Category Archives: Climate Change.

THE BEADY EYE LOOKS AT INFLATION

05 Monday Sep 2022

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What is inflation?

One can look or think of it in various ways, as it comes in many forms.

The fact is that inflation is a far more complex phenomenon than one might initially assume.

The Big Bang for instance was it caused by inflation?

Did it happen at the begging or the end of something inflating externally or internally.

If it was external it could only have happened on a quantum bases – which means that there was something there before the Big bang that existed other than eternal inflation.

Whether it did or not, during inflation space is repelling space, so there is more space and more repulsion. Pass events cause present events are ever changing is a quantum fluctuation.

The defining characteristic of inflation is its exponential rate of growth.

All inflation whether its space, money, planetary resource use, or the human population, doubles in every fixed interval of time.

It starts slowly, almost flat and then goes up and up till vertical, hitting a material limit.

This is not so in space where it can go on endlessly, according to Einstein theory of relativity.

Indeed it is faster then light, but with the help of gravity it is slowed down as it passes through different density of the universe.

However this is not true in the Quantum world of particles and antimatter which can burst out of nothing, coming back together and disappearing in a flash.

This will be the reason that the James Webb telescope will not discover God.

Unfortunate due to inflation it is looking into the past with the future always over the horizon. Beyond that we have no way now or ever finding data.  Here we reach the limits of language and are faced with the choice of mathematics or myth. 

Thank God. 

—————–

There are zillions of particles popping out of the vacuum of space and disappearing.

Indeed they don’t even come into existence unless they are observed.

However the real question is how does energy turn into particles. What is the actual process of inflation doing. I dont think we know.

Where did it come from in the first place, converting its expansion into Entropy – disorder.

All ordinary matter is however, everything made of atoms including the protons and neutrons that make up an atom. So it stands to reason that inflation after the Big Bang was caused by atoms that were there before inflation existed, in a dormant state.

This then leaves us with no way to explain why individual quantum events happen – they have no cause, but they do happen is standard physics, creating an eternal inflation of creativity.

We can only rely on predictions because probability obeys deterministic laws.

In the end there is no deeper source of meaning for us than to experience our own lives as reflecting the nature and origin of our universe.

For those who demand the Ultimate truth there is no way to take even a single step beyond what other people have already thought.

Lets return to earth.

At its most basic level, inflation is a general increase in prices across the economy and is well-known to all of us. This can lead to fears of possible hyperinflation, a devastating scenario in which inflation rises rapidly out of control or Stagflation (a time of economic stagnation combined with inflation) which also wreak havoc.

Although numerous theories exist, arguably the two most influential schools of thought on inflation are those of Keynesian and Monetarist economics.

Keynesian economists argue inflation results from economic pressures such as the increased cost of production and look to government intervention as a solution; monetarist economists believe inflation stems from the expansion of the money supply and that central banks should maintain stable growth for the money supply in line with GDP

The Keynesian school believes inflation results from economic pressures such as rising costs of production or increases in aggregate demand. Specifically, they distinguish between two broad types of inflation: cost-push inflation and demand-pull inflation.

The Monetarist view is perfectly encapsulated by Friedman’s remark that “inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.” According to this view, the principal factor underlying inflation has little to do with things like labour, materials costs, or consumer demand. Instead, it is all about the supply of money.

According to the quantity theory of money, if the amount of money in an economy doubles, all else equal, price levels will also double.

This means that the consumer will pay twice as much for the same amount of goods and services. This increase in price levels will eventually result in a rising inflation level.

Then you have negative inflation when prices drop for various reasons.

What are the Causes of Inflation. 

What causes inflation is significantly complex.

An increase in the supply of money is the root of inflation, though this can play out through different mechanisms in the economy. A country’s money supply can be increased by the monetary authorities by:

  • Printing and giving away more money to citizens.
  • Legally devaluing (reducing the value of) the legal tender currency.
  • Loaning new money into existence as reserve account credits through the banking system by purchasing government bonds from banks on the secondary market (the most common method)

Now I am no quantum expert or scientist but to my mind the world economy is now dependent on electronic products, all subject to the Quantum theory.

Smart phones, laptops, computers, and algorithms all fuelling inflation of knowledge and falsehoods.  The world of computing is full of buzzwords: AI, supercomputers, machine learning, the cloud, quantum computing and more.

One word in particular is used throughout computing – algorithm.

Computers string algorithms together in complex fashions to produce more algorithms. So, an algorithm is the process a computer uses to transform input data into output data. Every piece of technology that you touch involves many algorithms.

They are black boxes—neither the company using them nor the people making them take responsibility for how they can wreck lives and reinforce stereotypes.

There is no knowledge of what they are even being judged on.

The people making the algorithms don’t take responsibility for users of their code and the people using algorithms place responsibility on the creators.

Algorithms are aimed at optimizing everything including inflation.  

They, that is profit seeking algorithms have put too much control in the hands of corporations and governments, perpetuate bias, create filter bubbles, cut choices, creativity and serendipity, and could result in greater unemployment and are no doubt at this very moment manipulating inflation.

The question now is are we living in two realities because they coexist with all advances in technology. In fact, everything people see and do on the web is a product of algorithms.

The use of algorithms is spreading as massive amounts of data are being created, captured and analysed by businesses and governments. Some are calling this the Age of Algorithms and predicting that the future of algorithms is tied to machine learning and deep learning that will get better and better at an ever-faster pace.

They will create new ways to misrepresent reality and perpetuate falsehoods.

Can anything be done to stop them plundering the world for short term profit?

Yes but it has to done now.

The adoption of data-driven technology affects every aspect of our society and its use is creating opportunities as well as new ethical challenges that are coming with climate change.

In the world before AI there were many different concepts of fairness. Once we introduce complex algorithms to decision-making systems, that range of definitions multiplies rapidly.

Inequality and unfairness have complex causes but society may reasonably conclude that justice requires decision-making processes to be designed so that human judgement can intervene where needed to achieve fair and reasonable outcomes for each person, informed by individual evidence.

The risk is growing as algorithms, and the datasets that feed them, become increasingly complex.

All algorithms programs should be vetted for ownership, transparency, bias, before being allowed to operate in a sustainable way.

Don’t worry you will always be around because each of us is an atomic pastiche an atom of you will always be around.

We are made of material created and ejected into the Galaxy by stars.

Try inflating that!

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Contact: bobdillio33@gmail.com

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S. WHO OWNS ENGLAND AND IS IT GOING DOWN THE PAN?

04 Sunday Sep 2022

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2022: The year we need to change., British Culture., Climate Change., England in five years., England's future., England., English General Election., European Union., EU_UK relations for the foreseeable future., How to do it., Human values., Life., Modern day life., Modern day Slavery, Money in Politics., Our Common Values., Political Trust, Politics., Privatization, Profiteering., Robot citizenship., Russia / Ukraine ., Stimulus package., The common good., The Obvious., The pursuit of profit., The UK Class system., Universal values., We can leave a legacy worthwhile., WHAT IS TRUTH

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( Ten minute read)

This is a country that sold is nations assets to private enterprises – energy, water, rail, etc, (In the ideology of Maggie Thatcher, shop till you drop), believing that the free market would give its citizens the best deal.

The massive privatisations of public assets undertaken by Mrs Thatcher and subsequent Tory governments since the 1980s now with the help of multilabel other world problems have come home to roost.

Below are a few examples of this.

[ARM Holdings, one the key British companies for research and innovation in electronics, was sold off in 2017 for £24bn to the Japanese company Softbank.

Amazon, a US corporation, now dominates retail in the UK.

Apple has shifted its tax liability in the UK to Ireland.

The key national airports in the UK – Heathrow and Gatwick – are both in foreign ownership.

Liverpool, Glasgow and Great Yarmouth ports are owned by Deutsche Bank. Felixstowe, is owned by one of Asia’s richest men and incorporated in the Cayman Islands.

Even Associated British Ports, which manages many UK ports, is owned by the Singapore foreign reserve fund and Kuwait’s sovereign wealth fund and registered offshore in Jersey.

Waterstones, the only surviving national book chain in UK, is also Russian owned.

Facebook and Twitter are now the main source of news for most British people despite its biases and its inadequate constraints on the dissemination of fake news. Both of these companies are effectively unregulated despite their critical social media roles, and both make enormous sums of money from advertising that goes untaxed.

The NHS, which is thought of as the great British innovation, is also increasingly being infiltrated by American health providers. Social care Southern Cross purchased by Blackstone, a US company.

