Shell Oil that first had their accountants put a notional 'carbon price' into their financial reports, thus hedging their bets. Should CCS prove economic, any carbon sequestered would not be taxed; should it not, then their financial planning would already be taking a carbon price into account.
      
      As it happens, just about the only thing preventing the uptake of existing CCS tech is money - the lack of a suitable global carbon price. The actual technology/chemistry, which is pretty simple, works just fine, and has done for some considerable time, it's only the economics of running it which have been dodgy. However, that's likely to change rapidly as Carbon Engineering's system of direct air capture  https://carbonengineering.com/ is expected to come in at around $100 a tonne, which is waay better than other systems. This is tech is also about direct capture of CO2 from the ambient atmosphere. Obviously, point of generation 'smoke stack' capture would be even easier. Even doubling that figure means that just a moderate carbon price would be sufficient to justify sequestering carbon just on financial grounds.
      
      Excerpt from their latest news:
      
      "Project Dreamcatcher is a key step towards Storegga and CE’s ambitions to build a large-scale DAC plant in the UK within the next five years. The proposed large-scale DAC facility will capture between 500,000 and one million tonnes of atmospheric CO2 each year and then safely and permanently store it deep below the seabed in an offshore geological storage site. One of the locations being considered by the partnership for this facility is in North East Scotland, with access to the Acorn CCS and Hydrogen Project (Acorn).

      Acorn is one of the most mature UK CCS and hydrogen projects and is positioned to be the most cost-effective and scalable CCS project in the UK. The Acorn project is currently in the detailed engineering and design phase of development and is planned to be operational by the mid 2020’s. DAC, CCS and hydrogen technologies are complementary solutions that provide key tools for the UK to meet its net zero targets."
      
      However, this doesn't mean that I think that Big Fossil Fuel's original hope that CCS would enable them to indefinitely continue to run their industry at the scale it was will come to pass. I think the business risk they took twenty years ago will not pan out for them. I'm fairly sure that the fossil fuel industry will shrink in future as the price of new renewables continues to fall to below the price of new fossil fuel and the much improved 'failsafe' and modular designs of new generations of nucelar power stations are authorised. It may be that there will always be some remaining niche applications for them to fulfil in future which still need fossil fuels and so CCS can take care of that, whilst sucking out existing excess atmospheric CO2.
      
      I think Scott's (Red Baron) system of carbon capture by sequestration of carbon into managed agricultural field systems has far more (read 'huge'...) potential than most realise. The arguments against it sound very close to the type of rhetoric that extreme environmentalists and left'ish anti-Big Industry types use to argue (fallaciously, in my opinion) against technological CCS inasmuch as I think it clear that they're antithetical to any solutions which promise to let our current technological civilisation continue as it is and so they jump through mental hoops to undermine them leaving, they hope, their favoured solutions as the only option.
      
      Whilst I'm throwing cats amongst the pigeons, how about this? Assuming widespread adoption of CCS techniques enables us to start lowering atmospheric levels in future, I don't think we should try to get back to pre-industrial levels of 280ppm. I think 350 ppm would be a great place to stop as it keeps us just about in the 'goldilocks zone' where the long term benefits of moderate global warming are, on balance, neutral or positive and would have the very long term benefit of heading off the next glaciation...

5507. One Planet Only Forever at 01:40 AM on 22 June 2021
      2021 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #25
      

      nigelj,

      My longer response would also address the "Tragedy of the Commons" issue which can be understood to be a problem caused by systemic "excusing and permitting of harmful actions" because of incorrect perceptions that the benefits obtained justify the unsustainable harmful activity, perceptions created by incorrect measures of status and improvement.

      The "Tragedy of the Commons" also happens because of a lack of pursuit of increased awareness and improved understanding of what is harmful and application of what is learned to limit the harm done. That lack of concern regarding potential for harm to be done excuses and defends the many harmful "externalities" that will develop in any system that does not rigorously govern activities to limit harm done.

      The solution to "Tragedy of the Commons" problems is the pursuit of increased awareness and improved understanding of what is harmful. That pursuit will lead to understanding the need for systemic changes to limit the harm done, and the understanding of what developed perceptions are incorrect and do not deserve to be excused or defended, no matter how popular or profitable they incorrectly became.

5508. One Planet Only Forever at 00:57 AM on 22 June 2021
      2021 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #25
      

      nigelj,

      My longer response would be based on the understanding presented in the section of the article I suggested you reread to better understand the issue, and the HDR 2020 report, particularly the last section "Part III - Measuring human development and the Anthropocene", that provides a comprehensive evidence-based understanding of what has developed and how to correct it, including the required corrections of the measures of status and improvement (things like GDP are the wrong ways to measure success and progress).

      My response to "Do you seriously think these things have any real probability of happening any time soon, enough to have significant impact on the climate issue?" is:

      I am well aware that the undeserving wealthy and powerful people will not willingly give up their harmfully obtained status or their opportunity to harmfully increase their status. They will do whatever they can get away with to protect Their Interests, including abusing the power of misleading marketing to gather foot-soldiers who will excuse and defend harmful unsustainable activities. It is easy to get people to dislike understanding that what they developed a liking for or aspire to achieve is harmful and unsustainable. That is how Team Trump got poorer people to fight against corrections that would reduce climate change harm done - people were easily misled into believing that they should be angry at the wrong people (scientists and other experts and people who shared that developing better understanding). That misleading popularity included less fortunate people being incorrectly angry about the Green New Deal efforts to ensure that less fortunate people were not made even less fortunate by the required transition of economic activity.

      It has been conclusively proven that the incorrect measures of status and advancement (like GDP) that are a dominant influence in socioeconomic-political systems (all of them, not just Capitalism), developed the climate change impact problem, and many other harmful results, and powerfully resists reduction of harm done when reducing harm done would undo incorrectly developed perceptions of advancement and superiority.

      Climate change impacts and all the other harmful developments will clearly not be solved without correcting the incorrect perceptions of advancement and status. Climate action leadership starting 30 years ago with the technology that existed at that time could have dramatically reduced the current magnitude of the problem and current magnitude of the corrections required, admittedly with significant but deserved, loss of status of fossil fuelled pursuits of benefit. Instead, the system made the problem worse and still restricts the leadership actions that would actually limit the harm done.

      The fundamental of the developed systems "Do as much harm as can be gotten away with" needs to be kept from being a significant influence in the future. Without that systemic change applied to all harmful developed matters there is no future for humanity.

      That also answers your question: "How likely is it that governments would deliberately engineer zero economic growth, which is near recessionary conditions? And how likely is it people would force zero economic growth to happen by making lifestyle changes, many of which are unappealing?"

      I have no delusions regarding how difficult it will be to limit the undeserved influence and status of harmful selfish people. But I also am not so deluded as to believe that serious problems, like climate change impacts, that have been created by the success (popularity and profitability) of harmful selfish actions will be effectively limited without systemic changes that address the fundamental problem - the liking and excusing of harmful selfishness.

      Without significant system change the harm done by harmful selfishness will continue to produce far worse results than need to be allowed to develop. No harm "needs" to be allowed. An exception could be made for some temporary harm done that exclusively assists the least fortunate live at least basic decent lives. But even that harm should not be "needed" since the supposedly superior people would only be superior if they helped the less fortunate in ways that were not harmful or unsustainable and if they provided the examples of how to live harmlessly.

