Tag Archives: Capitalism vs. the Climate.

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S; WE CANNOT TRUST TECHNOLOGY TO COME TO THE RESCUE.

10 Tuesday Dec 2019

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( A Crucial twenty-minute read)

Climate change is accelerating and we know that it is the world’s greatest collective action problem.

The global climate is probably the most complex of all complex systems to which humans belong.

It’s more than a quarter of a century since the leaders of the world, gathered in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, committed their countries to avoiding “dangerous anthropogenic interference in the climate system” by signing the UN convention on climate change.

Climate protesters prior to the COP23 talks in Bonn, Germany

We know we have to tackle climate change –as do the politicians.

We know that it’s rational for an individual country not to drastically reduce greenhouse gases, given most economies are heavily based on energy resources that emit them.

Yet, if all nations act that way — indeed, that’s what’s happening — most countries will eventually be worse off due to the cumulative impacts of all our emissions.

Put another way, what’s better for each individual country in isolation is actually worse for the planet as a whole. Conversely, what is worse for each individual country, overtime would be better for the planet.

Unlike other policies, climate change is cumulative.

We know that climate summits highlight the science, but achieve little or nothing-

The First World Climate Conference was held on 12–23 February 1979 in Geneva as was the second the third.

Here is the list

Contents

1995:  Berlin, Germany

1996:  Geneva, Switzerland

1997: Kyoto, Japan

1998: Buenos Aires, Argentina

1999: Bonn, Germany

2000: The Hague, Netherlands

2001: Bonn, Germany

2001: Marrakech, Morocco

2002: New Delhi, India

2003: Milan, Italy

2004: Buenos Aires, Argentina

2005: Montreal, Canada

2006: Nairobi, Kenya

2007: Bali, Indonesia

2008: Poznań, Poland

2009: Copenhagen, Denmark

2010: Cancún, Mexico

2011: Durban, South Africa

2012: Doha, Qatar

2013: Warsaw, Poland

2014: Lima, Peru

2015: Paris, France

2016: Marrakech, Morocco

2017:  Bonn, Germany

2018: Katowice, Poland

2019: Bonn, Germany

2019: Madrid, Spain

A lot of talking while the ice melts, our lands burn, and our oceans rise and our Co2 emissions are traded on an Ecosystem Marketplace’s – Carbon offsetting- Cardon Cap and trade systems.

The longer we wait to address it, the bigger the problem it becomes and the harder it gets to solve, fueling a feedback loop that makes solutions ever more difficult.

Imagine getting taxed before you put that money into your fund and then not living long enough to reap the payoffs of your fund.

That’s happening with climate change, on a global scale.

However, we must realize that climate is a much broader, systemic problem that can not be tackled solely by making how important our everyday choices are.

We know that behind the energy and climate change hypocrisy is in all of us.

You’re a hypocrite for advocating on climate change while using fossil fuels.

Such arguments are shallow because virtually everyone depends on these fuels somehow.

Trying to make people feel guilty for their carbon-intensive activities doesn’t actually get them to change their behaviour.

Nobody wants to change unless they really, really have to.

We know that transforming endemic corporate behaviours that are devastating the planet requires whole industries to move together, and fast.

We need bold, industry-wide coalitions for change.

We need to bring industry leaders together to agree on reforms to the parts of the business that are irrelevant to customers but of grave importance for our environment.

However business cannot tackle climate change on its own and we don’t have time to wait for individual companies to each go on their own sustainability journeys.

We know that enacting policies today to cut greenhouse gas emissions won’t have a discernible impact on global warming for decades, if not centuries.

We know that investors are in effect expecting returns on assets in companies that eventually must be written off for the planet to be safe.

The private sector can either destroy the planet or replenish it.

We know what needs to be done.

This means that sustainable savings are the number one solution to climate change and the effects are larger than rooftop solar, solar farms, afforestation and electric vehicles combined.

To do this is laying down a clear challenge.

But unfortunately, not all carbon footprints are created equally.

This makes it a tough sell and begs the question to what degree people are willingly taking concrete steps to lower their lifestyle’s impact on climate change, or why people are not.

The why not, is because for most people it’s still intangible and not well understood even considered a Hoax because of Fake news’ or ‘inconvenient truth that there is no problem and hope that it disappears by itself.

The willingness is rhetoric like flight shaming which is near the top of the list of hypocrisy charges.

No press release can obscure the fact that time is not on our side.

We need to cap our carbon emissions now not in ten years.

Increasingly missing from this picture above is the support of governments that operate on 2- to 6-year election cycles.

Technology is bringing down the price of switching to green alternatives, not least renewable energy. So what is stopping governments from making these technologies available with affordable Green Grants to one and all Now?

With most countries more engrossed by their internal domestic political squabbles the reasons are political or financial, not scientific.

The science isn’t that difficult to explain but instead of explanations we are presented with statements of facts with an only simple explanation and no real substance, CO2 is like a blanket.

A Chinese man wears a mask to guard against air pollution in Beijing. Much of Eastern and Central China is regularly blanketed by a thick smog caused by coal power plants and industrial production, both of which fuel global warming and climate change, direct results of consumer culture.

Yet there is a troubling gap between the serious reality depicted by climate change science and the level of concern among all of us.

Worry and action are two different things.

Climate change is a direct consequence of the widespread, now globalized, mass production and consumption of goods, and of the material construction of our habitat that has accompanied it. Yet, despite this reality, production and construction continue unabated.

If we believed that a systemic response to climate change was an equally shared responsibility, was our responsibility, we would be responding to it.

Until we do that, we’re all climate change deniers.

