An Endless Series of Hobgoblins
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Jessie Willcox Smith From The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald 1920 We need to renew the discussion about climate (change) be
[See the full post at: An Endless Series of Hobgoblins]Ya know, it probably not popular to point out, but if you let the “market” do its job it would ration energy for us. And i think the end of the American Empire will bring the market back to the forefront when our “enemies” have more of a say in price. Kinda like all the inflation we’re suffering from now.
I was not really trying to refute Bishko when my research to find the numbers where CO2 extinction happens per Bishko’s remarks; I was just doing due diligence to make sure I wasn’t right when I was really wrong or vice-versa. I stumbled upon this:
which came from a quora question that lined up with my google query: At what concentration does the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere become light saturated, so that adding more will not increase infrared absorption, and stop heating up the lower atmosphere?
This was also cited by quora dude: Undertsanding Atmospheric Radiation and the Greenhouse Effect from the nicely titled The Science of Doom. It’s for those who like to see the math in some form. Lotsa graphs too!
Anyway, it raises questions about this extinction/saturation thing, and I cannot in good faith — both to myself or anyone foolish enough to invest in me — yet concede that I am incorrect in having believed for most of my adult life that greenhouse gas emissions warranted serious consideration as a possible major global problem with universal effects.
But a guy as wrong as often as I am is surely still wrong about being wrong. Am I
rightwrong yet?The problem with letting the market do its thing is that part of its thing has always included the urge to corner the market. The very increase in wealth that healthy unregulated markets produce provides the surplus that mentally unhealthy scoundrels hoard and then use to fleece us and boss us.
It’s another one of those Who Will Bell the Cat? things.
I recall attending a lecture by Buckminster Fuller in San Francisco many years ago. When he finished speaking, the audience was invited to engage in the dialogue via open microphones around the auditorium. One gentleman took the mic and proceeded to tell Buck that he was full of beans, didn’t know what he was talking about, and had no basis for his point of view. Bucky paused for a moment, looked toward the speaker, and replied, “Thank you.”
As Bucky turned toward another person, the gentleman raised his voice and repeated his denunciation of Bucky and his thoughts, a bit more firmly. Again Bucky paused, looked squarely at the speaker, and replied, “Thank you.”
Once again, Bucky turned to another and, once again, the gentleman raised his voice, repeated his diatribe and offered quite a bit of angry energy to his comments, asking why he was being dismissed so summarily.
This time Bucky responded something like this: Did you not notice that I paused to consider what you had to say? I looked inside myself to see if some part of me was reacting to what you had said about me, particularly if some part of me were upset, prone to counterattack, or otherwise affected. I have found that when I am in that kind of reaction, there is typically something there for me to learn about myself, something for which I need to improve. In this instance, I found no reaction. Thus, you were simply sharing your opinion to which you are fully entitled and with which I have no argument. Therefore, “Thank you” seemed most appropriate.Bishko uses the fact he is a Chemist to claim authority on Atmospheric Physics? He seems to be letting his politics affect his science while claiming to do the opposite, which is something we’ve certainly seen a lot of lately.
We’re where we are because of MPP (Maxium Power Principle) and it’s also why we’re not getting out of this by “Going Green”. It’s a biological imperative to consume all available resources, that’s why we call them resources! Do we have to? That’s a philosophical question, not a practical one.
I’m not a chemist but rather observational. I’ve been told since the early 2000’s that climate change was going to kill us all, before that i was told a loss of the ozone layer was going to kill us all, and AIDS. Just recently i was told COVID was going to kill us all. None of these things have happened but the credibility of those making the claims grows less and less every year. Why should anyone believe the shriekers?
“None of these things have happened but the credibility of those making the claims grows less and less every year. Why should anyone believe the shriekers?”
Has anyone else noticed that all of that garbage has come from the same people/institutions?
Thank you, RIM, for pulling this together. Those were two excellent comments and worth a second read. “What strikes me about this discussion, if you can still call it that, is that the people alarmed about the climate never come with actual solutions.”