      Harmlessness is, of course, an ideal. But it is essential that it be the aspiration governing all human activity. All humans self-governing that way is also the ideal. But Governing that limits the harm done by people who have not or will not learn to be less harmful is not an ideal. That is the required understanding.

5509. nigelj at 16:58 PM on 21 June 2021
      2021 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #25
      

      OPOF @2

      "I will provide a longer response but will start by suggeting you reread the section in the article that is titled "A New Term in Europe Rooted in an Old American Concept".

      I have no problem with the steady state zero growth economy in principle. Please appreciate I said "And I'm not arguing that we can somehow maintain high levels of growth forever because we obviously can't." My comments did not include a critique of degrowth in principle. 

      Now answer the questions that formed the actual substance of what I said: "Yes it would work in a technical sense to cut emissions, but the strategy has enormous practical problems. How likely is it that governments would deliberately engineer zero economic growth, which is near recessionary conditions? And how likely is it people would force zero economic growth to happen by making lifestyle changes, many of which are unappealing?"

      Do you seriously think these things have any real probablity of happening any time soon, enough to have significant impact on the climate issue? I don't think they do. People are simply too materialistic and there's no evidence of enough changes already happening to suggest a degrowth agenda is feasible. So in what way would the rest of my comments be wrong?

5510. One Planet Only Forever at 12:31 PM on 21 June 2021
      2021 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #25
      

      nigelj,

      I will provide a longer response but will start by suggeting you reread the section in the article that is titled "A New Term in Europe Rooted in an Old American Concept".

      My comment will also recommend reading the 2020 Human Development Report (download from this UN site).

      The main point of my future response will be that what currently exists includes unsustainable over-development by the highest consuming and impacting people. THe ways that a small percentage of the global population live and profit causes the majority of the problem. And incorrect perceptions of status make things worse by making those harmful unsustainable examples the inspiration for Others to aspire to match or exceed.

5511. nigelj at 08:57 AM on 21 June 2021
      2021 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #25
      

      Regarding the commentary: "Is the Controlled Shrinking of Economies a Better Bet to Slow Climate Change Than Unproven Technologies?"

      "The study found that holding global economic growth to zero (my note: degrowth) could cap climate warming at the 2 degree Celsius limit of the Paris agreement. While that strategy still requires low levels of carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere, it doesn’t rely on unproven technologies.

      I think a deliberate degrowth strategy is very problematic overall. Yes it would work in a technical sense to cut emissions, but the strategy has enormous practical problems. How likely is it that governments would deliberately engineer zero economic growth, which is near recessionary conditions? And how likely is it people would force zero economic growth to happen by making lifestyle changes, many of which are unappealing? 

      Taking the things a bit wider, If humanity reduces the focus on promoting renewable energy and negative emissions technologies ( as some degrowth people want) and focuses on promoting degrowth and degrowth fails, we have lost the window of opportunity to build renewables and negative emissions technologies, because doing all this takes time. If we focus on promoting renewable energy and negative emissions technology and that fails, the degrowth alternative is still there and could be instantaneous, if you can convince people to embrace it. 

      I'm not arguings against reducing carbon footprints. Some of these might even reduce growth like reducing air travel, but others might increase growth like adopting heat pumps. And I'm not arguing that we can somehow maintain high levels of growth forever because we obviously can't. Its just that a deliberate degrowth strategy does not look realistic.

       

5512. RedBaron at 14:25 PM on 20 June 2021
      The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
      

      @77 One Planet Only Forever,

       Thanks for the kind words and yes a socioeconomic "Square deal" (to borrow a phrase from Teddy Roosevelt) does indeed need addressed, simply to make sure bad actors don't ruin all the hard work we do. Holistic management considers systems with complex social, ecological and economic factors; management considers and plans in the whole, rather than each as separate. This applies at every level of management from the land manager himself to every level of government from local, regional, national, and even international. 100% with you there. We probably use different terminology, but the principles are overlapping for sure.

      @ 78 michael sweet,

      Great post. I would like to discuss a few things about it though.

      1)It is important to know the study results claim they were measuring sequestered carbon, not fixed carbon. The fixed carbon numbers are much larger, but not stable. Decay of fixed carbon (biomass) will release CO2 as it is cycled in the labile carbon cycle. Stable carbon is sequestered into geological timeframes, even if eroded that carbon will generally turn up in sedimentary deposits rather than being released back into the atmosphere. It's an important destinction for climate scientists to understand. Only a fraction of fixed carbon gets sequestered long enough be considered sequestered in the soil, and that % has everything to do with the methodology and biology. Did you use the term "fixed" purposely? Do you think there is a flaw in their methods? Or was this an oversite on your part?

      2) You mentioned hydrology, a subject obviously very important to agriculture. However, there is a nuance you might not know about. I don't believe I have ever posted this study here because the focus here is primarily CO2e. (I have posted it many other places as water is obviously critical to the land manager) 

      Effect of grazing on soil-water content in semiarid rangelands of southeast Idaho

      Notice please that comparing different methods of grazing and even total rest (no grazing at all besides the odd insect or rodent), regenerative grazing has the highest soil water content! This is a function of water infiltration and holding capacity against the evaporation and transpiration rate. Soil biology and various types of carbon content have everything to do with this result. It explains the biophysical reason for the counter-intuitive results of even arid and semiarid grasslands still being capable of sequestering significant rates of CO2e. The biological community in the soil is in fact purposely using carbon compounds retrieved from symbiotic relationships with plants and animals to more effectively use the little water that does come annually. This results in the very counter-intuitive high rate that healthy semiarid grasslands actually sequester . Healthy arid and semiarid grasslands have far more soil carbon sequestration than even tropical rainforests! (although tropical rainforsts fix far more carbon into biomass) It is in fact their evolutionary fitness strategy that gave them the advantage over other vegetation and soil microbiology community types in dryer areas. There are limits to this of course, but surprisingly low amounts of rainfall are needed, once full ecosystem function is achieved. 

      On the other hand I do agree with your final statement. I actually do need to make more realistic estimates of carbon sequestration for widespread support. I am in fact trying to get some more good data on that as part of my Red Baron Project. I actually don't post everything about the project plans here, but be sure I am very aware of the need for better data and am working on finding creative ways to get that data.

5513. michael sweet at 02:05 AM on 20 June 2021
      The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
      

      Red Baron at 76:

      It is interesting to see how much carbon was able to be fixed in the example you linked.  However, there are tradeoffs.  From the abstract of your study:

      "However, when comparing required land between the two systems for food production, MSPR required 2.5 times more land when compared to COM. Thus, while our model indicates that MSPR can simultaneously produce protein while regenerating land, a considerably greater land area is needed when compared to COM. Our results present an important yet paradoxical conclusion on land and food production balance. Should society prioritize an input-intensive, COM system that produces more food from a smaller yet degrading land base? Or, alternatively, should systems such as MSPR that produce less food on a larger, but more ecologically functional landscape be more highly prioritized? These complexities must be considered in the global debate of agricultural practice and land. Our results indicate MSPRs are a useful model for alternative livestock production systems with improved environmental outcomes, but in this study may present considerable land-use tradeoffs." my emphasis.

