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I have been following the climate debate for around 30 years now and quickly moved from someone who was originally alarmed to someone who is still alarmed, not about any marginal levels of temperature rise but around the political response to a minor issue (IMHO). But you cannot convince a true believer. They are simply totally convinced that the establishment position is correct on this topic and that any dissenters like me are tin foil hat conspiracy theorists.

I have come to the conclusion that 30 years of propaganda and brain washing, - starting in schools and relentlessly pursued through the media and supported by a politicised scientific establishment - have created a mass delusion that no amount of facts, logic or rational sceptcism can dent. It is the new religion with its notions of original sin, purgatory and redemption. It is part of a value system - not a scientific and economic debate framed by political choices. It is part and parcel of the west's general delusions in a post fact world.

I place less reliance on the power of the "global elites" to mastermind our futures than many who haunt these sites. Nevertheless the WEF strongly supports the Malthusian solutions proposed to this "climate crisis". These are anti-human and coercive, and will reduce human population, wealth, health and happiness - and generally support the power of the state over indiviuals and families.

As a long time "climate sceptic" I used to argue that the problems was wildy exagerrated and the proposed solutions counter-productive if not actually dangerous. I realise that this was a hopeless position. The belief system is too far ingrained. I don't bother now. The realists have lost.

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In regard to political response, I don't see any serious political response to climate change in the US. The Republican party, which controls most of the country, is openly hostile to the idea. And Biden has signed more oil drilling permits in his first two years than Trump did. In the US, fossil fuels companies net billions in subsidies every year. According to the International Energy Agency, globally they pull in about $1 trillion in subsidies. And, of course, we keep burning more fossil fuels (2022 was a new record). So while some politicians pander to their base by talking about climate change, the establishment position in the US (if not globally) seems to align with your personal position: It's nothing to worry about, keep burning fossil fuels.

Of course, it's possible I'm missing something. What is the political response you are alarmed by?

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Ok, I will assume you are not trolling me. This frequently happens in discussions on this topic. For political response maybe read policy response.

I live the other side of the pond and whilst the US Administration and various State Governments have come down hard on what they see as carbon pollution, you may well be correct in that you percieve little difference. Hre are a few things going on in the Uk and Europe at large:

1. Closing effcient reliable coal, gas and oil fired electricity generating capacity to move to expensive, unrelaible and non-eco wind and solar. (ie in Germany, that well known southern nation with a Mediterranean climate)

2. Net zero.

3. Closing nuclear power plants.

4. Buying in electricity from abroad generated by these "bad" methods

5. Mandating the end of efficient gasoline and diesel cars in favour of eco-disaterous and uninsurable and unsafe electric cars, with shorter range and a larger lifetime carbon footprint.

6. Carbon taxes on the consumer

7. carbon taxes on industry, forcing it to move abroad whewre it emits the same or worse - but not our problem

8. Closing farms down on a compulsary basis because cows and sheep fart, eat bugs instead

9. Scaring kids and the population in general with IMHO propaganda re climate catastrophe

10. being Ok with climate "reparations" and "climate" refugees.

Our great and good may have forgotten that (a) the ROW does not give that much credence to climate except for the grift they can extract from the woke west and (b) it doesn't matter what we do because the ROW will industrialise anyway and the use of fossil fuels is rising every year. You could tow the UK into the middle of the Atlantic and sink it, but it would make no difference to world temperatures in terms of carbon emissions.

The rational policy response is actually a heavy investment in nuclear power. We begin to see this coming to pass. but 20 years too late - I have been following the west's suicidal energy policy for a long time too.

The difference between our lives a peasant in the middle ages is the ability to harness machines. which run off something other than human or animal power (maybe water and wind too). Coal, oil and gas have driven human advancement for 100 years. It may well be rational to plan for another future,. To replace what amounts to civilisation with "hot air" is suicidal and policy responses based on religious dogma (promoted by a Swedish teenager) are unlikely to sustain our standard of living and well being.

And all this for a rise in temerature of 0.14C per dacde since 1979. That is a decadal shift equivalent to 6 feet in height. ie the temperature between your feet and your head. If the young folk want to get excited about that then let them. I am unimpressed with this. As you will have guessed.

And like the adherents to the climaste religion, I doubt my views can be changed!

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And apologies once more for the typos but I am seeing a black background and white font here which makes it difficult for me to proof read.

