There’s lots of talk about renewable energy replacing fossil energy and reducing climate change.
What does the data show?
CO2 released per year continues to increase exponentially. We have not even leveled off, let alone begun to decline.
The portion of our energy that does not come from burning carbon is unchanged in 25 years.
http://euanmearns.com/global-energy-trends-bp-statistical-review-2015/
At a time when we need citizens with stronger reasoning skills, our education system is encouraging the opposite.
http://questioneverything.typepad.com/…/time-to-retire-from…
Chris Martenson wrote a pretty good piece today.
“Perhaps it was my own blind spot(s) that prevented me from really appreciating just how powerful human denial really is. But here we are, 40 years after the Club of Rome and 7 years after the Great Financial Accident of 2008, collectively pretending that neither was a sign warning of the dangers we face — as a global society — if we continue our unsustainable policies and practices that assume perpetual growth.”
This three part series titled “Adventures in Flatland” by Dave Cohen is a must read for anyone seeking to understand our predicament.
http://www.declineoftheempire.com/…/adventures-in-flatland.…
http://www.declineoftheempire.com/…/adventures-in-flatland-…
There has always been an odd tenor to discussions among climate scientists, policy wonks, and politicians, a passive-aggressive quality, and I think it can be traced to the fact that everyone involved has to dance around the obvious truth, at risk of losing their status and influence.
The obvious truth about global warming is this: barring miracles, humanity is in for some awful shit.
The goal of the universe is to dissipate energy and life evolved to help it achieve this.
Through an improbable mutation that allows humans to deny reality, we became the best energy dissipators in the universe.
Our reward for being the best is probable extinction.
I think yes. Here’s why.
The laws of physics are the same everywhere in the universe. There are no forms of energy useful on a human scale that we do not already know about.
The laws of biological evolution are likely the same everywhere in the universe. Life’s form and chemistry may differ, but its foundation of evolution by natural selection of replicators is probably universal.
Any life with advanced technology requires two things. First, a powerful brain with an extended theory of mind capable of collaborating on the invention of advanced technology, and second, sufficient energy to allow the specialization of skills, extraction and production of materials, and construction of infrastructure necessary to develop the technology.
Varki explains that a brain with an extended theory of mind initially requires denial of reality behavior.
The only form of energy with the utility, density, portability, and extractability necessary to boot strap the creation of advanced technology is liquid hydrocarbons (oil). The biological and geological processes that create oil remove carbon from the atmosphere, bury it under ground, and release oxygen into the atmosphere. The creation of oil therefore changes the environment, and the burning of oil, which reverses the process, also changes the environment.
If a planet has life with advanced technology then it likely began by denying reality and burning oil. The energy from oil will increase food production which in turn will cause the population and pollution it produces to increase unchecked due to universal reproduction behaviors coupled with denial of reality.
Depletion of the non-renewable oil, disruption to the climate from burning the oil, and other associated negative impacts on habitat make it probable that the life will overshoot its environment and collapse before it has time to evolve the awareness of reality necessary to reduce its population and develop a high density non-carbon form of energy such a fusion, if indeed fusion on a human scale is even possible given the temperatures and pressures involved.
This may explain why we have not detected life in the universe despite trillions of planets.
We should be grateful for being alive to witness the peak of what may be possible in the universe.
The goal of the universe is to degrade energy. Life is one of the universe’s best inventions for degrading energy because it replicates until it has used all available resources. Humans use their unique brain power, which emerged after a rare mutation for denial of reality, to out compete other life. But the losers would do the same thing if they could. A dead planet seems to be consistent with what the universe wants.
A must watch video.
The climate models our leaders are basing their decisions on are grossly optimistic.
un-Denial 