( See Post – suggestion a World Aid commission of 0.05% )

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THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: THE WORLD HAS YET TO GRASP PROPERLY THE CLIMATE CHANGE PROBLEM.

30 Saturday Nov 2019

Posted by in Climate Change.

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(Two-minute read)

There is no doubt that climate change is a complex subject and is challenging us in ways we’ve never seen before.

Based on what scientists understand, the changes we are seeing today are far more rapid than anything that has occurred in our planet’s history.

How best to depict the climate emergency is down to the media to ensure that the images publish accurately and appropriately convey the climate crisis that we face.

To address Climate Change with or without an agreement is going to cost trillions.

when trying to depict what cannot always be seen.showing the direct impact of environmental issues on people’s daily lives as well as trying to indicate the scale of the impact,the effect of the reporting and how we perceive the risks. to unearth photography beyond the usual keywords of climate change, heatwave and floods.

The problem is:  No one, No country, No government, No Organisation, No economy, wants to pay for it. T

THIS ISSUE IS CRITICAL IF WE ARE TO ACHIEVE ANYTHING WORTHWHILE.

Everyone is, however, paying lip service to the problem.

Delay action will drastically increase the costs of taking action, but no one ever talks about how the funding required can be achieved.

Why?

Because the costs will not be shared evenly.

The trillions have to come from somewhere.

The world’s most powerful institutions are still engaged in a game of lethal procrastination that threatens to speed up global ecological collapse and sow chaos throughout human civilization in the decades to come.

The world’s biggest asset managers remain heavily invested in climate-polluting industries ― and do little if anything to convince those companies to change.

Forceful engagement with the companies in these sectors to hasten their transition to low carbon technologies must occur.

A Bloomberg New Energy Finance chart shows investments in new solar, wind and other non-hydroelectric power projects dropping from 2017 to 2018. (Photo: Bloomberg New Energy Finance)A Bloomberg New Energy Finance chart shows investments in new solar, wind and other non-hydroelectric power projects dropping from 2017 to 2018. (Photo: Bloomberg New Energy Finance)

Clearly, it’s not enough.

At this juncture, to meet the growing demand for green and social investments we need to have a dual focus on maximizing the potential of our current financial instruments, while also creating space for the next wave of innovations for sustainable growth.

We all know that there is already technology that exits, or that are coming on stream to tackle the problem head-on. Not in thirty years from now.

This blog as I am sure are others have been posting a solution that addresses the fair spreading of the costs worldwide. 

( See: 0.05% World Aid commission)

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THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: LET’S STOP THE BULLSHIT AND START GETTING SERIOUS ABOUT THE WORLD THAT WE ALL LIVE ON.

13 Sunday Oct 2019

Posted by in Climate Change.

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(Twenty-minute read)

The most recent UN Climate Change summit in New York saw a succession of national leaders standing on the podium saying they understood the gravity of the situation but then failing to announce concrete plans.

China made no new promises. The United States said nothing at all, with Germany promoting a new plan worth $60 billion over 10 years to speed a transition to clean power the European Union did not signal its intention to cut emissions faster.

In fact, a host of countries made only incremental promises. Most of the major economies fell “woefully short” of expectations.

Their lack of ambition stands in sharp contrast with the growing demand for action around the world.

Indeed the summit highlighted that the United Nations (which is our best effort to humans to come together for the good of all) is for all intensive purposes a gossip shop with no powers.

This is not the fault of the organisation because the only way for human rights to persist is for everyone to collectively agree to accept that things don’t have to go their way 100% of the time.

Climate Change, however, represents a unique problem in as much that for the first time in human history, the human race is confronted with a problem that is not about human rights but our very existence as a species.

It is the defining issue of our time and now is the defining moment to do something about it.

Fortunately or unfortunately observations of the future are not available at this time.

But we do however have scientific models with the best data available predicting the need for humans to act like one if we want future generations of our species to prevail.

Rowland said, ” What’s the use of having developed a science well enough to make predictions if in the end were willing to do is to stand around and wait for them to come true.”

Thanks to technology we are now constantly aware of every fault and flaw of our humanity, combined with an inundation of doomsayers and narcissistic nihilists commanding our attention space

It is what is causing this constant feeling of a chaotic and insecure world that doesn’t actually exist.

It’s this feeling of insecurity and chaos that is igniting the platforms of divisive strong-men like Trump, Erdogan, and Putin.

It’s this feeling that has consumed the consciousness of millions of people and caused them to look at their country through the lens of popularism a fun-house of the mirror: exaggerating all that is wrong and minimizing all that is right.

We judge groups of people by their weakest and most deprived members. And to protect ourselves from the overreaching judgments of others, we consolidate into our own clans and tribes, we take refuge in our own precious identity politics and we buy more and more into a worldview that is disconnected from cold data and hard facts.

Because of this, we demonize each other.

The plain truth lies in our past historical model of our development to the present day which confirms that because of greed we are incapable of acting in the common good of all.

This is not just a world of shortages, but also of over-consumption. A great paradox is that 1,300 million tons of food is wasted every year, while almost 2000 million people suffer from hunger or malnutrition.

We all know that we need Fresh Air/Fresh Water/ Clean Energy/ and Food.

In order to keep ourselves tethered to reality as it is, not to reality how it feels the sooner we come to term that Climate Change has all the components to affect each and every one of them the better.

One only has to look to see that we are failing to match reality, rather than peaking, the level of emissions being released into the atmosphere are at an all-time high, triggering global weather hazards from heat waves to intense hurricanes and raging wildfires.

