Let's all of us do everything we can to turn from war and the violence war has internalized in most of us..........and build the green future. We have everything we need to do it....if all of us start where we can, vote intelligently, and start talking climate........we might have a chance.
We love our solar panels, our heat pump, our EV. Started in 2009...have only the asbestos contaminated vermiculate to remove from our attic and replace with real insulation....so should be climate ready by 2027 at the latest. If we stop our foreign excursions for a year or three........most of us in the MC, at least in Canada...
Can support the industries of the future and get close to net 0.
Nope,roll guillotine! Or all 74 million of us shut down the country and capitalism peacefully. The French Revolution was the way( effectively) to eliminate a king, but the Reign of Terror that followed failed to establish liberty and justice for all,just as our Civil War kept the Union together, but failed to address the evil of slavery and so we had to address the main problem a hundred years later during Civil rights fight.Now trump Nazis are going backwards again because white supremacy loses its mind because Obama looks good in a tan suit and old white men can't stand it that American demographics is getting younger, more female and Hispanic. America needs to grow up and start acting like an adult after 250 years!!!
White supremacy needs to be ground into the dirt where it belongs
Actually Margie.....you begin by reasserting your desire for the guillotine and then go on to prove my point. Every struggle so far has fallen into the good guy/bad guy of dualism.....what I call the prison of 'two ideas, one of them wrong".........a grown up version of the true or false tests we endured perhaps as children???
Instead of dividing into two teams and duking it out, we actually do need to grow up and live our ideals. Inclusion will be hard at first as there are many damaged adult children in the first world. Likely its not that much different in Russia or China, though I don't live there so won't pretend I know.
We're going to have to invest in people not things.......we're going to have to all learn how to grow food, in conditions that are going to make that process harder for the foreseeable future. We're going to have to go for 0 waste. Export economies are going to have to shrink. We feed all our own people before we dry up rivers to grow avocadoes for rich fucks in North America, yes??
I think there has always been enough for all of us.......but patriarchy/Christianity/the great chain of (un)being have kept us slave labour dependent. If we all work........there will be less drudgery, and the best jobs might actually pay less than the dirty work where there is no intrinsic rewards, but only the needs of the society to recommend it.
We need another system. And to my mind, it looks more like a version of communism than it does a property based monetary system. If I'm right, America will need to do more than grow up....they'll need to abandon a lot of unsustainable beliefs that have motivated them since the birth of the Republic.
Which is to say, the road ahead, for all of us......is revolutionary yes. But hard as well. We're going to have to give up some fantasies, accept that reality is not an infinite bank of goodies for the few.
D never seems to burn out....he is relentless in his destruction and has been his entire life. From wearing contractors down in court (so he can avoid paying full price or at all) to enacting Project 2025, he has an insatiable appetite for domination.
And the people who gave him a free hall pass all his life??? The nation so divided by free enterprise wealth creation that it voted for him.........twice???
That's the mystery for me. Capitalism the system that should be unpacked.
Yes, exactly! You make excellent points about capitalism.I have had university professors admit that capitalism is far from " ideal" or fair, but they end by saying it's the best system of a bad lot. But is it really? You are right,we should be looking hard at other economic systems and human rights - avoid the tyrants and dictator types that are greedy for power.
And just maybe, stop demonizing other governments.......like Cuba.......because they don't have the obscenely rich f*cks America has to put in place the best government money can buy.
What particularly galls me, is that a nation who elected the dumb grifters around Trump............thinks it can sit in unqualified judgement of other nations like Venezuela.......or Russia.......or Iran....and use that judgement to go to war against them.
What's worse, most people who tell me how bad Putin is.....seem to want/need to erase every covert thing the CIA did in Ukraine to push Putin into war............they play dumb, or are dumb, in order for it to be that old good versus evil reason to kill, maim and get the bleeding earth ready for Climate Chaos.
I would say he is actually more of a condenser for the evil or bad karma we've already built up by filling up our tanks for decades and driving everywhere and allowing the financial industries to survive and allowing big tech to build there datacenters....our entire way of life is filled with a disregard for nature and now we can't avoid that bad karma.
The objective for many is to get comfortable, invest in a good set of mutual funds, buy whatever they want online, watch 4K streaming, buy a second car....the fact that this is the nearly-forced endpoint for most people is already an evil in itself.
That's the mystery...how so many Americans came to hate and distrust a system they didn't understand, and fall for Trump's big promises.
They must be feeling terribly betrayed now he's got your country into another losing war......and moving toward the futher folly of American boots on the ground.
Tom Steyer, rather than splitting the progressive vote in the jungle primary for CA-Gov, risking a general election between two Republican finalists, should be using his money to help fund an alternative to the mass media system now bought up by right wing tech broligarchs like the Ellisons, on top of the older right wing media empire led by Murdoch et al.
That is such a good point! For these amazingly successful wealthy people, ambition and ego casn get in the way of good judgement, i.e., assessing how to be most effective. I hope he has good advisors. Truly, better mass media (stop the lying!) would be a worthwhile goal.
