Hi, Bill, Great post, as usual! I was able to use your reference to Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), that obscure set of dangerous provisions in so-called "global trade agreements," to alert the TA North Carolina Working Group about it, and propose we co-sign the letter being circulated by Public Citizen and Sierra Club et al. against this corporate Bill of Rights that protects their "investment" in burning the planet. Better yet, maybe TA central should also do so! Don Nonini
I have no recollection of subscribing, I assume I hit a button sometime and I started getting these e-mails. I’m very glad I did because they are great! I can’t subscribe right now but will try to when things get easier. Thank you.
Love the way you dispel rumors and gossip, as well as your discussion of the hatred of change and the new. I'm also reading The End of Nature (1989)...finally...and am absolutely blown away by your discussion of the Gaia theory and our (mis)handling of it. At one point you said something to the effect that many now regard the Earth as a kind of self-cleaning oven, without entertaining the possibility that we are the crud. What affected me most was your mention of Gaia: An Atlas of Planet Management. Your ideas jibe amazingly well with my own research, which suggest that we are here to take over this MF. An event occurred about 4-5,000 years ago in Eastern Turkey that hastened an era of humans wanting to be more, wanting to be higher, wanting to be more powerful. None of these things should be regarded as positive developments, as one might suspect by looking around at what we've done to the place.
In order to hold informed conversations about the horrific conditions experienced by miners of cobalt in the Democratic Republic of Congo, we need to be, well, informed. To this end, I highly recommend that all who wish to address this issue read the book Cobalt Red, by Siddharth Kara. We need cobalt to build the EV batteries; most of the word's cobalt is in Congo. The humanitarian conditions there are unspeakably horrendous, and unnecessary. We could mine this stuff responsibly. We aren't. There's a great interview (by Mitch Jesserich on his show "Letters and Politics") with the author and overview of this subject here: :https://kpfa.org/?s=Siddharth+Kara
As we transition to clean, renewable energy, we need to make sure we do it right, and to do this, we have to pay attention to issues like this.
I’m tired of reading articles aimed at convincing deniers they’re wrong, and would like to read pieces supporting the dedicated scientists, engineers and other innovators and our deliberations to communicate what positive results can be achieved in the near-term to begin actual cooling during the decades it will take to reduce carbon concentration in the atmosphere and reduced acidity in the ocean, restoring fisheries, whale populations and the entire oceanic food chain.
Reducing emissions in and of itself will not reduce CO2 concentrations or global average temperatures except on a geologic time scale irrelevant to saving humanity and civilization.
Your paragraph (below) seems to apply to those folks who are dead set against innovation to get back to <350ppm and Holocene norms including the jet stream and Arctic vortex which now deliver extreme weather, death and destruction.
<< Psychologists have done their best to explain why we’re more scared of possible dangers from new things than obvious dangers from old ones (“this reaction may have to do with our amygdala, which research suggests plays a role in detecting novelty as well as processing fear”), and marketers have done their best to exploit it. But the rest of us have to do our best to fight it in ourselves and others. >>
However all of the climate people I have seen have fallen hook line and sinker for the covid/vaccine propaganda and no one is willing to engage with me on the evidence, i just get blocked. It's very disappointing. https://georgiedonny.substack.com/p/there-is-no-covid
Very good but diminished by reference to how many lives the shots have saved. Have you looked into it- it's government and pharma propaganda to make money; just like the propaganda to keep us confused about climate change and transition; to protect profits.
Saving lives is very difficult to prove. You have to show that someone would have died from the virus without the shot. If 'covid' is anything like the flu, according to one of the editors of the BMJ, Peter Doshi, only about 18 people a year are recorded by the CDC as dying from the actual virus. The 40,000 often quoted is from pneumonia, which has many causes. Thus the flu vaccine cannot be claimed to save 40,000 lives. Nor has the flu vaccine even been shown to save any life, it may produce antibodies and prevent symptoms as the covid vaccines allegedly did; in the case of Pfizer in 0.85% more people than placebo (if you need to look up absolute vs relative efficacy (the 95% efficacy quoted) please do so now). So you need to vaccinate about 100 people to prevent symptoms in 1. The infection fatality rate was virtually zero in children and increased with morbidity and age, poor nutrition, lack of outdoor exercise, forced ventilation, remedisivir and 'good death' midazolam administration to up to 1%. (maybe like the flu only 0.045% of deaths were from the 'virus' )The vaccines were not shown to save any lives in children, as they were never at risk, and not shown to save any lives in old people as the causes of their deaths was never shown to be a 'virus'.
