Period as a semi-retired pensioner: 128 days
Last week I proposed some advice for dealing with our less rational fellow humans. George Bernard Shaw said, “Never wrestle with a pig. You get dirty and besides, the pig likes it”. This week I have a confession to make. I engaged in some pig wrestling. The devil made me do it. Pig wrestling is a suitable topic for Ruminant Pink Friday ™. I did get a bit dirty, and it was not that bad. This, of course, begs the question of whether I am a pig. This is something I will need to explore with my therapist but you, dearly beloved readers, can of course offer your comments and opinions. And in case you didn’t know pig wrestling is indeed a thing and its best done wearing a pink shirt. Of course, the animal rights activists are incensed at pig wrestling. https://www.postcrescent.com/story/news/local/2014/08/10/pig-rassle-generates-minimal-mudslinging/13873181/
An article in Politicsweb by David Bullard regarding Covid vaccination sparked a bout of pig wrestling. https://www.politicsweb.co.za/opinion/the-new-lepers. David Bullard has a long, chequered, and interesting history as a journalist and columnist and I confess to reading his columns many of which are interesting, thought provoking and entertaining. Turns out though that he is an anti vaxxer and he threw in being a climate change denialist for good measure. This, unfortunately, brought out my inner pig and some adventures in the comments section.
This is what I learned from the very helpful people commenting. It turns out there is a grand conspiracy involving the mainstream media, academia, medical schools, the medical journals, health organisations and hospitals where the true facts are suppressed. There is some form of secretive uber authority actively hiding and banning the truth and releasing an elaborate false narrative using the mainstream media. To find the truth, you need to read a lot more, but you need go into the dark corners of fringe non peer reviewed stuff that anybody can publish on the internet. A bit like this blog. Don’t be duped by the mainstream media the truth is out there. I can also reveal it to you, preferably for a small fee.
This brings me to a book I read many years ago entitled, “Them: Adventures with Extremists” by Jon Ronson. https://www.amazon.com/Them-Adventures-Extremists-Jon-Ronson/dp/0743233212. Ronson spent two years investigating extremist groups and concluded that a wide variety of extremist groups – Islamic fundamentalists, neo-Nazis, amongst others – share the oddly similar belief that a tiny shadowy elite rule the world from a secret room. One of the leading candidates for this shadowy elite was the Bilderberg club which is apparently controlled by 12 alien shape shifting lizards posing as humans. This book was published in 2003. In the intervening two decades it appears that views such as this have become much more mainstream, to the point where once could debate whether they are extremist.
This week the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) issued a 4000-page, extensively referenced, report on the science of climate change. Each chapter has been compiled by a staggering array of global experts in their fields. The report stresses that the world is living through climate change, not watching it draw near. Its 234 authors base their conclusions on multiple lines of evidence. Some of that evidence comes from computer models, and some from improved physical understanding of various planetary processes. Crucially, an increasing proportion comes from direct observations of the way that the world has changed so far.
As a semi-retired pensioner, I am going to try and wade through some of this. The report covers so many different fields that no single human being, except stable geniuses like Donald Trump, will be able to fully comprehend or critique this report. And yet many, including award winning, scientists, such as Andrew Kenny, just brush all of this away and know better. No hubris there. https://dailyfriend.co.za/2021/02/07/the-paris-climate-accord-scientific-folly/. It’s all an unscientific political conspiracy perpetrated by the shadowy elite. They have co-opted the IPCC including its 234 authors and by also controlling the mainstream media are perpetrating one of the most elaborate hoaxes in history.
What are the motives of this shadowy elite and who are they? Is it really the lizards? Where is the secret room? Perhaps it will be a worthy quest for me to follow in the footsteps of Jon Ronson to try and find them. Dearly beloved readers if you happen to know any of them, please put me in contact with them.
Thank you for your comments and suggestions please keep them coming.
Regards
Bruce
Ruminant Pink Friday 
awesome as usual herr Dr ..
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Let’s see now Bruce. The very foundation of carbon release – the energy industry – makes your fortune over many past years. You semi retire – then decide to walk away from your past, without so much as a slight thank you. One might just yell irony or hypocrisy. I suggest you may just be wrestling with yourself. I know I am as an avid scuba diver.
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Thanks Mark.
Quite correct. The fossil fuel industry has been good to me and many others. One can argue that fossil fuels have been very beneficial to humanity. Without fossil fuels, I think that the enormous progress made in the 19th and 20th centuries would probably not have happened. There would have been no industrial revolution and no chemical industry as we know it. No ammonia and nitrogen fertilisers and no polymer industry. The world population would be much smaller than it is today. Large scale electricity generation would probably also not have been possible or happened. We would still be living in a much smaller and impoverished pre-industrial society.
Some (crazy?) people might actually believe that this would have been better. The fossil fuel era is a necessary step in the evolution of humanity. Everyone alive is still dependant on fossil fuels and will be for a number of decades. If a global ban on fossil fuels were implemented next year the world would descend into chaos and misery.
