25 Comments

1. 

   Curt Kastens on November 9, 2024 at 11:36 am

   The best summaries of what is happening on the field of play since Howard Cosell and Jim McKay worked together.

   • 

     Panopticon on November 9, 2024 at 2:24 pm

     Ah, thanks, Curt. That is high praise indeed.

   • 

     VPK on November 9, 2024 at 4:32 pm

     Until we get to net zero, warming will continue. The earlier we can get to net zero, the lower peak warming will be, and the smaller the risks of irreversible impacts,” notes study co-author Joeri Rogelj, professor of climate science and policy and Director of Research of the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London and senior research scholar in the IIASA Energy, Climate, and Environment Program. “This underscores the importance of countries submitting ambitious new reduction pledges, or so-called Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), well ahead of next year’s climate summit in Brazil.”

     Delusional statement under Sea Levels Set to Rise…sure more pledges …right…

     I loved in Massachusetts for 17 years between 1989 to 2007 and never witnessed such extremes in weather conditions…off the wall…
     Don’t know how much longer I have before I’m wiped out in South Florida…
     Might take a trek across like this Chinese fella..

     Chinese man cycles across the U.S. to ‘show that human nature is good’
     Yifei Xu rode his bike across the country, sleeping in a tent and relying on the kindness of strangers for every meal — all to prove the goodness of everyday Americans.
     33-year-old relied solely on the kindness of strangers for every meal, approaching everyday Americans with the same pitch: “Hello, I am a cyclist come from China, can you offer me some food to eat?”

     Xu previously biked across Russia, England and France. And though not all of his U.S. encounters were positive, Xu said the vast majority of the responses he got — in places like Catawissa, Pennsylvania, and Bennington, Nebraska — proved him correct, buoying his spirit and keeping him going through endless hours on the road and uncomfortable nights sleeping in his tent.

     “To be honest, before I came here I had a different — and you could even say, slightly negative — perception of America,” Xu said in Mandarin, speaking with NBC News. “But so many people here have offered to help me without expecting anything in return and it’s really touched me.”

     • 

       Mad Hatter on November 9, 2024 at 6:07 pm

       That is lovely – as I have said before when citizens are in dire need (Katrina) the local people do whatever they can.
       Can we just get rid of governments?

       • 

         Panopticon on November 9, 2024 at 7:12 pm

         There has been a touching outpouring of support for flood-stricken Valencia with volunteers pouring in from all over Spain and even further afield to help.

         There was also looting within 24 hours of the disaster, and there has since been such widespread opportunistic thieving and robbing that locals have needed to form vigilante groups.

         I guess humans are a mixed bag, and even more so under duress.

2. 

   Cassandra on November 9, 2024 at 12:47 pm

   Exporting water from Canada? 🤯

   That poor penguin! “they too are feeling the full effects of the climate crisis; their species are at full risk of extinction within 10 to 50 years, as the earth’s temperatures continue to rise.”

   Of course, they forgot to mention homo sapiens, too.

   • 

     Mad Hatter on November 9, 2024 at 2:07 pm

     Isn’t it weird how they can use phrases like “50 years”?
     Is it snorting cocaine that gives “them” such optimism?
     Meanwhile article on COP saying the usual, I left a link for here in the comment. Mixed feelings about that: on the one hand you need the support but on the other hand we need to keep you safe, Pan.
     https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/09/ban-ki-moon-cop29-climate-crisis-hurricanes-heatwaves-flooding

     Warm wishes to everyone and GO STEELERS!

     • 

       john bee on November 9, 2024 at 6:31 pm

       hell yeah

       • 

         Panopticon on November 9, 2024 at 7:24 pm

         My pom-poms are at the ready. Give me an S! Give me a T! etc.

         Mad Hatter, re your article, it features a very interesting shift in focus. Ban Ki-moon does not mention fossil fuels once and nor does he beseech wealthy nations to reduce emissions. Instead, he wants COP29 to be about ensuring poorer countries are given more financial aid to adapt to climate change.

         Honestly, if you read between the lines, it is an admission of defeat.

3. 

   Rob on November 9, 2024 at 6:21 pm

   Act now? Mankind is already a ham, at least to judge by the scale of the over-acting it’s doing, best exemplified by the Keystone COP facade: emoting while striking deals to expand fossil fuel production.

