If you are interested about AGI, here's a slightly more in-depth video about the subject. The fact is that it's happening as we speak. It's not anymore a matter of exactly when but then what? Are we ready for true artificial intelligence?
I think not. And THAT may be the true risk!
This video is amazing by what it says. Basically that AGI is down the road and will be achieved soon just by scaling up the computer power.
I also believed that this was not going to be so easy a few years ago. Not anymore.
We will have some kind of AGI by the end of the year. At the latest in early 2025. 5 years earlier than the optimistic previsions of Ray Kurzweil.
Now what? Do we also get and explosion of intelligence and the singularity by the end of the year? Not so fast? Who knows?
A few days ago I heard an interesting metaphor: The arrival of artificial general intelligence may look like a game of chess against a grand master. You think you are playing great and suddenly you realize you've lost the game! Or something else?
In any case, we should expect the unexpected. We are truly in uncharted territory!
It's not just Exxon. Tens of the largest companies, especially in Germany, are exiting the continent. Without oil, nuclear energy or Russian gas, Europe industrially is finished. You don't run a modern economy on renewables! There is still a lot of capital invested but the absurd "green" policies destroying agriculture, factories and investment will put the continent on its knees. Most countries are already in recession, it will be a depression by the end of the year. Ramping up the pressure on Russia will further accelerate the decline by limiting the import of resources. The terrible silence about the crimes of Israel in Gaza is heard loud an clear in the Middle East. What are these people thinking? It looks like some kind of collective suicide. A complete disregard of reality like the meaningless war in Ukraine which is being won by the Ukrainian army all the way to the Polish border. Madness!
By Irina Slav of OilPrice.com
Exxon has warned the European Union that it will leave and take billions of dollars in climate investment with it unless Brussels makes it easier to spend those billions on transition-related projects.
The Financial Times cited the company today as saying that there was way too much red tape in the EU and it took too long to get a project going, which prompted the supermajor to consider spending its $20 billion in decarbonization investments for 2022-2027 elsewhere.
“When we make investments, we’ve got very long time horizons in mind. I would say that recent developments in Europe have not instilled confidence in long-term, predictable policies,” Karen McKee, president of Exxon Product Solutions, told the FT.
“What we’re experiencing is the deindustrialisation of the European economy and we’re concerned,” McKee also said.
The European Union’s leadership has promised time and again it will facilitate transition projects but it seems it has been slow to act on this promise. According to Exxon—and a lot of other companies involved in the transition—getting a project off the ground in the EU is fraught with regulatory obstacles and “slow and torturous” permitting and funding procedures, per Exxon’s McKee.
The EU’s Green Deal plan features a “predictable and simplified regulatory environment” as one of its four pillars but judging from the reactions of the business world, this has yet to go from theory to practice. Faster access to funding is the second pillar in the EU’s lineup but that, too, is taking quite long to materialize.
It is these delays in implementation that have prompted business leaders to meet today in Belgium to press the EU leadership into going from words to actions. There is growing concern that the regulatory burden put on businesses is scaring them away, taking investments elsewhere.
There are also some European leaders, notably France’s Emmanuel Macron and Belgium’s Alexander de Croo, who have blamed red tape for the farmers’ protests.
What's happening is the West is simply amazing. We are not only seeing the destruction of democracy but a terrible radicalization of ideas and speech,
On such tracks, what will be worth keeping in a year or two?
Almost nothing I am afraid!
Douglas Murray, the director of the British Free Speech Union,
announced a new initiative on Monday aimed at doxing critics of Israel
for "hate speech" and keeping them from getting jobs.
"Douglas
Murray is Director of the British Free Speech Union. He is now going to
lead an initiative to have harsher penalties for those accused of hate
speech, and bar 'bigots' from employment opportunities based on social
media posts!" Keith Woods commented on X.
"These speech laws have been used to target nationalists more than anyone -- Murray's countryman Sam Melia is going to jail for sharing stickers about mass-immigration and this is what he is working on, what a disgrace!"