Boots, which has 2,500 shops in the UK acquired by private equity in 2007, asset stripped and saw its HQ moved to Switzerland to avoid UK taxes. It is now wholly owned by the giant US pharmacy chain Walgreens.]

What are the common elements in the above?

With London becoming the global centre of such transactions because of weak regulatory systems, especially in respect of privatised utilities, it has been price gouging at the expense of consumers in the UK.

It is now clear that some at least of the purchasers of domestic assets have used the opportunity to launder illegally acquired money.  Russian millionaires had a field day.

We are now looking at a country that recently spent nearly $8 billion building two new large, conventionally-fuelled aircraft carriers, spending between £72.1bn and £80.4bn, on a high-speed rail HS2 to save thirty minutes traveling time, while its people can’t afford their energy bills, to feed themselves, to house themselves, or afford the cost of a rail ticket.

A country that turned its back on the biggest market on its door step the EU with £25bn left to pay by 2057.

A country that in the first year of the pandemic, from April 2020 to 2021,  borrowed £299bn, the highest figure since records began in 1946, to save it economy more than its people with, the cost of Government measures announced so far range from about £310 to £410 billion.

Most of this extra money was spent on public services (such as the NHS), and support for businesses.

In the space of 15 months, from March 2020, the three main Covid loan schemes – bounce back, CBILS and a scheme for larger loans, CLBILS – handed out nearly £80bn to businesses with fraud losses estimated at £4.9bn at the end of March, money the government is unlikely to ever recover.

The UK government wasted hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money on poor quality and unusable personal protective equipment (PPE) while leaving frontline workers insufficiently protected from covid-19. The decision to prioritise hospitals meant that social care providers were left exposed by the lack of PPE contributing significantly to deaths in care homes in the first wave.

Among the government deals was a contract with a jeweller worth £70.5m (€80.5m; $97.6m) to buy sterile gowns. It also signed contracts for millions of face masks, which were not usable in the NHS because they had the wrong type of fixing.

The question of whether greater investments in health care in non-crisis times may have reduced the level of emergency funding needed to respond effectively to the pandemic warrants important reflection.


Money

Now with more money going out and less coming in, the English government has only one option – to borrow.

When a government spends more than it collects, it runs an annual budget deficit. The level of the national debt in the UK equates to 108% of national output (GDP) and the average amount of debt owed per person in the UK to day is ten thousand pounds.

This is a country that sold it soul to consumerism,  which is still spending millions on football with millions of lotto funds spent to win medals, with a homicide rate was 11.7 per million population, while small businesses and charities are going bust.

Like most of Europe it is in a downward spiral economically, with inflation and energy cost mounting ( due in part to the Russian invasion of the Ukraine,) and will have to borrow another £200bn by the end of the year.

 Its’ no wonders it is going down the Pan.

————————

 In the back ground there are other reason for its troubles–  its class system, its colonial history, its antiquated education system, its benefits system, its first past the post election system, to mention a few.

Its colonial past making it a very ethnically diverse nation,( People born outside of the UK account for 10% of the UK’s population.)

It has lost its once dominance as an empirical power in the world.

Once a rich country the crimes of your past are catching-up with you.

Britain was the world’s largest market for transportation of human lives, bowing to the new citadel whose tentacles reached out into great swathes of colonial wealth – and steadily drank it dry until the slave trade was finally banned by an act of parliament.  The arrogance and greed of your masters could not go unnoticed – could not pass-by unatoned for.  Nor could the pacifistic stance taken by the greater populous when confronted with such frequent acts of national and international vandalism.

Like most of us it has now become enslaved to the smart phone.

Now a country of digitalized citizens, with short term ambitions, in desperate need of a written constitution.

Why?

Despite considerable social change, and strong policy intervention, it still have some way to go to address equality of opportunity and racism.

—————————-

In the next few days the Conservative party will elect a new leader to take control of the country, without a general election.

He or she is facing social, unrest, as the UK economy is now too weak for sharp spending cuts due to the recent financial crisis, and Covid  pandemic, it is now currently facing serious issues in terms of cutting its unemployment rate and reducing its national debt.

Not to mention other current issues such as immigration, internal ethnic relationship, internal security, economic recovery, and Britain’s relationship with the EU all acting as major blocks to the progress of the British society.

Whatever the next British government may be, these are the issues that party has to address and solve. 

Modern British society has to find ways to deal with these crucial issues in order to move towards a brighter future.

So who owns the country?

Private no right of way sign

Behind this simple question lies England’s oldest and best-kept secret. It’s a secret that goes back to the Domesday Book – and an issue that goes to the heart of many of the biggest problems the country face to day.

Central government owns more than 16 million square metres of property and land across the UK – six times the area of the City of London. There are over 97,000 properties owned by foreign firms in England and Wales.

Collectively, the Royal family owns 180,550 acres of land, or roughly 282 square miles with an elite of less than 1% of the population owning half of England with a few thousand dukes, baronets and City bankers now owning far more land than all of Middle England put together.

As Mark Twain once said, “buy land: they’re not making it anymore” – and in England, its scarcity has made it so sought-after that land values have increased fivefold since 1995.

Just over 400 hectares (1,000 acres) of central London’s super-prime real estate belongs to the Crown, the Church, and four wealthy aristocratic estates.

Over 200,000 hectares (500,000 acres) of the English uplands are tied up in huge grouse-moor estates owned by around 150 people. The Duke of Northumberland, whose family lineage stretches back to Domesday, owns 40,468 hectares (100,000 acres) – a tenth of his home county.

Corporations own around 18% of England and Wales.

The Crown Estate owns London’s Regent Street, including the freehold for Apple’s flagship UK store, from which the Crown collects more rent than from all its agricultural land.

The National Trust owns around a fifth of the Lake District National Park in Cumbria.

The Duchy of Cornwall owns London’s Oval Cricket Ground, Maiden Castle in Dorset (above) and Ham Hill in Somerset.

Paternoster Square in the City of London, home of the London Stock Exchange, is owned by the Church Commissioners.

The Crown still owns the freehold OF the Houses of Parliament.

The housing crisis hasn’t been caused by a sudden rise in the price of bricks and mortar, but rather in the value of the land on which homes are built.

The vast gap in living standards between the precariat and the executive class are all to some extent the result of increased foreign ownership of almost everything that continue to call ‘British’.

There is hope, however to be fair few countries will escape the fever that’s upon this world – Climate change.

A fever for which the only cure is the unconditional metamorphosis of man himself, washed through and through, cleansed of that reckless hubris which has brought us to this tipping point of all of us having to live without the all gentle arts that nature had so diligently taught us.

The tide is turning upon mankind. Now it is our turn to be on the receiving end.

In the coming years Climate Change will make the cost of living we see to day ingenuous, compared to what is in store.

No man or woman can turn his or hers back for long upon her simmering powers.

When it comes to climate no man can lay claim to having pacified and sold her soul – because passivity was not on her agenda, and her soul was never for sale. And those who sought to profit from her bounty will soon leave empty handed; for that time, prophesied of old, has finally come. And yes, nature it is that once again rises up in defiance of all attempts to bring her under the control of those who would use and abuse her for their private wealth and make of her a platform for staging their profit driven foreign wars.

Not even the vicious technologically engineered destruction of our climate can suppress the rising winds of change that are upon this scarred and battered jewel called Earth. It can only increase their velocity.

The result is only too obvious with unstable work, often poorly paid, and increasingly inadequate to support a family. It is unsurprising therefore that there has been a sharp increase in poverty much of it in families in full-time work.

Prepare yourselves for the deluge – a great cleansing is upon the island; a cleansing that will jolt befuddled minds into memories of great stories of other eras, when lands were not swallowed by mighty acts of nature.

You were so proud to turn away from nature and forge your industrial steel into the wheels of the brave new world of mass consumerism  you new face a heavy price for its blinkered, stubborn occupants, who for so long turned a blind eye on deeper truths and refused to look upon the blood encrusted pages of your colonial history.

Oh England, my England, so where is your soul today?

————————

At this point you may well be asking what if anything can be done?

The master Conservative plan is levelling up. The big idea for post – Brexit Britain.

It identifies six capitals: physical capital (i.e. infrastructure and housing), human capital (skills and health), intangible capital (ideas and innovations), financial capital (business finance), social capital (community and public trust), and institutional capital  (local leadership).

The plan comes at a defining moment but it will fail to devolve enough power and money.

Why?

Because the places that have an abundance are now in a virtuous circle, where the different capitals reinforce one another.

Because is not matched by the scale of investment or the proposed solutions. Missing are a clear set of mechanisms that break the vicious cycles in places that are lacking in the six capitals.

