Albert Pinto Profile picture
Sep 14, 2020 10 tweets 7 min read Read on X
Who else is feeling the cognitive dissonance of today's extraordinary claim of possible microbial life signature on Venus while we crash earth's ecosystems.

Good day to revisit @KenCaldeira's 2018 Carl Sagan lecture on our mad, bad, exceptional species! kencaldeira.wordpress.com/2019/02/10/car… ImageImageImage
Carl Sagan made his scientific name analysing Venus' atmosphere & proposed its runway greenhouse gas effect.

Life in the Clouds of Venus (1967)
nature.com/articles/21512…



A bittersweet day.
The question of life on earth's neighbours - Mars & Venus - rightly destabilises us psychologically. Historically, it is tied to our scientifc understanding of globalwarming & making tools to monitor it. From Sagan, to Soviet Vega program, to Jim Hansen... history.aip.org/climate/Venus.… Image
"Phosphine=sign of Life" is plausible only coz we know little of possibilities of early life. We guess E. coli makes it here, but don't know. Life made earth flip from CO2 to O2 before (Lovelock). Are we, with our hand stuck in the fossil jar, too, early life?

Too soon to tell. Image
Many congrats to Jane Greaves & her team who persevered for many moons in looking for life in the solar system. A stunning discovery that's sure to send us off flycatching to Venus again! And thanks to ppl at Atacama & Hawaii for observing on Corona planet ImageImageImageImage
Jane Greaves @jgreaves6 in a total BOSS MOVE is gonna be immortalized in history as the woman who may have discovered extra-terrestrial life... & doesn't even go on about it on twitter!!
Such a fun announcement:
cardiff.ac.uk/people/view/91…
The clouds are balmy (~30C) & at same pressure as earth. Is life "clinging on, tucked up inside water droplets in the clouds, the last remnant of a once rich ecosystem forced to adapt to a strange environment by a rapidly changing climate" lrb.co.uk/blog/2020/sept… @chrislintott
Never felt the Two Cultures divide more acutely. Ppl in science are thrilled/sceptical/raring to send probes to Venus while normies are full of Weltschmerz - no head, no heart, no soul. Life, truly is wasted on the living.
Master trolling by Russian space agency: “We believe that Venus is a Russian planet. Our country was the 1st & only on Venus. Our equipment was there,& it conducted research" rt.com/russia/500773-…

Will accelerate joint missions w NASA, ESA, pvt firms...

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Albert Pinto

Albert Pinto Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @70sBachchan

Mar 30
1/ "What's happening in Guyana isn't just happening there. All over the globe, oil companies are racing to tap as many of the remaining fossil fuel reserves as they can"
@jeffgoodell :

Nice @WeAreDrilled @amywestervelt
rollingstone.com/politics/polit…
stitcher.com/show/drilled

Image
2/ This is not a a story of Guyana’s PM lecturing western liberals over hypocrisy climate, oil & Amazonian forests.

But a geopolitical story of developing country elites working with western firms (Exxon) to sell to western markets (oil goes to europe)
phenomenalworld.org/analysis/offsh…
3/ "Guyana is now producing nearly as much oil as Venezuela -1 of the largest oil exporters since the 1920s & founder of OPEC

This amazing article on Exxon shows that the logic of imperial exploitation of natural resources is alive & kicking"-@GaraviniG
phenomenalworld.org/analysis/offsh…
Image
Read 7 tweets
Oct 21, 2023
White House request to Congress for $106 billion in emergency funding for foreign aid.

A budget tells you more than words about actual priorities. Full breakdown in this PDF incl military aid to Ukraine, Israel, intl development (World bank) etc Thread whitehouse.gov/wp-content/upl…
Image
2/ UKRAINE: US so far has sent more than $75 billion to Ukraine. Of new $106B, Biden asks $61B for Ukraine.

~$50B military aid, loans for military gear, DOD stocks of weapons etc (Pg 4-27_
~$11.75B economic (pg 42)

New aid is opposed by GOP in House
whitehouse.gov/wp-content/upl…

Image
Image
3/Reminder why Biden's request for emergency funding looks the way it does-$106B for ukraine,israel,border, humanitarian. US congressional politics when governed by Dem president+Dem senate+Republican house makes funding requests look like a dogs breakfast
Read 4 tweets
Aug 16, 2023
“opposite responses of China and the U.S. have revealed that the two countries appear weak only because their strengths are asymmetric”

Key point from @BuddyYakov: US and China can mobilize their fiscal and productive capacity in a way that EU cannot.
noemamag.com/the-american-f…
deja vu Policy debates in US-EU-China

US, 2021:
Do more fiscal spending into the pockets of most vulnerable households and businesses!

EU, 2022:
Do more fiscal spending ....!

China, 2023:
Do more fiscal spending into the pocket of most vulnerable households and businesses
Read 6 tweets
Aug 11, 2023
Three guesses:
1 Energy transition is from fossil fuels to metal-based economy
2 Revenues from metals is tiny compared to selling fossils => No current petrostate turns into electrostate.
3 Hi Capital requirments =>Majority of extraction will take place in Global North not South Image
if 2 is true, then the future has no electrostates. None. Not Indonesia, Australia, certainly not Canada.

Revenues that a state will earn from digging metals & processing it will be too tiny to support an entire population with welfare or dividends. ft.com/content/0d2fba…
sure, very metal specific. cobalt, nickel, copper etc will continue to be in global south countries

to clarify, by majority I meant more than half, not less than half. in most ppls minds, global south is going to do all of it

Ppl forget Australia+Canada+US have capital & metals Image
Read 6 tweets
Aug 3, 2023
The deranged idea—as @GhoshAmitav describes—that we are safe, that things are under control, that bad things only happen to people who are far away, persists.

Anticipating future ruin, we fail to act in the here & now.
New @polycrisis @kmac & I: phenomenalworld.org/analysis/globa…
Image
This July has been the hottest in our recorded history and, most likely, over the last 120,000 years

On stocks and flows, action and inaction in the planetary impasse: phenomenalworld.org/analysis/globa…
Image
Amid the climate crises, other records have been smashed too: the most air travel passengers in a single day in the US; the highest-ever profits for European carriers IAG and Air France-KLM; record oil consumption and record coal production.
phenomenalworld.org/analysis/globa…
Read 36 tweets
Jun 15, 2023
What do ppl mean when they say the existing ramshackle global financial architecture heaps pain upon the weakest & poorest shoulders?

@kmac & I wrote about negotiations between North & South at next week's Paris Summit @polycrisis. Figure ht @CSEINDIA
phenomenalworld.org/analysis/globa… Image
Former US National Security advisor Fiona Hill acknowledged that the “Rest” were rebelling against the West. She cited an Indian interlocutor asking, “Where are you when things go wrong for us?”

We contrast Mia Mottley in Paris with Modi in DC
phenomenalworld.org/analysis/globa… @kmac Image
Climate needs investments. But there is global Austerity. Countries make terrible choices between debt payments & food, energy, social services. And they almost always choose to make debt payments to not risk further downgrades.
phenomenalworld.org/analysis/globa…
Read 10 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

:(