Proving you can't serve God and Mammon. Unless of course you are a Christian Zionist so contemptuous of this earthly life that you crave immortality and the rapture of destroying worlds. Amerikkka has produced some Crazies....that's for sure. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$ lust, without the brains to know what to do with it. And hubris??? OMG.
It's hard to clearly understand a major historical change from within the middle of it. But it makes perfect sense that the end of the fossil fuel age and the advent of a hotter world would include political disruptions, including wars for resources and power. As the planet gets hotter and drier and billions of people grow more desperate, we can expect more, and worse. The future may be better, but getting there won't be easy.
Not unless every privileged American gets off the couch and puts a few solar panels wherever they can. Then an EV with your own level 2 charger becomes affordable....and voila..
You've signed on to the real revolution, the good war.
I got lost in the weeds, but appreciate your efforts. Last summer here in Marietta, Ohio, this 80 yo doc couldn't leave my air conditioned 1 BR apt for 5 weeks, all of July and first week of August. The Grim Reaper is at my doorstep. I did some research on solar panels actually PRODUCING heat energy from sunlight. Yup, up to 149 degF on a sunny day, and only 20% of the incoming solar radiation is converted to electricity, although 149 degF is also directed back into your roof. So, don't touch your solar panels on a sunny day! There are no easy outs to global heating, the 1.2T tons of global ice are melting annually, 3.3 B tons daily, and the 321 M cubic miles of oceans, where 93% of incoming solar radiation is absorbed, are heating to c.60 degF on the surface. Our AC is stressed and reaching its max. The idiotic data centers (5,500+ in the US) each generate 4.1 B BTUs/day while drawing 50 MW of electricity generated from fossil fuel burning. We are on a fool's errand and GAIA bats last. Have a blessed day and do not dare bring another innocent life to bear at this very late date in our species' brief sprawl over the surface of a once beautiful planet.
🙏Greeley, you are the only one here so far that I’ve read who is not distracted from what should be our priority #1. All this chatter is simply based on delusion.
Renewables do nothing to bend the Keeling Curve trajectory down toward Holocene CO2 norms, from ~430ppm to <350ppm, and from 1.5°C to <0.5°C. A suite of direct cooling measures—including steps to restore albedo—is required concomitant with reduction of future CO2, CH4 and other GHG emissions and removal of past legacy accumulations in the ocean and atmosphere.
We recently moved from AZ to northern CO and braced ourselves for the snow…which never came! WTF? We were promised snow! Then, because it’s been an abnormally warm winter, our area experienced frequent hurricane winds as the weather went back and forth between cold and warm (which usually causes turbulence). The locals say this is an abnormally windy winter, but I believe it’s destined to be the new norm. Scary new reality.
The belief we can move to better conditions if we've got the dough rey me is a rich man's fantasy. Far better to put all your extra cash into the new technologies and stick it out where you live. Every installation supporting the new technology guarantees that it will get better. Our first solar array put up in 2009 cost us nearly 30,000 Canadian....in 2017 we augmented that with fewer panels that provided nearly twice the energy, for 16,000....
I'm sure the technology is more efficient now.....
We still get snow in the winter, so the tech for Canada has to be different than for Calilfornia going forward.....we need some device inside or beside the panels to rapidly melt off that snow so a minimum of energy is lost....but I'm sure its coming, if enough of us put our money where our brains are............and abandon Fracked fossil gas and dirty heavy oil.
We moved to be close to our daughter who recently moved to CO from SoCal. We’ve always wanted to live close to her and the grandkids, so CO was a state we all love.
Keeping family close is important.....but I've recently heard from people in retreat from what the climate is bringing to their area, and I wanted to underline how futile that is going to be.....and how soon the bad weather is going to find us.
We know how lucky we are to have all 6 grandchildren close.
> All I’m saying is, the next six months could be the ultimate in teachable moments, with rapidly rising prices for oil, and rapidly rising temperatures. And what do you know, we have a midterm exam coming up on November 3.
Regardless of how instructive the moment is, it doesn't negate the fact that people will still do what benefits them most in the short-term. What benefits the diffuse, "general" children and grandchildren will not factor in the decision.
But even if people get extra worried and so-called "learn", what sorts of good will that do? A change in congress on November 3, as you mentioned? Perhaps that will give the democrats more power, but all that the democrats will do is look to is providing more "clean" energy for our unsustainable practices, like the ever-growing demand for AI datacenters. Or make it easy for the wealthy to install solar on their second home, so they can spend less time worrying about their power bill. Or stop a war or two, or try to promote equality in education so that even more people can become part of the system, making more money, which is proportional to the destruction.
What the democrats will not do is threaten anything seriously, like the destructive global economy. They won't lay a finger on big tech, who are using up energy that we can't afford to use. They'll just go after regulation to ensure that Facebook and OpenAI and others buy a billion solar panels from China to run their datacenters. Sure, BIG OIL won't have it as cushy, and that's a good thing. But oil and gas are already on their way out. Trump is not really the problem, just a symptom of the problem. He and his cadre just want to create a little space to make a little profit from a dying industry. The real problem is the entire capitalistic system, which slowly co-opts the efforts of environmentalists and turns them into spokespeople for new industries that offer false promises to improve the world.