You might not think that humans were and are capable of changing the basic physics and chemistry of this entire, huge planet but you can’t make this shit up we are all related: us, plants, animals, soil. Far left mob Extinction Rebellion plan to bring London to its knees

Extinction Rebellion a do-it-together movement has its core reasons for protests correct :

That government and other institutions must tell the truth and declare a Climate and Ecological Emergency must act now to halt biodiversity loss and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero by 2025 and must create and be led by the decisions of Citizens’ Assemblies on climate and ecological justice.

Their protests worldwide are causing a flood of negativity because  Capitalism is not ready to burn down the very structures on which the most successful civilizations in human history have been built.

They are promoting internet generated platform where apocalyptic beliefs are celebrated and spread, and moderation and reason is something that becomes too arduous and boring to stand.

There is no doubt that with our ever-increasing population, our human needs for various resources to sustain, maintain and increase our living standards have put a great strain on our planet and it’s ability to provide.

But the world isn’t worse. It’s just that we’re more aware of all of the bad things than ever before. By every objective measurement, it’s arguably the sanest and safest it’s been in recorded history.

What is new is smartphone the internet, and most importantly, social media. This is what’s new. This is what’s different. How we’re getting information, what information is reaching us, and most importantly, what information and views we are most rewarded for sharing.

Perhaps if Extinction Rebellion were to shift their focus to the attention economy, (outrageous news and information spread faster and further than any other form of information, dominating our daily attention) where people are rewarded for extremism they might have a greater effect.

There is only one way to tackle climate change and that is by making Profit for profit sake provide the financial assistance that is required to do so. ( see the previous post on – A world aid commission)

By applying a World Aid commission of 0.05% on all activities that generate profit for profit sake we would create a perpetual fund of billions that could seriously address the underlying reasons for climate change.

We could also through this fund give people the opportunity to get involved by issuing World Aid non-trading Bonds.

All everyone needed to do to succeed in life is work very hard, it is what we’ve all been sold and it is true but no it is not if you just take a few steps back and look at the bigger picture and the smallest of details.

Most of us are lucky to live in a world where wars are far less frequent than they were in the past, the trade-off does not make for good celebratory achievement, however.

I’m exhausted from all the stories of shootings and attacks and bombs and the constant stream of awful stuff that is happening out there. I, too, feel desensitized and dejected from the seemingly constant carnage raging across the planet.

Most of us wouldn’t be happy with living our lives on water rations, for the poor and developing world that is already the case.

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THE BEADY EYE SAY’S. WE MUST REIN IN THE TECH GIANTS BEFORE ITS TOO LATE.

20 Friday Sep 2019

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2019: The Year of Disconnection., Algorithms., Capitalism, Democracy, DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Fourth Industrial Revolution., Google, Modern day life., Our Common Values., Purchasing Power., Reality., Social Media., Technology, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Wealth., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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( Fifteen-minute read) 

WHY?

These days we are allowing Google, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook do whatever the hell they want. The US sees them as winner-takes-all markets as the law of the capitalist jungle; the EU sees them as an intrinsic threat to consumers.

Because four companies dominate our daily lives unlike any other in human history: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. They have aggregated more economic value and influence than nearly any other commercial entity in history.

Because the concentration of wealth leads to concentration of power. Their massive size and unchecked power have and are throttling competitive markets and are keeping the economy from doing its job—namely, to promote a vibrant democracy.

Because all of them have managed to preserve their monopoly-like powers without heavy regulation. 

Because they have effectively ripped the heart out of the journalism, publishing, music, and entertainment industries but, even worse, they are demolishing the ranks of both corporate middle-management and entry-level service jobs and crushed commercial real estate and retail shopping malls, all for the enrichment of a very few.

Because they’re tracking your movements — or, even better, getting you to track yourselves for them, whether it’s “checking in” on Facebook or leaving your cell phone switched on while you travel (and who doesn’t?).

Because as we have seen the harvesting of the personal data use for political purposes.

Because the amount of money they generate, and the volume of content they accumulate, most of it provided voluntarily by you, for free, is stupefying.

Because with the coming of 5G technology they will have  too much power over our economy, our society, and our democracy.

Because using black-box algorithms to surface content to users they will have control over the way we use the Internet.

Because they are exploiting their monopoly power to stifle competition; they are spreading fake news; their fantastically rich owners portray themselves as right-on yet go to a great deal of trouble to minimise their corporate tax bills; they are ripping the heart out of communities through the closure of brick-and-mortar retailers.

Because social media is an increasingly key part of how we communicate. Yet legally, nothing stops Facebook from simply banning users from its platform, for any reason it wishes.

Because we’re heading for an Orwellian nightmare the shape of which is just now becoming apparent with climate change is being turned into a product. 

Because this isn’t just abstract concern about what could possibly happen in the future – market power of this magnitude isn’t unprecedented.

Because with a sprawling array of loosely related businesses under one roof they are becoming worldwide conglomerates.

Because no one or any company is now going to penetrate online shopping or the search market.

Google, Amazon, and Facebook are colossal companies. Together they make up almost 10% of the S&P 500. Together, they have a market capitalization of the GDP of France.

These are the 3rd-, 4th-, and 6th-largest companies on earth. Combined, they are worth over $2 trillion. And they’ve grown 470%, 175%, and 95% over the past five years.

Because they will take our choices away.

Because they’ve bulldozed competition, used our private information for profit, and tilted the playing field against everyone else.

Because country and companies that dominate technology will gain more power with time and 5G technology, gene editing, nanotechnology, creating what only can be called a profitable circle of global oligopolies.

Because they will soon be introducing their own cyber currencies.

