Author: Rob Mielcarski

By Chris Martenson: As We Enter 2017, Keep the Big Picture in Mind

An excellent year-end piece by Chris Martenson.

https://www.peakprosperity.com/blog/105291/we-enter-2017-keep-big-picture-mind

 

Truthfully, there’s a lot about which we should all be concerned, and I think that people’s sense of unease heading into 2017 is well-deserved, if sometimes misplaced.

What do I mean by that?  Well, it is misplaced to be worried about symptoms instead of causes.  The fever is worrying but it is not the cause of the illness.

 

Perhaps the most vexing challenge remains how to more effectively communicate the various predicaments and problems we face.

It’s not having more numbers, or more data, that’s for sure.  If numbers and data ‘worked then we’d have taken a very different path sometime back in the 1950’s.

 

As Admiral Hyman Rickover said in a speech to a group of doctors in 1957:

“I think no further elaboration is needed to demonstrate the significance of energy resources for our own future. Our civilization rests upon a technological base which requires enormous quantities of fossil fuels. What assurance do we then have that our energy needs will continue to be supplied by fossil fuels: The answer is – in the long run – none.

The earth is finite. Fossil fuels are not renewable. In this respect our energy base differs from that of all earlier civilizations. They could have maintained their energy supply by careful cultivation. We cannot.

Fuel that has been burned is gone forever. Fuel is even more evanescent than metals. Metals, too, are non-renewable resources threatened with ultimate extinction, but something can be salvaged from scrap. Fuel leaves no scrap and there is nothing man can do to rebuild exhausted fossil fuel reserves. They were created by solar energy 500 million years ago and took eons to grow to their present volume.

In the face of the basic fact that fossil fuel reserves are finite, the exact length of time these reserves will last is important in only one respect: the longer they last, the more time do we have, to invent ways of living off renewable or substitute energy sources and to adjust our economy to the vast changes which we can expect from such a shift. Fossil fuels resemble capital in the bank.

A prudent and responsible parent will use his capital sparingly in order to pass on to his children as much as possible of his inheritance. A selfish and irresponsible parent will squander it in riotous living and care not one whit how his offspring will fare.”

(Source)

His logic was as irrefutably sound then as it is today.  Such information was known at the highest levels throughout government and academia.  But there was no, and continues to be no, sustained and well-funded efforts to grapple with the basic dilemma posed by increasing population as dramatically as we have all the while living on, literally eating, fossil fuels to encourage that rapid population growth.

“Can you think of any problem in any area of human endeavor on any scale, from microscopic to global, whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way aided, assisted, or advanced by further increases in population, locally, nationally, or globally?”  ~ Al Bartlett

 

The predicament we face is really quite profound.  I submit to you that people know this in their guts and the fact that they do goes a long way towards describing the feeling dread many people report they are carrying here at the start of 2017 and cannot seem to shake.

And of course they are.  Not having a plan for how to even feed 7.4 billion people, heading to 9 or 10 billion people, without massive fossil fuel calorie subsidies is a troubling thought.  If it’s not troubling, then more thinking needs to be applied.

Examples Being Set

obama-family-in-hawaii

During his 8 years in office, Obama spent about $90 million on long distance family vacations.

That’s a lot of CO2 from someone who claims to care about climate change.

Real leaders set good examples.

Good intentions are worthless.

Only actions count.

justin-trudeau-in-bahamas

Justin Trudeau, another leader who claims to care about climate change, made 23 international trips to 19 different countries since becoming Prime Minister on November 4, 2015. Plus a family vacation with his 1 more than 2 children to the Caribbean.

It’s no wonder that the majority of citizens are reluctant to change their lifestyles.

Leaders and experts that understand how serious the situation is, like climate scientists, must set low-carbon lifestyle examples.

Obviously, if all leaders cancelled their long distance vacations and banned government travel it would not solve climate change, however it would send a strong message because long distance travel is a high carbon activity that many people enjoy but do not need to survive.

And it would set the table for the much stronger medicine that must follow: economic contraction and a one child policy.

We are out of time.

By Ludlum and Kunstler: Obama’s Legacy

It’s likely Trump will be really bad, but he’s going to have to work hard to be worse than Obama.

Steve Ludlum and James Howard Kunstler recently wrote nice summaries of Obama’s legacy. I’ve posted them to remind myself in the future just how bad Obama really was. Or perhaps how little power a president actually has.

 

In fact, almost every ‘crime’ the oafish Trump is being accused of in advance has been committed already by preceding administrations including Obama’s, starting illegal wars, snooping on citizens, raping the environment, cozying up to bankers, bankers, bankers and more bankers.

Don’t forget Obama’s ‘drone war’, suspension of habeas corpus, arbitrary imprisonment and torture in secret prisons. These programs took form under Bush but Obama did nothing to end them or much to rein them in.

It’s okay as long as ‘our guy’ does it: it wasn’t Trump who ringed Russia with military bases, missiles and combat formations, it wasn’t Trump who sent spies and provocateurs to destabilize Ukraine or attack Russian clients Syria and Libya from the air. It wasn’t Trump who is engaged in questionable wars in multiple countries across the globe all aimed at driving energy- and resource consumption to the world’s largest energy hog. It isn’t Trump who made al-Qaeda into a defacto ally of the Pentagon and the CIA, who gave the militants arms and training, who enabled the rise of Turkish neo-Ottoman ambition alongside Saudi Salafism and state terror. It was Obama who did all these things and more, following in the footsteps of American presidents going back to Truman.

http://www.economic-undertow.com/2016/12/23/king-trump-the-irrelevant/

 

I didn’t vote for Hillary or Donald Trump (I wrote-in David Stockman). I’m not happy to see Donald Trump become president. But I’ve had enough of Mr. Obama. He put up a good front. He seemed congenial and intelligent. But in the end, he appears to be a kind of stooge for the darker forces in America’s overgrown bureaucratic Deep State racketeering operation. Washington truly is a swamp that needs to be drained. Barack Obama was not one of the alligators in it, but he was some kind of bird with elegant plumage that sang a song of greeting at every sunrise to the reptiles who stirred in the mud. And now he is flying away.

http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/exit-hope-change/

By Robert Scribbler: Climate Change Updates

Economic growth has been minimal since 2008 yet CO2 is increasing at a record rate. That’s a really bad sign. Where are the adults?