The true problem is here is the system itself. It's the fact that we focus on relatively trivial issues like how to stave off the most overt of the problems like Trump. It's the fact that we think there's some way to save the industrial system, keep the upper middle-class fattened with the only change being a solar panel on their roof, and keep the economy going.
If a boat is sinking in frigid waters, and there's an island a kilometer away, you've got to toss your possessions overboard and swim for safety. Not try and hold onto everything, because you'll just drown. We've got to take some sacrifices, and those sacrifices have got to be forced on us, because no one is going to voluntarily let go of their wealth, the generation of which is the true cause of the destruction.
Only about 20-25 % of the world's energy needs moves through the Strait of Hormuz. And the US only gets about 4% of that, with the majority going to . . . China and other Asian countries.
So it is fair to ask: Why are we paying more for gas?
Clearly, the rising price is not caused by Iran's attempt to shut Hormuz and thus blackmail the world to obey the ayatollahs.
Experts, and "experts," refuse to answer questions by referring to a mysterious "global market" setting gas prices from Dubuque to Delhi.
OK. In that case, why doesn't the US improve that market or get out of it?
After all, we are told by everyone in the know that the US produces more than enough oil and gas to satisfy its need.
And, btw, is the new multi-billion-dollar Texas refinery going to solve this problem?
We produce a lot of heavy oil (tarsands) in Canada as well......but our right wing shills constantly for more pipelines, to facilitate export. We've built one huge LNG facility on our west coast, in the process of building a second, for fracked fossil gas export.
The truth is the oil rich nations don't want to supply their citizens first and only export the excess. Neoliberalism built an export dominated global supply chain structure. It's those supply chains that make the $$$$$$$$$$$$$$....and of course, Oil Company executives want to cash in on the profits of world prices.
At the end of the Fossil Fool Age, oil will go at top dollar to the rich. It's Capitalism man, and capitalism has to grow, find new markets, and if necessary, cannibalize its own people to keep the cancer prosperous.
Our problems are SYSTEMIC...and the system is as big as it gets. The entire globe is vulnerable to Climate disasters, Oil price hikes, and just look at what Amerikkka has done, is doing to Cuba................to get a realistic picture of what can happen to any country unable to produce, or buy the fuels killing the planet. Unilateral sanctions are a Capitalist product as well, praise Mammon.
From start to finish.....Fossil Fuel Wealth has been a ponzi scheme. We just don't want to fully wake up enough to see the dream for the nightmare it is.
Nor does the childish racism and Islamophobia of your ruling elites help you..........I'm reminding you of one of your source authorities.......still alive and well in what's left of your Republic.
And make no mistake, while many of us feel sympathy for the good people in your country, we have long hated you for the role you play in murdering innocent people around the world.
We have relatives by marriage in Cuba........imagine what they're thinking of Amerikkka......as I write this reply.
Trump creates new distractions every day. He is inventive, destructive, and manipulative, and is becoming more delusional, fractured, and unrestrained as time goes on. His thinking has fewer safeguards, and his reasoning and way of presenting ideas are more clearly distorted. He is likely to become more unstable as his ratings drop and his influence over Congress wanes. Trump has the unwavering support of the Republican Party, especially among southern Republicans. But like the captain in the Cane Mutiny, his paranoia, mental instability, and way of thinking will worsen and become more evident.
Trump has made it clear that our country’s Constitution is flawed and that a union of fundamentally different states cannot work effectively. Our Constitution included questionable compromises to appease the southern states, such as the creation of the Senate and the Electoral College. The southern states were justified in trying to establish their own government, knowing that their values were very different from those of the northern states.
The excitement about Democrats regaining the House and possibly the Senate won't fix the major flaws in our government. Trump and his key MEGA supporters have exposed the Constitution's vulnerabilities. Historically, our nation has been a tug-of-war between the North and the South. The party in power will always try to undermine what the other party achieved while in power.
The history of our country has been a continuous struggle between Republicans and Democrats, characterized by ongoing conflicts and disagreements over the way the government should function and core differences in citizens' rights. We will never resolve the deep-rooted divisions between these two groups.
Trump's megalomania will keep pushing our country toward the realization that we are a doomed nation in our current state. His insanity will remain uncontrollable, and he will keep becoming more erratic and delusional, lying, fabricating realities, and using his followers to carry out his commands, with no way for us to stop him.
As upsetting as we are about his craziness, maybe this will motivate us to fix our flawed government union of dysfunctional, uncooperative, and disengaged states that almost dislike each other and are on the verge of anger. Trump is becoming increasingly unpredictable and frightening each day, and he holds a position of power beyond our current ability to control him. In some ways, his craziness and lack of control might actually be a blessing in disguise if they push us to become more creative, resourceful, and to tap into our existing strengths. You may think this will resolve itself, but what happens is not up to fate; Trump's madness is shaping it.
We hold power; we built this government, and it functions on our taxes. We were once a group of independent, successful, sovereign, and strong states. We can become that again and take back control of our lives from this madman and his followers.