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It’s a matter then of extremes and doable choices. I for sure will not give up my petrol car ( just yet), but I can accept my Chinese takeaway in a compostable paper carton !
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Giving up you petrol car for an EV in south Africa will be very bad for the planet as you will swap burning petrol for coal.. so we have to wait for a transition in power supply before that helps.
I read an article yesterday about Maersk commissioning some new container ships that can run on “green methanol”. Unfortunately they can’t find any “green methanol” and so have to run on diesel in the meantime. So they are also waiting for someone else before they can claim to be “carbon neutral”.
I read articles all the time claiming huge breakthroughs in hydrogen to chemicals, hydrogen to power, hydrogen storage etc. All “green” because the hydrogen is going to be green . We’ll make the power requirement from biomass, agriculture, solar, wind… problem is that is not going to happen very quickly. I’d suggest a solution of modular nuclear power to make the hydrogen would be more practical, but that also incurs the wrath of the same people who are clamoring for the end of fossil fuels..
So we develop technologies that rely on green power and then call them “green” – they are not, they are technologies that could be green IF the power was green., then the hydrogen is green… we are waiting for ??? Godot?
We also NEVER mention the other side of the equation….. CONSUMPTION… very unpopular to suggest that as a good way to tackle AGW… as you know, I hate the term “climate change” – its deliberately vague. What we are worrying about is warming caused by humans…
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Car perspective noted. Home is Mauritius, and all energy here is oil/gas based and imported. Some solar gaining traction ( no pun intended).
Point is there are a lot of small things that can easily be done, that collectively can make something of a difference when done by a lot of people, and yes , it’s mostly on the demand side, and yes it does impact convenience, but often at no great expense to overall quality of life. Does that make me a greenie – not really, but it does reflect some need to do what I can.
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Two things… before fossil fuels, the street lights of London and New York were fueled with whale oil. In a flash, fossil fuels saved the whales.
Secondly – “them” is me – I rule the world. The “room” is my home office and if you watch VERY carefully at lunch today, you will see that my eyes to blink vertically giving away my true lizard… 🤣
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Hi Bruce,
Perhaps now as a semi-retired pensioner, if you can tear yourself away from pig-wrestling and other exciting pursuits long delayed by you sojourn deep within the petrochemical industry, you will be able to utilise your technical training and powerful intellect when reading the latest IPCC missive to answer the issues raised by Andrew Kenney:
• Specifically, what time period do the IPCC refer to as pre-industrial, and what were the average and extreme temperatures during that epoch? Why was that specific time period selected, and was that sensible?
• Why the limit of 2°C temperature rise is a suitable threshold, and from exactly which baseline? What cost-benefit analysis has been performed to justify this?
• What scientific observations due to CO2 emissions leading to downside impacts are predicted to occur and when, to be able to test the IPCC hypothesis? Surely falsifiable predictions are a feature of a scientific hypothesis, furthermore the significance of a scientific hypothesis depends on how broad the spectrum of observable and confirmed predictions it encompasses. Einstein’s prediction of gravitational bending of light near the sun confirmed during solar eclipse measurements comes to mind – clearly not a feature of Newtonian mechanics.
Perhaps you will be able to venture an opinion on the degree and nature of any disagreements between the 234 co-authors in the report – relative to the degree of consensus observed at technical conferences you have attended.
Lastly could you venture an opinion of the likely locations worldwide where a net benefit of climate change are most notable – if any? Yes filthy lucre …
Rob
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Hi Rob
Thanks for your comment. Some preliminary views. Your comments and questions will not be my immediate focus of study. As you know this is a 4000-page report which was released only 10 days ago. Many of the questions you ask are addressed in the study and I’m not sure why you ask them of me. It would be better for you to take them up with the authors.
The 2 C temperature rise is somewhat arbitrary. Any cost-benefit analysis is going to be subject to many assumptions and will require extrapolation of the models. Doing this sort of cost-benefit analysis properly is a huge task and no matter how you do it will be subject to significant uncertainty. It will thus always be possible to cast doubt on the projections. For individuals such as you and me to do this will have limited practical value.
With 234 authors and many of them being academics I’m sure there is significant disagreement. Having been an academic I know that many academics disagree for the sake of disagreeing.
You seem to suggest that the entire IPCC has been coopted by sections of the business community to make money. (A shadowy elite?) That is an extraordinary claim in the realm of a conspiracy theory for which you provide no evidence. The energy transition to “net zero” being proposed is an enormous undertaking that will cost tens of trillions of dollars and take decades. It is my own view that the magnitude of this task is underestimated by academics and it will take a lot longer and cost significantly more than current projections. Some of the existing petrochemical giants will not survive this transition. They have been and will continue to resist and slow down this change. A much more likely interpretation is that the IPCC report is a genuine attempt to address the issue of climate change which is an incredibly complex problem. Of course, it is imperfect but it is not an elaborate conspiracy and I will not be looking at it based on that assumption without evidence.
Regards
Bruce
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