      They obtained good results for fixing carbon but there were severe land use issues.  More land use often means less short term profit for farmers.  The answer is complicated.

      In addition, the land they studied was degraded cropland (much land is farmed until it is degraded).  It was located in an area that used to have good soil and gets a good amount of rain.  You cannot extrapolate the results from that area to all worldwide rangeland.  Much rangeland is used to graze animals because it is poor quality land and/or gets little rain.  I recently drove across New Mexico and Arizona through rangeland.  It would be impossible to fix as large amounts of carbon as your study measured because they do not get sufficient rain.  You need to make more realistic estimates of carbon fixation if you want widespread support.

      Changing farming practices can produce major benefits for climate action.  Actually achieving possible benefits worldwide is a difficult problem.

5514. One Planet Only Forever at 01:49 AM on 20 June 2021
      The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
      

      Increased awareness and improved understanding applied to limit harm done and repair harm that has already been done (the objective of the Sustainable Development Goals) leads to common sense acceptance of the need to rapidly end fossil fuel use, implement changes that reduce the magnitude of the massive mess that has been made, and help improve the lives lived by the less fortunate - all at the same time.

      Red Baron's position that emissions reduction and agriculture changes to sequester carbon should be done concurrently is aligned with that understanding. And so is the Green New Deal understanding that the efforts to fix the harm done by harmfully selfish people needs to include improving the living circumstances of the least fortunate.

      Defending concepts like Capitalism, Democracy, Freedom, and Nationalism requires helpful corrective action to rapidly end the harmful results created by harmfully selfish people and repair the damage the harmfully selfish have caused. Defending those things requires a significant reduction of status of harmfully selfish people.

      The real problem always has been, and continues to be, the harmfully selfish being able to get away with harmfully personally benefiting. The harmfully selfish, including the potentially unwitting pawns in the misleading marketing efforts of the harmfully selfish like Nick, claim that people pursuing increased awareness and improved understanding of the required corrections to harmful unsustainable socioeconomic-political developments are anti-Capitalist, anti-Democracy, anti-Freedom or anti-Nationalists (what the helpful people are accused of being in regions with harmful authoritarian leadership). Those people are actually understandably anti-"harmfully selfish". It is the harmfully selfish, not those who expose the need to correct the harm done by the harmfully selfish, who threaten potentially helpful concepts like Capitalism, Democracy, Freedom, or National Pride because their harmful selfish actions get tied to and harm those potentially helpful concepts.

5515. RedBaron at 15:10 PM on 19 June 2021
      The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
      

      @ 62

      Ecosystem Impacts and Productive Capacity of a Multi-Species Pastured Livestock System

      Notice this:

      “Our 20-year MSPR chronosequence of soil C and other soil health indicators shows dramatic improvement since establishment, sequestering an average of 2.29 Mg C ha−1 yr−1”

      Convert that to standard units agreed by the Kyoto accord:

      roughly 8 Tonnes CO2e/ha/yr sequestered on average over 20 years.

      4 billion ha of grazing land in the world x 8 tonnes CO2e/ha/yr = 32 billion tonnes CO2e sequestered in the soil yearly if we change agriculture to the above. This does not include cropland. That could boost it even more.

      (I have posted many more studies prior to this as you know. This is just the latest and as all of them agree, an average of ~5-20 tonnes CO2e/ha/yr is repeatable again and again if the land manager/farmer knows what he/she is doing)

      Total fossil fuel/industry emissions worldwide in 2020 was about 34 billion tonnes CO2.

      But wait there is more. Land use change was an emissions source of about 6 billion tonnes, and changing that to a sink instead with ecosystem restoration gives us ~38 Billion tonnes CO2e potential sequestration rate against ~34 billion tonnes CO2 emissions.

      So which is more important? And which must be done first?

      I would claim both are equally important and both should be done as quickly as possible. Then we really would have drawdown. 

      Reducing emissions alone can not produce drawdown. At best it would reduce emissions to near zero but likely still not reduce legacy CO2 and even with current levels of CO2 the Earth will continue to warm.

      Even if every acre of agriculture in the world was converted to regenerative agriculture, and wild biomes with restored ecosystem services, it probably still would not drawdown CO2. Offset most current emissions probably (we need more data, but this is currently what the data supports), but not actually reduce atmospheric CO2.

      But both together has a real chance. Together its possible to dramatically reduce CO2 with renewable energy; and ALSO convert to regenerative ag and reforestion where applicable to remove legacy CO2, then this steep ski slope hill Mann refers to could be made manageable. 

      I still have not read Manns book, but I did watch his hour long talk and read several reviews. I don't think he is hostile to regenerative ag per se, but he also doesn't seem very convinced of the need to do both immediately.

5516. Bob Loblaw at 10:30 AM on 19 June 2021
      The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
      

      Nick's posts are reminding me of the cartoon about the Hollywood movie plot:

      97% of the world's scientists conspire to create an imaginary environmental crisis, only to be exposed by a plucky band of billionaires, senators, and oil companies!

      I know NIck does not think the climate problem is imaginary, but he sure seems to have a different way of judging the behaviour of environmental groups than he does of the fossil fuel industry (as espoused through the organizations they fund).

5517. nigelj at 08:47 AM on 19 June 2021
      The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
      

      Nick Palmer @70,

      "I'm saying is that it should be acknowledged that the 'Heartland ideology' is, as least partially, based on truth. Many prominent environmental voices do indeed have significant left leaning politics and there are plenty of those who believe openly or secretly that the gobal warming 'mega threat' can be used to engineer the 'great reset' that they want for human civilisation."

      So what? This doesn't make the ordinary left leaning environmentalists necessarily wrong as a whole, and it doesn't prove the oil companies engaged in spreading a missinformation campaign "just because" of the fanatical fringe, and it doesn't excuse the oil companies launching or colluding in a campaign to spread doubt and misleading rhetoric, just because they didnt like it all. All you have done is demonstrate there are a few annoying extremists out there. I agree broadly with MAR.

5518. michael sweet at 06:08 AM on 19 June 2021
      The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
      

      What MARodger said times two.

      Still no references to successful carbon storage plans, only expensive methods to extract more oil.

5519. MA Rodger at 06:07 AM on 19 June 2021
      The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
      

      Nick Palmer @70.

      So now your telling us that Big Oil is not threatened by all those nasty folk in GreenPeace but is just doing what any industry would do when threatened by draconian restrictions to its operations (threatened by who exactly?). And so Big Oil legitimately assists the likes of Heartland & Competive Enterprise Institute to spread a pack of lies and disinformation about AGW, this required not to prevent timely action to address AGW but to defeat some communist conspiracy that has infiltrated the environmental movement. And as such reds-under-the-beds infiltration is apparently to be seen in the left-leaning folk within the environmental movement, the likes of Heartland & Competive Enterprise Institute are not at all a pack of bare-faced liars but a band of gallant freedom fighters.

      It is good to know where you are coming from, Nick.

5520. Philippe Chantreau at 04:01 AM on 19 June 2021
      The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
      

      Based on this, it would only be fair to say that activist organizations use the rethoric they use because "it works" and because they are "a pragmatic technique to influence public perception." I'm sure that they "absolutely do believe that" the unrestrained pursuit of profit by fossil fuel interest groups pose an existential threat to the future of humanity and of its natural support systems.