The Tafsik Organization, which is behind the initiative, says on their website that they're lobbying for new hate crime laws to block people from getting jobs and keep them from traveling freely:
Proposing a Hate Offenders List akin to the Sex Offenders list for those convicted of Hate Crimes would streamline law enforcement efforts, imposing travel restrictions, limiting access to certain public places, and significantly impacting job opportunities to deter the wielders of hatred from positions of power.
They also say they're building a doxing database using facial recognition and AI:
Utilizing the SEO from social media platforms like Twitter(X)/TikTok/Facebook posts reported onto D.A.V.I.D. will have hyper visibility using a simple google search, affecting the individuals employment opportunities and reputation. D.A.V.I.D. employs facial recognition to identify bigots from photos or videos. AI spiders crawl social media platforms, detecting antisemitic content in posts, comments, and images.
A frightening overview of our preparation for war in the West: The wrong tools for the wrong war! and still it looks like we are rushing head first into a conflict about which nobody understand the consequences. Isn't it the definition of stupidity?
Another amazing interview from Tucker Carlson. This time we get a close up view on how the deep state really works. It is simply amazing.
Ep. 75 The national security state is the main driver of censorship and election interference in the United States. "What I’m describing is military rule," says Mike Benz. "It’s the inversion of democracy."
https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1758529993280205039?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1758653462232093011%7Ctwgr%5E0badcefd9c52f5ea5d8cf0db8d7ec32d1c7fdd81%7Ctwcon%5Es3_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theburningplatform.com%2F2024%2F02%2F17%2Fcan-you-handle-the-truth%2F
This is about the end of free speech in France but make no mistake it's coming to yours likewise if you live in the West. As we let big corporations take over our democratic systems, the next stage will be force. Wasn't it all predictable?
Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Epoch Times,
History does seem to be on fast forward, doesn’t it?
A major battle is brewing throughout the Western world over the basic principle of free speech. Is it going to be protected by law? It’s not entirely clear what the outcome will be. We seem to be on the precipice of a potential calamity if the courts don’t decide the right way. Even if we squeak out a victory, the question is already in play. Our free speech rights have never been more fragile.
Turn your attention to France right now. In the dead of night, a new law slipped through the General Assembly that would make it a crime to criticize mRNA shots. Critics call it the Pfizer law. It calls for fines up to 45,000 euros and possibly three years in prison for debunking an approved medical treatment.
A general view of the French National Assembly (Assemblee Nationale) is seen in Paris on July 17, 2023. (Bertrand Guay/AFP via Getty Images)
Like all Western nations, criticism of the mRNA platform has already been subjected to vast social-media censorship. Even given this, there has been a major and global consumer turn against these shots. People are not convinced that they are necessary, safe, or effective. Still, government imposed mandates for everyone, billions of people worldwide. This was a form of conscription that has driven a deep divide between the rulers and the ruled.
Rather than back down, however, governments, which have been captured by pharmaceutical interests, are going to bat for the companies and the technology to threaten imprisonment of anyone who speaks out openly against them.
Here is where censorship becomes severely weaponized. It’s the next logical step. First you deploy every power to keep the distribution channels of information free of dissent. When that doesn’t entirely work, simply because people find alternative means of getting the word out, you have to intensify matters and institute outright controls.
It stands to reason that this would happen. After all, the whole point of censorship is to curate the public mind to put down opposition to regime priorities. When mainstream corporate media is falling apart and new media is rising, the next stage is to go the full way to flat-out criminalize opinion, like any totalitarian government.
We are very close to that stage. If it can happen in France, it can happen throughout Europe, then the Commonwealth, and then the United States. We know this much about politics today. It is global. The elites that have seized control of our governments coordinate across borders. This is why it is hugely important to pay attention to what’s going on across the pond.
As a second item, I’m alarmed to read the lead piece in the New York Times opinion section that celebrates a defamation case about which I had not previously heard. It is by Michael Mann, professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He had sued a writer for the Competitive Enterprise Institute for taking issue with Mann’s climate change model, and the so-called hockey stick in particular.
