Take a ride on the Hopium Express
Dr. James Hansen et al. has published a new post on the climate situation, “Global Warming Acceleration: Hope vs Hopium”
Dr. Hansen and associate’s science is best in the world, and over their last several papers, shown how Earth’s energy imbalance and global warming have been increasing and why the IPCC’s reports have underestimated every aspect of the changes in climate.
Quoting from the above paper:
“A bright future for today’s young people is still possible, but its attainment is hampered by precatory (wishful thinking) policies that do not realistically account for global energy needs and aspirations of nations with emerging economies. An alternative is needed to the GCM [Global Climate Model]-dominated perspective on climate science. We will bear a heavy burden if we stand silent or meek as the world continues on its present course.
Yes, Dr. Hansen is correct to not succumb to reticence, which often happens in Science. Scientists are supposed to stick to their studies and avoid “politics.” Dr. Hansen is correct to bring these reports to the attention of the public at large, but perhaps he should rest his case at that point and not venture into remedies, leave that work to us generalists. As per his articles title, “Hopium,” he puts what he sees as “wishful thinking” into the definition of Hopium. But it seems to me that much of his conclusions and remedies reside in Hopium.
“as the world continues on its present course.”
The Present Course of the world faces three main existential threats, as I have written in previous posts, ranked in this order: two of humanity’s gravest errors, nuclear weapons and plastics, and global warming. Global warming is third due to the exponentially lower hazard it represents. Nuclear weapons can massively disrupt all life on the planet. The Pope has said that nuclear weapons are immoral:
In August 2020, Pope Francis condemned both the use and possession of nuclear weapons in a message to organizers of a ceremony commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Hiroshima atomic bomb detonation. "The use of atomic energy for purposes of war is immoral," the pontiff said, "just as the possessing of nuclear weapons is immoral."
The author of a new book, _Nuclear War, A Scenario_, Annie Jacobsen, writes about the ever-present danger of nuclear war in an interview at Mother Jones, reprinted in The Bulletin:
“Gen. Robert Kehler, the former commander of STRATCOM, said to me that the world could end in the next couple of hours.”
That means ANY next couple of hours, any day of any week. The USA has a “launch on warning” directive, and in every scenario imaginable, the endpoint is always nuclear winter. But hey, THAT will get CO2 emissions down quick, right? But you will be dead so will not care too much one way or the other.
Plastics WILL bring about the 6th extinction even without the thousands of other human-generated toxins spewing into the environment. That leaves global warming as a third-order threat but of course of dire consequence. But it is Hopium to imagine that these three massive threats can be effectively dealt with under present modes of governance (the world on its present course). Just imagining governance changes within the USA does nothing to calm planet-wide disrupters. All those people, salary-pullers, con-men, schmucks, and/or ideologues, who occupy the social space which should embody actual government, must be relegated to the dust-bin of history. That is on the national and local levels, and all of that superseded by a true world government. Failing that, we truly are hooped. Imagining that we can somehow carry on like this is Hopium on steroids. This planet cannot endure more of the Russian silver-back’s annexation schemes, or China’s silver-back sending swarms of his aircraft aloft like an irritated hornet’s nest, every time a foreign ship passes too close to that former Japanese colony of Taiwan. A true world government, which could be an improved, functioning United Nations, is our first and primary concern, the first step to solving these existential problems, and establish that there really is a civilization on this planet. As it stands now, we cannot call this mess a civilization.
In Dr. Hansen’s above quotation, he mentions “… for global energy needs and aspirations of nations with emerging economies.” Two problems here - Don’t conflate “energy needs” with energy wants. Yes, everyone wants more and more energy. But stuff it, OK? This planet cannot endure the constant expansion of this urban-industrial-economic system. It must be wound down! I’m not saying you have to return to the Stone Age. Life was pretty good in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s, before the exponential (hockey stick) rise of CO2 emissions. I can remember those times, you young folks have no idea. We can all get by fine using less energy, and especially the rich Global North needs to shrink energy uses down to world per-capita average. For the “aspirations of nations with emerging economies,” somehow we must get the message across to them that “we have made a massive error in chasing our urban dreams!” And having these fat-ass cruise ships sailing into their ports flaunting consumptive excesses is absolutely not helping. The concept of “developing nations” is an erroneous construct that implies replacing their thousands of years of culture with urbanized over-consumption complete with proliferation of plastics throughout their environment. Remember, City Life is not what this planet looks like, it is not “life,” it is a long-period hotel-stay, an attempt to escape the living world.
The greatest Hopium in human history is pretending that “we” can transition to a carbon-free economy without any sacrifice. That is absolute bunk. We need a massive level of “de-growth” to get back to a sustainable human presence on this planet. All air travel must completely cease, now and forever. That includes sports, World Cups, Olympics, all of it. Yes, the scientists, for example, will whine that they can’t get to their conferences. I will be 78 later this year, never been on an airplane. I had a section-level (poster) paper at an international science conference in France, but I don’t fly, so can’t attend. I had the main paper on nutrition at a regional-international conference in Egypt, but too-short notice to hop a freighter and I don’t fly, so can’t attend. They are not amused when the author of a main paper does not show up to defend the paper, especially when all local expenses are covered, you just have to get there and show up. But, can’t attend, don’t fly. Find another way to do these confabs without involving travel.