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No, I wasn't trolling. I seem to be one of the rare people that genuinely wants to hear opinions from average people who seem informed, but I don't necessarily agree with. And I never try to debate or change minds. That's just a fools errand. Often, like now, I discover we agree on a lot more than I had suspected.

For instance, I agree with you that electric cars are a marketing ploy. They are not "green." I also agree the hate for nuclear energy is ridiculous. Climate change aside, you don't want to raise your kids downwind from a coal burning power plant. And the carbon in cow farts is derived from the grass they eat. While they're clearing one pasture, another pasture is sinking carbon to grow more grass. So it's silly to compare them to fossil fuel burning.

I do think humans are negatively impacting the climate. We are not the first species to do so. But it looks like it'll be at least near the end of this century before large areas are underwater or not fit for normal human habitation. And, of course, there are already many extinctions happening. What I am skeptical about is whether anyone with any power will do anything about it before it's too late. Every time one scratches the surface of the new, big, highly-funded scheme to halt climate change, it turns out to be penny wise and pound foolish, yet another ineffectual money-making endeavor, or both.

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Hi. The truth is we haven't had to use fossil fuel energy for some time. It is for the "currency." Tesla free energy is patented and blocked, but is just take electro-magnetic energy out of air like a crystal radio, or your TV.

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Climate change, whether you believe in it, or not, is a self limiting symptom: the cause is burning fossil fuels, which are running out i.e. overshoot i.e. once fossil fuels are gone (a handful of decades at most) there will be the same number of humans as before the fossil age ~ under 1 billion: this background reality - the carrying capacity of humans on Earth - is the ultimate boundary within which billionaire elites play their games.

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So taking your point, and with population at 9 billion and rising, how do you see some 8 billion people dissapperaring over the next few dacades? Incidentally, the argument you make is Malthusian in character and one I therefore would not necessarily accept.

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Starvation and murder and not being born, the down curve of population dynamics related to resource depletion is always very steep. It took over 200,000 years of human prehistory and history for the global population to reach one billion and only 219 years more to reach 8 billion. Its doubled since 1960.

Please see my comment here for how and why with links and sources Biophysics is not "Malthusian" in the scare mongering insult fashion that's usually meant.

https://darkfutura.substack.com/p/climate-paranoia/comment/22255554

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I prefer my future vison to yours.

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I prefer biophysical reality - 8bn people are supported by fossil fuels not magic wands - no fossils fuels = 1bn people, unless you know how to break the laws of thermodynamics?

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In general, the future does not defer to people's preferences. Or, do you think it does? should?

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I was simply responding to the word that marcjf used in their comment: "I prefer my future vison to yours". As such it's a bit silly and absurd to twist the concept of "biophysical reality" as a personal preference - the laws of physics do "not defer to people's preferences" !

Unless you know how 8billion humans can live without fossil fuels, which according to Shell & BP etc.. will decline at 2% a year, which in 70 years will be 1/4 of oil supply in 2019.

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ftsa&q=Global+%27peak+oil%27+has+already+happened&ia=web

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Hmm. Apologies for the confusion. My response was also directed at marcjf - he, after all was the one who said "I prefer my future to yours"... as if the future was taking votes on our preferences... ;) I am in full agreement with your point that biophysical reality (and its influence on the future) is not subject to our personal preferences. Be well.

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Peak oil? We've heard that story many times before, starting with the prediction of the Club of Rome in 1970.

Nevertheless, it is obvious that some day we will run out of coal and gas. BUT what linear modelers like yourself do not factor in, is human ingenuity. Malthus, the original linear modeler, thought the world will run out of food within 100 years and humanity will die. Instead the population exploded! Even with such in-your-face examples of consistent wrong predictions by models, people like you still keep faith with modelling. BTW, do not mislabel models as bio-physical reality which is just a hi-fi sounding word for reality. Reality will show all models wrong, as it has consistently done so for 100+ years.

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KenKam, you make at least two straw man arguments here.

1) The message of the 'Club of Rome' Limits to Growth book predicted that the earth's interlocking resources - the global system of nature in which we all live - probably cannot support present rates of economic and population growth much beyond the year 2100, if that long, even with advanced technology.

In support of the 'Club of Rome' prediction, Shell and BP tell us their supply will decrease by about 2% per year from 2019 i.e. in about 70 years it will 25% of what it was in 2019. Same story from all the big oil gas and coal firms.