We must remember who we are and the power we hold as states. We were the founders of this government, and we need to take responsibility for our lives and our states. We have unlimited resources, finances, and means to regain control of our lives. We don't have to live among people who think and act differently from us and our neighbors. We may feel helpless and powerless, but we are resourceful and must reclaim our state sovereignty and authority.
I, for one, want to live in a caring, concerned community with like-minded neighbors. I do not want to be associated with selfish, self-centered, and uncaring people. They can live in their states, and I can live in mine. We do not have to pretend to be one when we are not; we never have been, and we never will be. France will never become Germany, and we will never become a country of entirely like-minded people. People think and believe differently, and they will never change their beliefs, and the Republicans will never become Democrats. I would prefer them to exist in their states, separate from mine.
After the election in 2016, I briefly had the fantasy that the people who comprise the electoral college would know what the Founders intended and would not choose Trump. Sadly, the electoral college has become nothing like the Founders intended. It is simply a rubber stamp of the voters' decision. There was discussion, at the time, of guarding against "mob rule." Tragically, that's what we haver now. I remember when the GOP senate went to talk to Nixon (I was in college) and to tell him that they would not support him if impeachment came. He then resigned. The current GOP senate is a bunch of foolish, cowardly creeps.
It's not all on Trump.......the Disunited states of Amerikkka have been racist, elitist and $$$$$$$$$$$ worshippers for as long as I've been alive..the biggest flaw though seems to me the determination of many to blame it all on Trump.
But the USA is the nation who produced him. He is not alone as you well know....the billionaires of pure Capitalism worship are with him.
I sympathize with your desire for a caring community. But even there, I detect an American flaw of the imagination. YOU WANT THAT COMMUNITY TO BE LIKE MINDED???
That's a domineering fantasy.
The Great Mother has survived this far because of her inordinate love of Diversity. There are only a few conditions we all need to respect to achieve community while jettisoning the Culture of the Same. Respect for differences, inclusion of all our children, a culture and economy that centres real CARE, and a willingness not to hoard resources so that some have too much and others nothing at all.
We demonize instead of democratize too often. We blame game, instead of taking responsibility and working hard to implement an inclusive culture. When it comes to other countries, the demonization of leaders, such as Putin, and a quick turn to institutional violence (War) makes us fascists on the international level........no matter how we play the 'good citizen' at home.
Sorry to be so critical. But all my life I've listened to good people ask for a change that seems to me to be no change at all. And most of that stalemate seems to come from our preference for demonization(the blame game) and our fear of real change (the learning game)
It won't be enough to end War. Or Trump. We have to roll up our sleeves and build a decentralized economy that works for everyone. No small task for sure. But the Green Economy has to be a part of it.
Richmond Doctor, I wish you well! Your conviction that North and South will remain sharply antagonistic, hopelessly at odds with each other sounds pessimistic. I think that sharp differences do in fact moderate, and history shows it. History is the newspaper version of evolution. Both are true, and one isn't wrong to hope *actively* (not wishfully) each day and vote prudently (or wisely) for government to serve the general good rather than enhance the prosperous at the expense of the more vulnerable. As most people have seen that empires are illogical and inhumane, I think most people will act responsibly (sooner than too late) and install more solar and other green energy than fossil fuel burners. Recall that 99 % of new power installations in 2025 were solar. It's human experience that people are a blend of weak and strong, pure and vicious, but most of us keep on trying to shoot straight, though we often miss the target. Let's find out how many more have common sense, day by day.
I love it how Bill keeps the good news for last..........and I'm grateful that there is some good news.
But I wish we were all reading these reports as avidly as many are trying to follow the war. There's an epitaph for our species hidden somewhere in all this destructive stupidity coming from America's leaders, and the constructive brilliance of the few working so hard to create a doorway out of the Armageddon religious zealots are determined to bring to the earth.
If we must have a SKY GOD why not posit, not earthly hell, but the fiery energy centre that is our Solar system. The sun, in concert with the light eaters (green plants) has created all life on our planet. Time to revive old Sun Gods.......or Goddesses.........and turn the real heat coming at us, to energy that can be distributed, produced and used by all of us....
The War Gods are Evil....death cults worship there, sadists and eaters of human flesh gather there.
The future, if we have one, acknowledges a Sun God.........and an Earth mother capable of feeding us all. If only we'd drop our belief that for dirty energy..........we need to cannibalize her, create sacrifice zones out of her, and conveyer belt earth resources up to the top of some mountain.
For the pleasure of an asylum of Epstein type abusers......drunk on power and fantasies of colonies on Mars.
Thanks Bill for your clear and timely assessment of the crisis that we are all in.
As a Canadian, while rejecting totally Donald Trump’s diatribes about Canada,
I would love to experience a combined effort involving all Canadians and Americans who want a kind, peaceful and sustainable world.
Let's all of us do everything we can to turn from war and the violence war has internalized in most of us..........and build the green future. We have everything we need to do it....if all of us start where we can, vote intelligently, and start talking climate........we might have a chance.
We love our solar panels, our heat pump, our EV. Started in 2009...have only the asbestos contaminated vermiculate to remove from our attic and replace with real insulation....so should be climate ready by 2027 at the latest. If we stop our foreign excursions for a year or three........most of us in the MC, at least in Canada...