      Although I have no more interest in reading their stuff that the tripe from right wing think tanks, one could probably find links showing legitimate concerns and well articulated, reasonable discourse justifying their activity, supported by evidence, because all their stuff is most likely "at least partially based in truth."

      One could also do a review of the power and reach of international interest groups linking  together transnational corporations, banking, tax heavens, all very capitalist elements and compare that to the means, reach and power of groups that oppose them, so as to assess precisely how much risk the uber-capitalists are facing. My guess is that it's quite limited. Draconian restrictions are anything except real. 

      It is rather ironic that the biggest globalisation push ever happened so that giant international corporations (environmentalist anathema, right?) could have their products made where workers were underpaid, had no protection and where environmental laws were non-existent, or unenforced. Draconian restrictions anyone? Now globalisation has become the bogeyman of ardent capitalist advocates. Funny.

      Sorry Nick, I'm still not buying it.

5521. Nick Palmer at 02:55 AM on 19 June 2021
      The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
      

      I don't wish to add more fuel to the fire I started with my alternative hypothesis explaining Big Oil's actions and motivations, in particular because some really useful comments have been made above just recently, but I want to clarify a coupel of points.
      
      I never meant to suggest that Big Oil were that scared of Greenpeace's 'reds' and the anti-industry policies they favoured. Big as Greenpeace is, it is still not a huge influence on governments and their policies. However, I assure you that giant industries of all types are concerned about draconian restrictions being placed on their activities by closet globalists/socialists/communists etc and that is why they employ these Institutes and lobbyists - as a counter-force to protect their interests. The industries do not necessarily 'believe' the propaganda that the Institutes push out but choose to use them to enable more industry friendly policies to be planned for that achieve the same ends (reduced pollution, greenhouse gases etc) without gutting their financial bottom lines.
      
      Here's a number of links showing pretty clearly that the major focus of the Heartland's, C.E.I's etc is on countering the 'Marxist threat' and they absolutely do believe that environmentalism was 'infiltrated' by globalists using the threats that environmentalism identified as an Eysencks' 'hobgoblin' as a proxy way to undermine capitalism and get the public, who would otherwise reject the ideology, to vote for so doing.
      
      In the links given, Jay Lehr, Senior Policy Advisor with the International Climate Science Coalition and Senior Science Analyst at CFACT was science director at Heartland for more than two decades. Tom Harris is executive director of the International Climate Science Coalition and is a policy adviser to Heartland and closely associated with Jay Lehr.
      
      https://americaoutloud.com/how-environmentalism-has-kept-communism-alive-part-one/
      
      https://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/cold-outbreaks-are-not-caused-by-global-warming?source=policybot
      
      
      In climate circles, when such as Heartland and Competive Enterprise Institute are being discussed, they are referred to as denialist organisations. Exposés of their funding usually let the reader assume that any funds from Big Oil etc were for the specific purpose of speading climate science denialism. These organisations only spread climate science denialism as a pragmatic technique that works to influence public perceptions. As Marc Morano (Climate Depot) suggested in the video I linked to, they don't even care much whether what they say is true as long as it achieves their end which is to fight what they see as an insidious assault on US Capitalism in the name of environmentalism and global warming etc.
      
      I'm saying is that it should be acknowledged that the 'Heartland ideology' is, as least partially, based on truth. Many prominent environmental voices do indeed have significant left leaning politics and there are plenty of those who believe openly or secretly that the gobal warming 'mega threat' can be used to engineer the 'great reset' that they want for human civilisation.
      
      Obviously, this does not exclude that the environmental threats can be real, which, of course, they are but it does explain why some activists so incorrigibly and grossly exagerrate both the risks and the time scales that the actual science delineates.

5522. Bob Loblaw at 02:15 AM on 19 June 2021
      The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
      

      OPOF:

      I was trying to avoid saying that out loud... :-)

5523. One Planet Only Forever at 01:32 AM on 19 June 2021
      The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
      

      Bob Loblaw @67,

      It seems to me that a good explanation for what you have observed is that people who develop a liking for benefiting from being governed by harmful selfishness, especially liking to self-govern that way, have to develop a high level of cognitive dissonance and a high level of tolerance for their "mind being full of harmful nonsense". They are the type who like "Freedom to believe whatever they want to excuse doing whatever they please" unencumbered by the pesky responsibility to be diligent about not being harmful.

      Increased awareness and improved understanding of what is harmful makes it hard for the harmfully selfish to explain and justify want they want to believe and do. They have to make up and believe unique excuses for each harmful unjustified thing they like. When all their thoughts and actions are taken as a whole they make little sense, but they can't admit it.

      The harmfully selfish have to give up things they developed a liking for in order to develop the common sense understanding of how to limit harm done. They end up believing that "Harm they do can be justified by Benefits they personally obtain - and they claim that when they benefit everyone (who matters) benefits". And they often resort to being dismissive of, or attempt to discredit, anyone who points out the harmful reality of what is going on.

      And in the worst cases the harmfully selfish will try to harm those people who point out the harmful unworthiness of the harmfully selfish, especially the unworthy people among the "Higher Status of current day humanity". Those harmful efforts include high status people who are unworthy of their status trying to get easily impressed people in the general population riled up and angry about "the wrong people to be angry about", getting people to be angry about "scientists and other experts or reporters and students who have figured out who and what is harmful".

5524. Bob Loblaw at 23:19 PM on 18 June 2021
      The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
      

      One of the weird things about a $50/t subsidy to the coal industry (the primary place where CSS is promoted, as in "clean coal") often is proposed by the same people that are dead set against a $50/t carbon fee/tax in general.

      The same people that argue "the government shouldn't try to pick winners" prefer an approach that picks coal as a winner instead of a general fee/tax that let's the market pick winners.

      It makes you wonder just what they are trying to accomplish.

5525. michael sweet at 13:19 PM on 18 June 2021
      The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
      

      Bob at 64:

      I agree with your assessment.  We should spend our money on things that give us a better return.  Essentially what Nordhaus says in John Hartz's comment.

5526. John Hartz at 10:38 AM on 18 June 2021
      The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
      

      In the context of the ongoing discussion of CCS, the following caught my eye:

      Mufson: One popular device here in Washington is the Section 45Q tax provision, which provides a tax credit of as much as $50 a ton for the capture and storage of carbon dioxide. Many lawmakers want to expand this.

      Nordhaus: Section 45Q is a subsidy similar to what was given to ethanol in an earlier era. It is a carbon sequestration subsidy. It’s messy. In part, it is subsidizing people already doing that activity. It is helpful rather than harmful. But it is way down the list of priorities. It is going after one of the most expensive ways to reduce emissions, There are so many other things to do before that that are much more efficient than capturing carbon dioxide and pumping it into the ground.

      The above exchange is excerpted from the Q&A article, Nobel winner’s evolution from ‘dark realist’ to just plain realist on climate change by Steven Mufson, Climate Solutions, Washington Post, June 14, 2021

      FWIW, I wholeheartedly concur with William Nordhaus on this particular issue.

5527. Bob Loblaw at 07:04 AM on 18 June 2021
      The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
      

      Michael:

      We used to live in Saskatchewan (and my wife worked briefly in SaskPower's environment section), so we were well aware of a lot of the plans for the Boundary Dam's CSS project. (It was built after we left.)