Because our existing computers can’t even scratch the surface of what quantum computers will be able to do via the cloud quantum computers will. Those who own this technology will make supremacy an arbitrary goal.

Such computing power will change the way we do business and the security we have in place to safeguard data, how we fight disease and invent new materials, and solve health and climate problems.

Just like humans, artificial intelligence machines powered by the insights from quantum commercialising technology computers that will learn from experience and self-correct.

They’ll be able to use quantum simulations to design entirely new molecules for use in medicine making it possible for chemists to determine viable drug options quicker. Instead of troubleshooting issues bit by bit as we do now with classical computers, they will allow for a person’s genes to be sequenced and analyzed much more rapidly tackling the entire problem at once.

How do they do it?

By creating what we now perceive to be free platforms run by algorithms.  

( To Big Tech, you’re not the customer, you’re the product they’re selling to others:)

Google offers a vast bounty of free services in order to maximize its data collection and optimize its advertising capabilities. Similarly, Amazon is credibly accused of hurting suppliers, hurting competitors, and even hurting its own employees — but nobody can deny that it’s a cheap and convenient way to shop for a staggering array of things.

Amazon is keeping tabs on you, monitoring your purchases, pushing other products on you and, in the form of the hideous Alexa, listening in on you while you sleep. Throw in the electronic snooping of Facebook, Google and your iPhone.

We know the problems; they’re easy to diagnose, however shaping the solutions is going to be more difficult.

So what if anything can be achieved to restrain their coming power?

The difficulty lies in defining what the real harmful effect is of these companies and establishing a causal link between their creation, their products, behaviour, and trends such as populism, depression, and manipulation. The contribution to society of these companies’ products is not as black and white as some would like them to be. 

We’re heading down an entirely new field of physics, and by its very nature, there will be discoveries, innovations and solutions we have never dreamed of yet.

However we’re living in a capitalists world we should be empowering people to choose where to sell their information, personal data so it would no longer be monopolised by the tech giants.

Competition authorities need to move beyond a reliance on prices towards an analysis of the impact of takeovers and mergers on societal welfare.

As we grapple with how best to protect ourselves against the risks of new, disruptive technologies, policymakers need to understand the roles that ethics and law can and should play. 

If human rights are at risk, and existing law is found wanting, we may need new, legally enforceable rights and mechanisms to grapple with emerging technologies. Citizens should not need to rely on the “ethical conscience” of tech companies to know their fundamental rights are protected. Ethics are laudable—but sometimes they are not enough.

At their core, Google’s mission “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” and while Facebook’s goal was to “give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together” are both truly admirable and few people would disagree with them but ethical promises made by tech companies are not good enough.

Instead of adding value to our societies, Facebook,  Twitter, Amazon, Netflix, Google, Microsoft, Apple have sucked the data out of us.

They or at least their free platforms which have become essential to daily life should be regulated as public utilities.

Failing to do so risks a backlash which will be bad for everyone.

Why? 

Because there is one indisputable fact.

In front of every great fortune lies a great crime, Immense wealth translates automatically into environmental impacts regardless of the intentions of those who possess it. 

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Google does the same by using algorithms to decide what comes up on an internet search. They hardly pay any taxes and their business practices and technology will help crush industries and companies left and right.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 “platform utility.” A platform utility would be barred from owning any of the participants on the platform.

 

THE BEADY EYE: OPEN LETTER TO THOSE ATTENDING THE UNITED NATIONS CLIMATE CHANGE SUMMIT ON THE 23 SEPTEMBER 2019.

10 Tuesday Sep 2019

Posted by in Climate Change.

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( Fifteen-minute read)

DEAR ATTENDEE.

You will have heard it all before the conflict between climate change action and the market place but there is no more time to be asking ourselves is the economy more important than climate.

Now is the defining moment to do something about it – Which requires a transformation of unprecedented pace and scale.

We know from all of the scientific advice internationally that global warming is already having a very significant impact on our climate and it’s already having an impact on a range of industries, most notably agriculture, but many others as well.

So there’s is not a clear choice here to do nothing and save all existing jobs and have uninterrupted global growth by undertaking carbon trading schemes that are not and will not be adhered to.

However, this is still the approach that countries are taking, don’t upset growth and this will be reflected in the forthcoming United Nations Climate change summit on the 23 SEPTEMBER 2019.

Take for example the Uk who are bidding to host the next UN Climate Change Conference while distorting the European carbon market by reducing the price of producing carbon to £16 per ton – £10 cheaper than the EU.

No matter what is said at the summit no country is going to take actions that are going to deliberately destroy jobs and growth in their country.

Just because one country or twenty declare a climate emergency, promising to reduce carbon emissions the capitalism market place will ensure that it makes a profit.

Climate change is already being turned in to a commodity. Globally, hundreds of companies are using an internal carbon price to inform operations and investment decisions.

It will, therefore, be no wonder that we the great unwashed will remain pessimistic about the likelihood of ambitious coordinated global action.

However, as you are well aware no country is going to undertake actions on climate change that is somehow or other going to change the climate of the globe.

Unfortunately, the Summit is not going showcase of a leap in collective national political ambitions and it will not demonstrate a massive movement in the real economy in support of the agenda to convert to a Green technological world of Capitalism.

Why?

Because as I have said, no one, no country, no government, no company, no city, no civil society, wants to pay the price.

This is beyond any douth the crux of the problem.

To finance the transition to a zero-carbon economy, markets need full information on climate risks and opportunities, and clear pricing signals and policies that shift global financial flows away from polluting investments and toward zero-carbon products, services, and business models:

Only when the financial markets contribute on an equitable just manner in bearing the costs worldwide will we be able to tackle climate change on a global scale.

