So there's a fuel shortage.

Without government intervention, inelastic demand means skyrocketing prices, severe stress for poor people, and likely unrest and instability, maybe even anarchy in the bad sense.

So what can democracies do to keep a lid on the pressure? The fairest thing is a simple rationing system. Everybody gets the same number of coupons for energy. Hard to avoid a secondary market in those coupons - that results in a wealth transfer from the wealthy.

Climate change is not the only existential issue for civilization. I've always said this. The thing about existential issues is you have to get them all right.

And given the disasters of the past two years, I think it is not the top item on the agenda at this time. We have issues with global security, public health, public education, public information, and mental health that have all gotten substantially worse recently.

People are busy blaming their own governments, which is a terrible category error. Our problems are global!

OK, so it may be time to move on from Twitter.

Let's talk about some risks from the post-Elon Twitter, and what we can do if there's a need for an alternative. One risk is that you won't be able to avoid Elon at all! He may set himself up a sort of super-account which everybody "follows" and nobody can block!

Important article summarizing where we are now in the broadest terms. Please read it.

For the first time in a half century I think it's justified NOT mentioning climate in a big picture article like this one. But climate ain't gonna make it any prettier.

foreignaffairs.com/world/downside… "This is because ethnic and sectarian groups and their particular grievances, which had been assuaged under common imperial umbrellas, were suddenly on their own and pitted against one another."

Superficiality is part of the problem of soi-disant "science journalism" coming out of J-schools, but there's another problem as well. That's an adversarial attitude.

When experts have complex and important information to convey, the last thing they need is an adversary. The potency of science is that people who don't particularly like each other can still come to a complex and coherent consensus understanding of complex phenomena.

This is the part to pay attention to.

So, this First of all, Texas, I still love y'all, but how could you RE elect this guy? Shaking my head.

Now about the graph, it just baffles me that deniers love it so much because IT OBVIOUSLY SHOWS A WARMING TREND. I mean, it's not subtle.

Leonard Cohen (1972) from "The Energy of Slaves"

The killers that run
the other countries
are trying to get us
to overthrow the killers
that run our own

(1/7) I for one
prefer the rule
of our native killers

(2/7)

Genuine art and genuine science are essential to civilization.

Somebody ought to revive the Wisconsin Idea somewhere. Sadly that is unlikely to be in Wisconsin. "The boundaries of the university campus are the boundaries of the state."

I realize my habit of going for long drives is very much contrary to my environmental ethic, but it also informs my understanding of out our environmental quandary.

If you hop from airport to airport, or zip along expressways, ignoring where you are passing through or over... If you never experience the actual countryside it becomes easy to demonize people who are invested in a landscape and culture where immense mobility and cheap energy has been taken for granted for nearly a century. It is little wonder that doubling energy prices make them angry.

The right wing does politics. The left wing does politics. The centre tolerates politics for the purpose of governance.

The wings select their facts and promote the experts that can reliably say what they want. The centre understands that facts aren't always convenient. In an era of propaganda ascendance, (and one where corruption in the establishment is the single most common theme in entertainment fiction), the wings take over and competence falters, competing policy dreamworlds dominate.

@KathMorrow90 Well, let's do a contrast with America, a country which I would call (why do I always forget this word, it's important to how I think)... deontological. @KathMorrow90 Americans firmly believe that it's possible to achieve fairness by transferring the final arbitration of power to a set of rules embodied in a document. Both left and right in America put their faith in their Constitution (typically capitalized, sic).

Easy(ish) food processor vegan latkes optionally with chick pea flour (aka gram flour, besan)

Step 1

Peel and shred about 4 cups yellow potatoes.

Soak in cold water Step 2

Boil 2 tbsp ground flax seed in 1/4 cup water, stirring with wooden spoon, until an ugly fluid with the consistency of raw scrambled egg results. Nonstick pot recommended. Takes only a minute or two.

Several interesting points more or less tangentially raised in this thread.

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1459914151451574272

Corporations have no souls, only bottom lines. Their pretense at being your friend is always hollow. They will get away with whay they can. This isn’t evil; it’s merely efficiently meeting the primary design objective.

The public doesn't extrapolate, and doesn't like restrictions. Legislatures don't exert the sort of leadership that extrapolations warrant. So responses are very much too late. Some problems need to be dealt when they're barely detectable, not when they're obvious to the public. New Zealand and Nova Scotia's COVID responses, e.g., show us that forward looking management in a democracy is possible and can be successful.

They do share the advantages of physical isolation and cultural homogeneity, but something more important is also at work.

So, contemplating my Twitter future. One DM from a scientist said they’d split into two accounts, one for science and one for “politics”. An interesting model. Another fellow I follow just said he’s giving up on “politics” altogether.

So I'm back. The first thing I want to say is a quote from Eston Williams.

"At the end of the day, I'd rather be excluded for who I include than included for who I exclude." Being about as America-obsessed as a non-American can be, I tend to talk to about America. But I want to limit the sorts of talking I do about America, at least in public.

So, and this is out of left field.

On the subject of the decline in influence of legitimate intellectual authority:

People say that they "believe in science" nowadays in a vague noncommital way. It's not clear what they mean. When I was young, few thought to say "I believe in science".

I think this is because there was a clear sense that "science" had transformed the world around us, remarkably and for the better.

See, we still had 19th century folk around us.

World's carbon intensity has declined from .48 to .35 kg /$ in 25 years, about 1.2 % per annum. Suppose we assume this can continue absent new policies.

Suppose we also optimistically assume 4.2% /yr global economic production growth.

Then carbon emissions grow 3 %/yr. After 80 years emissions rate go up ten fold under these assumptions. Average rate over the 80 years is quadruple current emissions.

Yes. This was my grip with Namoi Klein. And I didn't especially like Franzen's list.

But I'm coming to the same place.

Should Canada punish Trudeau for his dalliance with the oil sands industry, because Canada is consequently dragging its feet on climate commitment?

I say no.

https://twitter.com/DanOlner/status/1171346754232561664

I say no because the Canadian Liberals are possibly the last bastion of pragmatism in the English speaking world. (And in large part because of francophone support, mind you!)

I'd like to suggest that the obsession with RCPs is misplaced, a symptom of economic discounting.

https://twitter.com/MLiebreich/status/1157777939590778881

In the end, the amount of damage we do is closely linked to the amount of CO2 we emit. Whether it is emitted before or after 2100 has little to do with the extent to which the world is damaged at the end of the carbon pulse.

You don't *need* to understand any climate science beyond these two facts:

1) fossil CO2 accumulates in the environment

2) the more there is, the worse the future will be

If you understand that, you are qualified to be active about the issue. If you *want* to know more, there are plenty of resources explaining these points.

These are things about which science is as certain as about cigarettes causing cancer.