Because this work has to be done at the local level because places face different challenges and have different growth potential.

Because if there is going to any levelling up is going to happen centrally from Whitehall.

Because the existing system for distributing money is highly complex  inequality will be aggravated and come to the forefront in the next general election.

Levelling up is a scatter gun approach for votes and it is on this feeling that the Government’s future electoral hopes hang.

IN THE END HERE IS THE BEADY EYE’S ADVICE TO WHO EVER GETS INTO POWER.

APART FROM A WRITTEN CONSTITUTION,  MAKE EDUCATION FREE AND BRING BACK A YEAR OF NATIONAL SERVICE TO TEACH THE VALUES THAT ARE NECESSARY AND FUNDEMENTAL TO THE FONDATIONS OF ANY NATION.  PUT THE PEOPLE FIRST NOT THE GDP.

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin..

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

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THE BEADY EYE ASK’S. HAVE WE ALL GONE BONKERS WHEN IT COMES TO CLIMATE CHANGE?

30 Tuesday Aug 2022

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2022: The year we need to change., Climate Change., Disaster Capitalism., Environment, Human Collective Stupidity., Life., Natural World Disasters, Reality., State of the world, Telling the truth., The essence of our humanity., THE NEW NORM., The Obvious., The state of the World., Truth, Unanswered Questions., Uncategorized, What is shaping our world., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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Four minute listen.

( Five minute read)

The message is clear Climate Change is here and is already having a significant impact.

It is inconceivable that we still have people refusing to accept the facts that surround them,  even if they saw 100 more years of it plain and apparent they and unfortunately many of our present world leaders are blind to what is happing and what is to come.

How much more evidence do they and us need ?

MAKE YOUR MINDS UP!

The Evidence for Rapid Climate Change Is Compelling:

I’ve not noticed any changes in the weather outside of the norm or I don’t give a Fuck what is happing. I’d rather live on another planet, than on one where every aspect of your life is subject to rigorous scientific control is not possible.

There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate.Rivers and reservoirs have shrunk dramatically in the past 20 years

Right now there’s nothing like enough understanding.

Observers recognise that the decisive, political steps to enable the cuts in carbon to take place will have to happen before the end of next year.

Human activity is the principal cause. It is undeniable that human activities have produced the atmospheric gases that have trapped more of the Sun’s energy in the Earth system.

However if there was meeting tomorrow of world leaders they would as before, argue that its not their responsibility, making promises that cannot be kept.

To have any chance of drilling into them the urgency of tackling climate change on a global scale perhaps it would be best to invite them all together in Gautama bay, take their mobile phone, starve them for a week and get them to write their last wills and testaments.

This might fired the starting gun on what will become a global race to eliminate fossil fuels.

At this point you might be asking why is it so difficult for the world to take action.

The effort to control climate change impacts virtually every element of a country’s economy “so countries have traditionally been nervous about what they’re going to be asked to do.”

The idea that every five years countries would be asked to come up with more ambitious targets, ramping up their efforts is therefore bull shit.

“We are living in an interconnected global village with a common stake,” says Xi.

Hybrid wind-solar plant at Zaozhuang, China“All countries are closely connected and we share a common future. No country can gain from others’ difficulties or maintain stability by taking advantage of others’ troubles.”

“We should embrace the vision of a community with a shared future in which everyone is bound together,” he continues.  He is right!  Heart-stirring stuff, eh?

A cynic might think his reassuring words were partly a ploy to reingratiate China with the climate-conscious Europeans, and isolate a climate-sceptic US President MR DUMP. 

But there is a much more important broader context for his announcement:

Let’s be clear what it means:

China, the most polluting nation on earth – responsible for around 28% of global greenhouse gas emissions – is saying it is going cut that back to virtually zero within 40 years. The commitment is of significant because China has never promised anything near as bold as this on climate before. President Xi’s 2060 pledge was notably unconditional – China will move ahead whether or not other countries chose to follow.

Why?

Because the cost of renewables follows the logic of all manufacturing – the more you produce, the cheaper it gets. Why invest in new oil wells or coal power stations that will become obsolete before they can repay themselves over their 20-30-year life?

Why carry carbon risk in their portfolios at all?

It looks like Xi has judged that the economics of clean energy mean that decarbonising is now the most sensible choice for the Chinese economy as well as for the world’s climate.

So can we stop worrying about climate change?

Sadly we cannot.

It is going to take eye-popping investment in wind, solar and nuclear power.

Even as the economics tilts in favour of renewables the task of decarbonisation is still enormous. However once half the world is on-board with the project of decarbonisation it is hard to see how the rest could hold out.

Evidence of environmental damage and climate change everywhere. It’s the biggest challenge humanity has ever faced. Tackling it means changing how we do virtually everything.

We are right to be anxious and afraid at the prospect.  Remember that by  2050 urban centres will hold 75% of the world population and 40% of them have no resilience plans in place, and have no plans to develop one in the hear future.  

Currently accounting for 70% of the worlds population and 70% of global GDP and 70% of CO2 emissions.

Don’t get me started on the food crisis.

You’ll be even more apprehensive if I was venture down that online rabbit hole.

Consider this conundrum:

When you talk to climate scientists you quickly discover they are far more worried about the dangers of global warming than most of us. Some tell you privately that they have had counselling to cope with the psychological effects of knowing the world is facing an impending disaster and not enough is being done.

Yes at this moment in history were in a mess.  Wars, Natural disasters, Energy, Rampant Inequality etc. On the right, I am alright Jack on the left just of a scream that will before defang in the next few years.

Leadership is action not position.

As Henry Miller said  ” No man is great enough or wise enough for any of us to surrender our destiny to. The only way in which anyone can lead us is to restore to us the belief in our own guidance. “

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

Contact: bobdillon33gmail.com

THE BEADY EYE SAYS: WITH CLIMATE CHANGE WE HAVE NOT SEEN ANYTHING YET! WHAT’S COMING WILL DEWARF OUR WOREST NIGHTMARES AND FEARS.

13 Saturday Aug 2022

Posted by in 2022: The year we need to change., Climate Change.

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( Seven minute read) 

Playing down the potential worst effects of global heating and climate breakdown is nothing less than climate appeasement.

It does nothing to help spur the urgent action that is required, and by underplaying the climate threat, works – intentionally or not – to encourage a grudging and cautionary approach to emissions cuts that we simply can no longer afford.

If we can encourage the green shoots and return to vigorous growth or leaders assume everything will be honky dory.   This is utter bollox.  As it is nature that will decide the outcome. It’s up to the planet to handle what we have created.

International negotiations on climate change have been going on for over 20 years. The vast majority of governments now agree that urgent steps are needed to reduce our impact on global warming.

So far, they have failed to sign up to a universal plan of action.

It is now more than obvious that we humans are only capable of acting on a limited scale as individual countries and it is now already too late to prevent terrible damage and the resulting consequence’s.

So we can only use our ingenuity to manage the consequence’s. 

                                   ——————————- 

Climate is sometimes mistaken for weather.  It is not weather it is everything that makes weather.

So far, during this decade, we have seen no sign whatsoever that real climate action is coming and that has to change.  Instead while the earth fries we are more interested in growth, the cost of living, and we need now more than ever to be told the whole story – warts and all because the human influence which is happening now is changing at a much faster rate then we think. 

 But is that the truth too bleak for general consumption?

If drastic, life-changing, action is being mooted, people need to know – have a right to know.

Why?

Because people simply don’t place their daily behaviours in an environmental context. 

Humans have destroyed a tenth of Earth’s remaining wilderness in the last 25 years.

Whether we like it or not here is what to come.

Once we pass a certain threshold, physics takes over.

We are approaching a critical tipping point that could spin global warming completely out of control with no possibility of reversing developments.

The pace and degree of climate change are about more than just anthropogenic emissions. It is now about tipping points and feedback loops.

Suddenly, climate change has ceases to be something vaguely inconvenient that we can leave future generations to deal with. Instead, it becomes far more of an immediate threat capable of tearing our world apart.

Wildfires are devastating hundred  of thousand of acres, even happing where you might least expect them – the boreal forests that encircle the globe in the Arctic North, for example, have in recent years “experienced wildfires at a rate and scale not seen in at least 10,000 years.” 

Sudden changes in the behaviour of ice sheets, carbon sources and sinks, and ocean currents, are accelerate warming and its consequences go way beyond the expected.