Space launches must cease except for important Earth observatory satellites. Most local transportation must wind down from this horrible level in which a large percentage of the population tramples across the landscape twice a day in their stinking commute. Just wind it all down in a sensible manner - the trick is to pull all this off without initiating world-wide civil war.
On one hand, Dr. Hansen rejects “Net Zero” promises as more Hopium then continues with his “carbon fee-and-dividend” proposal, which I consider major Hopium. Yes, Net-Zero is total bunk, since it is essentially promising (remember, just a promise) to have net-zero emissions by 2050. Taken straight up, you would assume that means no further additional emissions beyond 2050. And what would the CO2 level be by then - maybe 450 ppm? And they include in these proposals huge amounts of “negative emissions” such as carbon-capture-and-storage (CCS). Which takes more energy, pipelines and materials, again trying to “save” us by further advancement of technology. So just ignore the “Net-Zero” folks, they are just trying to make you feel good, take your mind off the issue while they just keep on drilling…
On the issue of his “carbon fee-and-dividend” proposal, I have written on that before, about a better alternative, oxygen pricing, putting a price on the oxygen that you steal from the commons to burn your fuels. The proponents of carbon pricing assume that an ever-rising price on carbon will discourage its use. What’s the highest price of carbon? Diamonds. But you cannot balance the books with this artificially-raised price on carbon. Try it, do some proper double-entry bookkeeping and show me the results. It would be better to run the price of carbon down to zero so it isn’t worth pulling out of the ground. Perhaps do the same thing that should be done to tobacco producers - disallow their expense deductions. See, if you make money producing fuels (a rising price of carbon), that profit encourages you to produce more fuels. Raising the price of carbon, in normal economics, would cause an increase in production. Meanwhile, with oxygen-pricing, you can balance that set of books, because when you make someone pay for the oxygen they use, you can then use the collected funds to pay someone else to produce more oxygen, such as by maintaining their tropical forests instead of cutting them down. The “dividend” part of Hansen’s scheme is simply to buy off the voters, but that is just for a while until they feel the pain of the ever-increasing price. If you make the price high enough they will burn everything they can get their hands on to heat their homes. The voter buy-off is just a short-circuit - yes the fossil fuel producers don’t get that price increase, but that money really should go, not back to the rich consumers, it should go to this nation’s (reneged) commitment to the UN funds for international mitigation and adaptation. And in this supposed “dividend,” the money that is taken away and given back to the mugs (sorry, I mean taxpayers), supposedly flows seamlessly through government - you know, those people, those salary-pullers, who have demonstrated over and over that they are incompetent to manage the public’s funds. And, AND, to make it worse, in USA and Canada, it is actually illegal for a government to ear-mark any specific bit of income to go to any specific payout. By law, ALL revenue must go into general revenue, so they have lied to you (again!).
Yet, there is more Hopium!
Further along in Hansen’s Hopium paper, he goes back to his support for nuclear power:
“The 30-year delay in support for nuclear power denied the industry the R&D needed to develop its potential. Based on the amount of material (steel, concrete, fuel, etc.) required for a power plant, nuclear power should be our cheapest energy, if it was supported equally. There is no need to cry over spilled milk, though. By 2030, there should be multiple options for modern ultrasafe nuclear power that can serve as the needed complement to renewable energies to produce carbon-free electricity.”
Creating dependence on nuclear power is part of the dream of decarbonizing the economy while supposedly being able to carrying on the full exploitation of this planet. Too bad carbon dioxide exhaust got in the way of our Progress, isn’t it? So we have this little stumbling point, a mere blip, a little set-back while we decarbonize, then get right back to “Normal,” right? That’s the grandest Hopium of all. Then we can just carry on, and hopefully find yet more Earths so that we can exploit one after the other as we build our massive utopian city-dreamscape? No! Nuclear power is the essence of anti-life and absolutely has no place on this planet. The other plants and animals (that we don’t give a crap about) that actually live on this planet have no say in this matter. I’ve already written enough about nuclear power, so will not waste your time with more words.
Dr. Hansen hopes that he can soon finish his book _Sophie’s Planet_ which will discuss some ideas worth considering. Well, instead of taking a few years to write a book, how about fixing things right now? Number One - restore the 3.5% sulfur content in marine fuels so that the CO2 emissions-to-aerosols ratio is restored to take down this recent spike in temperature. Next, get to work on world governance - yes this takes leadership, which seems to be an unknown quantity right now. But it is imperative to convert the nature of sovereignty from a public good that is seized by rogue players from the commons, to a good that is conferred by consensus of the other nations. With that structural change, wars, expansionism and strategic deterrence can be abolished. Then having found a civilization on this planet, we can start working on the larger issue, and it really is larger - finding a way to live in harmony with this planet.