Is there anyone with data on lithium fires at the batteries at solar farms? A group here in Santa Fe is spreading fear-based information about the dangers in order to block a planned facility. If you can point me to the facts, it would be greatly appreciated. Feel free to respond here or send me an email at dreed1969@msn.com. Thanks in advance for your help
Reading this, I can't help feel a strong resemblance between fearmongering/demonizing renewables and the same attitude & lies about nuclear power which has the biggest potential to defeat the real enemy: fossil fuels .
How does one determine death from breathing fossil fuel smoke? Does a medical examiner put it on the death certificate? And what’s this 9 million number? It’s certainly not a worldwide statistic. Does anyone run the opposite? How many on this planet die from energy insufficiency because they don’t have access to fossil fuel based energy?
It’s apparent you’ve been doing this for a long time. Your deception skills are amazing. Just yesterday I scanned one of your previous posts where your simplistic reference to solar was “pointing a piece of glass at the sun”. You also recently labeled both wind and solar as “cheap and elegant”. False and false. Unfortunately the climate crazies are easily manipulated, so you have a large, willing audience.
The video in JoNova's post (at the "widely-read Australian climate denial website") is actually pretty good. It expresses lots of skepticism, but does not draw absolute conclusions. One interesting point he brings up is that the literature on which models of Range Rovers are actually hybrids could be wrong. Such mistakes are not inconceivable in this age of a cornucopia of different options. There's lots of mechanics who don't think a diesel fire would look like that. Could petrol and diesel burn hot enough to make that floor collapse? Even if it was only started by a diesel fire, it could have spread to a hotter burning EV. Are there older cases of diesel and petrol car fires collapsing parking garages?
Our species appears to be unable to see the results of its so-called progress and science. As smart and inventive as we are, all our conveniences are based on the exploitation of our host, the Earth. Though I don’t consider myself well-read, I haven’t heard of any writing in the past that warned that the industrial revolution and all its goodies would put us on a path that is directly related to our species’ destruction of the natural world and the resulting existential crisis. Now circumstances beyond our control seem to demand that those who survive will need to learn, or relearn, how to live simply, in balance with the earth.
Hi, Bill, Great post, as usual! I was able to use your reference to Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), that obscure set of dangerous provisions in so-called "global trade agreements," to alert the TA North Carolina Working Group about it, and propose we co-sign the letter being circulated by Public Citizen and Sierra Club et al. against this corporate Bill of Rights that protects their "investment" in burning the planet. Better yet, maybe TA central should also do so! Don Nonini
I have no recollection of subscribing, I assume I hit a button sometime and I started getting these e-mails. I’m very glad I did because they are great! I can’t subscribe right now but will try to when things get easier. Thank you.
Love the way you dispel rumors and gossip, as well as your discussion of the hatred of change and the new. I'm also reading The End of Nature (1989)...finally...and am absolutely blown away by your discussion of the Gaia theory and our (mis)handling of it. At one point you said something to the effect that many now regard the Earth as a kind of self-cleaning oven, without entertaining the possibility that we are the crud. What affected me most was your mention of Gaia: An Atlas of Planet Management. Your ideas jibe amazingly well with my own research, which suggest that we are here to take over this MF. An event occurred about 4-5,000 years ago in Eastern Turkey that hastened an era of humans wanting to be more, wanting to be higher, wanting to be more powerful. None of these things should be regarded as positive developments, as one might suspect by looking around at what we've done to the place.
Thanks as always, Mr McKibben.
In order to hold informed conversations about the horrific conditions experienced by miners of cobalt in the Democratic Republic of Congo, we need to be, well, informed. To this end, I highly recommend that all who wish to address this issue read the book Cobalt Red, by Siddharth Kara. We need cobalt to build the EV batteries; most of the word's cobalt is in Congo. The humanitarian conditions there are unspeakably horrendous, and unnecessary. We could mine this stuff responsibly. We aren't. There's a great interview (by Mitch Jesserich on his show "Letters and Politics") with the author and overview of this subject here: :https://kpfa.org/?s=Siddharth+Kara
As we transition to clean, renewable energy, we need to make sure we do it right, and to do this, we have to pay attention to issues like this.
Bill,
I’m tired of reading articles aimed at convincing deniers they’re wrong, and would like to read pieces supporting the dedicated scientists, engineers and other innovators and our deliberations to communicate what positive results can be achieved in the near-term to begin actual cooling during the decades it will take to reduce carbon concentration in the atmosphere and reduced acidity in the ocean, restoring fisheries, whale populations and the entire oceanic food chain.
Reducing emissions in and of itself will not reduce CO2 concentrations or global average temperatures except on a geologic time scale irrelevant to saving humanity and civilization.
Your paragraph (below) seems to apply to those folks who are dead set against innovation to get back to <350ppm and Holocene norms including the jet stream and Arctic vortex which now deliver extreme weather, death and destruction.
