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RedBaron at 14:25 PM on 20 June 2021The 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.
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michael sweet at 02:05 AM on 20 June 2021The 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.
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One Planet Only Forever at 01:49 AM on 20 June 2021The 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.
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RedBaron at 15:10 PM on 19 June 2021The 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.
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Bob Loblaw at 10:30 AM on 19 June 2021The 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).
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nigelj at 08:47 AM on 19 June 2021The 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.
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michael sweet at 06:08 AM on 19 June 2021The 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.
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MA Rodger at 06:07 AM on 19 June 2021The 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.
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Philippe Chantreau at 04:01 AM on 19 June 2021The 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.
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Nick Palmer at 02:55 AM on 19 June 2021The 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. -
Bob Loblaw at 02:15 AM on 19 June 2021The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
OPOF:
I was trying to avoid saying that out loud... :-)
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One Planet Only Forever at 01:32 AM on 19 June 2021The 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".
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Bob Loblaw at 23:19 PM on 18 June 2021The 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.
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michael sweet at 13:19 PM on 18 June 2021The 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.
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John Hartz at 10:38 AM on 18 June 2021The 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.
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Bob Loblaw at 07:04 AM on 18 June 2021The 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?".
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michael sweet at 06:01 AM on 18 June 2021The 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.
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michael sweet at 05:57 AM on 18 June 2021The 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.
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michael sweet at 05:53 AM on 18 June 2021The 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.
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nigelj at 08:25 AM on 17 June 2021The 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.
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.
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Bob Loblaw at 01:30 AM on 17 June 2021The 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.
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RedBaron at 01:03 AM on 17 June 2021The 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.
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MA Rodger at 01:03 AM on 17 June 2021The 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.
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michael sweet at 22:45 PM on 16 June 2021The 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.
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nigelj at 08:10 AM on 16 June 2021The 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.
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One Planet Only Forever at 06:45 AM on 16 June 2021The 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.
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Nick Palmer at 06:31 AM on 16 June 2021The 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... -
Nick Palmer at 04:05 AM on 16 June 2021The 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 -
Eclectic at 21:03 PM on 15 June 2021If 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.
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MA Rodger at 19:58 PM on 15 June 2021The 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.
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jimmww at 18:04 PM on 15 June 2021If 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.
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nigelj at 16:55 PM on 15 June 2021The 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.
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michael sweet at 14:11 PM on 15 June 2021The 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.
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Eclectic at 12:09 PM on 15 June 2021The 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!! )
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Nick Palmer at 10:20 AM on 15 June 2021The 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 -
nigelj at 09:55 AM on 15 June 2021The 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.
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Bob Loblaw at 08:11 AM on 15 June 2021The 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".
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nigelj at 07:02 AM on 15 June 2021The 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:
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MA Rodger at 22:45 PM on 14 June 2021The 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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Bob Loblaw at 06:30 AM on 14 June 2021The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
Oh, I"m addicted. Phillippe asks Nick:
"At what point in time did the science become strong enough to demand action?"
I'd like to ask Nick a slightly different question:
At what point in time did the science become strong enough that arguing that "it is all wrong and global warming is not going to happen" became an unwarranted attack?
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Philippe Chantreau at 05:16 AM on 14 June 2021The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
OK, I understand what you're saying. You're still not addressing some of Bob's and my points. There is a big disconnect in your discourse. Clarify a few things for me:
At what point in time did the science become strong enough to demand action?
For one principled as you are on communicating the science, at what point does denial rethoric become unacceptable?
As of now, only baby steps have been made, in large part because vested interests have been successful at delaying significant action over the past 20 years, way beyond the 80s or 90s. Was this justified?
As much as activist organizations can ask for ending fossil fuel use now, it has a zero probability of happening and even a zero probability of being attempted. You contradict yourself by stating on one hand that corporations are worried that the public would buy into that extreme activist threat, and on the other that their view is "non-starter" for at least half the population.
Your argument appears to boil down to this: it's ok to support false/misleading denial rethoric because, if it's not out there, these activist groups will convince the world of ending all fossil fuel use from one day to the next. That's a stretch reaching the breaking point. In fact, it is not believable at all.
Was it ever desirable for denial rethoric to be so successful as to prevent any effort at a transition, even one that did not present the existential threat you mentioned?
Since you have spent so much effort combating misinformation, would you say it was ever desirable to have such a large proportion of the public buying into all the myths this site debunks?
Is BAU and a never ending status-quo desirable?
Can we honestly say that nothing between the extremes of status-quo and end-it-all now could possibly be worked out?