      In addition to being costly, it also causes a significant reduction in efficiency, which doesn't help the economics. (Although burning more coal is probably a relatively low cost compared to invested capital in CSS).

      I think it was useful in testing new technologies at an operational scale, but it demonstrates the difficulty of creating a functional, inexpensive CSS facility.

      In part, I see CSS as a way to get people to invest more in coal-fueled power production and tie them into long-term captial investment that creates a continued market for coal. The more you invest in new coal-based systems now, the more expensive it will be to get out of them before the normal end of their useful life.

      When I think about CSS, nuclear, etc. as technologies to reduce GHG emissions, my main concerns are "at what cost, and in how many years?".

5528. michael sweet at 06:01 AM on 18 June 2021
      The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
      

      Bob @59:

      I am also not very impressed with the Boundary Dam installation.  They only catch a small fraction of the carbon dioxide from the power plant and it is costly.  They have demonstrated that they can catch carbon dioxide but it does not look economic to me.  They use the carbon dioxide to get more oil out of the ground.

      It may be that they can use carbon capture on plants burning biological materials to support electrofuel manufacture if that path is taken.  It will not be a cheap way to go.  I do not see carbon capture as a way to allow the continued use of large amounts of fossil fuels.

5529. michael sweet at 05:57 AM on 18 June 2021
      The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
      

      Red Baron:

      I think that carbon sequestration as you describe has a good chance to contribute a lot to future mitigation efforts.  That is a different process than carbon capture and storage which the fossil fuel industry is pushing in the USA.  I do not see data to support the claims that CCS can put enormous amounts of carbon back into the earth in a practical, economic manner.

5530. michael sweet at 05:53 AM on 18 June 2021
      The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
      

      MARodger:

      Your link was a good place to start.  I think they got most of their information from the Global CCS institute here.  Both locations have lists of CCS facilities in the USA and worldwide.  Apparently the USA has the strongest government support for CCS.  There are only 65 facilities built ior in planing, some very small, and I did not have time to read them all.  I note that the largest, most expensive unit at Kemper in the USA was canned after several billion dollars was spent.  

      In general, most of the carbon is being injected back into the Earth to enhance oil recovery.  It increases the cost of the process (usually making electricity but also cement and other chemicals).  While they have demonstrated that they can catch the carbon dioxide, it is very expensive.  The scale of capture to meet temperature goals is very large.  When they stop recovering oil with the carbon dioxide it will be even more expensive.  Many plants get the carbon dioxide from natural gas, a source which will be eliminated in the future.

      I am skeptical that CCS can reach the very high goals asked for it.  They are talking about even more expansion of CCS than is needed for renewable energy.  The renewable energy goals are high also, but at least you make money investing in it. 

      I agree with Dr. Mann that a lot of CCS is a cover for the fossil fuel industries and not a reasistic proposal.

5531. nigelj at 08:25 AM on 17 June 2021
      The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
      

      I haven't read Michael Manns new book, but the following links give a decent review by New Scientist, and one persons very useful summary of the key points in the book and an analysis of its themes. 

      www.newscientist.com/article/mg24933160-300-the-new-climate-war-review-reasons-to-be-optimistic-about-the-future/

      anotherendispossible.medium.com/i-read-michael-manns-the-new-climate-war-so-you-don-t-have-to-c03056f2ab92

      I can see where Manns coming from overall in his book, and I think hes largely right, maybe 90% right.

      These links all seem to support Nick Palmers contention @1 that "Dr Mann ...dismisses CCS, afforestation, nuclear, soil regeneration etc as unworkable or as a Machiavellian poker play of the 'delayers, dismissives, inactivists' etc"

      I get the impression Mann sees all these things as a distraction from a new energy grid and he's condemned some of them in a way thats not terribly nuanced, and its annoyed some people.

      CCS seems like a borderline useful technology. Its just not cost effective but its probably not completely dead yet. But I can totally understand why Mann was so critical of it.

      I tend to have doubts about tree planting myself. 

      Its not clear whether he totally dismisses nuclear power or sees it as a bit player.

      It's disturbing that he is so dismissive of the usefulness of regnerative agriculture to act as a carbon sink. This technology is not coming from end of the world doomer activists and it clearly has significant potential to play some part in mitigation (despite my criticisms of some of the more wildly optimistic claims. But you get wild optimism with any new ideas). And its a benign sort of mitigation. He could have been more nuanced.

      From the links its clear that Mann sees the urgent need for a new energy grid is undermined by a lot of de-growth activists out there promoting massive and unrealistic lifestyle changes , and who categorise wind and solar power as evil tools of profit hungry corporations. And that oil companies have leaped onto this to deflect attention from system change to personal responsibility. I think he's largely right about all of this. I'm on Nicks side over this aspect of things. The priority has to be a new energy grid. There is an obvious problem about finite resources and the viability of high levels of consumption but changing this looks really difficult for obvious reasons and is not something that is likely to change anytime soon so I think renewable energy has to be the priority even if its resource intensive.

      It's clear Mann doesn't dismiss individuals reducing carbon footprints. He says  this is useful but not adequate in itself. I dont see how anyone can argue with that.

      Wikipedia also has a useful article on his book.

5532. Bob Loblaw at 01:30 AM on 17 June 2021
      The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
      

      I know of one of the early "demonstration at commercial scale" CSS projects in Canada: the Boundary Dam installation (retrofit of parts of an existing coal-fired plant) in Saskatchewan:

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundary_Dam_Power_Station

      Numerous problems, numerous economic issues. The Wikipedia article covers it.

5533. RedBaron at 01:03 AM on 17 June 2021
      The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
      

      @ 56 Michael Sweet,

      I have not had the free time to read/listen to the book yet, so I have not commented as of yet. I want to make an informed post. However, your comment about "no examples of successful carbon sequestration at an industrial scale." needs a qualifier. There are plenty of examples of biological carbon sequestion at scale. Both in natural systems and agriculture. What is fossil fuels themseves but proof of concept that nature has in the past sequestered large quantities of carbon repeatedly in the past when conditions were right for it? If it couldn't, we would not have the abundant fossil fuels to begin with!

      It's an important caveat to make.

5534. MA Rodger at 01:03 AM on 17 June 2021
      The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
      

      michael sweet @56,

      Just as there are a number of examples of fictional "punks" who gamble on how many bullets remain in Dirty Harry's 44 magnum handgun that they are told would "blow your head clean off" (this evidently a bare-faced lie), there are a number of examples of operating CCS pants. According to this Dec 2020 webpage there were 26 globally that are actually operating, sequestering 40Mt(CO2)/yr. Mind, this 2014 CarbonBrief survey of global CCS reckoned there were 13 in operation in 2014 so that is doubling the number operating in six years. And it appears most of the 22 projects described by CarbonBrief aren't/won't-be capturing all the emitted CO2 and the portion that is captured is-being/will-be used to extract oil. And you do get the impression from the likes of this webpage that the many of the "punks" in Big Oil are betting the farm on CCS.

5535. michael sweet at 22:45 PM on 16 June 2021
      The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
      

      Nick Palmer:

      So no examples of successful carbon sequestration at an industrial scale.

      Perhaps you need to reconsider your criticism of environmentalists who are skeptical of an unproven technology.