Extreme heat and heatwaves have happened since the beginning of time, but across the board.  Climate change is making heatwaves more common, severe, and long-lasting. As seas get warmer, they add more water vapor and heat energy into the atmosphere. This extra heat and water, just happens to be the perfect fuel for hurricanes and in the right conditions, can make dangerous storms even more powerful.

In 2007, for example, water scarcity, crop failures and livestock deaths stemming in part from climate-related drought drove an estimated 1.5 million people to the cities from rural areas in Syria, helping spark the horrifying civil war that displaced millions more.

It is beginning to look as though a climate-changed jet stream is driving conditions that lead to episodes of extreme weather being ‘locked in’, so that both their intensity and duration are elevated. 

Nearly 20,000 species of plants and animals are at a high risk of extinction and if trends continue, Earth could see another mass extinction event within a few centuries.

Viruses love hot dry conditions to thrive and climate change will ideal conditions for waterborne pathogens like bacteria, viruses, and protozoa, which flourish in warmer waters.

Oceans are warming and becoming more acidic, and sea level is rising.

Changes in the patterns and amount of rainfall, as well as changes in the timing and amount of stream flow, can affect water supplies and water quality and the production of hydroelectricity.

The homes of 200 million people will be below sea level in 70 years.

At least 155 million people were pushed into acute food insecurity in 2020 due to extreme weather.

What’s clear is that the climate we are accustomed to is no longer a reliable guide for what to expect in the future.

Change Is Not Merely An Environmental Problem.

Anyone still convinced that climate change is purely an environmental problem should open there eyes.  

Migration on an unprecedented scale in areas of already high tension; drought and crop-failure, leading to intensified competition for food, water and energy in regions where resources are already stretched to the limit.  (And economic disruption on the scale predicted in the 2006 Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, and not seen since the end of the Second World War.)

 “This will not be the first time people have fought over land, water and resources, but this time it will be on a scale that dwarfs the conflicts of the past”, an unstable climate will create the very kind of tensions and conflicts for this to happen.

For too long, we have been waging a senseless and suicidal war on nature. 

    Wildfire

Notwithstanding the unlikelihood of achieving net zero global emissions in a little more than three decades “climate change is a threat that can bring us together if we are wise enough to stop it from driving us apart”.,

If we don’t take collective action and protect our Mother Earth, the forthcoming generation might not be able to see it. The earth is precious and we need to save it from destruction.

Unfortunately the solutions have become perceived as a problem by the moneyman!

They tend to try to make us believe that the solutions will bring down the economy! 

Let me tell them, it is coming for your wine, your coffee beans, and your ill founded gains … as well as for your health and safety. The cost of inaction on climate change is predicted to reach a staggering $44 trillion. There will be no economy by 2060.The dry, salt-crusted Lake Poopo. Poorly irrigated land, logging or evaporation can cause desertification. The amount ...

WHAT CAN BE DONE?

Science speaks for itself as to whether it is convincing or not, but what climate change will mean is not determined by the science but our relationship with the larger reality of climate change.

The real problem is that our relationship is presently putting humanity at the centre rather then a common consensus on what reality is and how it all came about. 

The Egyptian in the days of Pharaohs tied our existence to the stars. the Hebrews had god already on the scene while the Greeks philosophers invented the founding idea of science and by the middle ages the nature of the Universe was no longer a topic of debate.    

This relationship is now unfortunately driven by inequality and technology, resulting in a complete upheaval of reality on a mental and social transformations, as one picture is replaced by another. 

Are our societies primed to re-envision our planet?   Not yet!

There is one thing that is certain all organisms must bend to the forces of nature.

We will unable replant a new ecosystem returning to a primeval slug. 

So the overriding question is to figure out how we humans might fit into the story. 

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.  

 

Contact;  bobdillon33@gmail.com 

THE BEADY EYE SAYS. EVERY RESEARCH HAS ITS LIMATIONS AND SO IT WILL BE WHEN IT COMES TO HUMANITY PENDING DEMISE.

09 Tuesday Aug 2022

Posted by in 2022: The year we need to change., Climate Change., Earth, Evolution., Human Collective Stupidity., Human values., Humanity., Imagination., Purchasing Power., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, Telling the truth., The common good., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Truth, Unanswered Questions., Uncategorized, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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( Five minute read) 

All animals must learn to do some things.

This is true even of those animals that function almost entirely by instinct. But exactly what that means – whether they are making rational decisions or simply reacting to their environment through mindless reflex – when it comes to making decisions, consciously considering their goals and ways to satisfy those goals before acting remains a matter of scientific dispute.

Apes and Monkeys  Matriarchal Elephants, Parrots, Octopuses, Pigs, Dolphins, Gorillas, Chimpanzees, Dogs, Ravens, Pigeons, Raccoons, Foxes, Crows,  Ants,  Whales, are all able to reason to a certain extent, to name a few.

In the true sense of learning, is by making mistakes and remembering to avoid them in the future.

We are also animals, so how do we  determine exactly what sets humans apart from other animals.

By learning from our mistakes had sharing our finds through language that we all understand and then taking correction action after reasoning that not to do so is more than dangerous. 

( Reasoning can best be defined as the basic action of thinking in a sensible and rational way about something. Sounds easy, right? Most of the time, reasoning happens automatically, but there are many types of  reasoning,  deductive, inductive, abductive, cause and effect, analogical, critical thinking, and de- compositional.

Reasoning is the ability to assess things rationally by applying logic based on new or existing information when making a decision or solving a problem and all reasoning begins with a set of reductionist assumptions that may not be challenged.

According to the Google Dictionary:

The meaning of reasoning is “thinking about something in a logical, sensible way”.
The meaning of logic is “reasoning done according to strict principles of validity”
The meaning of sensible is “… in accordance with wisdom or prudence”
Validity means to be “factually sound.”)

                                              —————————-

However all research has its limitations so it’s important to give an explanation of how your research limitations can affect the conclusions and thoughts drawn from your research.

The first thing needed is to take the new or given information and combine it with existing information, this allows for examination of all information before starting to make a decision.

Humans possess the power of reasoning but where is it when it comes to facing climate change?

“Since systematic scientific assessments began in the 1970s, the influence of human activity on the warming of the climate system has evolved from theory to established fact.”

Life on Earth depends on energy coming from the Sun. But several lines of evidence show that current global warming cannot be explained by changes in energy from the Sun:

  • The greenhouse effect is essential to life on Earth, but human-made emissions in the atmosphere are trapping and slowing heat loss to space.
  • Five key greenhouse gases are CO2, nitrous oxide, methane, chlorofluorocarbons, and water vapor.
  • While the Sun has played a role in past climate changes, the evidence shows the current warming cannot be explained by the Sun.

The dry, salt-crusted Lake Poopo. Poorly irrigated land, logging or evaporation can cause desertification. The amount ...

Here a few facts to put in your pipe to reason on.

People around the world are witnessing first-hand how climate change can wreak havoc on the planet.

200 million people in the world, more than three times the UK population, will live below the tideline by the end of this century.

Wildfires, from Australia to California and Greece, are raging for longer and spreading farther than ever before. Blistering temperatures are proving fatal.

A chilling number of Earth’s other denizens, including 40 percent of all amphibians known to science (about 3,200 species) is under threat due to human impact,

Plastic production and use is forecast to double over the next 20 years, and quadruple by the early 2050s,

At least 155 million people, 2.3 times as many as live in the UK, were pushed into acute food insecurity in 2020 due to extreme weather, as well as conflict and economic shocks.

Climate change is accelerating the spread of infectious diseases.

Nowhere on the planet is spared the impact of climate change.

Climate change both reduces the amount of food that’s available and makes it less nutritious.

It’s no good just having cold winters to replenish ice levels.

“The science is unequivocal.”

Once we pass a certain threshold, physics takes over it therefore stands beyond all reasoning, “If we don’t do anything, that would be cataclysmic.”

Unfortunately we are too occupied with ourselves, killing each other, making unsustainable profits looking at our selves on smartphones, and all the rest of the shit promoted by growth at all costs widening the inequalities in the world,  to acknowledge that the earth we live on is in crises and if no globally action is undertaken now, (not in thirty years or any time tomorrow.) there will be no growth put a race to the bottom.   

So the consequences of either ignorant of or in denial about physical alterations that climate change is going to bring cannot be left to people alone. 

Clarity about the danger is in some sense is our only possible atonement for leaving  not just a nuclear poison world behind but a world destroyed by climate change is another kettle of fish.

Why are we unable to see this? 

Many of humanity’s most dangerous problems arise from our antiquate way of looking at the Universe, which is at odds with the principals of science that we blithely use in countless technologies. 