This is not my area of specialization at all but I have no doubt that mainstream climate science should be subject to vigorous criticism. If the COVID era has taught us anything, it is that the “scientific consensus” can be outrageously wrong and needs a check that comes in the form of writing, some of it zippy and cutting.
Scientist Michael Mann attends the New York screening of the HBO Documentary "How to Let Go of the World and All The Things Climate Can't Change" in New York on June 21, 2016. (Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images for HBO)
Dr. Mann filed a defamation lawsuit. Defamation is a very high bar: it means to deliberately lie about something with the intention to harm. One might not suppose that many things could qualify as that, certainly not criticism of a climate model. Indeed, most defamation lawsuits are dismissed outright simply because this country generally values free speech.
This one, however, was accepted by the judge in Washington, D.C. court. After a full decade in litigation, and a full hearing, the jury ended up deciding in favor of the plaintiffs. One defendant, Rand Simberg, has been told to pay $1K and the other, Mark Steyn, $1M. Simberg says he will appeal and stands by every word that he wrote. Steyn agrees and is ready to appeal.
Essentially this verdict is criminalizing hyperbole, said the defense attorney.
The op-ed writer, however, says this is justice. “Our recent trial victory may have wider implications,” he says. “It has drawn a line in the sand. Scientists now know that they can respond to attacks by suing for defamation.” He mentions in particular people who have disagreed with the COVID consensus—disagreeing with Anthony Fauci—or otherwise make “false claims about adverse health effects from wind turbines.”
Can you imagine? Criticize a wind turbine or pandemic lockdowns and find yourself hauled in front of a judge!
Will this case have a chilling effect on criticism of government? Absolutely! Indeed, it is terrifying to think what it implies. And the writer leaves nothing to the imagination. He sees this case as a wedge to make scientific criticism of any area of life—from vaccines to climate change to the conversion to EVs—essentially illegal. In any case, if not that, it comes close by erecting so many landmines that critics essentially shut up for fear of having their whole lives ruined.
This case went on for ten years. The article in question was published 12 years ago. How is it possible that litigants pushed a case for that long? It was to establish a serious precedent. That precedent is now clearly established. The definition of defamation is so malleable that juries can decide anything. Just the prospect of being hauled before a judge over ten years is enough to deter speaking out.
We can hope that this appeal reverses the decision. But let’s face it: free speech should not rest on such a thin foundation of jury-created law and arbitrary judicial edict. This is all extremely dangerous and flies in the face of the First Amendment.
Essentially, every critic of the “scientific consensus” in every area has been put on notice. They are already fair game. That’s the world toward which we are moving.
Here’s the issue. Censorship works when government can control all the distribution channels of information. What happens when that no longer works? The powers that be have to use more direct methods, even when they fly in the face of the First Amendment. Those who say that this cannot happen here need to pay closer attention to the reality of what’s happening.
Many people are excited to see the breakup of old media. Certainly I am but consider how the censors will respond. They are getting hardcore, relying more on law rather than capture, and hoping the courts can act to shut up the critics permanently. That’s the future we are looking at. It is extremely dangerous. Under this trajectory, free speech will be no more. The First Amendment will be a dead letter.
Amazing video as food for thoughts.
This should still be science fiction although it's almost reality now.
I truly changes everything. Think about it.
Will people realize soon enough what a catastrophe Net Zero really is?
Authored by Kevin Stocklin via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Electricity is among the most essential sources of America’s unparalleled prosperity and productivity; it is also the greatest vulnerability.
The United States has become so utterly dependent upon an uninterrupted supply of affordable electricity that, as our grid becomes ever more fragile American society has become fragile along with it.
Former CIA director James Woolsey testified before the U.S. Senate in 2015 that, if America’s electric grid were to go down for an extended period, such as one year, “there are essentially two estimates on how many people would die from hunger, from starvation, from lack of water, and from social disruption.
“One estimate is that within a year or so, two-thirds of the United States population would die,” Mr. Woolsey said. “The other estimate is that within a year or so, 90 percent of the U.S. population would die.”
Chris Keefer, president of Canadians for Nuclear Energy, concurred.
“The energy grid is a civilizational life support system, and without it, modern society collapses very quickly,” he said.