5536. nigelj at 08:10 AM on 16 June 2021
      The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
      

      Nick Palmer @54 says "I think you lot are trying to hard to prop up a very long standing meme,....I think the true culpability of Big Fossil Fuel is not for resembling the activist meme of them being shadowy psychopaths intent on destroying the world for profit but rather for being like the punk in Dirty Harry who, when neither of them knew for certain whether there were any bullets left in the Magnum, recklessly took a chance and paid the price."

      I don't see where I've supported that activist meme that "corporations are shadowy psychopaths intent on destroying the world for profit". Their motives are more complex than that. They seek profit because thats how the system works and the law requires they build shareholder value and I don't see that as evil, although it would be useful to see if the law could expand corporate goals to also include environmental objectives.

      Corporations  pollute because of the tragedy of the commons problem. There is not mush point blaming them for that too much, rather that the answer is government  environmental laws or we change the entire economic system.

      However corporations do misbehave and break laws at times and Exonn Mobils behaviour was underhanded. And I dont buy into this crazy notion that the oil companies behaviour was because of Greenpeace. The oil companies could see the writing on the wall that governments would put pressure on them one way or the other, and perhaps the general public will so they got worried about impacts on their incomes and job security etc,etc, and defensive and it lead to a campaign to spread doubt. I've seen polling studies of oil companies where almost their entire staff are climate change sceptics, liberals and conservatives alike.

      But I agree with your Dirty Harry analogy.

      "I came to my ideas from a lot of experience over several decades debunking 'ordinary' denialism, but I also found it quite often necessary to debunk alarmists too, who went much further than the peer reviewed science actually said."

      Same with me. It's tough going because you get labelled a luke warmer and traitor. There's exaggeration, group think , bias and tribalism on both sides of the debate, but I think our side is far more objective overall and correct  environmentally and thats the bottom line.

5537. One Planet Only Forever at 06:45 AM on 16 June 2021
      The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
      

      In spite of Nick’s comments, Mann’s interview does not support the position Nick takes regarding things like CCS. At the end of the interview Mann states that every tonne of emissions generated makes the future worse. Building CCS could excuse continuing to add tonnes making the future worse. It may be beneficial if it is imposed on already built fossil fuel operations. But it could be used to excuse building new fossil fuel operations or running existing operations longer.

      I share the understanding that CCS is questionable. CCS does not, and will not, capture close to 100% of the produced emissions. And the captured stuff has not been “locked away with certainty”. The understood need to limit harm done to future generations leads to understanding the need to rapidly end the addition of carbon to the already massive problem. Given the already existing alternatives, especially the alternative of reduction of energy consumption, CCS does not justify building any new fossil fuel energy generation operation. CCS application would be limited to reducing the harm done by already built operations. And even that has questionable economics compared to rapidly building renewable generation and shutting down the fossil fuel burner. Being “already built” does not justify its continued operation, no matter what the people wanting to benefit that way claim. People benefiting from harmful unsustainable over-development do not deserve accommodation and compensation for their reduced potential for “Personal Happiness from harmful activity”.

      Nick may pursue being “science correct”. But he does not appear to apply that science in an engineering sense to limit harm done. He appears to have a business-political biased perspective excusing harm done which is exposed by his statement in the comment @31.

      “BTW, when I refer to left wing I am not referring to centre'ish politics like that of the US Democrats but more towards the sort of Utopian student revolutionary type beliefs.”

      A brief political comment is required to begin the response to that:

      A political perspective like Social Democracy pursuing increased awareness and improve understanding of what is harmful and applying that knowledge to keep harmful activity from being able to compete for popularity and profit is “Centrist” in the Left-Right or Socialist-Capitalist spectrum. The average of the diversity of views currently in the Democratic Party is pretty far Right of Center. The Democrats of the USA are only centre'ish in the significantly skewed realm of USA politics.

      It is not Utopian to be aware of the need to correct the harmful over-development that has been produced by selfish people being able to get away with harmful actions and related beliefs that excuse those actions, especially the extremes that have over-developed in places like the USA. Harmfully unsustainable pursuers of maximum personal benefit “pursuing Their maximum Happiness in understandably harmful ways” have no sustainable future. But they are OK with that as long as things are good for them in their lifetime. And many of them will make-up beliefs that Their future generations will be just fine because things only ever get better for their type of people.

      Awareness of that extreme bias towards making up excuses for understandably harmful beliefs and actions provides a robust explanation for the attempted arguments presented by the likes of Nick.

      The following may not change minds like Nick’s, but it is likely a more Common Sense understanding of the situation.

      Exxon appeared to be pursuing a science (increased awareness and improved understanding) and engineering (application of knowledge) pursuit of understanding applied to limit harm done. Then they appeared to shift to a business and political approach with misleading marketing, perhaps to protect their vested interests. And now they may be shifting to legal efforts to delay and minimize penalty consequences to allow current beneficiaries to keep each additional month of increased benefits before effective restrictions and penalties, if there are any, get imposed.

      The tobacco case is similar. But so is the history regarding Ozone damaging compounds, sulphur emissions, and the recent “VW diesel deception” (harmful engineering for business motives) which discovered that parts of the VW organization did something harmful and deceptive that could not have been an oversight. And among the many claims made were claims that VW executives were unaware it had been done, that it was the actions of rogue technologists, not something that corporate leadership was aware had been done.

      Nick does not present a “new” perspective. Making up excuses for harmful actions has a long harmful history. It is true that unless there is physical documentation as proof the motives of people are unknowable, even if they declare their motives. And even if there appears to be irrefutable evidence of motive it can still be denied or refuted.

      So we are left with interpreting all of the available information, even information that contradicts beliefs about the glory of things like Freedom, Democracy or Capitalism. All those things are potentially good. But history is full of evidence showing that if the potential for harm is not effectively Governed and Limited harm will develop in any of those potentially helpful systems. And history is full of misleading marketing efforts to defend the systems and the resulting Winners, including misleading claims that those systems are better than any alternatives, and are better with less Governing or Limiting of what is allowed. That is misleading because a diversity of systems are helpful as long as harmful attitudes and actions are effectively and constantly limited from being popular or profitable.

      Review my comment @29, in addition to revisiting my earlier comments.
      I agree with others who have made it clear that it is incorrect to claim that misleading marketing is being equally applied by both extremes of this faux debate.

      The understood need to protect the future of humanity from harmful consequences leads to understanding that extreme potential harmful results are the appropriate considerations to be presented. Attempting to compromise that awareness by claiming that a "most likely" or average degree of harm is the “proper centrist or moderate” consideration is fatally flawed.

      A failure to care about protecting the future of humanity leads to many Popular beliefs and claims, including claims motivated by the belief that already developed popular and profitable activity must not be demonized and penalized.

5538. Nick Palmer at 06:31 AM on 16 June 2021
      The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
      

      I think you lot are trying to hard to prop up a very long standing meme, originated by Greenpeace and subsequently promoted by, IMHO, political forces not related to pure climate science. I've never said that Big Oil should have done what they did, just that their motivation to do it may not have been that which was attributed to them by that meme. FWIW, I think the true culpability of Big Fossil Fuel is not for resembling the activist meme of them being shadowy psychopaths intent on destroying the world for profit but rather for being like the punk in Dirty Harry who, when neither of them knew for certain whether there were any bullets left in the Magnum, recklessly took a chance and paid the price.
      