   Pushing climate derangement into high gear is the curtain call of a tragic market play, this one in three Acts: EV’s, food-to-fuel, and energy transition, with each act staged to a round of applause in a theater surrounded by heaps of smoking ash still smoldering from mankind’s wiled fires, even as it stokes worldwide internal combustion by the robofacture of 100 million new personal transportation modules/year.

   All this play-acting, similar to big-ag, creates killing fields: enormous expanses of destroyed habitat wherever and whenever humanity unfurls it Green credentials.

   Guterres is dead wrong. It is past time we STOPPED acting and got serious. Of course, there’s net zero chance of that happening.

   • 

     Panopticon on November 9, 2024 at 7:43 pm

     “…the Keystone COP.” Rob, nice. Wish I’d thought of that. 😂

4. 

   john bee on November 9, 2024 at 6:37 pm

   There’s a lot to take in today, but the thing that stayed with me is that article on private jet use. 900,000 flights of LESS THAN 50km. It blows my mind that people would do that, not even from an environmental standpoint (they fly private, you think they care?). Imagine driving to an airstrip, waiting for takeoff, flying, landing, getting back into a car, and driving to your destination, and you’ve only moved 50km. There’s no way it could be convenient, so is it strictly to stunt on the poors? Absolutely wild.

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     Panopticon on November 9, 2024 at 7:48 pm

     John, that struck me, too. The study does suggest it is for convenience or to save time but, as you say, these very short flights barely seem to offer that. I suppose if they are hopping over extremely congested areas it might.

     My suspicion is that it is primarily about ego and “the flex”, as my youngest would say.

5. 

   Heather B on November 9, 2024 at 7:11 pm

   I love those in academia who play down the climate doomerism while ignoring all of current facts and records being broken and the 6th mass extinction but okay then all of scientist are completely wrong to. Things are getting more strange by the day as things get worse on the ground daily.

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     Panopticon on November 9, 2024 at 7:55 pm

     Heather, I imagine you are talking about Michael Mann and his ilk. I stopped checking in on these self-appointed gatekeepers of the climate change narrative on X, as it was getting bad for the blood pressure, but of course they pop up in the news from time to time.

     Michael has picked up a glamorous-sounding, new academic appointment at Penn, I saw. What a guy.

     “Michael Mann, presidential distinguished professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science and director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media, has been named Penn’s first vice provost for climate science, policy, and action.”

     https://www.thedp.com/article/2024/10/penn-center-climate-science-michael-mann

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       Heather B on November 9, 2024 at 9:02 pm

       Not Mann specifically but i do others floating around on social media now on alternative channels saying what Mann says but its quite amusing right now.

6. 

   TR on November 9, 2024 at 9:12 pm

   As us old unfiltered codgers would say: “Pan’s got his shit together!”

   My whole life I was thinking the global economic & political systems were fubared, now to find out the environment is clusterfucked!

   There is not another member of this lethal virus having more fun than me. 😉

   • 

     Panopticon on November 10, 2024 at 2:28 pm

     “”Pan’s got his shit together!””

     This is not really a claim I can make, TR, but thank you for the vote confidence.

7. 

   Curt Kastens on November 10, 2024 at 10:28 am

   I am going to attempt to do a summary of how humans got to where they are now from the very very very very beginning. These are the mile markers on the yellow brick road.

   800,000 years ago humans tamed fire. This was the first step on the path to both civilization and unavoidable extinction because human civilization is inherently completely unsustainable for many reasons. All of the steps that follow this first step are inevitable consequences of this first “advancement”.

   250,000 years ago language begins to develop.

   200,000 years ago there are languages. This gave humans superpowers. Language is a force multiplier. Knowledge could not only be passed on it could develop much faster.

   70,000 years ago humans develop the bow and arrow. Another superpower is added to their capabilities.

   15,000 years ago. Dogs are domesticated. Now humans can hear and smell 10 times better in a manner of speaking. And they get a visual second perspective in the bush. One that can see underneath vegetation that blocks the view of humans. While humans can see over vegetation that blocks the view of dogs. With this step human over population becomes inevitable, along with environmental degradation. Humans will be far too short sighted to see where they are now headed. With fire, and bow and arrows and dogs the natural world has become totally unbalanced. The fall really begins picking up speed at this time. Humans just had their fall broken along the way delaying their inevitable death several times.