Mr. Keefer is one of the experts featured in energy analyst, author, and documentarian Robert Bryce’s new film, “Juice: Power, Politics and the Grid.” This five-part docuseries looks at how and why America is now “fragilizing” and destabilizing the engineering marvel that is the central pillar of our society.
“We are seeing the grid’s reliability, resilience, and affordability all declining,” Mr. Bryce told The Epoch Times. “We wanted to get people and policy makers to understand that our most important energy network is being fragilized, and we ignore this danger at our peril,” Mr. Bryce said.
He has been fixated on America’s electric grid for decades and authored the 2020 book, “A Question of Power,” one of the more comprehensive studies of how electricity grids work and why they may not work as well in the coming years.
Steven Pinker, author and Harvard psychology professor, wrote in a review of the book that “energy is our primary defense against poverty, disorder, hunger, and death.”
And yet, many nations in the West have engaged in a game of Russian roulette with their power grids, in an attempt to reduce global temperatures.
The warnings don’t just come from the analysts featured in the documentary; electricity regulators are becoming more vocal in sounding the alarm as well.
In a May 2023 report, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), charged with overseeing grid reliability, stated that a majority of America’s grid is now at heightened risk levels for outages.
“This report is an especially dire warning that America’s ability to keep the lights on has been jeopardized,” National Rural Electric Cooperative Association CEO Jim Matheson stated.
It was the near-collapse of Texas’s power grid during winter storm Yuri in 2021 that compelled Mr. Bryce to make the documentary. He partnered with film director Tyson Culver, who along with Mr. Bryce, experienced the crisis first-hand while living in Austin.
“I didn’t plan to make another documentary after we made our first film that we released in 2019,” he said. “I just thought, ‘I can’t do this; it costs too much and takes too long.’
“But then we learned that the [Texas] grid nearly failed, and if it had failed, tens of thousands of people would have died,” he said. “And we realized, if this could happen in Texas, the energy capital of the world, then the electric grid is really being undermined.”
The North American electric grid is rapidly being transitioned from one in which coal had once dominated to one that is seeing an ever increasing share of wind, solar, and natural gas. In the process, America’s electric grid is changing from something that was once so reliable that consumers rarely thought about it, to one that increasingly features rolling blackouts and may, one day soon, be on the brink of long-term failure.
The destabilization of the power grid is the result of what analyst and author Meredith Angwin deems the “fatal trifecta.”
“The Texas grid almost collapsed because of what I call the fatal trifecta,” Ms. Angwin states. “The first part of the fatal trifecta is over reliance on renewables, which go on and off when they want to.
“The second part is over reliance on natural gas, which is delivered just in time and can be interrupted just in time,” she says. “And the third part is relying on a neighbor to help.”
All of these factors came into play during Texas winter storm Yuri in 2021. Wind and solar facilities were unable to deliver in freezing weather, and supplies of natural gas were interrupted by freezing temperatures as well, just as people needed electricity to heat their homes.
According to a Texas comptroller’s report, natural gas supplied 51 percent of Texas’ electricity; wind 25 percent; and coal 13 percent. As these sources went offline, utilities frantically enacted blackouts to cut demand, fearing that a mismatch of supply and demand that lasted more than several minutes would cause long-term damage to the grid’s hardware.
While Texas missed having a months-long outage of its electric grid by only a matter of minutes, the damage from short-term outages was severe.
“Rolling blackouts were intended to take stress off the power grid but turned into outages that—in some parts of the state—lasted several days,” the report stated. In that short time, at least 210 deaths were attributed to the outage, which also caused an estimated $195 billion in economic damage.
The third leg of the “fatal trifecta” is the ability of regions of the grid to support each other.
For all its fragmented sources, utilities, and regulations, the North American power grid is interconnected in a way that allows one region to shift electricity to another region if one has an excess and the other a shortfall. Utilities routinely rely on this to balance supply and demand at any given moment.
Increasingly, however, with excess reserves dwindling as coal plants are aggressively shut down across the United States, this ability to “phone a friend” is going away.
