Climate change versus Tipping Points

Everyone with a television or a radio knows the climate is shifting. Typically, scientists and weather broadcasters will cite old weather records that are broken by today’s storms, flooding, drought and heat, inching up in small amounts each year. Generally, the public acknowledges these unusual changes but often dismisses them as part of a slow and probably long-term condition.

Scientists have begun redefining ‘climate change’ as a series of increasingly disastrous events called tipping points. For example, Vermont, a no-news weather area, has had its second 100-year storm in roughly a decade. This likely could not have happened twenty or thirty years ago but the ‘slow creep’ of statistics has reached a point where new conditions permit sudden disruptions in climate that were not previously possible.

Several nations around the world have experienced economic collapse because of new levels of turbulence, drought or flooding. Rather than defining these news events as a gradual increase in the effects of global warming, scientists have recognized them as notable events that were not possible in the past and identify them as ‘tipping points’.

For the past ten years or so, scientists have used annual statistics to predict that turbulent times will occur between 2030 and the end of the century. Today, however, there is a correlation for climate change based on tipping points. In each instance tipping points become more disruptive.

To be metaphoric about it, we are accustomed to watching the weather train go by but that is no longer appropriate. We should be watching cluster bombs explode and consider the circumstances should the cluster bombs become nuclear bombs.

How can we cry “Uncle” to Mother Nature?

Mariner has his sunscreen, hard hat, flippers and an innertube ready to go at his apartment in Chicken Little’s hen house.

Ancient Mariner

Possession is nine tenths

Does the reader feel a slight comforting breeze? Just for a second, nothing that will turn around climate or political heat. Whoops, it’s gone. Nevertheless, being able to see a cloud in a blue sky through bomb smoke can give hope for survival.

The breeze he mentions is the slowly shifting opinions of the electorate regarding the economy (inflation fading and a stable job market) immigration (least in two years), and the lowest crime rate in two years. Surely this is enough to cause a small breeze in these cynical times.

It seems this subtle improvement in democratic party performance has chopped the toenails off republican assaults on old man Biden.

Poor Joe. He’s almost as old as mariner. He has trick knees just like mariner. His accomplishments, just like mariner’s battle with rabbits, are an uphill battle.

But what would the electorate prefer – comfortable old, worn out slippers that have earned their trust or a pair of hard leather slippers with a sole of thumbtacks? (that means Joe versus the big D)?

Given a disease-infected republican party, given the lawsuits dragging on about Donald’s veracity, given the religious fervor of the anti-wokes, Joe’s old-style legislating may be a cloud in the blue sky until the rabid right fades.

The liberal side of the democratic party has chosen, wisely, not to go to war with the conservatives; they are waiting for a shift in political wind. That shift undoubtedly will come as Mother Nature continues to wreak havoc with human behavior.

Neither party knows what to do about AI or an economy without fossil fuel. Mariner suggests the electorate stay with Joe, a man who by himself overcame stuttering.

Mind you, this is the ONLY exception to mariner’s first rule of voting – given a choice, always vote for the candidate under 35 years of age.

From his apartment in Chicken Little’s hen house,

Ancient Mariner

Check the sky – is it falling?

Mariner allowed Guru to offer a spontaneous thought about the state of things. Guru said, “Armageddon isn’t going to happen because there won’t be enough souls around for Jesus to bother coming back. However, the Apocalypse already has begun.”

Mariner has built a small apartment in Chicken Little’s hen house. He’ll be living there now. Amos has been put on leave.

Book to read: “Brief Answers to the Big Questions” by Stephen Hawking published 2018. Stephen Hawking is beyond reproach as one of history’s premiere theoretical physicists; he picked up where Einstein left off. He answers questions like:

Is there a God?

How did it all begin?

Will artificial intelligence outsmart us?

Will we survive on Earth?

And six other questions.

If the reader needs me, check the hen house.

Ancient Mariner

About Fabric

Has the reader noticed that among cloth generally, there are many different fabrics? Each has a unique feel to it. For example, one can clearly tell the difference between silk and denim, or suede and wool, or nylon and hemp. What if, in fact, all cloth felt the same? Would that not really matter? Cloth is cloth and it’s the fashion that is important; it’s usability for whatever; it’s the style that counts; it’s what is popular that matters more.

In virtually every fiction book and film where mariner has observed ‘the future of mankind’, the plot is about humans becoming nondescript, that is, the fabric of life changes. It happens in a piecemeal way. Consider what effect the internal combustion engine had on daily society: Towns no longer had to be only twenty miles apart because that was the limit of a day’s horse ride; agriculture shifted from local market to national market; shared resources among large, stationary families shifted to independent career income no longer bound to the home town or the family.