Our cultures over the centuries downgraded the importance of having a home. To day ” the Universe” in the popular mind has become little more than a shapeless space or a fantasy setting for science fiction.

No atonement will suffice the generation to come. 

Were the generation that needs to make the big jump to sustainability. 

Get your finger out of where the sun does not shine and use your buying power to demand change.

Perhaps you will have noticed that taking the knee has disappeared from football ( Racism is cured)  if so let sport take up the mantle of promoting sustainability by holding aloft (for a minute) a piece of the earth they are playing on. 

Not until we stop focusing on or differences, classifying others into them and us will we realize the pearl we all live on. 

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.     

 

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bobdillon33@bobdillon33

THE BEADY EYE SAYS. WE HAD TWELVE TO SAVE THE PLANET.

03 Wednesday Aug 2022

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2022: The year we need to change., Climate Change.

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(Four minute read) 

Now it seems, there’s a growing consensus that the next 18 months will be critical in dealing with the global heating crisis, among other environmental challenges.

Right now, we are losing the fight against climate change AND THERE IS A GOOD CHANCE SOCIETY COULD COLLAPSE AS SOON AS 2050 IF SERIOUS MITIGATION ACTIONS ARENT TAKEN IN THE NEXT DECADE.

Right now we will have to alter our trajectory very quickly if we wish to have a good chance of limiting the global average temperature rise to less than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.

Right now there’s nothing like enough understanding of, or commitment to REDUCING CARBON EMMISSIONS.

Right now the risks the world runs if this limit is ignored is life will survive, but not life as we know it.

Right now we have barely started to think about how to apply sufficient pressure on our governments 

Right now emissions reductions by efficiency improvement — vital though that is, are and will be inadequate.

Right now, we are heading towards 3C of heating by 2100 not 1.5.

Right now current plans are nowhere near strong enough to keep temperatures below the so-called safe limit.

We need to shift the world on to a different investment and green growth path right now.

                         ———————————-

The natural tendencies are either to do nothing, while insisting there is no problem, or to agree there is a problem, while merely pretending to act.

It is not clear which form of obfuscation is worse.

Above all, climate change involves huge distributional issues — between rich countries and poor ones, between countries that caused the problem and those that did not, between countries that matter for the solution and those that do not and, not least, between people today, who make the decisions, and people tomorrow, who suffer the results.

Without question, 2020 is a hard deadline for that leadership to finally manifest itself.

But if there’s ongoing political turmoil around climate change then the government may not have the bandwidth to unpick the multiple global challenges that climate change presents.

The sense that the end of next year is the last chance saloon for climate change is becoming clearer all the time. Decisions taken on climate change in the next year or so will be critical, up to one million species could be lost in coming decades.

Political steps to enable the cuts in carbon to take place will have to happen before the end of next year.

The profound urgency for ambitious climate action is still patchy even though we are now witness to a collective convergence of public mobilisation, worsening climatic impacts and dire scientific warnings that compel decisive climate leadership.

If we don’t see that don’t hold your breath!

Consider what the future could be, picking up the mantle against climate change may not seem so bad after all.

 Its up to us to start using our buy power to force change. ( See previous post) 

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THE BEADY EYE SAYS: GOVERNMENTS MUST GO BEYOND GROWTH (GDP) AND FOCUS INSTEAD ON A NEW SOCIAL CONTRACT.

02 Tuesday Aug 2022

Posted by in 2022: The year we need to change., Climate Change., Fourth Industrial Revolution., GDP., How to do it., Human Collective Stupidity., Human values., Humanity., Imagination., Life., Our Common Values., Purchasing Power., Purpose of life., State of the world, Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The Obvious., The pursuit of profit., The state of the World., The world to day., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  , We can leave a legacy worthwhile., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Twelve minute read) 

This is an easy thing to say but to implement is another kettle of fish because it requires a paradigm shift in the way developed countries approach economic policy.

Changing the world seems like one of these huge, impossible things that no man can possibly achieve.

It requires a rethink how we define and measure economic success.

In order to find new ways to transform the world we live in goals will have to be built into the structures of the economy from the outset, rather than hoped for as a by-product, or added after the event.

Everything that goes around, comes around.

People always wish for change because it’s the constant thing in this world, and they always have this deep, inner desire to improve things even if there’s nothing to improve.

Every people I know wants change, but for what purpose exactly?

Why do we crave change?   And how exactly to change? 

How exactly can you change without making mistakes?

How to actually know you’re making a change if you don’t know your objective?

What if there’s nothing to be changed?

Where do we start?

Change comes in learning from the mistakes of our past.

Realising that it’s a mistake.

When things stay the same and your life is getting worse and worse, then it’s time for a change.

                                   ————————-

Broadly speaking an economy is an interrelated system  of human labour, exchange, and consumption. 

Economic policy should prioritise environmental sustainability, economic resilience, reducing inequality and improving wellbeing economic growth in OECD countries have generated ‘significant harms’ over recent decades – including rising inequality and catastrophic environmental degradation.

Instead of focusing on gross domestic product (GDP), now is the time to  prioritise environmental sustainability, improving wellbeing, reducing inequality and strengthening economic resilience. 

A return to the status quo would be disastrous so governments that are spending unprecedented sums to rebuild their economies after the Covid pandemic, must look beyond growth alone to prioritise the needs of people and planet.

It argues that this will require a new role for the state, with governments becoming more entrepreneurial, seeking to shape markets and steer the process of economic change, not simply correcting market failures.

                                    ———————-

So where are we?

Various layers of inequality have being exposed and exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

It has laid bare risks we have ignored for decades: inadequate health systems; gaps in social protection; structural inequalities; the digital divide, environmental degradation. the energy sources we count on are limited, just like water.

In fact, most wars and political conflicts in the world start because of lack and/or need for energy resources. In America alone, the consumption of energy rises every year, and it doubles every 20 years. 

The climate crises is showing that computers and software will not be able to replicate human creativity.

This “new kind of social contract” is required to transform the relationship between the state, business, civil society and citizens.Industryweek 34572 Understanding 5g 5g 623431736

5G as on par with the printing press, electricity and the steam engine –

Self-driving cars, remote robotic surgery, autonomous weapons — all that and much more is set to be delivered via the 5G wireless network, which promises to transform our lives and add trillions of dollars to the global economy every year.

This leap forward in connectivity will be key to the spread of artificial intelligence and machine learning, enabling massive amounts of data to be collected from remote and mobile sensors and analysed in real time.

Drive everything from home appliances that order groceries to autonomous vehicles to smart cities.

Given the power of 5G technology, it is no surprise that it has also become a proxy for the broader power struggles. 

However Technology alone will not change the core problems in the world. 

Why?

  • The Fourth Industrial Revolution can’t be a panacea for the problems caused by our obsession with unchecked economic growth. Over the past couple of decades, the world has become enamoured with the transformative power of technology.
  •  In spite of all the hype, digital technology could not prevent nor control the spread of the coronavirus.
  • Technology won’t solve the climate crisis, prevent the recurring wildfires.

                     ———————————————-

The last thing the world needs is another ‘revolution’ that ignores the external cost to society of our unchecked obsession with economic growth at all cost.

We all think time and money is so important, but are our health, peace and happiness not more important?

We’re in this together and it can only be solve together. 

We can protest, till we are blue in the face, demand change till the cows come home, hold world conferences till we run out of air.  There is however one weapon if we all of us were to use it collectively that would bring change – that is  Buying power.

Doing the right thing for the environment, pro-actively using it to effect change.

In this uphill battle, the good news is that solutions are out there.  

Business would  be held accountable for addressing local and
global societal needs.

Industry players that suffer would not helplessly standing by as their revenues and profits dwindled, they would act intensified competition.

But is this inevitable? Can companies learn to adapt and react to ensure their continued success and prosperity? The answer is yes.

Since buyer power is dynamic, just visualize this scenario.

What would happen if we all refused to pay our energy bills till the Government put in place non repayable grants to install solar panels or insulation. 

There is no right answer here but it would be impossible to either jail or fine everybody.

It is therefore important to understand what choices we have available to us to determine what type of buyer we will be, and therefore where our strengths lie.

That strength would be a campaign conducted on our mobile phones. 

Once a month campaign targeting profit for profit sake, demanding change.

Your choices would impact their bottom line.

Resilience – not technology – is the answer to our biggest

challenges.

It’s either an entirely environmentally-friendly existence. 

Or are we just going to except a burning world with wars and mass migration till there is nothing left to live for. 

 

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THE BEADY EYE SAYS: THE SCIENCE ON CLIMATE CHANGE IS NOW PROVING TO BE UNEQUIVOCAL.

