In which Lou attempts valiantly to tie off a gaggle of loose ends without sounding even less coherent than normal…
I’ve revamped the Energy and Environment Clocks stuff with a new color scheme and new home page for the entire project. The home page will always have links to all of the online clocks.
- Energy and Environmental Clocks Home Page [•]
- Energy and Environmental Clock Beta Version 0.0.2 [•]
- Energy and Environmental Clock Beta Version 0.0.1 [•]
I will post updates here as new clocks are released or existing ones are updated.
Let me stress one more time that I’m open to suggestions for changes or new clock versions, bug reports, etc.
And please do spread the word about this project, via the above links. The more people we can get to look at and (gasp!) think about these numbers, the better for everyone involved, which is, well, everyone.
Don’t forget the graphs page [•], too.
Yesterday I started using a new link style, like the ones in the EE Clocks stuff above–notice the “[•]“? That’s meant to indicate that the page opens in a new window. I couldn’t find a concise, generally accepted, text-only way of doing this, so I made up this convention. (Why don’t browsers add an indication to the status line when you’re hovering over a link that will open in a new window? As far as I can tell, none of them do that, and it would be very simple to implement. Oops–I feel coherence slipping away. Better get back on topic.)
If “[•]” is too visually intrusive, what should it be? “•”? Something else? Or should I forget the whole thing and let people continue to guess what my links will do unless they hold down the Control key when they click them?
What does “sustainable” really mean? The easy answer is “something we can do forever without exhausting a needed resource” (assuming the capacity for the atmosphere, oceans, etc. to act as waste sinks is another form of resource). This begs the question: What does “forever” mean, in this context? Until the entity performing the activity ceases to exist? Until the entity in question no longer wants to perform the activity? Until the sun burns out?
And what about transitional activities? You can argue that listening to music on old media–LPs, cassettes, eight tracks, CDs–has a high enough consumption of resources per unit of music (album, song, whatever) that it wasn’t sustainable in the long run, but electronic distribution of music is much more sustainable. At some level, almost everything we do, if viewed narrowly enough, is a transitional activity; with sufficient economic incentive we could continue to make LPs or whatever without petroleum. That would clearly move those products toward the “more sustainable” end of the spectrum, but would they then be sustainable in absolute terms?
Perhaps I’m just in a Very Bad Place right now, but I just can’t get excited over the news that G-8 Agrees to 80% Cut in Carbon Emissions by 2050 [•]. (It seems the media can’t agree on what happened. Obama broadens push for climate change pact [•] says that the agreement was 50% reduction by 2050, but “developing nations refused to go along”.)
I’m certainly not convinced that 2C is “enough” to prevent the kind and scope of climate chaos impacts that we don’t want to endure. (See Two degrees of separation [•] for why I’m ambivalent on this detail.)
I’m also less than convinced that the G8 embracing the standard prescription of an 80% CO2 emissions reduction by 2050 “fixes everything, forever!” as the saying goes. Trying to get from that declaration to a policy that “should” deliver the desired results to actually seeing that level of emissions cuts is a very treacherous road. Just getting the current climate bill through the US House of Representatives, even with the astounding level of sausage making involved, was like pushing a full-size SUV up a steep hill with the parking brake on. And the US Senate awaits.
What happens when we have to take the steps needed to get the last 20 percentage points of that 80%? Will there be enough of a shift in public consensus by then, and enough technological advancement, to overcome the myopia and ideology and just plain greed that form the biggest single barrier to climate progress? I hope so.
My wife and I celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary two days ago. Thirty years. Wow. And to think my wife is still my 21-year-old college sweetheart. I have to ask her some time how that works.
I was planning to do a long “look at how we’ve changed” post that talked about energy, the environment, our personal consumption (including my V6 Gremlin X) and technology in general, but I honestly didn’t have the heart for it right now. There are too many other, more productive things I can do with the considerable amount of time it would take to do that idea justice.
Who would you nominate for an Energy and Environment Hall of Fame? I’ve pondered doing that on a separate page on this site, if only as a way to help educate people about which topics more important than others, and where specific contributions came from.
There are a few no brainers: James Hansen, Bill McKibben, Matt Simmons. Some legacy names get in with zero debate, as well: M. King Hubbert, Rachel Carson, Svante Arrhenius.
Some of my favorite, and often overlooked, current writers, would get my vote: Fred Pearce, Lester R. Brown. Probably Chris Mooney, if Unscientific America turns out to be another home run.
Some people don’t fit into a neat category. I’d vote for Joe Romm, for his combination of books and his relentless blogging over at ClimateProgress. Same for George Monbiot for his books plus newspaper/online writing. Heidi Cullen gets in for her work on The Weather Channel (and likely other TV shows) and her appearances in documentaries.
Al Gore? No one has been a bigger, more abused target of the wackaloon deniers than the former US Vice President. But who has single handedly done more to educate the public than Gore accomplished via An Inconvenient Truth?
How to fairly pick some of the unsung heroes? Who gets the nod from the real scientists? Does Michael Mann and his co-authors get in solely for their hockey stick graph? How about Mark Serreze, Director of the [US] NSIDC (National Snow and Ice Data Center)?
Organizations and web sites? NRDC, Greenpeace, Sierra Club, EDF; Treehugger, RealClimate, … ?
Do any of those wackaloon deniers make it, in the sense of treating “fame” literally and not merely as “good”? No.
How about the relentless Apocalypticons? No. Even though they do help to publicize the problems of peak oil and climate chaos, they also make it much harder to get many people to take action. I’ve personally seen this effect many times as newbies Google “peak oil”, land on a couple of Apocalypticon doom-fest sites, and instantly decide the entire topic is so much balloon juice.
Congratulations on the anniversary Lou, 30 years is a great accomplishment.