   10,000 years ago agriculture begins to replace hunter gathering as the main way of life for humans. Over population and environmental degradation did not cause this transition but it eventually would have caused it if the transition did not happen sooner. With the development of agriculture, the carrying capacity of the planet increased. On the other hand, an agricultural based lifestyle made slavery possible for the first time.

   8,000 years ago the first animals, sheep, are domesticated.
   7,500 years ago the stone age ends with the manufacturing of copper tools.
   7,500 years ago the first city in the world reaches a population of 10,000 people.
   6,000 years ago the wheel was invented
   5,000 years ago for better and worse the first empires arise

   Humans were now on a plateau that would last for 4,400 years.
   Setting the stage for what was to come.

   1400 years ago Science started flourishing in the Islamic world
   700 years ago science began flourishing in Europe due to contact with Muslims.
   600 years ago the development of firearms began

   These last two events did not determine what would happen next, They determined who would do what to who in the big picture. I mean by that for example the victory of English over the French in the 1700s was not predetermined but that European colonial expansion was. But even that is only a small detail for the planet. Though it is of course a major detail for those who died on slave ships going to Brazil or the United States. Yet in another dimension of the universe the shoe might be on the other foot.

   300 years ago humans began transitioning from wood for energy to coal. Although this step might not have been directly caused by a lack of wood for cooking and smelting and building such a shortage of wood would have eventually occurred. This was the final nail in humanity’s coffin. Now we only have to lie down in it and accept our coming fate. We humans did not know back then that coal and later oil and natural gas would cause the planet to warm when they were burned. But by the middle of the 19th century some people had discovered that. But even if we humans had collectively known what the consequences of this change would be I highly doubt that we would have done anything differently. This choice would have been between suffering rapidly declining standards of living very soon or taking a chance on a new offer that would allow a massive improvement in standards of living for an indefinite period into the future. The choice is basically live well and die or live at the living standard of a chimpanzee on the savannah for all time. If you ask me that is an obvious choice.

   Fossil fuels allowed for a massive population overshoot. They made us look like an intelligent species rather than the naked apes that we are. Very importantly fossil fuels greatly reinforced a foolish optimistic outlook in vast numbers of humans, specifically a foolish belief that technology can solve all of our problems and deliver us to paradise.

   124 years ago The Book the Wonderful Wizard of Oz was written which subliminally told humanity how the world really works. The book was made into a popular children’s movie several decades later.

   60 years ago more or less, some intellectuals began raising an alarm about human society being unsustainable. But for the most part they were ignored. And i guess it was a great thing that they were ignored. Because their warnings came 800,000 years to late. To have even tried to have transitioned to a more sustainable society would have required that someone like Joseph Stalin, but only with a sense of humor, to be a world dictator. If huge sacrifices were not made they would not have had nearly enough impact to make any worthwhile delay in the inevitable collapse of industrial civilization.

   55 years ago most people were oblivious as to what was in store for humanity in the coming century. But in at least one corner of the world the people were aware of what was coming. That corner of the world was a few rooms deep in the heart of the pentagon. The knowledge that the world faced a bleak future was perhaps also not ignored in a few rooms inside the Kremlin or in a Peking Bunker as well. That knowledge gave added impetus to people inside the Pentagon for creating their plans for war to achieve global domination. Work had begun in this direction by the US military after the US Civil War. Then the purpose of world domination was to be superior to everyone else. Now the purpose had become, that while others died, they would survive.

   But those plotting to survive were so naive it is astonishing. But we can thank our lucky stars that they were in charge. Because by plotting to dominate the world they accidently give the impression that there will be something left over to dominate. And on top of that it gives the rest of a motive to live as long as possible, the motive to torture and murder them for their massive betrayal of public trust.

   In the meantime, every person who understands where we are and how we got here is faced each day with a terrible decision. To pretend that we can get our solve our sustainability problems and keep hope alive, which murders the truth. Or to explain why we are way way way past the point of no return which defends truth but murders hope.

   • 

     Panopticon on November 10, 2024 at 2:36 pm

     Thank you, Curt, for that magnificent journey through the ages.