Can support the industries of the future and get close to net 0.
I'm ready! Roll guillotine!
Solar panels first.....0 $$$$$$$$$$$$$ invested in violence. We can't afford the lowbrow fun of the French Revolution.
Nope,roll guillotine! Or all 74 million of us shut down the country and capitalism peacefully. The French Revolution was the way( effectively) to eliminate a king, but the Reign of Terror that followed failed to establish liberty and justice for all,just as our Civil War kept the Union together, but failed to address the evil of slavery and so we had to address the main problem a hundred years later during Civil rights fight.Now trump Nazis are going backwards again because white supremacy loses its mind because Obama looks good in a tan suit and old white men can't stand it that American demographics is getting younger, more female and Hispanic. America needs to grow up and start acting like an adult after 250 years!!!
White supremacy needs to be ground into the dirt where it belongs
Actually Margie.....you begin by reasserting your desire for the guillotine and then go on to prove my point. Every struggle so far has fallen into the good guy/bad guy of dualism.....what I call the prison of 'two ideas, one of them wrong".........a grown up version of the true or false tests we endured perhaps as children???
Instead of dividing into two teams and duking it out, we actually do need to grow up and live our ideals. Inclusion will be hard at first as there are many damaged adult children in the first world. Likely its not that much different in Russia or China, though I don't live there so won't pretend I know.
We're going to have to invest in people not things.......we're going to have to all learn how to grow food, in conditions that are going to make that process harder for the foreseeable future. We're going to have to go for 0 waste. Export economies are going to have to shrink. We feed all our own people before we dry up rivers to grow avocadoes for rich fucks in North America, yes??
I think there has always been enough for all of us.......but patriarchy/Christianity/the great chain of (un)being have kept us slave labour dependent. If we all work........there will be less drudgery, and the best jobs might actually pay less than the dirty work where there is no intrinsic rewards, but only the needs of the society to recommend it.
We need another system. And to my mind, it looks more like a version of communism than it does a property based monetary system. If I'm right, America will need to do more than grow up....they'll need to abandon a lot of unsustainable beliefs that have motivated them since the birth of the Republic.
Which is to say, the road ahead, for all of us......is revolutionary yes. But hard as well. We're going to have to give up some fantasies, accept that reality is not an infinite bank of goodies for the few.
D never seems to burn out....he is relentless in his destruction and has been his entire life. From wearing contractors down in court (so he can avoid paying full price or at all) to enacting Project 2025, he has an insatiable appetite for domination.
That's why he is evil in human form
And the people who gave him a free hall pass all his life??? The nation so divided by free enterprise wealth creation that it voted for him.........twice???
That's the mystery for me. Capitalism the system that should be unpacked.
Yes, exactly! You make excellent points about capitalism.I have had university professors admit that capitalism is far from " ideal" or fair, but they end by saying it's the best system of a bad lot. But is it really? You are right,we should be looking hard at other economic systems and human rights - avoid the tyrants and dictator types that are greedy for power.
And just maybe, stop demonizing other governments.......like Cuba.......because they don't have the obscenely rich f*cks America has to put in place the best government money can buy.
What particularly galls me, is that a nation who elected the dumb grifters around Trump............thinks it can sit in unqualified judgement of other nations like Venezuela.......or Russia.......or Iran....and use that judgement to go to war against them.
What's worse, most people who tell me how bad Putin is.....seem to want/need to erase every covert thing the CIA did in Ukraine to push Putin into war............they play dumb, or are dumb, in order for it to be that old good versus evil reason to kill, maim and get the bleeding earth ready for Climate Chaos.
I would say he is actually more of a condenser for the evil or bad karma we've already built up by filling up our tanks for decades and driving everywhere and allowing the financial industries to survive and allowing big tech to build there datacenters....our entire way of life is filled with a disregard for nature and now we can't avoid that bad karma.
The objective for many is to get comfortable, invest in a good set of mutual funds, buy whatever they want online, watch 4K streaming, buy a second car....the fact that this is the nearly-forced endpoint for most people is already an evil in itself.
And the American system protected, enabled and voted for him.
There's a lesson there, if we could unpack it.
And sadistic cruelty.
He is a monster.
So does Amerikkka. Which is why a sizeable percentage of your people voted for him. Twice!!!!!!!!!!
That's the mystery...how so many Americans came to hate and distrust a system they didn't understand, and fall for Trump's big promises.
They must be feeling terribly betrayed now he's got your country into another losing war......and moving toward the futher folly of American boots on the ground.
Tom Steyer, rather than splitting the progressive vote in the jungle primary for CA-Gov, risking a general election between two Republican finalists, should be using his money to help fund an alternative to the mass media system now bought up by right wing tech broligarchs like the Ellisons, on top of the older right wing media empire led by Murdoch et al.
That is such a good point! For these amazingly successful wealthy people, ambition and ego casn get in the way of good judgement, i.e., assessing how to be most effective. I hope he has good advisors. Truly, better mass media (stop the lying!) would be a worthwhile goal.