In many ways, Texas followed the lead of Europe and California in transitioning their grid to wind and solar energy, retiring coal plants and sometimes nuclear plants as well, to halt global warming and please anti-nuclear activists. Because wind and solar are weather-dependent, a dispatchable backup source is needed, and that source is typically natural gas.
As Europe, California, and Texas have learned, this transition creates vulnerability compared to coal and nuclear plants, where fuel can be stored on-site. It has also led to sharply increasing prices for electricity, as dual systems of power generation need to be built, along with additional transmission infrastructure.
According to a 2021 Princeton Study, relying on wind and solar to achieve net zero by 2050 would require America’s high-voltage transmission network to triple in size, at a cost of $2.4 trillion.
In what appears to be a surrender, or at least a retreat, from the net-zero transition, some European countries, like Germany, are restarting their coal plants as wind and solar fail to meet demand, even at inflated prices.
“What we see in Europe from this misguided infatuation with renewables is a stark warning, and I think we can see the same thing in California—skyrocketing electricity prices and no significant reduction in CO2 to speak of,” Mr. Bryce said.
At the same time, the drive to achieve net-zero CO2 emissions has led to political and corporate campaigns to shift ever more products onto the electric grid. This includes such essentials as home heating, transportation, and cooking.
Laws and regulations in Europe and the United States have sought to ban or phase out oil and gas heating in homes, along with gasoline-powered cars, trucks, and buses. The effect of this will be to make people more dependent on electricity while pushing up demand to levels that many say the grid cannot meet.
“The grid is already cracking under existing demand,” Mr. Bryce said. “We’re seeing the grid’s reliability, resilience, and affordability all declining, while these pressure groups are trying to put yet more demand on it.
“This is a date with disaster.”
Added to this is the insatiable hunger of the wind and solar industry for the consumption of land.
According to a May report by The Nature Conservancy (TNC), reaching the goal of net-zero carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 2050 would consume more than 250,000 square miles, or 160 million acres, of land.
“With current siting practices, an area the size of Texas is required to accommodate the wind and solar infrastructure we need to reach nationwide net-zero emissions by 2050,” stated Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist at TNC, a renewable energy advocate.
Many energy experts and environmentalists are coming to the conclusion that nuclear energy is the best choice to generate reliable, affordable energy, while cutting CO2 emissions. Despite headline nuclear catastrophes at plants in Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima, many countries are building new plants or delaying closures of existing nuclear plants, considering it the cleanest and least environmentally harmful source of electricity.
According to a report by the Nuclear Energy Institute, wind farms require up to 360 times as much land area to produce the same amount of electricity as a nuclear energy facility, and solar facilities require up to 75 times the land area. Compared to coal and natural gas plants, wind and solar consume at least 10 times as much land, according to the left-leaning Brookings Institution.
In addition to a smaller footprint, nuclear power stations also typically do not require the construction of thousands of miles of new transmission lines to reach remote locations, where wind and solar facilities are typically built.
With nuclear, Mr. Bryce said, “we don’t need to expand the grid; we can use the grid we have.”
Even ardent supporters of green-new-deal initiatives are starting to accept that nuclear must be at least part of the plan.
“What we’re seeing out of Congress, and to some extent out of this White House, is more accommodation for nuclear energy,” Mr. Bryce said.
A 2022 report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace reports that “France, the EU’s leading atomic state with nuclear weapons and fifty-six power reactors, is poised to launch a major reinvestment in nuclear power.”
Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, and Poland are also preparing to build new nuclear reactors, the report states, while other European nations—Austria, Denmark, Germany, Luxembourg, and Portugal—remain opposed to nuclear power.
California regulators, meanwhile, opted in December 2023 to keep the state’s nuclear facility at Diablo Canyon open through at least 2030, having previously ordered its closure in 2025. This is a retreat for a state that has been plagued with rolling blackouts as it jumped headlong into a wind and solar future.
“If we are going to agree that climate change is an issue, with more [weather] extremes for longer, it’s total insanity to make our most important energy network dependent on the weather,” Mr. Bryce said. “We need weather-resilient, weather-resistant generation, not weather-dependent generation.”