Not until this is achieved will there be any just transition to a zero-carbon economy via social dialogue with businesses, workers, and communities, and by integrating measures outlined in the Paris conference and the forthcoming UN Summit.

All will remain unachievable.

To make progress on this important issue and to be effective and credible it must be financed on an equitable base worldwide.

By creating a World Aid fund that is financed by all capitalist marketing functions that are currently exploiting the world for profit for profit sake.

This will allow the scraping of the emissions trading scheme and replace them with a grants-based system to encourage emissions reduction.

HOW CAN THIS BE DONE?

In order to ensure that the transformative actions in the real economy any financing must not create losers or add to economic inequality but creates new opportunities and protections, in the context of a just transition.

By placing a World Aid Commission of 0.05% on all activities within our world markets that produce profit for profit sake. 

THEN AND ONLY THEN WITH decisive business leadership complemented by ambitious government policies, each positively reinforcing each other will we be able to set Science-Based Targets in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement, committing to net-zero emissions by 2050 at the latest, switching to 100 percent renewable electricity, doubling energy productivity, accelerating the transition to electric vehicles and committing to implementing the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) otherwise every good intention will remain verbal diarrhoea.

It’s not that we don’t seek to deal with climate change.

Yours Faithfully

Robert de May Dillon founder of the Beady Eye

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THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: THE WHOLE CATEGORY SYSTEM CONCERNING STORMS NEEDS SERIOUS RETHINKING.

08 Sunday Sep 2019

Posted by in Climate Change.

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(Ten-minute read)  

 

Why?

Because the maximum intensity of hurricanes will increase by about 5% this century. 

Because there is growing evidence that the warming of the atmosphere and upper ocean, due to human activity such as burning fossil fuels, is making conditions ripe for fiercer, more destructive hurricanes.

Warming oceans conditions are ideal for spawning hurricanes.

While there is no consensus on the frequency of hurricanes in a warmer world, there is a consensus that the hurricanes are becoming more intense, and hence their impact will be worse.

Meanwhile, natural buffers to hurricanes, such as mangroves and coral reefs, are being stripped away around the world as a result of coastal development, pollution and warming waters.

THERE WAS A TIME WHEN STORMS HAD NO NAMES – A GALE FORCE

Now males and female names alternated because we are less afraid of hurricanes with female names.

Hurricane Florence killed dozens or so people. Hurricane Michael, killed about 70th, Hurricane Harvey unloaded 33tn gallons of water on Texas, Hurricane Irma, which reached a top speed of 177mph, ravaged Florida and several thousand people died in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. Hurricane Katrina had 1,833 fatalities. Hurricane Dorian barrel into the northwestern Bahamas ravaging the Abaco Islands, killings 20.

Particularly devastating hurricanes cause names to be retired, which is why we won’t see a Hurricane Katrina, for example, again.

Now Storms are given names once they have sustained winds of more than 39mph so insurance companies don’t have to pay out home insurance policies if named storms are do not specify in their cover. ( Premiums may rise as insurers face ballooning claims.)

The Saffir-Simpson scale is now irrational, in part, because it deals only with wind, ignoring factors such as a storm’s size, rainfall potential and forward speed. 

The scale was designed to measure the amount of damage inflicted by winds, not the severe flooding due to storm surge.

The proportion of tropical storms that rapidly strengthen into powerful hurricanes has tripled over the past 30 yearsHurricane getting stronger

Perhaps its time to classify hurricanes as predators.

DANGEROUS: 

SEVERE- DEVASTATION: Enough force to damage homes and snap trees.

LIFE-THREATENING: 

GET -OUT:  Raze dwellings, causing widespread power outages and result in scores of deaths.

APOCALYPTIC: Stay put and die. 

 

NOAA’s GOES East satellite captured this view of the strong Category 1 storm at 8:20 a.m. EDT, just 15 minutes before the center of Hurricane Dorian moved across the barrier islands of Cape Hatteras.

In general, hurricanes are steered by global winds. The prevailing winds that surround a hurricane, also known as the environmental wind field, are what guide a hurricane along its path.

In 2016, for the first time since 1938, a hurricane formed in the Atlantic in January- Hurricane Alex.

While the eye of a hurricane is typically very calm and nearly windless, the eyewall is the fiercest part of the story, where winds are strongest.

A hurricane can pick up as much as two billion tons of water a day through evaporation and sea sprays. If the heat released by an average hurricane in one day could be converted to electricity, it could supply the United States’ electrical needs for about six months.

Those who deny scientific findings of climate change in favour of magical thinking and other such fallacies will only leave the world a more unstable and dangerous place for future generations to come.

 

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THE BEADY ASK’S. WILL THE FORTHCOMING UNITED NATIONS CLIMATE CONFERENCE TELL THE WHOLE TRUTH AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH.

05 Thursday Sep 2019

Posted by in Climate Change., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., United Nations

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( Fifteen-minute read) 

In one sense, as no one knows the future, no one or any organisation is able, to tell the truth about climate change.

There is not a politician on earth who wants to tell his or her constituents the truth when it comes to Climate Change so we’ve probably already blown our chance to avoid substantial suffering, but we can somewhat reduce the even worse suffering that awaits our grandchildren.

However, the truth is that the evidence for rapid climate change is now more than compelling:

The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have decreased in mass

Unfortunately, are we not able as a species to confront the facts?

Humans are subject to intense status quo bias.

