Climate change basics

Because I have immersed myself in the interesting details of the progress in climate science, I sometimes forget how confusing the subject really is. In spite of the mostly unreasonable criticisms, most climate science research is reasonable, thorough, and in some cases, brilliant. But since those who run Big Media barely report on science at all and run the other direction at the slightest controversy, climate change is most certainly not covered like something "important" like whether a porn star should be able to disrupt the people's business.

Spend a couple of hours every day chasing a subject for many years tends to distort the assumptions of what people should know about the subject. So when climate change goes to court, the culture has attempted to move the understanding of how this works from scientists (who probably understood the concept of greenhouse gasses in 7th grade) to lawyers (who probably went to law school because they weren't very good in science.) So California judge William Alsup asks some good basic questions and Oliver Milman came up with accurate and concise answers.

This should probably be considered the minimum level of awareness of climate change. Thanks Oliver.

Germany's dirty little coal secret

The other day, I went looking for some images / video of brown coal mining in Germany. Turns out Germany mines about 170,000,000 tons of the stuff every year to supply around 25% of her electric power. Ironically it seems to hang on because it is the only energy source for generating electricity cheaper than solar / wind. I mean, what else do you do with brown coal but burn it? It's not like you could turn it into the coke necessary to make high-grade steel.

Anyway, I found some video taken at 4K by a drone. Germans are often efficient because they love to build BIG things. This also explains why Germany, which has led the charge on renewables, still has one of highest per capita carbon footprints. Brown coal is dirty stuff but if you can scoop up thousands of tons per day with a few skilled operators, it makes "economic" sense to scoop.

The following article is from Australia. That country is providing China with a LOT of coal. So there is a whiff of "see, we are no worse than the Germans." But only a whiff. And I'll bet there are many Germans who hate the burning of brown coal as much as her neighbors.

Protectionism flickers to life

There are times when the conventional disgust with "protectionism" rises to the level of the outrage over pedophilia. Which is strange when you think about it. From Ben Franklin to Abe Lincoln to H. Ross Perot, there have been strong supporters of many of the ideas that the high tariff folks believed in so strongly. When a country is developing a sophisticated manufacturing base, the protectionists usually triumph. It is only when a country gets rich and imperial do the "free" traders win the day. The traders are a fraction of overall economic activity but when the dominant economic strategy favor traders over manufacturing, they get to write the rules in their favor.

Hudson is pretty good on trade issues. He's a ways from Lincoln but he's way better than your typical cable business talking head. So I thought he might celebrate the fact that Trump has at least moved the needle away from the free trade extremism as practiced since the late 1970s. Well, I was wrong. Hudson instead faults Trump for not having a coherent trade policy to back his Twitter outbursts on trade. Fair enough.

Me, I am happy that someone is reopening the Free Trade debate—which has been pretty dormant since the Battle for Seattle in 1999. Free trade has been such an unmitigated disaster there is barely time to count the ways. As someone who comes from the Naomi Klein wing of the DFL when it comes to trade issues, I find it a bit odd to hear some of our best arguments come from the mouth of Trump. I only hope he understands that by even questioning the free trade establishment, he has committed an unspeakable heresy and the the race is on among those who author papers glorifying the conventional economic wisdom to see who can denounce this sin with the greatest fervor.

Even the Paris 2015 climate accords won't solve the problem

Robert Hunziker is perhaps the politician that best understands climate change—and has for some time. He is running for a seat in Washington's 8th Congressional District. I certainly hope he wins.

Whenever I stumble across someone who has a profound and deep understanding of a subject, I am immediately curious as to how he came to be that way. I am especially curious if that person is young. His campaign literature sort of explains his enlightened worldview. Turns out that there CAN be some significant advantages to learning a society from the bottom up. So here's to someone who has had enough exposure to Producing Class virtue to understand that no matter how enlightened a Leisure Class actor, that person cannot build the sustainable future.

Infrastructure funding

Whenever I discuss possible solutions to climate change, it isn't long before someone demands, "How much will this cost??!! And how do you propose we pay for it?" These are in fact excellent questions because the MAIN reason why this civilization-threatening problem doesn't get seriously addressed is the sticker shock that occurs whenever someone gives a realistic estimate for a fix.

Then there's Ellen Brown who reminds us that the problem of not enough money should be the easiest problem to solve of all.  Then she gives us historical examples of why democratic money creation suggest the perfect solutions to the funding problems. Unfortunately, folks who saw the world like Ellen does mostly disappeared by the early 1950s so she has become an almost lone voice for a sane monetary and banking organization.

Which is all the more reason why she should be read.

Climate Tipping Points

Like many college students, there has been a sense when the subject was climate change that we could always "cram for the final" when things got really serious. Now I feel a shift in tone—there is a sense of urgency. Below are two short pieces that address why this may be so. The first addresses the new and truly frightening data the great scientific measurements can provide. While second talks about the disappearing paradise that was Santa Barbara California. Two different looks at impending doom and how close it may be.

The power of conventional wisdom

One of the smartest men I know once assured me that the "Zeitgeist cannot be changed—that's what makes it the Zeitgeist." OK. Except I know better. I grew up in the world created by the Keynesians of the Ken Galbraith variety. I watched it just disappear in the wake of the 1973 Arab oil embargo to be replaced by people who believed in ideas that supposedly had been forever discredited by the Great Depression. I still gasp at the sheer audacity of it all. It helped immeasurably that we had become a land of historical illiterates (The United States of Amnesia--Gore Vidal) so forgetting economic history was a trivial problem. And so the Zeitgeist changed from the Keynesians to the Monetarists in an historical eye-blink. Maoists become central bankers. And no, I most certainly do NOT believe all this happened by accident.

Even so, this was much easier than anyone could have imagined (or at least me.) The family business was running a church where I learned just how difficult it is to get folks to change their minds. Turns out well-funded think tanks can change quite a few minds. Jason Hirthler lays out a believable explanation for how and why this happened. Interesting reading.