Is it realistic to consider that, if fossil fuel companies accepted the conclusions of the science, they would instantly disappear, in view of how ingrained fossil fuel use is to our economies and all aspects of our lives?
As for nuclear, as I have said earlier, I am not opposed, at least in principle. They just need to get their sh*t together and stop being over budget and behind schedule.
Fusion sounds great, but is unrealistic as short or even mid-term solution. Cold fusion has not been beyond the pipe dream level. The best hot fusion to date is the recent 101 seconds at 120million deg at EAST. Nowhere close to breaking even, let alone produce anything. ITER is supposed to be complete in 2025, I doubt they'll see plasma before 2026.
Meantime, the multiple wedges approach that we could have adopted 20 years ago (a very reasonable approach completely removed from extreme views) has not happened on any significant scale and we sailed passed 400ppm.
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Nick Palmer at 04:39 AM on 14 June 2021The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
Incidentally, I'm going to re-link to the video of greenman3610 - Pete Sinclair - interviewing Marc Morano because I spotted many contributions by me to the comments below it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFnhTo6Wd80
My screen name back then (8 years ago) was aylesmerep. Most of the denier/sceptics myself and my tag team partner yubedude (who I never knew the real name of - anyone know who they were?) took on deleted their comments because we 'whupped their arses', so it's very difficult to follow the threads nowadays but I remember their content. Realoldone2 was a cracker! I think Robert '1000frollyphd' Holmes was there too.
I find it fascinating to see how arguments in the climate science wars have changed so much in such a short period. Back then many denier comments to such videos were really smart and they always argued the science and nothing but the science. It's only really the last few years that the 'reds under the bed' hypothesis to explain why climate science was, they assert, faked up has taken off like wildfire in the general and conservative media. It doesn't help that some well known climate science media 'go to' figures, such as Professor Kevin Anderson, who is one of Greta Thunberg's support team, is nakedly left in his politics and his choices of solutions he thinks appropriate.
I think what has happened is that the 'debate' has become rapidly polarised recently on political ideology grounds and the various political stances of major figures are now being increasingly blatantly paraded. I wish the political biases of the various protagonists could be stripped out of the public arena, as this development is wholly counter-productive in my view -
Bob Loblaw at 04:37 AM on 14 June 2021The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
All this is getting way off topic as far as Michael Mann's book is concerned.
Nick: you are sounding here like a fossil fuel apologist, Lefties, Greenpeace, socialism, accusing others of following a "gospel", etc.
You seem to feel that it was OK for Big OIl to fund B.S. I do not. Let's leave it at that.
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Nick Palmer at 04:07 AM on 14 June 2021The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
Bob wrote "I really hope that you do not consider sound science (even with uncertainties) to be "an unwarranted attack".
and "If you are referring to non-scientific organizations such as Greenpeace, then I hope that you are not saying that unwarranted attacks justify B.S., simply because it is "effective"."
I am stating that the science was not strong enough back then for the world to have any real confidence that the balance of negative and positive outcomes projected for various amounts of global temperature rise from the rudimentary knowledge of the various sensitivities would be bad, good or neutral.
Bob wrote "Using phrases such as "top climate scientist" represent an argument from authority. I was already teaching undergraduate and graduate climatology courses when Andrew Dessler was still a grad student."
You sound like a denialist! They don't like anyone quoting the statements of top climate scientists either and often accuse one of using the argument from authority 'logical fallacy'. The thing is, quoting an actual 'go to' authority in the field of climate science is not really invalidated by dismissing it as a logical fallacy. I'll take Dessler's viewd over yours any day, particulary as I have interacted with him a little in the past. Sorry... -
Nick Palmer at 03:45 AM on 14 June 2021The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
Phillippe wrote: "That is why I find it kind of puzzling that you would make excuses for the promoters of such disinformation"
It's not excuses, it's an alternative explanation to the insinuative narrative that just about everyone seems to have accepted. I think that narrative is fundamentally flawed and was constructed by people with a strong ideological bias as a way to socially engineer the public towards a position that public otherwise might reject. This was originated largely by Greenpeace and is now aided and abetted by Oreskes/Supran and similar who get quoted in articles/programmes in major media where the mass of the voting public can be influenced by them.
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. First, I was at a conference of the environmental organisation I was a part of at the time in the 80s. It was late night in the corridors and the top directors were 'relaxedly' discussing the way Greenpeace were going down a slippery slope precisely because they were abandoning a focus on reasonably presented peer-reviewed science in favour of 'scare stories' to gee up their followers and recruit more by 'empowering people' - in short they were going political to get more power and the direction was not to the right or centre.