Especially on the conservative end of the psychological spectrum — which is the direction all humans move when they feel frightened or under threat — there is a powerful craving for the message that things are, basically, okay, that the system is working like it’s supposed to, that the current state of affairs is the best available, or close enough.

No matter how we look at it the truth is, that on our current trajectory, in the absence of substantial new climate policy, current warming is heading for up to 4°C and may be higher by the end of the century.

On any clear reading of the available evidence, no one or any country wants to financially foot the economic cost of reducing emissions. 

We are headed for disaster — slowly, yes, but surely with the outcome determined not by us but by earth itself. 

We are now facing a situation in which limiting temperature even to either 2/ 3°C requires heroic policy and technology changes, not to mention trillions and trillions in investment.

Capitalism might be “decoupling ” carbon emissions but whether we like it or not the worrying implication is that emissions will be much higher than expected even if climate action continues and is ramped up.

It is true to say that over the course of the Earth’s 4.5-billion-year history, the climate has changed a lot. This is true. But the rapid warming we’re seeing now can’t be explained by natural cycles of warming and cooling. This much faster warming corresponds with levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which have been increasing since the industrial revolution.

Let’s be clear, CO2 itself does not cause problems. It’s part of the natural global ecosystem.

We’re already seeing the devastating effects of climate change on global food supplies, increasing migration, conflict, disease and global instability, and this will only get worse if we don’t act now.

It threatens the future of the planet that we depend on for our survival and we’re the last generation that can do something about it.

The fact that everyone involved has to dance around the obvious truth, at risk of losing their status and influence will once again be displayed at the forthcoming UN conference.

But that’s where we’re headed.

It will take enormous effort just to avoid that fate and we’re running out of time; we’ve only got five or 10 years to turn things around, but we can do it, if we just not only put our minds to agreeing a 0.05% world aid commission on all activities that produce profit for profit sake. ( See previous posts) 

The problem is, while carbon capture is getting less, as more and more forests are either cut down or burned across the world, largely to produce our food or palm oil or cosmetics etc,  Governments are still backing dirty fossil fuels. 

The technology and systems we need to move to 100% renewable energy by 2045 and use our planet’s resources sustainably are already available. 

What’s now needed is for political and business leaders to take bold and urgent action towards using these solutions to address the climate crisis and restore nature.

Given what we know about human beings, path dependence, and political dysfunction we will not be able to suck thousands of megatons of carbon out of the atmosphere, so humanity can go net negative by 2100. 

Capitalism is already turning climate change into a product.

Before its too late – there is no way that the world will come to any agreement unless there is an equitable distribution of the costs. 

Capitalism profit contributed to it so let it do it again but in reverse.

This is the brutal logic of climate change.

Even if we emit a bunch more carbon in the short term.  “deployment of large-scale bioenergy faces biophysical, technical and social challenges will cause massive social unrest.  

No branch of science, certainly not climatology, can tell us what the humans of 2050 are capable of. We are all, on that score, making educated guesses, and a knowledge of history, politics, and economics will be just as important to that judgment as any knowledge of the physical sciences. 

We can watch footage of Trump calling climate change “a hoax … a money-making industry” and not be left winded by such staggering ignorance or astonishing deceit, though it is, more likely, more bleakly, a catastrophic combination of the two.

The evidence that climate change is a serious problem that we must contend with now, is overwhelming on its own. There is no need to overstate the evidence, particularly when it feeds a paralyzing narrative of doom and hopelessness.

No one wants to pays but we will all pay in one way or the other. 

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THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: THESE DAY’S IS THERE ANYTHING SUCH AS POLITICAL SCIENCE.

30 Friday Aug 2019

Posted by in Artificial Intelligence., Democracy, DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Elections/ Voting, England EU Referendum IN or Out., European Elections 2019, Fake News., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Life., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Politics., Populism., Post - truth politics., Reality., Robot citizenship., Social Media, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What needs to change in European Union.

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( Twenty-minute read)

 

Call it what you want:

Political Science,  Political theory, Comparative Politics, International Relations, Political Methodology. It all leaves you scratching your head and wondering what is Political Science exactly?

Political Science is a social science that focuses on government institutions and political behaviour, but how exactly did it come about?

When one watches gatherings such as the G7/8 of world leader one would have to ask where are we going.

Every major media outlet has a political scientist on call to commentate about likely voter reactions to the candidates’ stances on hot-button issues.

The behavioural models that political scientists create can practically forecast the outcome of an election before a single vote has been cast.

However in the 21st, it means “democracy”, is the crowd-sourcing of politics run by algorithms.

So political science is governed by five myths:

That it is possible to study politicsn> That it is scientific > That it is possible to study politics separated off from economics, sociology, psychology and history > That the state in our democratic capitalist society is politically neutral, that is available as a set of institutions and mechanisms to whatever group wins the election > That political science, as a discipline, advances the cause of democracy.

For me it is “superficial and trivial”, and that concept formation and development is “little more than hair-splitting and jargon”

These days we are told if something can’t be measured, then that’s not it, and if an event didn’t happen twice, then it didn’t happen.

One way or the other all the more interesting questions falling outside the bounds of scientific investigation, the internet age is gradually forcing itself upon our leaders but it is unlikely to make them reconnect with voters “less because they see the light, and more because they are beginning to feel the heat”.

For all the talk about politics, political science has never decided what exactly it should study.

The result is that many trivial matters receive an inordinate amount of attention and many important ones go untreated like climate change.

In short, political science seems to have turned around the order in which any person not trained in the discipline would try to answer the questions.

We will soon learn that political science is not about the real world but only about those features of the world that can be studied by methods deemed to be scientific.