Exactly.
As you point out, the only solution is to scale back use. Many people have done that, but we are not going to negate all the private jets flying around the world carrying billionaires from one of their 12,000 sq ft houses to another …
Which gets to my core question about this CO2 “debate”: what’s the point?
I think Bishko is correct to state he’s an academically trained (I assume) chemist using his degree to earn his living. Not crucial but, imo, helpful: it lets me know where he’s coming from.
Re: climate change: when the War on Terror’s value as a flag-waver faded around the era of Obama’s election, climate change began becoming, like Serious Business. Put America Back to Work Building Green.
Well, I have to admit the hills of the Inland Northwest Pacific did wear white windmills awfully well. Mighty fine pinwheels. Purty. Hardly anyone hard about the nuts’n’bolts long-term cycles of those things much less an honest EROEI. One reason for this is because everyone was too busy bitching at each other about the weather.
Meanwhile, this showed up on my mini-neighborhood’s email grapevine:
I got my gutters cleaned yesterday and found a pair of jeans on my roof. I used gloves to check the pockets and inside was a phone, phone wallet with a bank card, OR trail card, $8 and change, a needle, pacifier, small hand sanitizer bottle, but I don’t think it’s hand sanitizer in it and pickle flavored sunflower seeds. I called the police and they aren’t interested. They checked the name and it’s not a missing person and he apparently had a rap sheet that made them say that this does not seem unusual for him*. There were also two receipts from nearby stores dated around the time that I thought I heard something on my roof and the dog was barking. I’m happy to return the items with a promise to stay off my roof and away from my property.
Update: I was able to find this person’s family, who is grateful to have information as he’s been missing since he walked off a job site in Lake Oswego a little over a week ago. His mother will be coming over this evening to collect his belongings.
* stripping nekkid on people’s roofs then walking away sans wallet and cyberlink. Sounds like a paraschizo who thinks he has ET’s home phone #. I remember seeing a guy conduct the weather in the middle of our street for a good half an hour. Big fat roiling changing troubled weather, and he had the score and was conducting a masterpiece.
Hail Atlantis.
“Which gets to my core question about this CO2 “debate”: what’s the point?”
Is an excellent question. Climate skeptics mostly focus on the green swindle, both to express outrage and make calls to arms; climate believers have agendas ranging from paid troll pay rates to really believing we can somehow stop the energy consumption juggernaut, this big bag of fossil IV blood draining into the arm of a nonetheless dying vampire.
Me, I’m in it to watch as a sociologist and a possible neighborhood military recruiter/strategist, to watch the different ways people learn different views on a thing, to learn about things climatological, and especially to watch and study our respective egos, doing so much in the light of that Bucky Fuller quote TAE just shared.
Bonus is that all this done decided me to begin reading my Goodwill copy of Azimov’s Understanding Physics
Credit there goes to Bishko, who did the unique thing of writing his own words from his own understanding, doing so with an obvious love for language and the majesty of physics as well as spirit (even if that’s a false dichotomy). Inspired me:
Regarding RIM’s comment: “I’ve long said that the only answer is using less energy, and that, given our wasteful ways, this is absolutely possible, we can cut our energy use by 90% is se put our minds to it with very little discomfort, but using less energy is not on the agenda.”
I am certain that we do not have the time to get all the people on board with the truth – be it climate or covid. Therefore, those who can should pivot while we can. Note: this does not mean that we give up or minimize efforts to press ahead with the science and with the “facts on the ground”. The facts on the ground being the most underutilized and ignored resource ever – marginalized, manipulated, and hidden on purpose by our masters.
In the meantime….why not initiate a “conservation campaign” from the grass roots for the grass roots? Something that can be duplicated and resurrected anywhere. And while we’re at it lets build a complementary local/regional “conservation currency” blockchain style. The “bank” would be funded by hours worked in building/creating/implementing conservation strategies at home, in the neighborhood, in the local community. The receipts could be refunded (on a percentage basis, like 50% Conversation Currency/50% cash) to buy equipment, supplies and additional labor from local/regional businesses. Community/regional investors and community members are welcome to contribute cash; in return they get nothing other than the satisfaction of helping to uplift and strengthen the resilience the community.