29 Friday Jul 2022

Posted by in Climate Change.

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( Five minute read) 

The COVID-19 emergency to a great extent shattered our sense of normalcy and forced us to grapple with the kind of world we want – and need.

Climate Change will not ask us it IS HAPPING WHETER WE LIKE IT OR NOT WITH THE threshold for dangerous global warming will likely be crossed between 2027 and 2042.

While 2022 is set to be a year of unprecedented climate chaos across the planet leading climate scientists issue new warnings about climate change and the soaring cost of fuel highlights the world’s ongoing dependence on fossil fuels.

How did we get here?

For decades, fossil fuel companies have stymied efforts to make this necessary energy transition by sowing public doubt about climate science and pushing a misleading narrative of consumer responsibility for the climate crisis. 

In fact, only 100 investor and state-owned fossil fuel companies are responsible for around 70 percent of the world’s historical GHG emissions. They have led the charge on climate change denial, fossil fuel companies have driven widespread false perceptions. They have stymied critical efforts to fight the climate crisis.

This sustained climate denialism by the fossil fuel industry is exposed in the below BBC documentary: Big Oil v the World. Exxon along with Koch Industries and the Republican Donal Trump committing the larges crime of all crimes supressing the science behind Climate Change for years in the name of the God profit.  

The fossil fuel industry must be held accountable for its damaging behaviour.

We should be placing financial penalties against these companies  because of the deception perpetuated to there shareholders and the public about company prospects in the face of potential climate regulation. These companies forced communities affected by climate change to pay for future damage caused by the crisis. 

However holding the fossil fuel industry accountable becomes more complex when one considers that most of the companies are diversified into various products, which are not all equally harmful to the environment.

Ultimately, removing subsidies for fossil fuels and implementing a carbon tax with a consumer rebate are strong first steps towards fighting climate change. This move would effectively hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for its emissions track record and efforts to divert climate action.

 So more than ever, we need storytelling, arts, and the humanities to generate new ways of responding to the ecological crisis we all face, and which disproportionately impacts marginalized peoples the most while bearing the least responsibility for climate change.

We believe that together, we can create a world where we rapidly transition away from fossil fuels to end the climate crisis.

Is this true? 

We all know how but very few of us have the courage to take actions that will make a difference.

Just as World War II called an earlier generation to greatness, so the climate crisis is calling today’s rising youth to action: to create a better future.People painting a mural on a building

We want the developing world to skip the fossil fuel/carbon dioxide/ methane-producing step and go right to renewable energy, so they won’t have to go back and clean up the environment they will have destroyed or degraded because of fossil fuels.                                            —————– 

The science is unequivocal.

The effects of human-caused global warming are happening now, are irreversible on the timescale of people alive today, and will worsen in the decades to come. 

Even thought the coming climate change will not only shatter our very existence and every other living thing, with souring TEMPERTURES, drought, wild fires, rising sea levels, oceans less oxygenated, release of methane, wars, and mass migration, with ecosystems and food supply under treat.

BUT STILL WE DON’T YET GET THE NEED TO CHANGE.

Global climate change is not a future problem. Right now, we are losing the fight against climate change.

Until now, wide ranges in overall temperature projections have made it difficult to pinpoint outcomes in different mitigation scenarios but we must avoid situations where leaders can claim that even the weakest policies can avert dangerous consequences.

Amplify the need for world leaders to address the vicious cycle of loss and damage experienced by climate-vulnerable countries across the globe yet we do not have access to decision-making spaces.

Once the world is talking about it in a constructive way, things will get done. 

If you don’t like regulations now, just wait till climate change gets serious!


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THE BEADY EYE ASKS. WHY IS THE WORLD IN THE STATE IT IS?

24 Sunday Jul 2022

Posted by in 2022: The year we need to change., Biotechnology., Climate Change., Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Environment, Fourth Industrial Revolution., Genetic engineering, Human Collective Stupidity., Imagination., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Reality., State of the world, Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, The Future, The Obvious., The state of the World., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  , Unanswered Questions., Wars, What is shaping our world., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, World View.

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( Twenty minute read) 

Following on from the posts under the heading of what shaped the world lets look at the state of the world as it is to day.

The world is becoming increasingly interconnected and interdependent, with ever more political, social, cultural, financial and commercial relations transgressing nation state borders but the convergence of issues facing the earth are now so interrelated that most of them cannot be fully understood out of context.

The recent pandemic served to prove our fragility and our interconnectedness.

When we start thinking about constructing a model of the world it’s better to say that while you are living in the world, it’s fairly difficult to judge it objectively or even understand all of its moving parts.

In addressing that issue I will note that many of today’s issues have legacies 100 years old and will not be addressed in this post.

If anything has brought us together over the last year and a half, it is our feeling of vulnerability about the present and uncertainty about the future.

Now urgent action, taken together, is needed to change course and reimagine our futures and this action must encompass an ethic of care, reciprocity, and solidarity.

But to translating and contextualizing these actions in a collective effort it requires a synopsis of the current state of the world.

It is only when the mess it is presented as a whole not news flashes that we have any concept of the state of the planet. 

The whole structure of today’s world, much of it inherited from an earlier era, is up for serious discussion.

Thinking of the present state of the world its remarkable what can be achieved when leaders are prepared to lead.

To achieve the maximum benefits from the extraordinary possibilities that artificial intelligence (AI) and Robots will usher in tomorrow. 

                            _______________________________

There are many factors behind what I call ‘the disillusioned society’ but greed and fear, two of the ancient enemies of human kind are the big drivers of Earth’s ecological and human systems which are now in severe crisis.

Climate change is a trend that affects all trends- economic trends, security trends. Everything will be impacted. And it becomes more dramatic with each passing year.

Our throwaway society, which in part drives markets and GDP, is continuing to damage the environment. 

A key decision to changing our thinking and attitudes to polluting activities and endless growth is to dump Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as the universal measure of progress. It is a totally inadequate measure of societal progress.Who is more powerful – states or corporations?

That said here is an overview of the current state of the world. 

Only 2.5% of the world’s water is fresh—the water on which the world’s terrestrial life depends. Around 70% of this fresh water is frozen in ice or permafrost. An estimated 4 billion people, nearly two-thirds of the world population, experience severe water scarcity during at least one month of the year.

Agriculture accounts for 70% of all freshwater withdrawals globally, a ratio that’s only going to increase – to an estimated 85% – as the population grows and agricultural production rises to meet it (by an estimated 50% before 2050).

About 43% of over 7,000 of the world’s languages are endangered. Just 23 languages are spoken by more than half of the world’s people, inhabiting upwards of 85% of the land surface of the globe.

In 2015, an estimated 2.1 billion people lacked access to safely managed drinking water services and 4.5 billion lacked access to safely managed sanitation services. Over 80% of all wastewater returns to the environment without being treated.

Population, pollution, greenhouse gases and deforestation are creating never before seen changes in Earth’s living systems—including a cultural and species extinction rate that is the highest in the planet’s history.

Higher concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases, mainly as the result of human use of fossil fuels, have been determined to be the predominant cause of earth’s changing climate.

Sea levels are already rising by 2mm a year—faster than during the past 5,000 years.

Evidence is growing that the thermohaline circulation, driven by temperature and salinity, could be slowed or stopped by cold fresh water inputs to the Arctic and North Atlantic oceans.

Our oceans are full of plastics. Sea ice and glaciers are melting throughout the globe. More than 93% of the enhanced atmospheric heating since the 1970s has been absorbed by the ocean.  

Over 90% of plastics produced are derived from virgin fossil feedstocks—about 6% of global oil consumption. This is equivalent to the total oil consumption of the global aviation sector.

Over 70,000 new chemicals have been brought into commercial production and released to the environment in the last 100 years.

An estimated 75% of the Earth’s land surface has been degraded through human activities, negatively impacting the well-being of at least 3.2 billion people, pushing the planet towards a sixth mass species extinction, and costing more than 10% of the annual global gross product in loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services.

The failure to reduce world hunger is closely associated with the increase in conflict and violence in several parts of the world. In addition, gains made in ending hunger and malnutrition are being eroded by climate variability and exposure to more complex, frequent and intense climate extremes. Approximately one third of the food produced in the world for human consumption—nearly 1.3 billion tonnes—gets lost or wasted every year.

In 2020, nearly 144 million children under 5 suffer from stunting (under height), 47.0 million children under 5 were wasted (underweight) , and of those, 14.3 million were considered severely wasted.