“What should I study?” and “How should I study it?”.

What has political science found out about the political sphere that we didn’t know before, or that isn’t abysmally trivial?

It makes even the worst real-world inequalities acceptable (not worth bothering about) by rendering them irrelevant to the task at hand. Guess to whose benefit?

Few things are more important to the legitimation of capitalist rule than the assurance given by political science that the dictatorship of the capitalist class in which we live is really a democratic state of the whole people.

If political science really wishes to advance the cause of democracy (as one of the myths of our discipline already has it doing), we should help people understand that the main barrier to democracy today is capitalism.

Given the importance of the capitalist context for everything that goes on inside it, this is also a first step toward making our research truly scientific, that is capable of uncovering how the state and politics really work, and how—with the democratization of undemocratic capitalist relations of production, distribution and exchange—they might yet come to work for everyone.

Now here is a non-trivial agenda worthy of political science that aspires to advance the cause of democracy through the use of scientific

The rational choice carries the miniaturization of political science one step further by dismissing what people actually do politically and concentrating on their decisions to do it,

We see news reports, headlines in the papers and if one checks the details you find that the headlines are misleading or half-truths.

I accept that all news, in whatever medium, is subject to some editorial bias but the days of reporting the facts dispassionately are gone due to social media.

Take Brexit for example:

Parties that had strong collective identities are now falling asunder all being lead by popularism into political cul-de-sacs. The loyalty and cohesion of political parties now depend much more on short term smartphone mass memberships.

The results are tragi-comedy modernisation and public mistrusted.

This is what motivated the In or Out referendum not an understanding of the long term consequences.

Annexing subjects like the European Union affects all lives in countless ways –

I don’t think that any political science predicted a Party without power or fame the Brexit Party. It now represents a piece of evidence about how the ground is shifting.

Thus to ask today, in the middle of Mitteleuropa, where political science has been heading is also to ask whether the new beginnings of the discipline in Eastern Europe should or should not follow the path entered by our “big brother,”

The digital revolution will do to grand planners in the West what the collapse of Communism did to socialist planners in the old Soviet bloc”.

THE PROBLEM IS:

Are we somehow going to see sense and see through the lies?

How have rampant inequalities shaped electoral campaigns and promises?

We don’t need political science to say that global climate change is real.

If you don’t believe it you’re anti-facts.

THE ONLY SOLUTION IS, to open up politics with the right of “recall” against MPs with whom constituents were dissatisfied.

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS: ARE WE LOOKING NOT JUST AT THE BEGINS OF A FAILED STATE BUT THE FINAL DEATH THROBS OF A EMPIRE

26 Monday Aug 2019

Posted by in Brexit v EU - Negotiations., Brexit., Capitalism, Climate Change., Democracy, Environment, European Commission., European Union., Fourth Industrial Revolution., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Inequality, Life., Our Common Values., Politics., Populism., Post - truth politics., Reality., Social Media, Sustaniability, The essence of our humanity., The new year 2109, The Obvious., The Queen., The state of the World., The world to day., Twitter, Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What needs to change in European Union., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Fifteen-minute read)

The British Empire was the largest in history existing from the sixteenth century into the twentieth century.

Unfortunately, it squandered all that it acquired on a victorian class system.

Queen Elizabeth II

It killed with famine, sword and fire more people than Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, Hitler or Stalin.

In the defence of its imperial interests, it precipitated in two World Wars.

Now it is presiding with “Mad cow disease” it’s very own self-destruction.

At stake are fundamental ideas about British sovereignty and whether in a

a progressively globalized world in which some claimed that the individual

the nation-state was becoming unviable with the can sovereignty in its

existing forms remain intact.

Queen Elizabeth II in 1992, referred to the year as the royal family’s “annus horribilis.”

SHE WAS WRONG.

Why?

Because along came a five-year austerity plan aimed at reducing the country’s massive deficit, which had been fueled by bank bailouts and stimulus spending in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and resultant recession which resulted in 52 per cent of voters opting to leave the EU, (making the United Kingdom the first country to ever do so)

Manufactured by Magie Thatcher who turned the market into replacing society as the model of state governance. 

Not surprising as worldwide political culture has in fact transformed from one based on class to a new sort of populist, demotic politics, shaped at least as much by the mass media, especially the popular press, as by the politicians.

A sort of firestorm has broken out not just in Brazil but all over the world.

Why?

Because the relationship between public culture and consumer capitalism, while the very Earth itself is struggling with climate change has been close, in many ways the one constantly trying to outguess the other.

This game of one-upmanship, marked by ironic knowingness, has been labelled “postmodern, Brexit or Donal Trump trade wars”.

It points to the growing understanding of the relative nature of truth, itself a reaction against the prevailing supposedly “modern” certainties of the 20th century (reason, freedom, humanity, and truth itself), which indeed have often had and are having appalling outcomes.

However, it is a sign of the times that these antifundamentalist currents, themselves critical of much of Western culture, emerged at much the same time as new fundamentalisms emerged in the forms of American neoconservatism and certain strains of radical Islam. The ferment of intellectual and cultural changes involved are inextricable from the massive changes underway in the transition to the novel forms of society made possible by new information technologies.

What the Smartphone and Social Media have and are doing since the 1960s onward for Africa are also unravelling England and the EU with the perception of poor economic performance and calls for the modernization of not just for British society and the British economy but the EU and the world at large.

Both England and the European Union need to reform.

Optimism only carries you so far.

History rhymes rather than repeats are what is required.

A society where elites are widely loathed, where the political parties are polarized by demographic echoes is on the brink of collapse.

Why?