“With the Inflation Reduction Act and the investment tax credits, production tax credits, all of the financial incentives in the power-gen sector are to build more wind and solar,” he said. “To me, that is just absolute crazy town.”
The documentary is available to watch for free on YouTube or at juicetheseries.com.
Amazing article which helped me see the light and realize that I was a "New Denialist"! What an amazing concept which applies to scientists (mostly I suppose) who believe (quite rightly) that the Earth is warming (very slightly and moderately as 0.7C in 100 years would indicate) starting from a very low base in 1880 and that mankind has very little to do with it. (As many scientists in many fields, glaciology, geology, oceanography and others also believe.)
The problem with Global Warming is not scientific. There is a debate. Some people argue for one side, others against. This is normal and the truth should emerge, slowly but eventually from this debate.
Politics doesn't work like that. The decisions being taken imply trillions of dollars and must therefore be based on certainties. And therefore the debate must be stifled less a doubt remains and policies cannot be implemented, including, in the emergency "packages", solutions which have nothing to do with climate and everything to do with control...
Authored by Graham Young via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
Could Michael Mann, the inventor of the so-called Hockey Stick graph, be a covert “New Denialist”? Or is there a split happening in the pro-climate change camp?
That’s two readings of Mr. Mann’s latest book “Our Fragile Moment.”
Either being true would be a good thing, and both are even better.
The “new denialists” is a new term coined to describe people who believe that while climate change is real, it is an open question of how much is manmade, and what the policy response should be.
Mr. Mann is not someone whom you would normally associate with such a position.
He has been famous in climate circles since 1998 when, as a newly-minted doctor in geology and geophysics, he was the principal author of Mann, Bradley, and Hughes 1998 (MBH98), also known as the Hockey Stick graph, a paleoclimate reconstruction of 1,000 years of earth’s temperature which showed unprecedented warming in the late 20th century.
It undermined the consensus view which was that temperature fluctuates quite significantly over centuries, and it was probably cooler now than it had been during the Roman climatic optimum and the Medieval warm period.
You may have seen its star role in Al Gore’s agitprop “An Inconvenient Truth” (“agitprop” because the film was ruled by a British court to be unsuitable for showing to school students without accompanying corrections because it contained “nine scientific errors”).
Mr. Gore had the graph on a large backdrop and emphasised the steepness of the blade, and thus the urgent need to stop CO2 emissions, by rising up beside it in a scissor lift while holding a large pointer in his hand.
Very dramatic.
That graph and successor hockey sticks are the standard bearers (if you’ll forgive me for mixing metaphors) of climate change catastrophism, and they’ve been used to hit (metaphor again) “climate deniers” over the head.
I’ve never had any regard for the hockey stick.
Not only did it purport to erase the consensus on the basis of one reconstruction, but its statistical techniques were shown to produce hockey sticks out of any random data. So it seemed unlikely to be correct.
But on top of that, Mr. Mann did something that is completely impermissible in statistical analysis.
When the proxy data that he was using came into the modern era they clashed with thermometer records. They showed cooling but the thermometers showed warming.
Mr. Mann “fixed” this by abandoning the proxies and splicing actual temperature records in, without revealing the reason.
This is why I call him “Piltdown Mann.”
The one “n” Piltdown Man is a scandal where an amateur paleoanthropologist claimed to have found the “missing link” between man and ape but it was a forgery where a modern human cranium had been combined with an orangutang jaw and teeth.
Mr. Mann’s technique is similarly defective and deceptive.
If the proxies don’t measure real temperature now, how could they be supposed to be measuring real temperature in the past? The whole proxy exercise had obviously failed and should have been abandoned.
If you want a further, very succinct reference on the Hockey Stick, I can only refer you to the judge in the case of Mann v. Simberg and Steyn, currently running in court 132 in the District of Columbia Superior Court. Mr. Mann is suing the two defendants for some very caustic comments about his hockey stick.
Presiding Justice Irving said:
“As to Mr. Steyn, his statements about the bogus, fraudulent nature of the Hockey Stick graph in his mind were substantially and entirely true.”