      If you've ever seen that analogy used in the climate wars, I originated it. My argument to denialists back then was that, by analogy, 'denier punks' had a right to risk their own lives by believing that there were no climate change bullets left, or that possible low climate sensitivity meant that any bullet would be nearly a blank, but that they had a much greater responsibility to not take any view which would put everyobdy else in the world at risk if they were wrong. I had long discussions about this general concept with Greg 'What's the worst that could happen' Craven whose approach of risk analysis I still think is far superior at getting through to the majority of the public rather than the 'This is what the science says', 'Oh no it isn't', 'Yes it is', shouting match that the public arena is.
      
      I came to my ideas from a lot of experience over several decades debunking 'ordinary' denialism, but I also found it quite often necessary to debunk alarmists too, who went much further than the peer reviewed science actually said. Alarmism gives deniers a lot of amunition to smear the actual science, in the minds of the public, by proxy. A lot of current denialism consists of holding up the silliest statements of extremists to ridicule, rather than attacking the science directly, but unfortunately that rebounds badly on the actual science in the public's view who have little way of knowing which of the very confident sounding sides are accurate or legit.

      Long before John Cook started off the whole Denial 101 F.L.I.C.C initiative, I had been made well aware of the multiple deceptive rhetorical 'tricks' used by ordinary denialists to deny the peer reviewed science. I also became aware that the vast majority actually completely believed their position, whether it was the 'almost mainstream' luke-warmer position or the weirder 'against the second law of thermodynamics' pseudoscience types. What I did notice was that, say, in the comments of WUWT, virtually none of the former ever criticised the latter. It was only a very, very few, such as Mosher, who took on the real loonies. I also came to see that the reverse was also the case in environmentalist literature. Apart from a few such as myself, who has always tried to root out any mistakes, delusion or deceptions wherever they may be found, activist alarmism in publicly available media seemed to get a 'free pass' from those who normally argued the science, such as skepsci types. For what it's worth, I find it much harder to deal with activists, rather than with the more moderate 'denialists' as activist ideology isn't really based on a rational bullet-proof knowledge of the science, but rather on persuasive memes and Hans Eysenck's 'hobgoblins' to scare the public. I couldn't help noticing that BOTH sides used the same techniques of misdirection, cherry picking etc although, back then, it tended to be the more extreme - the incorrigibles of the denialist side - who did the lion's share of it. In the last few years, as the political aspects of the climate arena have suddenly popped out of the closet far more than ever before, and the sides have become ever more partisan, I'd say 'what lies beneath' the surface of people on all sides debating climate policy is surfacing.
      
      I used to sit on my former Government's Energy panel, which was set up to deal with energy policy relating to climate science and the energy transitions required and I became pretty well connected with some significant movers and shakers in the climate science arena, both scientists, civil servants and media folk. For what it's worth, the panel also had representatives on it from gas and oil 'fossil fuel' corporations, plus the area electricity supplier.  That's another reason why I'm virtually certain that the Greenpeace/Oreskes meme, that even some smart people seem to have swallowed hook, line and sinker, is a fair distance from the truth. The meme has a lot of the smell of simplified 'hobgoblins to sway the public' about it, rather than it being a completely accurate piece of historical reportage...
      
      Anyway, it's been interesting to see the, in my view somewhat biased, kick-back from long term Skepsci followers. I think what I might do in due course is approach John Cook to see if we can arrange a Zoom meeting. He and Stephan Lewandowsky are right at the forefront of the 'psychological' approach to deconstructing denialist attitudes and methods. Maybe they'll be more welcoming of a new hypothesis than others...

5539. Nick Palmer at 04:05 AM on 16 June 2021
      The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
      

      Just to reassure the audience that I was only criticising a part of Michael Mann's new book, the bit where he dismisses alternative solutions and rather over-eggs the 'Big Fossil Fuel is evil' meme, let me post this recent interview of him which very well encapsulates what I believe is true and I support almost every word he says in it
      
      Interview of Michael Mann

5540. Eclectic at 21:03 PM on 15 June 2021
      If growth of CO2 concentration causes only logarithmic temperature increase - why worry?
      

      Jimmww @5 , the  global warming effect of CO2 is not a plain logarithmic effect (also note Scaddenp's comment @ #3 above).   And thus your assertion is well off-target.

      Why do you say climate change "is a given" ?   Taken by itself, that comment doesn't actually make sense.  To make some sense of it, you really need to explain yourself, in considerable detail.  Your own slogans are not sufficient.

5541. MA Rodger at 19:58 PM on 15 June 2021
      The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
      

      Nick Palmer @47,

      Youe "Meanwhile..."  rather misses the point that Emily Atkin's May 26 blog is making. (And that even with all the words employed.) What explanation does Atkins give for good-news climate stories being framed as bad-news big-oil stories?

      Describing May 26 as “A good day for life on Earth” means admitting to that fact [that "stabilizing the climate requires an end to oil and gas extraction"], and becoming vulnerable to cries of bias from the oil industry and its allies. News outlets don’t want to deal with that, so they simply call it “a bad day for Big Oil,” and let the industry attack those pesky oil-hating climate activists instead.

      Your objection to that fact [that "stabilizing the climate requires an end to oil and gas extraction"] is that it ignores is that it " turns a blind eye to the use of carbon ca[pture and sequestration technologies which are far more advanced than types like her will admit."

      If that is the idea you want to establish, make it and see if it floats. All this 'He said, she said, they said, type like her said' stuff remains boring nonsense and quite irrelevant if you cannot make the case for the survival of Big Oil as a big extractor of FF from the geology - this assuming your "Meanwhile..." is not just more wordy frippery.

5542. jimmww at 18:04 PM on 15 June 2021
      If growth of CO2 concentration causes only logarithmic temperature increase - why worry?
      

      Since the first 20ppm of CO2 produces 50% of its GHG effect, the next doubling to 800 ppm will in crease its GHG effect by less than 2%, overwhelmed, most likely, by the other eight forcings.

      There are reasons to look for alternative sources of energy.  There are good reasons to clean up our environment (and our bedrooms). Plastics in the oceans and rivers should now be our main concern.  And it isn't!  CO2 is not a pollutant.

      Climate change is a given, not a problem.  CO2 mitigation is a problem, not a solution.

5543. nigelj at 16:55 PM on 15 June 2021
      The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
      

      Nick Palmers theory appears to be the fossil fuel companies were defensive and spread denialism because they were under attack by extremist environmentalists and never offered the option of carbon capture because environmentalists allegedly hate it. The real reason for the fossil fuel companies defensive response and spreading denialism and doubt is far more likely to be vested interests, fear of job losses, dislike of government regulation / taxes, all the usual things. Just apply Occams Razor. This is far more likely than the complicated, fantastical movie like drama that is rather lacking in hard evidence, painted by Nick Palmer. This Greenpeace stuff would be a bit player in the whole affair.

5544. michael sweet at 14:11 PM on 15 June 2021
      The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
      

      Nick Palmer:

      Suggesting that Greenpeace and Exxon Mobile are equivalent is really not valid at all.  For decades the oil companies have received hundreds of billions of dollars subsidies to pollute our air.  It is very rare for Greenpeace to be invited to teh table.  Politicians are only moving now because renewable energy is cheaper than oil and climate change is causing catastrophies worldwide.  Your suggestion that oil companies were responding to a few environmentalists is beyond reason.