<< Psychologists have done their best to explain why we’re more scared of possible dangers from new things than obvious dangers from old ones (“this reaction may have to do with our amygdala, which research suggests plays a role in detecting novelty as well as processing fear”), and marketers have done their best to exploit it. But the rest of us have to do our best to fight it in ourselves and others. >>
We have met the enemy … you know …
Great content as always. Appreciate you.
You are right to point out the sensationalism of 'health freedom' who deliberately or ignorantly confuse excess deaths with the death rate and claim that the vaccines are a genocide. I've written about this at length https://georgiedonny.substack.com/p/update-on-excess-deaths-and-depopulation
I have seen how health freedom has been targeted by oil and animal ag with climate denial and bird killing windmills. And have also written about this at length. https://georgiedonny.substack.com/p/startling-omission-of-the-word-animal
However all of the climate people I have seen have fallen hook line and sinker for the covid/vaccine propaganda and no one is willing to engage with me on the evidence, i just get blocked. It's very disappointing. https://georgiedonny.substack.com/p/there-is-no-covid
Very good but diminished by reference to how many lives the shots have saved. Have you looked into it- it's government and pharma propaganda to make money; just like the propaganda to keep us confused about climate change and transition; to protect profits.
Saving lives is very difficult to prove. You have to show that someone would have died from the virus without the shot. If 'covid' is anything like the flu, according to one of the editors of the BMJ, Peter Doshi, only about 18 people a year are recorded by the CDC as dying from the actual virus. The 40,000 often quoted is from pneumonia, which has many causes. Thus the flu vaccine cannot be claimed to save 40,000 lives. Nor has the flu vaccine even been shown to save any life, it may produce antibodies and prevent symptoms as the covid vaccines allegedly did; in the case of Pfizer in 0.85% more people than placebo (if you need to look up absolute vs relative efficacy (the 95% efficacy quoted) please do so now). So you need to vaccinate about 100 people to prevent symptoms in 1. The infection fatality rate was virtually zero in children and increased with morbidity and age, poor nutrition, lack of outdoor exercise, forced ventilation, remedisivir and 'good death' midazolam administration to up to 1%. (maybe like the flu only 0.045% of deaths were from the 'virus' )The vaccines were not shown to save any lives in children, as they were never at risk, and not shown to save any lives in old people as the causes of their deaths was never shown to be a 'virus'.
Is there anyone with data on lithium fires at the batteries at solar farms? A group here in Santa Fe is spreading fear-based information about the dangers in order to block a planned facility. If you can point me to the facts, it would be greatly appreciated. Feel free to respond here or send me an email at dreed1969@msn.com. Thanks in advance for your help
As always, thank you Bill McKibben....
Reading this, I can't help feel a strong resemblance between fearmongering/demonizing renewables and the same attitude & lies about nuclear power which has the biggest potential to defeat the real enemy: fossil fuels .
How does one determine death from breathing fossil fuel smoke? Does a medical examiner put it on the death certificate? And what’s this 9 million number? It’s certainly not a worldwide statistic. Does anyone run the opposite? How many on this planet die from energy insufficiency because they don’t have access to fossil fuel based energy?
Comical
It’s apparent you’ve been doing this for a long time. Your deception skills are amazing. Just yesterday I scanned one of your previous posts where your simplistic reference to solar was “pointing a piece of glass at the sun”. You also recently labeled both wind and solar as “cheap and elegant”. False and false. Unfortunately the climate crazies are easily manipulated, so you have a large, willing audience.
The video in JoNova's post (at the "widely-read Australian climate denial website") is actually pretty good. It expresses lots of skepticism, but does not draw absolute conclusions. One interesting point he brings up is that the literature on which models of Range Rovers are actually hybrids could be wrong. Such mistakes are not inconceivable in this age of a cornucopia of different options. There's lots of mechanics who don't think a diesel fire would look like that. Could petrol and diesel burn hot enough to make that floor collapse? Even if it was only started by a diesel fire, it could have spread to a hotter burning EV. Are there older cases of diesel and petrol car fires collapsing parking garages?
Our species appears to be unable to see the results of its so-called progress and science. As smart and inventive as we are, all our conveniences are based on the exploitation of our host, the Earth. Though I don’t consider myself well-read, I haven’t heard of any writing in the past that warned that the industrial revolution and all its goodies would put us on a path that is directly related to our species’ destruction of the natural world and the resulting existential crisis. Now circumstances beyond our control seem to demand that those who survive will need to learn, or relearn, how to live simply, in balance with the earth.
Please write some positive angles on the Climate Position as we all have to adapt. Upbeat happy development needs to be emphasised !?