Proving you can't serve God and Mammon. Unless of course you are a Christian Zionist so contemptuous of this earthly life that you crave immortality and the rapture of destroying worlds. Amerikkka has produced some Crazies....that's for sure. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$ lust, without the brains to know what to do with it. And hubris??? OMG.
It's hard to clearly understand a major historical change from within the middle of it. But it makes perfect sense that the end of the fossil fuel age and the advent of a hotter world would include political disruptions, including wars for resources and power. As the planet gets hotter and drier and billions of people grow more desperate, we can expect more, and worse. The future may be better, but getting there won't be easy.
Not unless every privileged American gets off the couch and puts a few solar panels wherever they can. Then an EV with your own level 2 charger becomes affordable....and voila..
You've signed on to the real revolution, the good war.
I got lost in the weeds, but appreciate your efforts. Last summer here in Marietta, Ohio, this 80 yo doc couldn't leave my air conditioned 1 BR apt for 5 weeks, all of July and first week of August. The Grim Reaper is at my doorstep. I did some research on solar panels actually PRODUCING heat energy from sunlight. Yup, up to 149 degF on a sunny day, and only 20% of the incoming solar radiation is converted to electricity, although 149 degF is also directed back into your roof. So, don't touch your solar panels on a sunny day! There are no easy outs to global heating, the 1.2T tons of global ice are melting annually, 3.3 B tons daily, and the 321 M cubic miles of oceans, where 93% of incoming solar radiation is absorbed, are heating to c.60 degF on the surface. Our AC is stressed and reaching its max. The idiotic data centers (5,500+ in the US) each generate 4.1 B BTUs/day while drawing 50 MW of electricity generated from fossil fuel burning. We are on a fool's errand and GAIA bats last. Have a blessed day and do not dare bring another innocent life to bear at this very late date in our species' brief sprawl over the surface of a once beautiful planet.
🙏Greeley, you are the only one here so far that I’ve read who is not distracted from what should be our priority #1. All this chatter is simply based on delusion.
Renewables do nothing to bend the Keeling Curve trajectory down toward Holocene CO2 norms, from ~430ppm to <350ppm, and from 1.5°C to <0.5°C. A suite of direct cooling measures—including steps to restore albedo—is required concomitant with reduction of future CO2, CH4 and other GHG emissions and removal of past legacy accumulations in the ocean and atmosphere.
I appreciate your detailed reporting on this. It’s grim but necessary to stay grounded in reality. Thank you.
We recently moved from AZ to northern CO and braced ourselves for the snow…which never came! WTF? We were promised snow! Then, because it’s been an abnormally warm winter, our area experienced frequent hurricane winds as the weather went back and forth between cold and warm (which usually causes turbulence). The locals say this is an abnormally windy winter, but I believe it’s destined to be the new norm. Scary new reality.
The belief we can move to better conditions if we've got the dough rey me is a rich man's fantasy. Far better to put all your extra cash into the new technologies and stick it out where you live. Every installation supporting the new technology guarantees that it will get better. Our first solar array put up in 2009 cost us nearly 30,000 Canadian....in 2017 we augmented that with fewer panels that provided nearly twice the energy, for 16,000....
I'm sure the technology is more efficient now.....
We still get snow in the winter, so the tech for Canada has to be different than for Calilfornia going forward.....we need some device inside or beside the panels to rapidly melt off that snow so a minimum of energy is lost....but I'm sure its coming, if enough of us put our money where our brains are............and abandon Fracked fossil gas and dirty heavy oil.
We moved to be close to our daughter who recently moved to CO from SoCal. We’ve always wanted to live close to her and the grandkids, so CO was a state we all love.
Keeping family close is important.....but I've recently heard from people in retreat from what the climate is bringing to their area, and I wanted to underline how futile that is going to be.....and how soon the bad weather is going to find us.
We know how lucky we are to have all 6 grandchildren close.
> All I’m saying is, the next six months could be the ultimate in teachable moments, with rapidly rising prices for oil, and rapidly rising temperatures. And what do you know, we have a midterm exam coming up on November 3.
Regardless of how instructive the moment is, it doesn't negate the fact that people will still do what benefits them most in the short-term. What benefits the diffuse, "general" children and grandchildren will not factor in the decision.
But even if people get extra worried and so-called "learn", what sorts of good will that do? A change in congress on November 3, as you mentioned? Perhaps that will give the democrats more power, but all that the democrats will do is look to is providing more "clean" energy for our unsustainable practices, like the ever-growing demand for AI datacenters. Or make it easy for the wealthy to install solar on their second home, so they can spend less time worrying about their power bill. Or stop a war or two, or try to promote equality in education so that even more people can become part of the system, making more money, which is proportional to the destruction.
What the democrats will not do is threaten anything seriously, like the destructive global economy. They won't lay a finger on big tech, who are using up energy that we can't afford to use. They'll just go after regulation to ensure that Facebook and OpenAI and others buy a billion solar panels from China to run their datacenters. Sure, BIG OIL won't have it as cushy, and that's a good thing. But oil and gas are already on their way out. Trump is not really the problem, just a symptom of the problem. He and his cadre just want to create a little space to make a little profit from a dying industry. The real problem is the entire capitalistic system, which slowly co-opts the efforts of environmentalists and turns them into spokespeople for new industries that offer false promises to improve the world.