RIM also said: “Of course I’ve also long said that we are -biologically- programmed to use as much surplus energy as we can (as all organisms are), so there are plenty dilemmas and contradictions involved.” Our selfish nature will be tamed in the pursuit of meaningful and productive good works that have a direct impact on the community where you live. Am guessing that your soup kitchen team understands the inter-connectedness of everything – and have deep respect for what is scarce and precious.
Some people say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. Practical, tangible, and actionable. Getting out into the world and mixing with people is where it’s at! The answers are out there.
LOVE to ALL.
There are also people who grasp the science but recognise there aren’t any answers. To me the biggest question is how we handle the coming collapse in complexity, and whether we can avoid burning everything in a futile attempt to hold entropy at bay.
All the cool kids came over here, and now I’m in on this conversation, too.
If you get a really good prism, and a collimated light beam, and the beam. like from a pinhole in a black window-screen in a dark room, you can see a spectrum of the frequencies of that light, like a rainbow.
This looks at spectral distribution of lights used for growing plants.As Bishko explained a photon that interacts with an atom, atoms, or a solid excites the atom(s) and is typically re-emitted in a less-energetic state, a longer wavelength. visible or UV light may be re-emitted as infrared (heat).
A lot of what enters the atmosphere gets converted to infrared either high-up (we don’t feel it) or low-down, where we live.
“Greenhouse gasses” are considered as things like window glass, which transmits visible light, but blocks some infrared light (not all of it, some).
CO2 does that.
This scientific paper shows the spectral absorption characteristics of some gasses and water-vapor. CO2 blocks/absorbs in an infrared band, so infrared emitted at ground level does not radiate back out into space.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6174548/#:~:text=Absorption%20bands%20of%20carbon%20dioxide,vibrational%20and%20rotational%20energy%20transitions.(Spectrum is singular. Spectral is plural. Spectral refers to characteristics of spectra.)
The really open question is how much of a threat this presents, and that is really not going to be settled, I think, except by living through it.
There are other threats, like the weakening of the magnetic fields with polar shift, letting in deadly cosmic radiation, not merely photons, but stuff that blows through metal roofing.
Big volcanoes cause ice-ages and mini-ice-ages.
Solar radiation heats the earth’s core. Where does that go?
What about Carrington-Events?At some point we have to choose what risks we can actually make any preparation for, what we can’t, and consider scenarios. What’s easier is to do absolutely nothing by either thinking that we will all doe, no matter what, or thinking that nothing bad will happen because that’s all wrong and made-up.
I’m just doing what I can. I can’t control most things. I’ve lived a full life, and I’m not dead yet, but I’m not that afraid, and I’d like to help my family, friends, life-on-earth, etc.
What some of you cool-kids saw already from DBS and Zerosum is this story about a P-8 Poseidon torpedo-bomber. “Pipeline Torpedo Bomber” which includes a picture of me with big Texas Okra.
https://drjohnsblog.substack.com/p/pipeline-torpedo-bomberThis story appears to be well researched and is quickly getting around, that an American specialty bomber for oceanic targets, a P-8 Poseidon, flew from the US to the Baltic Sea, getting aerial refuelling over Germany, loitered over the areas of the pipeline bombing, at the same time that the undersea explosions were detected, and flew back to the US. It was reportedly the only aircraft over that area at that time.
The P-8 Poseidon can carry multiple payloads, including special torpedoes launched from altitude, carried to a level above the surface of the water, slowed and released from their carriers as precision-guided torpedoes. Thanks DBS.
https://www.monkeywerxus.com/blog/the-nord-stream-2-pipeline-sabotage
Colonel US Army (ret.) Douglas McGregor
Former Pentagon Advisor Says US Likely Attacked Nord Stream Pipelines to Isolate Germany
“Then you have to look at who are the state actors that have the capability to do this. And that means the Royal Navy, the United States Navy Special Operations,” said Macgregor.