Industrialized civilization is still dependent upon cheap and reliable fossil fuel energy. There is a limited amount of fossil fuel. It is not “renewable” and there is no known way to make more.

The current humanitarian crisis in Ukraine may be in the spotlight right now however there are currently 27 ongoing conflicts.

A quarter of the entire global population lives in conflict-affected areas. 84 million people were forcibly displaced because of conflict, violence, and human rights violations. This year, it is estimated that at least 274 million people will need humanitarian assistance.

The cost of war is almost unfathomable.

Just imagine what the world could do with that money if conflicts were to end worldwide. 

Conflict drives 80% of humanitarian needs and in 2016, the cost of conflict globally stood at an astonishing $14 trillion. That’s enough to end world hunger 42 times over.

Nearly 11 years after it started, the Syrian refugee crisis remains the largest displacement crisis worldwide (13.2 million, including 6.6 million refugees and more than 6 million internally displaced people). At least 2 million people are living in tented camps with limited access to basic services.

Lasting more than 60 years, the conflict in Myanmar (previously called Burma) remains the longest ongoing civil war in the world.

The recent takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban after 20 years of US-led conflict more than half of the country’s estimated 40 million population face “extreme levels of hunger, and nearly 9 million of them are at risk of famine.

Wars are constantly in the news. 

While we tend to hear more about refugees there are actually twice as many internally displaced persons around the world. In 2013, for instance, there were 16.7 million refugees and 33.3 million internally displaced persons. it’s easy to dismiss them and forget that we’re talking about individual people whose lives have been completely disrupted.

The World Bank and the IMF can pursue their loans in perpetuity, regardless of the loans having been given to dictators or incompetent borrowers, and regardless of whether the money actually benefited the poor.

The current depletion of biological diversity and, in particular, the prospect of severe depletion, if not virtual elimination of tropical forests, wetlands, estuaries and coral reefs that have been the “engines of biodiversity” for hundreds of millions of years, may have profound effects on the evolutionary processes that have previously fostered re-diversification.

Before 1961, the entire Earth satellite population was just over 50 objects. Since 1957, about 9,600 satellites have been launched and about 5500 are still in space—and 2300 of these are still functioning. The total mass of all space objects in Earth’s is more than 8800 tonnes. Earth’s orbit is now cluttered and dangerous with: ~34,000 objects bigger than 10 cm; ~ 900,000 objects from 1cm to 10 cm; and 128,000,000 objects from greater than 1 mm — 1 cm.

By the time you finish reading this paragraph, four acres of rainforests in Brazil (i.e. about three football fields) will be replaced with farmland, largely to grow cattle and animal feed.

The commercial exploitation, militarization and weaponization of space around the earth is ongoing.

Space Tourism is just getting started but the impact of bioengineering is what is going to have profound impacts on society in the near future.

The development of bioengineering issues in tandem with overlapping

technological areas such as artificial intelligence are what is going to shape

the world for the next generations, if climate change does bot wipe us of the

globe.

(Biotechnological discoveries are increasingly facilitated by automated and roboticides, private ‘cloud labs)

These issues will shape the future of bioengineering and must shape modern discussions about its political, societal and economic impact.

Technology is in the infancy of creating a world state. 

                                   ————————————-

The Bioengineering Technologies to Look Out for in the Next Decade – The Wire Science

Bioengineering is a discipline that applies engineering design and principles

to biological systems. Some examples of this fusion are artificial organs or

limbs, the genetic synthesis of new organisms, gene editing, the

computerized simulation of surgery, medical imaging technology and

tissue/organ regeneration.

Bioengineering brings with it both huge potential for good, and risks to

regulate. Like any other technology, bioengineering has damaging potential,

whether it be through misuse, weaponization or accidents. This risk can

create significant threats with large potential consequences to public health,

privacy or to environmental safety.

We need critical thinking to understand what they are, what their impact is and how they are related, with ethical and regulatory frameworks, climate change, inequalities, technological convergence and the misuse of technology, in order to drive informed policy decisions.

Below is by no means a comprehensive list. 

<5Years 5–10 Years >10 Years
Artificial photosynthesis and carbon capture for producing biofuels Regenerative medicine: 3D printing body parts and tissue engineering New makers disrupt pharmaceutical makers
Enhanced photosynthesis for agricultural productivity Microbiome-based therapies Platform technologies to address emerging disease pandemics
New approaches to synthetic gene drives Producing vaccines and human therapeutics in plants Challenges to Taxonomy-Based description and management of biological risk
Human genome editing Manufacturing illegal drugs using engineered organisms Shifting ownership models in biotechnology
Accelerating defense agency research in biological engineering Reassigning codons as genetic firewalls Securing the critical infrastructure needed to deliver the bioeconomic
  Rise of automated tools for biological design, test and optimisation  
Biology as information science: impacts on global governance
Intersection of information security and bio-automation
Effects of the Nagoya Protocol on biological engineering
Corporate espionage and bio crime

Additions.  

  • Using Bioengineering Instead of Animals
  • Using Bioengineering Instead of Plants
  • Using Bioengineering to Create Eco-friendly Materials
  • Using Bioengineering for Greenhouse Gas Sequestration and Removal DNA technology, makes insulin much more accessible to people with diabetes by producing human insulin using bacteria instead of animals.
  • Veggie burgers using bioengineered yeast.
  • Altered yeast to produce collagen, the animal protein that is the main component of leather. 
  • To produce anti-malarial compounds. (Every year, 200 million people are affected by malaria.)
  • Bioengineered yeast to make beer and palm oil.
  • Genetically engineered bacteria that reduce the need for nitrogen fertilizers.
  • Biodegradable product that eliminates both the unsustainable practices
  • Manufacturing biosynthetic indigo could reduce the use of petroleum and the release of toxic chemicals by a factor of five
  • Genetically engineer microbes to actually pull greenhouse gases – such as CO2 and methane – from the air. 
  • Use bacterial fermentation to turn that methane into a biodegradable polymer called poly hydroxy alkanoate (PHA).
  • To  provide nutritious and non-toxic feedstock for farmed fish that doesn’t require overfishing AND removes CO2 from the atmosphere. 

                          ———————————————-

What happens if a world state is reached?

It is natural at this point to ask whether a world state would be desirable— But quite clearly many areas of social life still remain outside state control.

First, all states are sovereign, which means that both domestically and internationally they recognise no jurisdiction superior to their own.

Secondly, all states are equal and should therefore be accorded equality of treatment before the law. 

A world state would not be a utopia in which there was nothing left to struggle over.

But once a world state has emerged those struggles will be domesticated by enforceable law, and so for purposes of state formation will be no longer important. Rather than a complete end of history, therefore, it might be better to say that a world state would be the end of just one kind of history. Even if one telos is over, another would be just beginning.

At the micro-level world state formation is driven by the struggle of individuals and groups for recognition of their subjectivity.

At the macro-level this struggle is channelled toward a world state by the logic of anarchy, which generates a tendency for military technology and war to become increasingly destructive.

The process moves through five stages, each responding to the instabilities of the one before — a system of states, a society of states, world society, collective security, and the world state. Human agency matters all along the way, but is increasingly constrained and enabled by the requirements of universal recognition.

The struggle for recognition is about the constitution of individual and
group identities and thus ultimately about ideas,

Hobbes (1968) justified the state on the grounds that only through
obedience to a common power could individuals escape a ‘nasty, brutish, and short’ life in the state of nature. A common power is necessary because of the physical equality and vulnerability of human beings — since even the weak can kill the strong, it is in everyone’s interest to accept the security provided by a state.

With the transfer of state sovereignty to the global level individual recognition will no longer be mediated by state boundaries, even though as recognized subjects themselves states would retain some individuality (particularism within universalism).

The question remains, however, whether a world state would be a stable
end-state, or be itself subject to instabilities that ultimately undo it.

Since even a world state would remain an at least partially open system, such
shocks could cause it to fall apart.

Equilibria are always vulnerable to exogenous shocks.

Going forward You have to be able to hold two ideas in your head at once: the world is getting better and it’s not good enough”. (Dr. Hans Rosling.)

But we must keep trying. The past is not coming back. The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.

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THE BEADY EYE LOOKS AT HOW CLIMATE CHANGE WILL SHAPE THE WORLD.

21 Thursday Jul 2022

Posted by in Climate Change.

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( Fifteen minute read)

If warm words prevented global warming, I wouldn’t be writing this article. 

One would think that after years we would get the message of not dealing with Climate change.

It is happing right in front of our eyes never mind decades or even centuries ahead.