The true problem is here is the system itself. It's the fact that we focus on relatively trivial issues like how to stave off the most overt of the problems like Trump. It's the fact that we think there's some way to save the industrial system, keep the upper middle-class fattened with the only change being a solar panel on their roof, and keep the economy going.
If a boat is sinking in frigid waters, and there's an island a kilometer away, you've got to toss your possessions overboard and swim for safety. Not try and hold onto everything, because you'll just drown. We've got to take some sacrifices, and those sacrifices have got to be forced on us, because no one is going to voluntarily let go of their wealth, the generation of which is the true cause of the destruction.
This is so long and rich, well attributed to sources! Bravo and more to you and all who help you!
Only about 20-25 % of the world's energy needs moves through the Strait of Hormuz. And the US only gets about 4% of that, with the majority going to . . . China and other Asian countries.
So it is fair to ask: Why are we paying more for gas?
Clearly, the rising price is not caused by Iran's attempt to shut Hormuz and thus blackmail the world to obey the ayatollahs.
Experts, and "experts," refuse to answer questions by referring to a mysterious "global market" setting gas prices from Dubuque to Delhi.
OK. In that case, why doesn't the US improve that market or get out of it?
After all, we are told by everyone in the know that the US produces more than enough oil and gas to satisfy its need.
And, btw, is the new multi-billion-dollar Texas refinery going to solve this problem?
We produce a lot of heavy oil (tarsands) in Canada as well......but our right wing shills constantly for more pipelines, to facilitate export. We've built one huge LNG facility on our west coast, in the process of building a second, for fracked fossil gas export.
The truth is the oil rich nations don't want to supply their citizens first and only export the excess. Neoliberalism built an export dominated global supply chain structure. It's those supply chains that make the $$$$$$$$$$$$$$....and of course, Oil Company executives want to cash in on the profits of world prices.
At the end of the Fossil Fool Age, oil will go at top dollar to the rich. It's Capitalism man, and capitalism has to grow, find new markets, and if necessary, cannibalize its own people to keep the cancer prosperous.
Our problems are SYSTEMIC...and the system is as big as it gets. The entire globe is vulnerable to Climate disasters, Oil price hikes, and just look at what Amerikkka has done, is doing to Cuba................to get a realistic picture of what can happen to any country unable to produce, or buy the fuels killing the planet. Unilateral sanctions are a Capitalist product as well, praise Mammon.
From start to finish.....Fossil Fuel Wealth has been a ponzi scheme. We just don't want to fully wake up enough to see the dream for the nightmare it is.
Your childish usage "Amerikkka" doesn't help you.
Nor does the childish racism and Islamophobia of your ruling elites help you..........I'm reminding you of one of your source authorities.......still alive and well in what's left of your Republic.
And make no mistake, while many of us feel sympathy for the good people in your country, we have long hated you for the role you play in murdering innocent people around the world.
We have relatives by marriage in Cuba........imagine what they're thinking of Amerikkka......as I write this reply.
If you don't see questioning your posts as helping, it's not my problem.
Trump creates new distractions every day. He is inventive, destructive, and manipulative, and is becoming more delusional, fractured, and unrestrained as time goes on. His thinking has fewer safeguards, and his reasoning and way of presenting ideas are more clearly distorted. He is likely to become more unstable as his ratings drop and his influence over Congress wanes. Trump has the unwavering support of the Republican Party, especially among southern Republicans. But like the captain in the Cane Mutiny, his paranoia, mental instability, and way of thinking will worsen and become more evident.
Trump has made it clear that our country’s Constitution is flawed and that a union of fundamentally different states cannot work effectively. Our Constitution included questionable compromises to appease the southern states, such as the creation of the Senate and the Electoral College. The southern states were justified in trying to establish their own government, knowing that their values were very different from those of the northern states.
The excitement about Democrats regaining the House and possibly the Senate won't fix the major flaws in our government. Trump and his key MEGA supporters have exposed the Constitution's vulnerabilities. Historically, our nation has been a tug-of-war between the North and the South. The party in power will always try to undermine what the other party achieved while in power.
The history of our country has been a continuous struggle between Republicans and Democrats, characterized by ongoing conflicts and disagreements over the way the government should function and core differences in citizens' rights. We will never resolve the deep-rooted divisions between these two groups.
Trump's megalomania will keep pushing our country toward the realization that we are a doomed nation in our current state. His insanity will remain uncontrollable, and he will keep becoming more erratic and delusional, lying, fabricating realities, and using his followers to carry out his commands, with no way for us to stop him.
As upsetting as we are about his craziness, maybe this will motivate us to fix our flawed government union of dysfunctional, uncooperative, and disengaged states that almost dislike each other and are on the verge of anger. Trump is becoming increasingly unpredictable and frightening each day, and he holds a position of power beyond our current ability to control him. In some ways, his craziness and lack of control might actually be a blessing in disguise if they push us to become more creative, resourceful, and to tap into our existing strengths. You may think this will resolve itself, but what happens is not up to fate; Trump's madness is shaping it.