Thus 'peak oil' is a bio-physical reality no matter how hard you try to ridicule the term “bio-physical” suggesting its a "hi-fi sounding word for reality".

2) Malthus made his predictions in his 1798 book An Essay on the Principle of Population, well before oil and gas as energy sources became commercially available or were predicted or had been discovered in quantities or potential use cases had been envisioned.

Oil and gas had already been used in some capacity, such as in lamps or as a material for construction, for thousands of years before the modern era, with the earliest known oil wells being drilled in China in 347 AD.

The modern history of the oil and gas industry started in 1847, with a discovery made by Scottish chemist James Young. He observed natural petroleum seepage in the Riddings coal mine, and from this seepage distilled both a light thin oil suitable for lamps and a thicker oil suitable for lubrication.

https://www.offshore-technology.com/comment/history-oil-gas/

Had those energy sources not appeared, Malthus' 1798 predictions on the food boom he observed in his time causing population bubbles followed by crash would be valid and correct. But oil and gas in huge quantities did appear shortly after his time and it is those sources that enabled the population to explode from under 1 billion to 8 billion today.

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Thanks for a civil and detailed reply.

I do not make strawman arguments. Both points are directly related to your comments a) peak oil, ie limited resources & b) malthus' projections.

I agree that peak oil is a reality we will hit sooner or later. My response to that is that human ingenuity finds a way out. As an example, we know that 3000 years ago in Egypt papyrus was used to write on. That papyrus only grew in the Nile delta. If your argument is applied to that era we would worry about papyrus supply running out, and that is correct. But humans found other means to write on! Applied to today's situation, we humans will find energy one way or another - by more efficient use of fossil fuels, or totally new means like solar, hydrogen, etc. So 8bn people will NOT suddenly become 1bn, that is a fantasy.

2. The point of Malthus was not that he didn't anticipate the technological changes. The point is that the future is ALWAYS uncertain and linear models cannot deal with that uncertainty. Even non-linear models are always based on assumptions which are human made, and cannot deal with an uncertain future. Hence, ALL modelling is inherently suspect, except in pure mathematical or physical realms where we know every variable. Climate is at the opposite end of such pure mathematical models, hence trying to model the climate is an exercise in futility. We can only use empirical methods in cases of extreme complexity like the climate. Models are always wrong, as proven by the history of all climate models so far.

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KenKam, appealing to papyrus shortages is once again a straw man, on account of the fact that 3000 years ago in Egypt humans were far further away from planetary limits than today, rendering your hope to fix the biophysical limits of this 'pale blue dot' i.e overshoot by appealing to that example of "human ingenuity finds a way out" an appeal to magic :-

a) "more efficient use of fossil fuels" - engineers have been working on fossil fuel efficiency for several hundred years, I can assure you (as one myself) that ALL relevant technology and machine performances has reached the bio-physical "hi-hi" limits of fossil fuels' efficiency gains.

b) You can't build solar energy flow harvesting machines, such as solar PV or thermal, or wind turbines or hydro and all the necessary distribution networks, or nuclear or indeed all machines that use fossil fuels, without fossil fuels. Why? Their energy density is too low compared to fossil fuels. Plus hydrogen is a silly con.

https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/renewables-plug-and-pray

c) With respect to CO2 emissions, it is irrelevant whether linear ~vs~ whatever models are uncertain, they are simply a symptom of overshoot.

1) Hydrogen hopium: Storage

https://energyskeptic.com/?s=hydrogen

2) Hydrogen or Electron Economy?

https://www.csrf.ac.uk/blog/hydrogen-or-electron-economy/

3) Pursuing the hydrogen economy as a climate solution will be a big mistake

https://greenallianceblog.org.uk/2021/02/11/pursuing-the-hydrogen-economy-as-a-climate-solution-will-be-a-big-mistake/

4) The Hydrogen Hoax: Confessions of a Former Hydrogenist

https://cassandralegacy.blogspot.com/2020/12/the-hydrogen-hoax-confessions-of-former.html

5) Hydrogen: The dumbest & most impossible renewable

https://energyskeptic.com/2019/hydrogen/

Please instead of clinging to 'magic' read this series of research articles in Energies journal 2021 which spells out why fossil fuels can’t be replaced with solar energy flow harvesting machines i.e. as oil and coal and natural get scarcer and harder to get out the ground humans will return to pre fossil age numbers. This is just a biophysical fact. Please spend the time and you will get an excellent insight into how access to energy dictates practically everything else humans do.