“I think that’s pretty clear. We know that thousands of pounds of TNT were used because these pipelines are enormously robust. You have several inches of concrete around various metal alloys to move the natural gas. So it’s not something that you could simply drop a grenade down at the end of a fish line and disrupt. That means it takes a certain amount of sophistication.”Former Pentagon Advisor Says US Likely Attacked Nord Stream Pipelines to Isolate Germany
Elon Musk tweeted a Yes-No poll choice about what he sees as the likely outcome of the Ukraine war, after or without more bloodshed. It’s controversial.
Ukraine-Russia Peace: YES/NO
– Redo elections of annexed regions under UN supervision. Russia leaves if that is the will of the people. – Crimea formally part of Russia, as it has been since 1783 (until Khrushchev’s mistake). – Water supply to Crimea assured. – Ukraine remains neutral.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/blue-checks-diplomats-bots-go-ballistic-over-elon-musks-proposed-russia-ukraine-peaceCharles Hugh Smith Chart a Course To Self-Reliance
Self-reliance in the 21st century is uniquely challenging because we’ve become overly dependent on globalization and financialization.
As things unravel, the one surefire strategy is to chart a course for greater self-reliance. Improving self-reliance has no downside, only upside, and everyone can increase their self-reliance incrementally in small ways.
Self-reliance isn’t the same as self-sufficiency. Even Thoreau on Walden Pond used manufactured tools and supplies sourced from afar. The basic idea of self-reliance is to reduce our dependency on long, fragile supply chains and the hamster-wheel landfill Economy of planned obsolescence and waste is growth consumption, and increase what we can do for ourselves and those we care about.
http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/Kinda gotta agree with TheUAoB on this (#117614).
Susmarie, love your thoughts and proposed solutions. But, seriously, no matter what we do at the grassroots level, I don’t believe (this is a belief, not a fact) that anything we do on a grassroots level will mitigate the wanton disregard for ANY conservation shown by the [too large] upper echelon.
We can try to build local grassroots solutions using block chain … to what end? “The receipts could be refunded (on a percentage basis, like 50% Conversation Currency/50% cash) to buy equipment, supplies and additional labor from local/regional businesses. Community/regional investors and community members are welcome to contribute cash; in return they get nothing other than the satisfaction of helping to uplift and strengthen the resilience the community.” Complete altruism by investors? And, where do the materials come from to build the alternate solutions? Not initially from local business. The materials come from global business, etc. (let’s just say, from China). I think it’s a fantastic idea in theory, but in reality, it’s unlikely to work. 🙁 I’m sorry.
Q: Can we just use 90% less energy than Al Gore?
A: This is actually pretty hard.
I don’t think the economy can get down to 50% without a lot of death.
Coming up to 1970 is a lot easier on folks than falling back to 1970.
For those of us in the west, that’s something we can conceptualize, but we can’t conceptualize living like farmers in India who plow with oxen, which is 10% of energy use, or thereabouts.
Also, we can’t declare that Africans and Asians and South Americans have to go back to THEIR 1970s.
That world got destroyed already.I think we need to survive this transition. If we are already conserving, using less, growing vegetables, we’ll have something like a running-start on this wave.
@boscohorowitz said
Anyway, it raises questions about this extinction/saturation thing, and I cannot in good faith — both to myself or anyone foolish enough to invest in me — yet concede that I am incorrect in having believed for most of my adult life that greenhouse gas emissions warranted serious consideration as a possible major global problem with universal effects.
Your articles were preaching to the choir, the usual “they just don’t understand, they are not as clever as us” approach. God has not shown them the light. They do not in anyway convince me of anything that would contradict Bishko’s explanation.
Keep that religion.
