Climate and Weather
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Bruddah IZ
DA
https://fee.org/articles/hg-wells-and-orwell-on-whether-science-can-save-humanity/?utm_source=ribbon
H.G. Wells and Orwell on Whether Science Can Save Humanity
Though Wells and Orwell were debating in the era of Nazism, many of their arguments reverberate today.
Wells, one of the founders of science fiction, was a staunch believer in science’s potential. Orwell, on the other hand, cast a much more skeptical eye on science, pointing to its limitations as a guide to human affairs.
H.G. Wells and Orwell on Whether Science Can Save Humanity
Though Wells and Orwell were debating in the era of Nazism, many of their arguments reverberate today.
Wells, one of the founders of science fiction, was a staunch believer in science’s potential. Orwell, on the other hand, cast a much more skeptical eye on science, pointing to its limitations as a guide to human affairs.
Sheriff Joe
DA
Orwell was not bashful about criticizing the scientific and political views of his friend Wells. In “What is Science?” he described Wells’ enthusiasm for scientific education as misplaced, in part because it rested on the assumption that the young should be taught more about radioactivity or the stars, rather than how to “think more exactly.”
Orwell also rejected Wells’ notion that scientific training rendered a person’s approach to all subjects more intelligent than someone who lacked it. Such widely held views, Orwell argued, led naturally to the assumption that the world would be a better place, if only “the scientists were in control of it,” a notion he roundly rejected.
Orwell believed that scientific education should not focus on particular disciplines such as physics, chemistry, and biology – not, in other words, on facts. Instead, it should focus on implanting “a rational, skeptical, and experimental habit of mind.” And instead of merely scientifically educating the masses, we should remember that “scientists themselves would benefit by a little education” in the areas of “history or literature or the arts.”
Orwell is even more critical of science’s role in politics. In “Wells, Hitler, and the World State,” Orwell treats calls for a single world government as hopelessly utopian, in large part because “not one of the five great military powers would think of submitting to such a thing.” Though sensible men have held such views for decades, they have “no power, and no disposition to sacrifice themselves.”
Far from damning nationalism, Orwell praises it to at least this extent: “What has kept England on its feet this past year” but the “atavistic emotion of patriotism, the ingrained feeling of the English-speaking peoples that they are superior to foreigners?” The energy that actually shapes the world, writes Orwell, springs from emotions that “intellectuals mechanically write off as anachronisms.”
Bruddah IZ
DA
https://fee.org/articles/free-markets-accomplish-progressives-housing-ideals/
Pro-Environment, Anti-Density
Cities have a reputation as dirty places. All those people, buildings, cars, pavement—it’s an environmental tragedy, right? Many well-meaning progressives seem to have taken that view to heart, and for decades have wielded environmental protection laws to keep buildings small and relatively spread out, and populations as low as possible—all in the name of preserving the environment.
But on a per-person basis, dense urban centers absolutely crush the suburbs on environmental-friendliness. We have smaller homes, often with shared walls, floors, and/or ceilings, all of which helps to reduce heating and cooling costs. We’re more likely to walk, bike, or take transit when we get around. And we share may public amenities, like parks, libraries, and roads, with many more of our neighbors. The map below is just one example of the environmental impact of dense housing, showing just how stark the difference in household carbon emissions is between the dense boroughs of New York City and the suburban communities that surround it.
Average annual carbon emissions per household in the New York metro area. Dense, “dirty” New York City produces about half as many emissions, per household, as the “green” suburbs beyond. Image from Berkeley’s CoolClimate maps site.
The real problem here is that housing is never just a question of “build” or “don’t build.” It’s “build here” or “build somewhere else.” And if you live in a coastal U.S. city, somewhere else is usually way worse for the environment. People don’t disappear just because they can’t move to our cities; they move to the suburbs of Texas, where housing continues to be produced in abundance and, as a result, costs have stayed reasonably low.
Opposing development on behalf of the environment is essentially “greenwashing,” and we need to acknowledge it for the lie that it is. It’s an environmental crime, not a triumph. We don’t celebrate the environment by moving into its midst and paving it over.
Pro-Environment, Anti-Density
Cities have a reputation as dirty places. All those people, buildings, cars, pavement—it’s an environmental tragedy, right? Many well-meaning progressives seem to have taken that view to heart, and for decades have wielded environmental protection laws to keep buildings small and relatively spread out, and populations as low as possible—all in the name of preserving the environment.
But on a per-person basis, dense urban centers absolutely crush the suburbs on environmental-friendliness. We have smaller homes, often with shared walls, floors, and/or ceilings, all of which helps to reduce heating and cooling costs. We’re more likely to walk, bike, or take transit when we get around. And we share may public amenities, like parks, libraries, and roads, with many more of our neighbors. The map below is just one example of the environmental impact of dense housing, showing just how stark the difference in household carbon emissions is between the dense boroughs of New York City and the suburban communities that surround it.
Average annual carbon emissions per household in the New York metro area. Dense, “dirty” New York City produces about half as many emissions, per household, as the “green” suburbs beyond. Image from Berkeley’s CoolClimate maps site.