We hold power; we built this government, and it functions on our taxes. We were once a group of independent, successful, sovereign, and strong states. We can become that again and take back control of our lives from this madman and his followers.
We must remember who we are and the power we hold as states. We were the founders of this government, and we need to take responsibility for our lives and our states. We have unlimited resources, finances, and means to regain control of our lives. We don't have to live among people who think and act differently from us and our neighbors. We may feel helpless and powerless, but we are resourceful and must reclaim our state sovereignty and authority.
I, for one, want to live in a caring, concerned community with like-minded neighbors. I do not want to be associated with selfish, self-centered, and uncaring people. They can live in their states, and I can live in mine. We do not have to pretend to be one when we are not; we never have been, and we never will be. France will never become Germany, and we will never become a country of entirely like-minded people. People think and believe differently, and they will never change their beliefs, and the Republicans will never become Democrats. I would prefer them to exist in their states, separate from mine.
Yes the Electoral College has been a big mistake in judgement.
After the election in 2016, I briefly had the fantasy that the people who comprise the electoral college would know what the Founders intended and would not choose Trump. Sadly, the electoral college has become nothing like the Founders intended. It is simply a rubber stamp of the voters' decision. There was discussion, at the time, of guarding against "mob rule." Tragically, that's what we haver now. I remember when the GOP senate went to talk to Nixon (I was in college) and to tell him that they would not support him if impeachment came. He then resigned. The current GOP senate is a bunch of foolish, cowardly creeps.
It's not all on Trump.......the Disunited states of Amerikkka have been racist, elitist and $$$$$$$$$$$ worshippers for as long as I've been alive..the biggest flaw though seems to me the determination of many to blame it all on Trump.
But the USA is the nation who produced him. He is not alone as you well know....the billionaires of pure Capitalism worship are with him.
I sympathize with your desire for a caring community. But even there, I detect an American flaw of the imagination. YOU WANT THAT COMMUNITY TO BE LIKE MINDED???
That's a domineering fantasy.
The Great Mother has survived this far because of her inordinate love of Diversity. There are only a few conditions we all need to respect to achieve community while jettisoning the Culture of the Same. Respect for differences, inclusion of all our children, a culture and economy that centres real CARE, and a willingness not to hoard resources so that some have too much and others nothing at all.
We demonize instead of democratize too often. We blame game, instead of taking responsibility and working hard to implement an inclusive culture. When it comes to other countries, the demonization of leaders, such as Putin, and a quick turn to institutional violence (War) makes us fascists on the international level........no matter how we play the 'good citizen' at home.
Sorry to be so critical. But all my life I've listened to good people ask for a change that seems to me to be no change at all. And most of that stalemate seems to come from our preference for demonization(the blame game) and our fear of real change (the learning game)
It won't be enough to end War. Or Trump. We have to roll up our sleeves and build a decentralized economy that works for everyone. No small task for sure. But the Green Economy has to be a part of it.
Richmond Doctor, I wish you well! Your conviction that North and South will remain sharply antagonistic, hopelessly at odds with each other sounds pessimistic. I think that sharp differences do in fact moderate, and history shows it. History is the newspaper version of evolution. Both are true, and one isn't wrong to hope *actively* (not wishfully) each day and vote prudently (or wisely) for government to serve the general good rather than enhance the prosperous at the expense of the more vulnerable. As most people have seen that empires are illogical and inhumane, I think most people will act responsibly (sooner than too late) and install more solar and other green energy than fossil fuel burners. Recall that 99 % of new power installations in 2025 were solar. It's human experience that people are a blend of weak and strong, pure and vicious, but most of us keep on trying to shoot straight, though we often miss the target. Let's find out how many more have common sense, day by day.
One might argue that the war is doing renewables a favour.
Nothing makes fuel free electricity generation look better than a fuel shortsge.
All the wars and strife in the world are distracting from an existential threat to all beings. We are killing our world!
The solar film! saved it for later reference
Little darling 😘, it's been a long and chilly winter 🥶❄️,‼️ Here comes the SUN 🌞, it's all right 👍... George Harrison 👌😎
I love it how Bill keeps the good news for last..........and I'm grateful that there is some good news.
But I wish we were all reading these reports as avidly as many are trying to follow the war. There's an epitaph for our species hidden somewhere in all this destructive stupidity coming from America's leaders, and the constructive brilliance of the few working so hard to create a doorway out of the Armageddon religious zealots are determined to bring to the earth.
If we must have a SKY GOD why not posit, not earthly hell, but the fiery energy centre that is our Solar system. The sun, in concert with the light eaters (green plants) has created all life on our planet. Time to revive old Sun Gods.......or Goddesses.........and turn the real heat coming at us, to energy that can be distributed, produced and used by all of us....
The War Gods are Evil....death cults worship there, sadists and eaters of human flesh gather there.
The future, if we have one, acknowledges a Sun God.........and an Earth mother capable of feeding us all. If only we'd drop our belief that for dirty energy..........we need to cannibalize her, create sacrifice zones out of her, and conveyer belt earth resources up to the top of some mountain.
For the pleasure of an asylum of Epstein type abusers......drunk on power and fantasies of colonies on Mars.