Even the fabric of riverside cities changed from river shipping to rail, leaving dozens of river towns with dwindling resources. Today local business, the enjoyment of life, the vitality of society is a pale remembrance. Perhaps it could be said these towns lost their fabric.

Readers will quickly challenge loss of fabric versus endless increases in the economy, freedom of new life opportunities, better health services, etc. After all, it’s not about fabric, it’s usability, fashion and style that counts.

Several months ago he read a book, ‘The Way Home – tales from a life without technology’ by Mark Boyle. It is an accounting of Boyle, an economist, who deliberately spent three years without money – zero dollars. The only economy he had was what he could muster with his own hands. What gave him the idea to retreat from industrial society was that he was aware of what it took to pump a glass of water from the ground; it required steel, copper, plastic, dams and endless pipelines including what to do with wastewater. It wasn’t about Mark Boyle being thirsty nor was it about any other individual being thirsty. Individuals were nothing more than a device used to discharge water from a very large, self-important industry.

His key discovery was that the farther away a human is from his core, natural environment, the more damage is done to that environment. His second discovery was that the few families that were close enough to his cabin to interact, were genuinely friendly and willing to help Boyle survive in his stark environment. He and his few neighbors came first instead of last. They had human fabric.

For more philosophical insight into the idea that humans are at the center of life, not abusive corporate trashing of the biosphere, read Gandhi.

Ancient Mariner

 

About the ‘do nothing’ Congress

Yes, it’s common knowledge that few citizens think Congress cares about them – about 74 percent on a recent poll, another poll had it in the 80s. Two large and lengthy articles have been written this week about new ways to redesign Congress and new ways to collect votes.

Fewer but larger state districts

If states had only two or three districts and each district had several representatives based on election percentages, this would make gerrymandering virtually impossible and would guarantee both parties (or more) would represent each district. Many countries already use this model, e.g., Australia.

Rank voting

This idea has been around for several years. Instead of counting votes exclusively for one party or another, the vote would include the total vote from all parties and the highest count would win. (For a detailed review, see ‘Ranked Voting – 2’ post published on April 2, 2022). Several states already have moved to this method first made by Alaska. This method does not change congressional seats.

What is new is the degree of angst among political writers that the two-party system will, in fact, destroy the nation. Now, party choice among the electorate is close to equal which means an evenly split Congress that can’t get anything done. Worse, the abuse of gerrymandering has become so extreme that minority races and opposing liberal-conservative representation do not have equal vote status – even when they vote.

The other condition is that if two weaponized parties continue to fight one another, both parties will move to extreme political positions. Does this seem familiar? This is the issue that bothers political thinkers.

These changes have a tough road ahead – especially in Dixie. Changing the structure of Congress requires changing the Constitution; while we’re at it, why don’t we change the Second Amendment as well?

Ancient Mariner

Does anyone have a plot line?

 

By Wiley:

Is it possible that our eager scientists are consumed by the phrase, “I do it because I can”? Is Homo sapiens ready for an automated lifestyle? Is the biosphere ready for Homo sapiens to have an automated lifestyle?

Scientists have created Xenobots, computer cells that can reproduce. Even Steven Hawking predicted this will be the demise of humanity.

Over the millennia, humans have learned to adapt to significant changes in the biosphere status quo; everything from ice ages to rocket ships and nuclear bombs. But each epoch was singular – just one at a time.

It isn’t the same today. There is AI, collapsing nationalism, global warming, social abuse, over-population and the waning of Adam Smith economics.

Can we Homos handle it?

Ancient Mariner

Continuing Ed

Everyone should make a point of continuing to learn new things about life and nature. Like exercises, we do it every day, right? However, mariner offers a few classes below that are interesting.

֎ From Scientific American, issue July/August 2023, is an article that suggests to us that bees are as intelligent as many birds. For example, they can problem solve both by trial and error and by learning from fellow bees; they also express emotional traits like happiness and PTSD.

֎ This coming Wednesday, July 5 on PBS a new series premiers called Human Footprint, a series that explores the creation and destruction caused by humans on the planet.

֎ Also on PBS online is the examination of the human mind as it is influenced by the subconscious. Mariner has recommended this film before but if you haven’t seen it, it explains the society we live in today. Look for ‘Hacking the Mind’.

֎ Science News has an article online that questions whether exercise is good for mental health. It suggests a yes and no scenario. The article gives an overview from which the reader can select more detailed information about exercise and health. See https://www.science.org/content/article/exercise-actually-good-brain

֎ What does ‘floccinaucinihilipilification’ mean? For those who may not know the meaning, it’s a bad habit.

Ancient Mariner