Good article and comments. My view coming from a background in geophysics and high performance computing (HPC) with many decades of experience is:
(1) Global warming is real. All the major sea powers measure ocean temperature profiles in great detail as they are critical to Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW). They have the data and their (real) scientists know it is real. Nearly all such data is highly classified and not available to the public.
(2) What is causing the global warming and the relative contributions of each is open to some discussions and debate.
(3) The effects of global warming are real. They are a large scale demonstration of a fluid dynamic phenomena known as Bénard Convection.
(4) The correlation between carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere and average air temperatures is real. But the causes of carbon dioxide increasing in the atmosphere and the relative contributions is subject to some debate. There are reasonable arguments that large scale geophysical changes are driving both global warming and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations.
(5) What man can do to slow down or halt global warming is debatable. Certainly reducing wasteful fossil fuel consumption would help a little bit, but would mostly preserve what is left of a dwindling FOSSIL fuel resource. It really is not a good idea to run the fuel meter clear to zero.
(6) Reducing pollution of all types, particularly in the oceans would be helpful. Stopping deforestation would be quite helpful.
Reforestation could significantly reduce carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere. Just look what happens with the Northern Hemisphere spring draw down of carbon dioxide. Now imagine that also happening in the global south.upstateNYer said
Which gets to my core question about this CO2 “debate”: what’s the point?
Because the believers in AGW are supporting the billionaires who are destroying our world and we need to identify them so that when we are all freezing – and granny has popped her clogs – we know which houses to burn down first. The AGW gang are the interventionist gang, the people who want to tell us all how to live, they used to be called the looney left. They cannot live in this world and accept it for what it is, they try to guilt us into doing stupid things by lying to us. It is hard wired into them.
Talking about climate change while ignoring weather modification seems like a waste of time.
Sort of like talking about the origins of COVID-19 while ignoring the Lab leak reports.
Reframing the issue from climate change or nothing to climate change or weather modification seems logical.@Aspnaz: That’s just “Kill the infidels”, isn’t it?
Let’s discuss specific merits, not confessional-groups.
@AndorClem: Now you’re talkin’!
“Talking about climate change while ignoring weather modification seems like a waste of time.
Sort of like talking about the origins of COVID-19 while ignoring the Lab leak reports.
Reframing the issue from climate change or nothing to climate change or weather modification seems logical.”I grew up on USMC and Navy bases during Vietnam. I saw contrails all the time, under different atmospheric conditions. I’ve been noticing, since the 1990s, the addition of “chemtrails”, which just hang up there and stay and sometimes spread out like dust across the sky. There are still contrails, too. Contrails diffuse after leaving the jet engine in real time. You can see it.
Much Earlier Boscohorowitz said: “Hail Atlantis” , but he forgot to link to the song that contains that lyrical salute. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAMYGzwUTK4
John Day said
@Aspnaz: That’s just “Kill the infidels”, isn’t it?
Let’s discuss specific merits, not confessional-groups.
The killing has already started, it started with Covid. The next killer is going to be the winter in Europe. I have no problem with people believing in AGW or in Covid vaccines, I do have a problem with people telling me that I have to suffer or die for their theories. Same principle as vaccinations, you do it to yourself is fine, if I decide not to take a vaccination that that too should be fine.
John, really? “Q: Can we just use 90% less energy than Al Gore?”
I already do. Chances are, so do you.
That’s what I keep trying to say … WE are already doing our part. And? Let me know when you have an answer to that.
Unfortunately, there are too many people and not enough resources to provide what most want, and nations and assorted parties are acting in the own best interests on themselves.
The problem is in the process of solving itself, Darwinian style.
Abner Doon.. Sounds awfully Malthusian or something. Malthus keeps being wrong in the “short term” while his adherents keep warning about the “long term”. right….
Betting the continued survival of the species , which would of course include the gambler(s) , on an untested solution to an as yet unidentified problem of unproved origin has such an infinitesimally small probability of survival that even permitting it to be be substantially attempted is incontrovertible proof that those who allow it are as crazy as those who attempt it.