Like it or not, even those of the public who don't support the tactics of Greenpeace mostly trust them to be 'telling truth to power' and so industry and commerce have respect for what the public believes if it might impact on their bottom lines. Greenpeace's rhetoric on climate change has swung sharply towards the draconian 'stop all fossil fuel use now' extremity and has been taken up by street activists and social media influencers and warriors. Their top guys have got brains so, considering that if the world actually did this it would almost overnight be immediately thrown into the mother of all global economic crashes which would cause far more devastation, hunger, death and destruction than anything climate change is projected to do for many decades, one has to speculate on hidden motivations for an explanation.
Second, a couple of childhood friends of mine, who came from a long time 'oil industry' family, ended up pretty high in the executive hierarchies of the major international oil corporations, so I have had quite an insight into their company's corporate attitudes over the years, so that's why I think the waay exagerrated (or wrong) insinuations of corporate 'evil' by those trying to push a political ideology which, in their case, appears to outrank whatever environmental ideology they may still have, stink. That's why I said that "they have kids and grandkids they worry about too". There are obviously some psychopaths in top board rooms who actually are in denial but despite anti-corporate propaganda, they really are not anywhere near being in the majority.
The G7 meeting, which is just down the road from me, has just finished. The White House has just issued this, to my mind, very good document.
FACT SHEET: G7 to Announce Joint Actions to End Public Support for Overseas Unabated Coal Generation by End of 2021
Just watch the 'usual suspects' jump on the word 'unabated' and loudly denounce it as 'weasel words', because the development and use of carbon capture and sequestration technology is a direct threat to what they appear to want to happen, which is the destruction of Big Fossil Fuel as some sort of 'punishment' for what they believe, or choose to pretend to believe, the corporations did and as a means of bringing in their almost certainly unworkable pie in the sky vision, that the majority would reject voting for, as to how the world should live.
Much though I regretted it, about 50% of the US voted for Trump both at the start and the finish of his term. Greenpeace's headline socialism-heavy hippy-dippy harmony - Nature! - vision is a non-starter for huge numbers of people and not just in the US. I'm pretty sure that explains why most of the major environmental organisations are still virulently against nuclear power even though the majority of studies show that it will be an essential part of the future energy portfolio of the world. One has to wonder why they are still so against it, even though their arguments against it have become increasingly thin, outdated or invalid. I submit this is because their underlying plans are making them reject anything which promises to rescue the world's use of so much energy and this bias is based on their ideological drive to have a low energy use world.
Third. One incident which cemented my views as to the naked political undercurrents beneath the superficially 'green' stance of some top environmental organisations, was round about 1989. This was when two electrochemists in the U.S thought they had discovered a brand new form of nuclear energy - cold fusion - which created no nuclear waste or ionising radiation and offered no potential for 'nuclear proliferation' or misuse by terrorists. In short, it promised a world where everyone could have a pollution free megawatt unit in their garage. I was associated with some of the people who checked out and ran experiments to validate (or not) the findings and I took it upon myself to contact Greenpeace U.S. (by phone! wasn't cheap!) to suggest they should throw their weight behind getting public acceptance and investment for this new miracle 'save the world, not just the whales' technology. They went very quiet and the temperature metaphorically dropped below freezing. You'll just have to believe my assessment of what was happening as I can't prove it, but it seemed very clear that they were very hostile to the possibility that this new energy source could keep our current society going, decarbonise cement, steel and industry, enable 'indefinite range' electric cars, give abundant cheap energy to the Third World etc and many other 'good' things that, on the face of it, they should have been for. -
Philippe Chantreau at 01:51 AM on 14 June 2021The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
Nick,
I have been at this for a number of years, so I am well aware of your contribution in fighting misinformation. That is why I find it kind of puzzling that you would make excuses for the promoters of such disinformation.
What constitue an unwarranted attack? If you want to argue that accusations of nefarious intent back in the days of high uncertainty were unwarranted, I can't disagree with that. If you want to argue that calling for efforts toward a real energy transition in the more recent times of much more limited uncertainty constitute unwarranted attacks, I can not agree.
So the activist you mentioned take liberties with the scientific information, they exaggerate and distort. Nonetheless, the direction in which they are pushing is indeed the one called for in view of what the science actually shows, whereas the inaction promoted by the fossil fuel supported outlets, that exaggerate and distort in other ways, can not be justified.
Is it warranted to work our way to doubling of pre-industrial concentration just to see what happens? If it really goes to hell, will the very rich individuals who profited from the extended status-quo pitch in to help? In view of the threat, and the magnitude of the task, what is truly unwarranted?