     I had no idea “The Wizard of Oz” had these hidden depths. I’d always vaguely assumed it was just a rather psychedelic slice of family entertainment:

     “The Yellow Brick Road symbolizes the gold standard… Dorothy’s silver slippers represent the silver standard of the time. These two elements of the story end up at the same place in the end: The Emerald City. Dorothy’s silver slippers follow the Yellow Brick Road, which both end up in the Emerald City, where the green color represents money all together.”

     https://wr.english.fsu.edu/College-Composition/Our-Own-Words-The-James-M.-McCrimmon-Award/Our-Own-Words-2005-2006-Edition/The-Wizard-of-Oz-More-Than-Just-a-Children-s-Story-by-Lauren-Houlberg

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     Curt Kastens on November 12, 2024 at 10:30 am

     I had been wondering if I should have put in the developement of writing in my list of mile merkels. for the moment I have decided that a much stronger case could be makde for the development of the printing press as a key event on the road to destruction. The printing press led to the developement of another massive industry that contributes to our unsustainabilty crisis.
     Once humans had tamed fire and invented the bow and arrow and tamed wolves there was still one thing that could have prevented human beings from overwhelming the natural environment. That would have been frequent plagues to keep the human population at a low level.

     I was just about to write how the printing press derailed this natural process of maintaining a low human population. But just now I have to also recognize the developement of formal scientific inquiry as a key development. As J was thinking, writing leds to an increase in knowledge. But before the printing press an increase in knowledge among a very limited circle of people. The printing press broke that barrier of lilmited access. But without science which had its beginnings in Europe at least not much before the printing press there would have not bee much usefull knowledge to pass around anyways. In historical terms, science (in Europe anyways) and the printing press and fire arms all occur very close together. What a stroke of good luck for Europe and bad luck for the rest of the world.
     And returning back to science, as far as I know it did not occur to anyone that human over population could be problem until the 19th century. This understanding came way way to late to be effective in preventing our extinction. well from a strictly scientific standpoint maybe not. But when one considers the political realities the understanding came far to late.

8. 

   Curt Kastens on November 10, 2024 at 10:46 am

   And if that was a bit too basic a list of why things fall apart can be added.
   1. Borders, humans cannot live with them, nor can they live without them. Trying to figure out where borders should be drawn leads to conflict.
   2. Isms do not work. Most importantly neither capitalism or socialism work. A combination of the two might work. But there is no mechanism that works to figure out how a combination of capitalism and socialism might work.
   3. Parents cannot be trusted to properly raise their children. No one else can be trusted to properly raise their children either.
   4. Specialization of labor makes everyone stupid. That encourages people to lie to each other destroying trust in society.
   5. If private organizations that disseminate information to the public try to hold governments accountable for abusing the public’s trust they become targets of the government and their ability to report facts will be damaged.
   6. Special interest groups have a decisive advantage over everyone else. By making comparatively small investments they can reap huge rewards by taking small amounts on a per capita basis from everyone else. But the costs of everyone else to oppose the efforts of these special interests is always greater than the rewards returned.

   What all of these factors from both comments lead to is inevitable chaos.

   • 

     rob on November 11, 2024 at 5:48 pm

     I’d like to add that the ruby slippers were not silver; maybe they were in the original and Hollywood changed it?

     History is great, and i agree with your ism take, but right now, it seems to me that the omission of Corporatism, the ism that provides corporate executives cover for their crimes, (VW comes to mind) is the most pernicious and so pervasive it’s not even noticed.

     As long as laws governing corporations remains unchanged, nothing else will be able to change. Whereas it’s said that capital and War exist only for themselves, they do so by their very nature, but the facts that corporations exist only for profit is mandated by law. Hence the Semmelweis effect is manifested in all so-called Green/clean climate derangement solutions:

     https://robertlowrey.blogspot.com/2017/03/firewall-st-siliconned-valleys.html

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       Panopticon on November 11, 2024 at 6:28 pm

       Rob, that is a good point re Dorothy’s slippers. I must admit that it is not a book/film I know much about. Tbh, the thing I remember most about it is all the wild partying the “munchkins” apparently got up to over the course of the shoot. 😂

9. 

   Heather B on November 10, 2024 at 10:18 pm

   https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/american-oz/
   Frank l baum documentary quite an eye opener of it all well worth watching if you can