As we reported in November, 2016 is on track to see a record rate of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) increase.

“The MMCO [Middle Miocene Climate Optimum] was ushered in by CO2 levels jumping abruptly from around 400ppm to 500 ppm, with global temperatures warming by about 4°C  and sea levels rising about 40m (130 feet) as the Antarctic ice sheet declined substantially and suddenly. ” — Skeptical Science

For 2016, Atmospheric CO2 Concentrations are Rising at the Fastest Rate Ever Seen

 

I’ve been monitoring climate science for many years and I’ve observed that this year’s worst case scenario often becomes subsequent year’s likely scenario. That’s a really bad sign. Where are the adults?

“What this means is that even if all of human fossil fuel emissions stop, the Earth environment, from this single source (soil), will generate about the same carbon emission as all of the world’s fossil fuel industry did during the middle of the 20th Century. And that, if human emissions do not stop, then the pace of global warming of the oceans, ice sheets, and atmosphere is set to accelerate in a runaway warming event over the next 85 years.”

“Sadly, soil respiration is just one potential feedback mechanism that can produce added greenhouse gasses as the Earth warms. Warming oceans take in less carbon and are capable of producing their own carbon sources as they acidify and as methane seeps proliferate. Forests that burn due to heat and drought produce their own carbon sources. But increasing soil respiration, which has also been called the compost bomb, represents what is probably one of the most immediate and likely large sources of carbon feedback.”

“The upshot of this study is that amplifying carbon feedbacks from the Earth environment are probably starting to happen on a large scale now. And we may be seeing some evidence for this effect during 2016 as rates of atmospheric carbon dioxide accumulation are hitting above 3 parts per million per year for the second year in a row even as global rates of human emissions plateaued.”

“What this means is that the stakes for cutting human carbon emissions to zero as swiftly as possible just got a whole hell of a lot higher. If we fail to do this, we will easily be on track for 5-7 C or worse warming by the end of this Century. And this level of warming happening so soon and over so short a timeframe is an event that few, if any, current human civilizations are likely to survive.

Furthermore, if we are to avoid terribly harmful warming over longer periods, we must not only rapidly transition to renewable energy sources. We must also somehow learn to pull carbon, on net, out of the atmosphere in rather high volumes.”

“In other words, even the optimists at this time think that we are on the cusp of runaway catastrophic global warming. That the time to urgently act is now.”

Beyond the Point of No Return — Imminent Carbon Feedbacks Just Made the Stakes for Global Warming a Hell of a Lot Higher

By Nick Breeze: On Climate Psychology

This is a thoughtful interview by Nick Breeze of Adrian Tait on the psychology of acknowledging the reality and implications of climate change.

What’s particularly interesting about this interview is that they are mostly talking about evolved denial of reality, yet because of their own inherited denial, they are not aware that denial is their main topic.

If you are not interested in or disagree with Varki’s denial theory, the interviews are still worth watching.

Trump Climate Irony

Fact 1: Trump denies the reality of human caused climate change and will probably reduce the US climate science budget.

Fact 2: Climate scientists have had zero success at influencing human behavior to reduce CO2 emissions.

Fact 3: Of all the groups in society, climate scientists should be setting a low carbon lifestyle example, but they don’t. See fact 2.

Fact 4: Firing all the climate scientists will definitely reduce CO2 emissions.

Coming to Our Senses

Given limits to growth there are only two possible paths forward:

  1. allow our economies to shrink, or
  2. fight over the remaining scraps and then collapse.

Here is Trump’s latest tweet…

Solving Overshoot with More Overshoot

Experts agree that the secret to population reduction is for everyone to have more wealth.

It’s true we can print money, but we can’t print the natural resources needed to make the new money worth something. And even if we could, the benefit would be outweighed by additional CO2, pollution, and species extinction.

Everyone wants a free lunch but nature doesn’t have any.

Where are the adults?

By Gail Tverberg: EROEI Calculations for Solar PV Are Misleading

Gail Tverberg has convinced me to stop using EROEI as a measure of the usefulness of alternate energies.

For me now the critical tests are: Does it pay more taxes than the subsidies it receives, and does it make a (small is ok) profit assuming a “normal” interest rate of at least 5%?

If yes, the energy is helpful. If no, the energy is not helpful.

I watch for alternate energy installations anywhere in the world that meet these criteria and have not found one yet.

Gail is this paper explains why EROEI is not a useful measure…

https://ourfiniteworld.com/2016/12/21/eroei-calculations-for-solar-pv-are-misleading

An Election Worthy of Angst

It’s remarkable how REALLY upset many people are about the US election despite the fact that neither candidate discussed or even acknowledged any of the real issues.

Imagine if both candidates acknowledged limits to growth and offered the only two possible paths forward.

Clinton said vote for me and I will put on the brakes so that we drop CO2 emissions and become poorer (hopefully) slowly together, giving us time to adjust and (hopefully) look after the less fortunate.

Trump said vote for me and I will use debt and the military to keep business as usual going as long as possible until we either destroy the money system and crash catastrophically, or we get into a nuclear war fighting over the remaining scraps.

Now that would be an honest election worthy of angst.