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MA Rodger at 20:54 PM on 13 June 2021Antarctica is gaining ice
wideEyedPupil @506,
There is a 'Global Maps' page on the GISTEMP website HERE that you may find useful. It maps the warming across the globe between any time periods as well as providing a graph of warming by latitude.
If you set the 'Time Interval' to something a decade-long (so perhaps 2010 to 2020 from the ) and for the full year, the warming of the Arctic since the 'Base Period' is obvious, as is "the slowest warming around Antartica." Surrounded by a doughnut of slow-warming oceans, the warming over the continent of Antarctica is less obviously exceptional.
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Jim Hunt at 17:23 PM on 13 June 2021Antarctica is gaining ice
Hello again WEP,
That is certainly the case for the Arctic. Here are some brief instructions on how to answer that sort of question for yourself:
https://GreatWhiteCon.info/2021/05/steve-koonins-unsettled-arctic-science/#WRIT
Here's just one example, which hopefully answers your question?
I leave producing the Antarctic version as an exercise for the interested reader. -
wideEyedPupil at 13:58 PM on 13 June 2021Antarctica is gaining ice
Thanks Bob, guess the bit I'm trying to clear up is the question i asked:
My understanding has been that while Land masses do warm faster than oceans (for more than one reason) but that warming at the polar regions had been more like 2-3 °C compared to the global average of 1.0-1.1 °C.
is true of either the North or South poles that they're warmed more than the global mean?
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nigelj at 13:50 PM on 13 June 2021The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews
Nick Palmer @31, I do understand where you are coming from but I have a couple of disagreements.
"I thought I'd already addressed that. The short answer is that Big Oil continued to support the "B.S. factories" because they were effective at trying to protect those corporations against unwarranted attack."
That doesn't mean the corporations don't also use lobby groups to help spread denial. You seem a little bit stuck in an either / or mindset.
"Anyone who regularly takes on the really incorrigible denialists, as I do - I don't mean the brainwashed rank and file Hicksville idiots, but the much smarter ones - soon discovers that beneath all the high sounding 'alternative science' of the 1000frollyphds, the B.S. factories, Heartland's James Taylor, Quora's James Matkin etc are people who are almost always actually motivated by just a couple of things, of which by far the most common is extreme ideological antipathy to the 'big government' solutions promoted by extremist activists - the deep green environmentalists, the 'Smash Capitalism' closet reds and the 'System Change, not Climate Change' demonstrators."
This extreme ideological antipathy to big government is indeed common thing with the denialists, a libertarian and conservative leaning thing, but you need to understand many of these people define big government as anything beyond military and policing! They are opposed to anything that isn't very small government. So to say climate denlialism is the fault of a few extreme political activists proposing very big government is flawed logic.
"The 'Greenpeace knew' report and the recent Oreskes/Supran paper really are not evidence showing which way the truth lies being, as I've suggested before, chock full of cherry picking and insinuation and, in my view, the leading-the-reader attribution of malignant motives to innocent(ish) behaviour because of the underlying ideology of the authors. Oreskes is known to be significantly left wing and long ago Greenpeace's leaders adopted similar, or stronger, politics and I find their campaigning and assertions have got increasingly slanted and deceptive too."
I thought Orekses book was actually quite good if a bit too general, but there is plenty of hard evidence tying oil companies to spreading denialism of you look around. Read the book Dark Money for a start.
"What is noticeable is that no matter how convincingly one may have demolished their case, give them several weeks, or a couple of months, and one will often find them using exactly the same flawed logic, cherry picked facts and deceptive framing as before. This could mean either they have some sort of mental condition where their mind edits out their defeat so, like psychics who forget all their wrong predictions and only remember any correct ones, they maintain a spurious sense of their own abilities or they don't care much if you demolish their case in public because their only goal is to sway the public mind to their desired end and they know that the public has a very short memory and that the short denialist memes 'it's the Sun, it's cooling, it's cold now in Hicksville, it's cosmic rays etc have a very powerful ability to fool, or at least induce doubt and uncertainty in, the public's minds."
Yes its some sort of mental condition of a sort. Some people have difficulty admitting to themselves they are wrong or have been sucked in, so they hang onto beliefs. They become stubborn and entrenched. We probably all do a bit at times. With others the stubborness and arrogance is more extreme. Google narcissistic personality disorder. Combine this with small government leanings and a smart mind and a reasonable knowledge of science and you have a nuclear powered denialist, and the internet gives them the whole world to preach to. It's really frustrating to say the least.
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