I would compare it to passengers in a lifeboat passively allowing one or more of the other occupants to take a fire ax to the bottom hull of the boat to drain the bilges.
Reality has an extremely harsh manner of responding to that level of crazy.
It is truly fascinating to observe how people will accept both the theoretical and practical aspects of the interaction of radiation with matter when it suits them, e.g. microwave ovens, but will fight to the death to reject both the theoretical and practical aspects of the interaction of radiation with matter when it doesn’t suit them, e.g. CO2-induced planetary meltdown.
‘people alarmed about the climate never come with actual solutions.’
That is totally untrue.
Actual solutions have been presented over and over again for the past 20 years, at least. Arguably a lot longer than that.
The problem is, actual solutions are ‘unacceptable’, so they are either ignored or censored out of existence.
Never forget that the system is run by banks and corporations for the short-term benefit of banks and corporations. Therefore, actual solutions that would quickly bring down banks and corporations are ‘unacceptable’.
Hence, we will continue to march straight towards an uninhabitable planet until the power of banks and corporations is broken.
‘before that i was told a loss of the ozone layer was going to kill us all’
And indeed it would have, had the Montreal Protocol not been hurriedly implemented. The rapid phasing out of most of the production of chloro-fluorocarbons in the late 1980s is what prevented the Earth becoming largely uninhabitable by around 2010.
The big difference between chloro-fluorocarbons and carbon dioxide is that phasing out emission of ozone depleting substances was possible because there were alternatives to ODS. However, there is no alternative to fossil fuels [when it comes to powering industrial civilisation]; hence zero action on reducing emissions (in fact they have been rising overall) and the promotion of a whole lot of scams like electric vehicles, ‘carbon trading’, ‘the hydrogen economy’ and other such nonsense that come under the umbrella of ‘green technology’.
By the way, high-flying aircraft are given a ‘free pass’ when it comes to ODS, CO2 and other atmospheric contaminants injected right where they can do the most damage.
AFKTT said
Never forget that the system is run by banks and corporations for the short-term benefit of banks and corporations. Therefore, actual solutions that would quickly bring down banks and corporations are ‘unacceptable’.
There is no solution because there is no crisis, this is an entirely man made hoax designed to strip the majority of us of our standard of living. If the only “solutions” to this hoax that can be proposed by the looney left is to get rid of banks then the proposers are immensely stupid as their solution is a revolution.
During Covid I had a long stint of trying to figure this stuff out myself, as the common description of the “greenhouse effect” doesn’t add up.
After a lot of reading I realized some things:
1. A CO2 molecule that absorbs an IR photon will in the vast majority of cases loose the aquired vibration energy in a collision with another air molecule, and not emit a new photon. So the animation with a CO2 molecule getting “hit” by a photon from the ground and then reemitting it in a random direction is garbage.
2. A CO2 molecule that hits another molecule may end up in one of the vibration states that can release a IR photon. This happens all the time and cause a gas with a CO2 component to emit IR photons. The amount of photons emited is bases only on the temerature of the gas and can be calcluated based on Plancks equation.
3. These photons will of cause be absorbed by the CO2 some distance off. The only IR radiation in the CO2 absorbtion band that reaches space are the photons generated in the uppermost parts of the atmosphere, where the amount of CO2 above is small enough for the photons to actually escape.
So now we come to the actual and real “greenhouse” theory, that the actual science, and not the popular simplifications, are based on:
As atmospheric CO2 levels increase the point in the atmosphere that has little enough CO2 above to allow photons to escape moves up. Because temperature decrease with altitude the gas temperature at this point will be lower for a higher CO2 concentration. Therefore fewer photons will be generated in the layer that actually transmit to space, and the energy flow will decrease, causing more heat to gather in the complete Earth system.
A bit hard to wrap you head around, but as far as I can figure out this is the actual theory used by atmospheric scientists.
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