Unfortunately, Mr. Mann won, and the matter is likely to go on appeal, but the case deserves an essay all of its own, so I will leave that there for the moment.
So I approached the opportunity to review Mr. Mann’s latest book with caution. A man who will mislead his scientific colleagues is likely to be even less reliable with the general public.
I was not disappointed, and at the same time, I was.
On the one hand, some propositions are surely false, while on the other there were insights that are most probably true. And then the final twist, where Mr. Mann showed himself to be relaxed about the near-term prospects for the world, unlike, say, prophets of doom like Greta Thunberg.
This is where he joins the ranks of what is being termed the “new denialists,” which seems to be a term to cover anyone who takes a “Don’t Panic” approach to changes in the climate.
The book is an example of the seductiveness of capitulating to expert opinion. Mr. Mann has a theory of everything, and that is that CO2 is the thermostat that controls Earth’s temperature. Except he occasionally allows for the sun to have a role at times through Milankovitch cycles.
Unlike most climate scientists, he understands geology and has a long-term view of the world, which means there are a lot of weeds for the amateur to get lost in.
My advice is to read the book, and then go and search out some contrary views.
The future might be all speculation, but once you get further back than yesterday’s dinner, the past can be just as speculative.
Maybe CO2 is a genuine thermostat, but then how do you explain this graph where the earth can be quite cold with high concentrations of CO2 and warm with low concentrations?
Mr. Mann deals with some of this by the concept of Earth System Sensitivity, which is the idea that there is a certain amount of inertia in the earth system and it may take quite a time for changes to manifest.
He posits that sensitivity may be higher in interglacials, and lower during glacials, partly a result of the fact that ice sheets, which dominate glacials, reflect a lot of sunlight and therefore act to keep temperature low, despite changes in CO2 pushing temperature in the other direction.
Ice sheets therefore melt very slowly causing temperature to also warm very slowly.
That brake on temperature change doesn’t exist when most of the ice sheets have melted, as they have today, so warming can be more instantaneous.
Perhaps.
I think it needs a lot more research but do please delve into the book—it has a wealth of detail which is hard to convey accurately, or at all, in a short review.
And definitely read the last chapter where I will let Mr. Mann speak for himself:
“But breathless claims of imminent climate-driven ‘human extinction’ and ‘runaway warming’ are both scientifically unsupportable and unhelpful.”
I’ve always been a “new denialist,” or if not always, since somewhere in the 90s.
Manmade climate change is a fact, to the extent that emissions of CO2 created by us have some effect on the climate. But to what extent is an open question, as is what to do about it.
What is certain is that the cost to human life of precipitately stopping the use of fossil fuels is immeasurably higher than any benefit.
We rely on them not just for electricity and transport, but for steel, plastics, glass, explosives, and fertilisers, without which it would be impossible to sustain the 10 billion or so humans who will live on this earth by the end of this century.
If we stopped all that tomorrow, how many humans could the earth support? 500 million? Take that figure from 10 billion, and that’s how many billions you would kill.
It would be wise to transition away from fossil fuels, and also wise to understand that any transition will be in the order of centuries, not decades.
After all, the first steam engine was developed in 1712, but it wasn’t until the early 20th century that it became dominant in sailing technology. Internal combustion engines have been around since 1860, but they are still developing.
Why should the decarbonised economy take only a matter of decades?
But to have a rational debate it requires rational premises all around, and this book is a good contribution to it.
And hopefully, it reflects a broader recognition amongst realists on the more climate-catastrophic end of the debate that if everything is a crisis, people will become so worn out that eventually, nothing is a crisis, because what’s the point, we can’t do anything about it?
Crisis overload.
If Mr. Mann can help to cool the debate, then I’m happy to have his support, even if his science might be less than rigorous.
“Our Fragile Moment: how lessons from the Earth’s past can help us survive the climate crisis” is published by Scribe and retails for AU$35.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.
Calling it "Cambrian Explosion" or "Big Bang" is just a lighter version of the Singularity. We are truly on the verge ...