The real problem here is that housing is never just a question of “build” or “don’t build.” It’s “build here” or “build somewhere else.” And if you live in a coastal U.S. city, somewhere else is usually way worse for the environment. People don’t disappear just because they can’t move to our cities; they move to the suburbs of Texas, where housing continues to be produced in abundance and, as a result, costs have stayed reasonably low.
Opposing development on behalf of the environment is essentially “greenwashing,” and we need to acknowledge it for the lie that it is. It’s an environmental crime, not a triumph. We don’t celebrate the environment by moving into its midst and paving it over.
I agree with all of the above.https://fee.org/articles/free-markets-accomplish-progressives-housing-ideals/
Pro-Environment, Anti-Density
Cities have a reputation as dirty places. All those people, buildings, cars, pavement—it’s an environmental tragedy, right? Many well-meaning progressives seem to have taken that view to heart, and for decades have wielded environmental protection laws to keep buildings small and relatively spread out, and populations as low as possible—all in the name of preserving the environment.
But on a per-person basis, dense urban centers absolutely crush the suburbs on environmental-friendliness. We have smaller homes, often with shared walls, floors, and/or ceilings, all of which helps to reduce heating and cooling costs. We’re more likely to walk, bike, or take transit when we get around. And we share may public amenities, like parks, libraries, and roads, with many more of our neighbors. The map below is just one example of the environmental impact of dense housing, showing just how stark the difference in household carbon emissions is between the dense boroughs of New York City and the suburban communities that surround it.
Average annual carbon emissions per household in the New York metro area. Dense, “dirty” New York City produces about half as many emissions, per household, as the “green” suburbs beyond. Image from Berkeley’s CoolClimate maps site.
The real problem here is that housing is never just a question of “build” or “don’t build.” It’s “build here” or “build somewhere else.” And if you live in a coastal U.S. city, somewhere else is usually way worse for the environment. People don’t disappear just because they can’t move to our cities; they move to the suburbs of Texas, where housing continues to be produced in abundance and, as a result, costs have stayed reasonably low.
Opposing development on behalf of the environment is essentially “greenwashing,” and we need to acknowledge it for the lie that it is. It’s an environmental crime, not a triumph. We don’t celebrate the environment by moving into its midst and paving it over.
Bruddah IZ
DA
The Conundrum by David Owen
Carbon...Carbon....Carbon....
CO2 ...oh my .....Carbon Dioxide
One part Carbon
Two parts Oxygen
4/5ths of our atmosphere is N2
The other 1/5th is almost all O2
But those Liberals want to focus on that pesky little amount of CO2
The gas that fluctuates with the Earths cycles ..........
CO2 ...oh my .....Carbon Dioxide
One part Carbon
Two parts Oxygen
4/5ths of our atmosphere is N2
The other 1/5th is almost all O2
But those Liberals want to focus on that pesky little amount of CO2
The gas that fluctuates with the Earths cycles ..........
Sheriff Joe
DA
Trump's on it.
EvilGoalie 21
GOLD
Spencer and Christy play it up for their audience, and the denier click bait sites spin away. And, yeah, sooner or later they will re-tweak their v6 thing. In some ways, though, given how complicated every aspect of the microwave sounding stuff is (from the underlying physics, to correcting for the satellites, to the computational part) I've always thought that the underlying message of the troposphere warming data from UAH and RSS is more similar than different. At least in the big picture. And my recollection is that both groups are pretty much the same on stratosphere cooling, which is just as indicative and doesn't get the same attention. To get a sense of it, I went back to the warming rates I pulled out of the Vostok ice core data set awhile back and compared those to current lower troposphere MSU warming rates from different versions of RSS and UAH. So for the proxy data it was possible extract rates for ~20 warming periods going back 800K years. These all cluster pretty tightly except for one big outlier which is the current warming period. And, for all the arm flapping that goes on every time UAH shaves their warming rate down a bit, all the UAH and RSS rates are still about an order of magnitude faster than any other warming period in the last 800,000 years.
EvilGoalie 21
GOLD
EvilGoalie 21
GOLD
And the soft music and math version for the TRWAP crowd
"As every fairy tale comes real
I've looked at love that way"
And seeing how its about Christmas and we lost Harry Dean Stanton this year (Paris, Texas was such an awesome movie) this one's for him.
"As every fairy tale comes real
I've looked at love that way"
And seeing how its about Christmas and we lost Harry Dean Stanton this year (Paris, Texas was such an awesome movie) this one's for him.
Cooling?
Hüsker Dü
DA
T'was certainly cold down at the beach this fine morn . . . nothing to see here.
Snow on the ground where I am.
See? No global warming!
Bruddah IZ
DA
Denier.
Hüsker Dü
DA
Never mind the coral die-off/warming oceans/ocean acidification, flooding of coastal cities/low islands, shrinking ice caps/glaciers/snow coverage and extreme weather events . . . besides that, nothing to see here.
Bruddah IZ
DA
Agree. Same old doom and gloomNever mind the coral die-off/warming oceans/ocean acidification, flooding of coastal cities/low islands, shrinking ice caps/glaciers/snow coverage and extreme weather events . . . besides that, nothing to see here.
Hüsker Dü
DA
Oh I see, it scares you little boys. You'd rather deny it, hold your hands over your eyes and ears hoping it just goes away. Just imagine what your children, grand children and theirs will encounter . . . yet you still side with those whose profits are at stake.