Tag: climate

HOPE VS. ACTION

Hannah Ritchie advises that a Sixth Extinction event, unlike former extinction events, can be stopped because it is manmade.

Books of Interest
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

“Not the End of the World” (How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet)

By: Hannah Ritchie

Narrated by: Hannah Ritchie

Hannah Ritchie (Author, Scottish data scientist, senior researcher at the University of Oxford, undergraduate degree in environmental geoscience and master’s in carbon management, working on a Ph D.)

Hannah Richie is vilified by some environmentalist who suggest she looks at global warming as a problem on its way to resolution. They argue Richie offers an unreasonably optimistic view of global warming. She obviously believes global warming is real, but argues history shows humanity is dealing with the crises and is working on what must be done to survive the future.

A little history: Since 1850, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimated the world temperature would increase by 2 degrees Fahrenheit per decade. However, in 2023 NOAA shows the actual average has been 2.43 degrees Fahrenheit per decade since the 1850s. The 10 warmest years have been in the last decade.

Though the exact temperature increase is disputed by other scientific studies, there is no rational disagreement on evidence of warming. Global warming is having an effect on world’ biodiversity.

Richie notes loss of forest lands from farming and timber production adds to global warming because trees absorb carbon dioxide from the air.

Atmospheric carbon-load increases global warming. Counter intuitively, Richie argues the building of cities and concentration of populations improves the world’s environment by moving people into the city which aids biodiversity in the country. She argues population services in a city reduces inefficient travel, conserves energy, encourages mechanized farming, reduces the environmental load of human’ waste disposal, and promotes community-wide water conservation.

As noted by many historians, sources of energy that are polluting the atmosphere have changed over the centuries. With few exceptions, these energy sources required burning. The world has moved from wood burning to coal to oil to non-burning energy sources like nuclear and alternative energy sources that have reduced carbon in the atmosphere. Richie notes each stage of energy development has incrementally reduced pollution, but global warming continues because of population increase and the continued use of fossil fuels in industrial production.

Richie notes the rate of world population increase has incrementally decreased and continues to decline with fewer babies being born per family.

Richie believes earth’s human population will plateau at around 10 billion people. At the same time the machine age and technology will improve efficiency of fossil fuel use to reduce the rate of environmental pollution. Richie infers the hope of limiting earth’s warming to 1.5 degree centigrade in this century (3 degrees Fahrenheit) is unlikely to be achieved. Still, she remains optimistic based on human history’s technological improvements since the agricultural and industrial revolutions. Richie is a proponent of nuclear energy because of its efficiency and clean energy potential. She discounts nuclear accidents by noting even with the worst nuclear accident at Chernobyl, deaths were minimal. (Less than 40 people were killed in the disaster with some disagreement about the number of deaths from indirect exposure.)

What is off-putting to many people is Richie’s argument for societal change. She argues the world population must become more vegan because of the negative environmental consequence of raising beef and sheep for food. Richie argues food shortages are the greater risk to human survival. To sustain the lives of ten billion people in the world, Richie believes there is not enough arable land to raise livestock and feed the hungry. She implies only with the advance of agricultural research and produce, including the creation of nutritious meat substitutes, can the world’s future population be sustained.

The threat Richie gives at the end of her book is that that speed of today’s individual extinction of species is a clear warning of what may be the sixth mass extinction, the Anthropocene Extinction, the death of humankind. She advises that a Sixth Extinction event, unlike former extinction events, can be stopped because it is manmade. Richie explains how a Sixth Extinction can be un-manmade by human beings’ actions. Richie argues humans are responsible for despoiling earth and it is up to humans to change nature’s degradation and its potential for a Sixth Extinction.

Richie offers solutions for global warming that are in the hands of humanity. She may be overly optimistic but hope changes to reality with action.

TIKTOK ENERGY

America and every nation must believe in themselves until, like all changes in society, the proof of an energy’s value becomes self-evident

Books of Interest
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

“Energy” (A Human History)

By: Richard Rhodes

Narrated by: Jacques Roy

Richard Rhodes (American journalist, historian, and author.)

Richard Rhodes explains the many forms of “Energy” that have changed the course of history. The one constant is human ingenuity. The source of energy evolves over centuries of civilization. The source of energy has changed from human hands to fuel burning machines to atomic fission to fusion to information. The back and forth of human thought and action have used sources of energy to remake the world. Rhodes’ history shows progress is not always forward. Change is often resisted until results outweigh failures.

Having just gone through the first chapters of Rhode’s excellent history of energy, this review was prematurely completed because of the TikTok controversy noted in the news.

It is important to complete Rhodes’ history to have some understanding of why information is the energy of modern times. Citizens of the world are facing many of the same obstacles Rhodes wrote about in his book. That energy is information may seem incongruous to some but, Rhodes’ history about wood, coal, oil, electricity, nuclear power, and the current state of renewables is like the energy crises of information today. Rhodes does not consider what some argue is tomorrow’s energy source. Tomorrow’s energy source is information. The many trials, the fits and starts, of the energy sources Rhodes explains are the same trials facing today’s world with information as the most current iteration of “Energy”.

Energy is fuel for doing work. Its early forms are those noted in Rhodes’ history. Earlier forms of energy are still relevant, but their utility is being challenged by the immense growth of information and how information drives the future.

There are lessons to be learned about the challenges of information as energy from the experiences noted in Rhodes’ history. This is a bumpy time that shares the trials and tribulations of wood, coal, oil, electricity, nuclear power, and renewable energy of the past. Each energy source has improved the lives of its users but not without trial and error. The world is in the midst of a transition from the industrial age just as the industrial age transitioned from the agricultural age. The world is entering the information age.

The energy change today is information, most recently multiplied by artificial intelligence.

The paranoia of today is that foreign governments will use information to disrupt the progress of nations that have their own forms of government. The controversy of TikTok is a case in point. On the one hand TikTok is being used by small entrepreneurs in America to conduct their businesses. On the other, TikTok’ popularity is spreading the equivalent of porn to the public, distorting the perception and education of children. There is the added threat of influencing the public to overthrow governments. The question is would TikTok be any less a threat if it were owned and restricted to one country or another? Facebook offers the same potential as TikTok. Facebook, Google, and Amazon are energy sources for distorting truth and influencing the public in the same way as TikTok. Domestic ownership does not cure the negative potential of information distortion or abhorrent political influence.

Is TikTok going to change democratic capitalism or is it going to change Chinese communism? One suspects, it will change both. The information highway cannot be blocked. Information energy, like water, will find its own way through cracks in its environment.

The fundamental point made in the last two chapters of Rhode’s excellent history is that the world, and America, need to increase the number of nuclear energy plants based on the need to curb environmental pollution. His argument is based on learning from the nuclear accidents that have occurred, and designing nuclear power plants to mitigate the consequence of failure. He notes no energy source in the world has succeeded without learning from producer’s mistakes. Our mistakes at Chernobyl, 3-Mile Island, and Fukushima are correctable. Environmental degradation is the crises of the 21st century that threatens human existence.

America and every nation must believe in themselves until, like all changes in society, the proof of an energy’s value becomes self-evident.