1) Through the Eye of a Needle: An Eco-Heterodox Perspective on the Renewable Energy Transition, by Megan K. Seibert and William E. Rees

Abstract: We add to the emerging body of literature highlighting cracks in the foundation of the mainstream energy transition narrative. We offer a tripartite analysis that re-characterizes the climate crisis within its broader context of ecological overshoot, highlights numerous collectively fatal problems with so-called renewable energy technologies, and suggests alternative solutions that entail a contraction of the human enterprise. This analysis makes clear that the pat notion of “affordable clean energy” views the world through a narrow keyhole that is blind to innumerable economic, ecological, and social costs.

These undesirable “externalities” can no longer be ignored. To achieve sustainability and salvage civilization, society must embark on a planned, cooperative descent from an extreme state of overshoot in just a decade or two. While it might be easier for the proverbial camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for global society to succeed in this endeavor, history is replete with stellar achievements that have arisen only from a dogged pursuit of the seemingly impossible.

https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/15/4508

2) Comment on Seibert, M.K.; Rees, W.E. Through the Eye of a Needle: An Eco-Heterodox Perspective on the Renewable Energy Transition by Mark Diesendorf

https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/3/964

3) Reply to Diesendorf, M. Comment on “Seibert, M.K.; Rees, W.E. Through the Eye of a Needle: An Eco-Heterodox Perspective on the Renewable Energy Transition by Megan K. Seibert and William E. Rees

https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/3/970/htm

4) Comment on Seibert, M.K.; Rees, W.E. Through the Eye of a Needle: An Eco-Heterodox Perspective on the Renewable Energy Transition by Vasilis Fthenakis et al

https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/3/971

5) Reply to Fthenakis et al. Comment on “Seibert, M.K.; Rees, W.E. Through the Eye of a Needle: An Eco-Heterodox Perspective on the Renewable Energy Transition by Megan K. Seibert and William E. Rees

https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/15/3/974/htm

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I think your estimated depletion date, and ensuing population decline, might be too aggressive, but your point is still worth noting. We don't even have to fully deplete fossil fuels anyway. We just have to deplete the cheap-ish to produce stuff, and much of what we currently use them for will become economically unviable.

To your point about the severe impacts this will have, how are we going to replace everything we do with petroleum? Even outside of fuel, petroleum products are ubiquitous in the modern world: Plastics, lubricants, food additives, cosmetics, medicines, etc. And there are not good replacements for many of the things we do with them. Are we really going to go back to lubricating our machines with lard? Lard doesn't work nearly as well, and there aren't enough pigs on Earth.

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Thank you all for a useful and interesting exchange of different views, while remaining civil. More of this! Say I. :)

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Global 'peak oil' has already happened. And as you say, "We don't even have to fully deplete fossil fuels anyway. We just have to deplete the cheap-ish to produce stuff" which is my point. For example, Shell say “oil production peaked in 2019,” and it expects its output to decline by 1 to 2 percent per year" which leaves only a quarter of it annual production by 2090 (i.e. in 70 years time) = 8 billion decline to 2 billion people if we accept the metric that population is supported by oil outputs.

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ftsa&q=Global+%27peak+oil%27+has+already+happened&ia=web

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Hi. The truth is we haven't had to use fossil fuel energy for some time. It is for the "currency." Tesla free energy is patented and blocked, but is just take electro-magnetic energy out of air like a crystal radio, or your TV.

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Assuming you are a serious commentor ... the first assumption, that climate change is caused by burning fossil fuels is scientifically, factually, incorrect.

Fossil fuel burning does have some impact on CO2 levels but its impact on climate is negligible when compared to all the other natural factors that also change the earth's climate.

Therefore all your conclusions are also false.

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KenKam, you refer to "you" and that "all your conclusions are also false" ..? but to whom are you replying? Meanwhile, yes I am "a serious commentor [sp commentator] " Thanks Natasha

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You are 100% right. But as you say and I agree, we cannot do anything about it, science and true realists have lost. We'll have to wait until this chimera of climate alarmism crashes against reality some day and people realise they have been fooled.

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