On reflection perhaps the questions on climate should to taken away from Accountants, Politicians,  Governments, GDP,  Science, Technology, or the printing of money, and the verbal diarrhoea of climate summits conferences and made relatable to all us.

If it all goes wrong nobody is asking what sort of world we will have to live in. 

Why?

Because day by day it is becoming less clear how sensible management of the planet should be.

Because we must stop its discounting by Countries Governments and corporations for profit.

Because the fact is climate change is now beyond serious dispute but has yet to become part of mainstream discussion.

Because we can not literally stand by and verbal about it till the cows come home. global warming melting the earth - shutterstock

INTRODUCTION.

Obliviously in shaping the planet the climate has two elements. 

The Visible and not so Visible. 

The climate debate is now fuelled, not only by controversial policies, and science, but the debate is moving away from the basic science, to the economic and political ramifications.  Both of which are becoming  old, and tired, and increasingly irrelevant, as the impacts of climate change becomes clearer.

Earth’s climate has changed many times but it’s hard to imagine what Earth might look like in 2500 never mind in the next twenty years.

Climate “scepticism” is always underpinned by politics rather than science so many people still assume the costs of climate change are in the future, despite us increasingly seeing the impacts economics and politics are now the principal battlegrounds in the climate debate.

This puts us in an invidious position.

Science should inform and underpin arguments but just what can we learn from science?

One of the real problems with the climate debate is the way in which climate science is not explained but is ‘refereed’ in the public domain. I still think that 85 percent of us never mind our governments have little understanding or concept of how climate change is going to change the planet and every living organism on it.  

Taking into account limitations to predictability.

Millions of variables—known, unknown, and approximate—as well as billions of calculations, are involved in every forecast, producing informative and fascinating modern computer simulations of the Earth system. 

This is all very well but the point is that the component parts of the Earth system can interact in incredibly fast in complicated ways, and this makes explicit mathematical analysis of the entire problem of climate change impossible.

Science never explicitly proves anything but finds the current best-fitting theory that explains real-world data, and that has led to the current assertion of the validity of the anthropogenic climate-change scientific theory.

Our predictions of what Mother Nature will do next are only possible with real-time imagery from satellites of the surface of the earth, not the unseen knock on effects. 

                             ———————————-

OF ALL THE THINGS SHAPING THE WORLD CLIMATE CHANGE IS AND WILL BE THE MOST DEVASTATING.

There are now twice as many days over 50C. Accompanying this rise in temperatures has been a five-fold increase in weather-related disasters over the past 50 years.   

The climate does not need money or the microchip or any of the other things on the list shaping the world. ( See previous postings) 

Bushfire in Queensland, Australia

The situation is bleak.

The Visible. 

Fifty years have passed since the first climate projections, set that distant target at 2100, however we continue to fool ourselves that technology will solve the problems.

The visible effects are on our news TV bulletins daily. There is little need here to highlight them. 

The Invisible.   

The ability to earn a meaningful livelihood is permanently impacted by unseasonal rains, harsher winters, drier summers, and other impacts attributed to the changing climate.

Studies by the World Bank predict that as many as 216 million people in six regions of the world may be forced to move by 2050. This includes communities in some of the most impoverished regions of the world such as Yemen and the Horn of Africa.

All will become climate refugees.

But there is another category of people who suffer from climate change and have no recourse. They’re stateless individuals who live in countries that do not grant them citizenship or permanent residency, They number in the millions. They include the Muslim Rohingya community in Myanmar, North Koreans in China, the Roma in Serbia, and many other groups.

They need to be included in any conversation about permanent, inclusive, sustainable, and ethical solutions. Otherwise, our approaches would only widen the gap between the privileged and the persecuted.

                                  —————————–

In a 2021 global survey of 10,000 people aged 16 to 25, three quarters said the future of the world was frightening, while more than half said they thought humanity is doomed.   

Climate models predict that Earth’s global average temperature will rise an additional 4°.6 C (7.2° F) during the 21st Century if greenhouse gas levels continue to rise. 

That results in a “major restructuring of the world’s biomes,” Changes in temperature, precipitation, and seasonal timing will alter the geographic ranges of many types of plants and animals. Many species will face extinction if the geographic range where they can survive shrinks.

We are looking at a future with much more rain and snow, and a higher risk of flooding in some regions.

By 2100, precipitation will increase by at least 1% with a possible increase of up to 12%. However, changes in precipitation will not be evenly distributed. Some locations will get more. Warmer global temperatures produce faster overall evaporation rates, resulting in more water vapor in the atmosphere…and more clouds. 

Warmer temperatures will cause (and are causing) changes to other aspects of climate – such as rain, snow, and clouds. They are also causing changes to the ocean, life, ice, and all other parts of the Earth system. Melting ice may lead to changes in ocean circulation, too. By the year 2100, models predict the sea level will rise between 30 and 100 cm (12 to 39 inches). Large-scale ocean currents called thermohaline circulation, driven by differences in salinity and temperature may also be disrupted as the climate warms. 

It will not just transform now-familiar terrain into alien landscapes over the next few centuries the U.S. Midwest will be transformed into subtropical agroforestry regions and by 2500 or the Ice capped poles will disappear.

                                  ———————————

To address the indirect, vicarious impacts of climate change.

Climate change is not only damaging the planet, but it’s also endangering our mental health, too. The “chronic fear of environmental doom.

Global change is as much a psychological and social phenomenon as a matter of biodiversity and geophysics and poses threats to psychological health and well-being on multiple, simultaneous levels.

We are now facing “tipping points.” A tipping point is a large, abrupt change that cannot readily be stopped at the last minute, even by employing drastic measures.

Runaway situations. The consequences of any of them are so severe, and the fact that we cannot retreat from them once they’ve been set in motion is so problematic, that we must keep them in mind when evaluating the overall risks associated with climate change.

Methane releases would generate a feedback loop of increased greenhouse warming by methane, driving further methane emissions.

At some point, seawater will become saturated with CO2 and unable to absorb any more.

It’s in our power to protect what’s left and make a meaningful difference.

Make climate change a factor in the decisions you make around what you eat, how you travel, and what you buy, demand that politicians and companies make it easier and cheaper to do the right thing for the climate.

There is now an urgent need to find new ways to narrate and envision a fairer clean future in which we all can actively participate to help to reduce global disparities in climate impacts.

Warming surface temperatures are also predicted to increase the frequency of heat waves and droughts, which can affect crop production, increase the risk of wildfires, and even impact human health.

Silhouette of a high industrial pipe with sun behind it The arguments that get bandied about in blogs and debates invariably focus solely on the predicted impacts of climate change, without any discussion of the caveats and assumptions that lie behind the models.

Take  “The prefix ‘bio’ doesn’t necessarily mean environmentally friendly.”

Growing and processing crops for energy purposes or feedstocks can have the heaviest environmental impact. 

It is more helpful to proceed as though climate change is real, partly man-made, and potentially quite threatening to building a sustainable world populated by a large hungry consumer-driven citizenry.

We had world summits, and the world promises to expose Sharp divisions between the major global emitters.

Trying to lead 197 countries forward on the critical global issue of climate change is not a job for the faint-hearted as democracy evolved because everyone wants other people to share the blame. 

What we hear is that by 2050 or 2060 we will become carbon neutral, 2060 is far away and if the people emit at the rate they are emitting the world won’t survive, so what are you going to do in the next five years that’s what the world wants to know.

We can’t just willy-nilly ignore the next 10 years because the scientists tell us that if we don’t do enough in the next 10 years we cannot keep the Earth’s temperature at 1.5C, we cannot even get on a roadmap to net zero by 2050.

If this means we can move on from a sterile debate about the global response to much more interesting questions about regional impacts, the rights of different generations, and, most interesting of all, what to do about it.

This blog has in previous posts made suggestions as to how to get us involved and how to fairly spread the cost and finance the changes required.

So my plea is to avoid the ‘happy talk’ and recognize that this challenge is global and never has there been a challenge that requires the unity of countries all across the planet than now.

But despite how terrible it’s important to remember that the appropriate response is to leap into action, not to be paralyzed by despair.

To supply some optimism and show that humanity isn’t totally screwed, here are 3 climate change projects that would change the game.

Inaction could result in scenarios that look downright apocalyptic.

One. It is time that our governments made non-repayable grants available to us all to install solar panels, and insulation.

Two.  Clean up the advertising industry for sustainability, not consumption.

Three.  The introduction in a green economy of a universal basic income.  

In this world, we might add another folksy adage to our climate repertoire. Just as it is the humidity, not the heat, it is the rate of change, not the magnitude, that truly matters.

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