      Please provide a reference for a single power plant anywhere in the world that captures its CO2 and sequesters it permanently.  There are a few operations that separate CO2 from natural gas and then pump the CO2 back into the ground to get out more oil and gas.  Provide a reference for three full size industrial sites that pump CO2 into the ground permanently.  Carbon capture and storage is completely uneconomic, there is no product to sell.  Putting CCS on a power plant immediately makes it lose money. 

      You are simply spouting fossil propaganda.

5545. Eclectic at 12:09 PM on 15 June 2021
      The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
      

      Perhaps a little "light relief" is needed amidst the current navel-gazing.

      The connection?  That deepest abyss of denialistic blogginess ~ WattsUpWithThat  (where I often monitor things).   At WUWT , there is no name which causes spittle froth to rise to the lips of WattsUpites . . . faster than the name Michael Mann.

      The SkS connection?   In recent weeks and a number of threads (but only the science-discussing threads, not the multiple lunatic-political ones) one can see frequent comments by an old friend of SkS :  Dikran Marsupial .   (NB he hasn't posted at SkS in latter years.)

      Along with the usual Nick Stokes, one sees Dikran Marsupial smiting the heathen , quite superbly.   ( If one wishes some light relief!! )

5546. Nick Palmer at 10:20 AM on 15 June 2021
      The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
      

      I'll try and get back to the latest comments. You lot are STILL not understanding my main point and are jumping to fundamentally fallacious conclusions about my position. Some are indulging in exactly the same type of mental gymnastics that denialists do to avoid an inconvenient truth and maintain their biases. Clearly the battalions of strawmen above show I have shaken up the dogma...
      
      In the meantime here, from todays 'Heated' report by Emily Atkins, which is apparently well respected, which is all about the 'three big wins' for the climate reported recently comes a snippet which shows that the idea that the left is cheering the result against the oil corporations and 'the right' is bemoaning it is common currency, which rather confirms the extreme political polarisation in climate news.
      
      "But this analysis illustrates a fairly common phenomenon. News outlets routinely favor a political framing over an existential framing when it comes to climate stories. In general, the push-and-pull between industry and activists is given greater attention than the fight over everyone’s health and economic well-being.

      This framing is preferred in part because it sells. The Left sees a “bad day for Big Oil” and celebrates. The fossil fuel-backed Right sees the same and freaks out. Both result in great click-and-share rates—way better than the rates for “A good day for life on Earth.” (Believe me, I know.)

      But this framing is also preferred in part because it’s safe. Though the news industry has made great strides in climate truth-telling, there is still one basic fact many outlets remain unwilling to state plainly: that stabilizing the climate requires an end to oil and gas extraction."
      
      Note that the left wing Atkins repeats the activist mantra that all oil and gas extraction use must stop, which I have aleady pointed out would cause colossal damage almost overnight. She turns a blind eye to the use of carbon ca[pture and sequestration technologies which are far more advanced than types like her will admit
      
      It's only a small jump from that to understanding how it was the political opportunism of the left which created the situation that led to Big Oil using lobbyists and think tanks etc to counter that opportunism in the minds of the public by using public relations techniques. It seems that people need to open their minds a little to maybe consider that the oil corporations were not really against solving climate change all along, as they have been relentlessly libelled, just the brain-dead and destructive 'solutions' that the anti-capitalist left wing embraced and wished to impose on them.
      
      Heated June 14th

5547. nigelj at 09:55 AM on 15 June 2021
      The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
      

      Bob Loblow @45

      "I did not get the impression that NIck denies this (my note: oil companies knowingly engaged in climate denialism from the early days onwards) - I was more under the impression that he thought it was a reasonable reaction to what he considers an "unwarranted attack"."

      I got the impression Nick thought the oil companies didn't knowingly and deliberately spread denialism because he was so critical of Orekses book (at comment 3) which apparently linked oil companies to denialism. Maybe I interpreted it all wrong. Apologies to Nick if I did. Its really easy for Nick to clarify the issue.

      And if he was just saying the oil companies were reacting to unfair attacks on them at that time, the science has firmed up in recent years yet at least some of the fossil fuel companies still seem to be linked to denialism. So whats their excuse now?

      I tend to actually agree with quite a few of Nicks views which I hope I've made clear. So this is a tricky thing for me to comment on. There seems to be an element of truth that some peolpe scapegoat oil companies to shift responsibility away from their own lifestyles, just as oil companies blame individuals to shift responsibility away from themselves. But the idea that denialists are denialists because Greenpeace's occasional bouts of craziness seems untenable. It might be a factor hardening some peoples attitudes but the denialism has other more fundamental roots.

5548. Bob Loblaw at 08:11 AM on 15 June 2021
      The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
      

      Nigelj @44:

      I did not get the impression that NIck denies this - I was more under the impression that he thought it was a reasonable reaction to what he considers an "unwarranted attack".

5549. nigelj at 07:02 AM on 15 June 2021
      The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
      

      I have to agree with MAR that Nick Palmers evidence regarding Greenpeace and fossil fuel companies is rather anecdotal and unreliable looking ( I think thats what MAR is saying). Same thought occured to me but I had given up on this discussion. However out of curiosity I just did a five minute google seach "fossil fuel companies promoting climate scepticism, doubt and denial" , and literally about the first four hits showed that people have researched this in depth, and come up with utterly compelling hard evidence, company documents etc,etc that shows fossil fuel companies have promoted climate denial, doubts etc. I dont know how Nick can deny this. The examples:

      www.bbc.com/news/stories-53640382

      www.climaterealityproject.org/blog/climate-denial-machine-how-fossil-fuel-industry-blocks-climate-action

      influencemap.org/report/How-Big-Oil-Continues-to-Oppose-the-Paris-Agreement-38212275958aa21196dae3b76220bddc

      www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/01/10/how-fossil-fuel-industry-got-media-think-climate-change-was-debatable/

      www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/10/vested-interests-public-against-climate-science-fossil-fuel-lobby

5550. MA Rodger at 22:45 PM on 14 June 2021
      The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
      

      I am always of the view that long passages of argument are a sign of a poor understanding. This big long comment interchange, now 18,000 words long, provides a good example of the phenomenon.

       

      Nick Palmer @37,

      You write "Perhaps it might help if you and the other two knew three things which might help you to realise that I'm not just making this up." [**My emphasis]

      You then set out these "three things." First there is some anonymous late-night conversation overheard back in the 1980s discussing "Greenpeace ... going down a slippery slope."  Second, a couple of your school chums now work for big oil and they aren't evil people. (I'm not sure where your G7 comments and GreenPeace=AntiNuclear comments fit in with this.) Third GreenPeace were not enthusiastic about supporting Cold Fusion.

      ** The "this" you insist you are "not just making up" concerns what you term "the insinuative narrative that just about everyone seems to have accepted." I would have thought the existence of such an "insinuative narrative that just about everyone seems to have accepted" could be demonstrated easily enough without all this massive wordage. And apart from your "three things" setting out the notion that GreenPeace is evil or something, and that you tell us this "insinuative narrative" was "originated largely by GreenPeace," I fail to see any reason for sharing these "three things."

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