Now as then — much more now than then, in fact — there is a pervasive mistrust of institutions, a sense that governments are rotting from the head down.

The abject failure of rulers in improving human values has resulted in a downgrading of human to sub-human levels with a race to expect dishonest money is the net result of the ultimate degradation of society.

How do you trick someone into giving you something they have?

First, you offer them something worthless, while convincing them that actually much better than what they have. Second, you convince them that what they do have is worthless.

This is a typical approach used by both con artists and governments.

These huge scams are just diversions from the ultimate crime Climate change.

Our survival instinct has to quickly override our conditioned naiveté and passivity that has been bred into us. We are not just threatened as countries but as species at the same time.

A twitter/ facebook driven world will be a world of shallow values- unravelling our societies.

The thin veneer of civilization that we all depend upon on a daily basis is disappearing at a staggering pace and its not just the melting of ice.

The question now is.

Do we follow the trodden path where we only find all the grass eaten?

Creativity and imagination are what is needed as we are not getting across the problems of probability.

How we discuss and what we discuss is vital.

We must know the facts. We need a world brain bus.

Who is more likely to embrace the marginalized, to work for the disenfranchised?

Who will work for those of all backgrounds, all races and ethnicities, all religions, sexual preferences, gender identities?

Who will work to promote respect and equality for all people in the World?

Who sends a message that I want our children to believe in?

The rich and the poor, the entitled and the marginalized—they all make up the threads that a country needs to weave a unified society. When not include we weaken the material that fabricates our entire fabric of the world.

There has never been such a thing as an empire only a company called East India Company merchants. The British Empire did not exist in the Middle Ages. In the early Middle Ages, England was part of other empires: 

The British Empire was a commercial, not a military or political one.

Originally, holding an empire was about power. Throughout history, kings and queens have invaded territories in order to gain strength and power. With colonies, a country gains space, a larger army, more trade markets and the chance to make money out of whatever resources are on offer in them.

The formation of the empire was thus an unorganized process based on piecemeal acquisition, sometimes with the British government being the least willing partner in the enterprise.

An ‘Empire’ is a group of countries ruled over by a single monarch or ruling power. An empire doesn’t need an ’emperor’. The British Empire comprised of Britain, the ‘mother country’, and the colonies, countries ruled to some degree by and from Britain.

(British Empire, a worldwide system of dependencies—colonies, protectorates, and other territories—that over a span of some three centuries was brought under the sovereignty of the crown of Great Britain and the administration of the British government.)

To this day Britain’s ‘cultural imperialism’, suggesting that it was based on nationalism and racist scorn for other people.

With a handshake and the commitment “On the word of an Englishman,”
Captain James Cook claimed it for the British crown.In the century 1815–1914, 10 million square miles of territory and 400 million people were added to the British Empire. By the British Empire Exhibition of 1924, Britain was the ‘Mother Country’ of a worldwide empire which covered a fifth of the land in the world, and Britannia ‘ruled the waves’.

Sorry but Empires have benefited no one nor will any future trade deals that are not attached to sustainability do anything to resolve Climate change.

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THE BEADY EYE: LOOK AT THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE FLIP FLOP TO CLIMATE CHANGE.

21 Wednesday Aug 2019

Posted by in Environment

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(Ten-minute read)

There is more to them than first appears.

Each day, consumers purchase cheaply made flip-flops, and each day these flip-flops are thrown away — discarded in a landfill or dumped in the ocean. It’s a classic case of wasteful manufacturing.

The flip-flop and sandal industry have not been immune to the calamity of overproduction.

Millions of discarded flip flops posing a huge hazard to ocean life

The average lifespan of a flip flop is two years.

Tons of them are washing up on coast all over the world.

  Each year, tons of flip flops wash up on the East African coast, including Kenyan beaches like the one pictured, posing a risk to plant and animal life.

According to one estimate by 2050, there could be more plastic than fish in the seas by weight. Flip flops contribute approximately 90 tons a year.

Before they reach the ocean they’re already a problem polluting freshwater ending up in landfills with no hope of biodegrading.

We don’t actually know how much rubbish there is in our oceans. But we know that most of it is plastic and that much of this is not visible to the naked eye.

It’s microplastic, which comes from emissions from our treatment plants or from larger pieces of plastic that have been decomposed by the sunlight or ground into smaller pieces by wave action. These minuscule particles, less than five millimetres in size, can be eaten by plankton, which is eaten by fish.

Produced from plastic foam that contains DDT, PCBs and flame retardants they’re upcycled and travel thousands of kilometres absorbing environmental toxins which they transfer to the island shores.

Three billion petroleum-based flip-flops are produced annually, eventually ending up as non-biodegradable trash.

It may be a while before this technology finds its way to three billion people’s feet.

22 billion water bottles are thrown away every year.

The history of flip-flops can be said to be quite long.

Ancient Egyptian murals on tombs and temples show flip-flops were worn around 4,000 B.C.

As early as thousands of years ago, humans used animal skins or all available materials to wrap them around the soles of the feet.

They come in all disguises – “jandals” “thongs” “plakkies”  “zories” “clam diggers” “slippers” “crocs” “zori”.

Billions of them are made every year, often in small factories in China. Flip-flop sales rise with the world population. As one billion people globally still walk barefoot, they are the first step into the world of shoes across the global south.

They also tell stories of how globalisation actually works on the ground.

Garbage is not just inert discarded material, but an active agent in making the future.

We live in an energy-based world. Fossil fuels are burned to produce electricity, which powers the factory in which the plastic is made. Plastic is very important for the economy to grow because in today world it is used in each and every place from cars till rockets.

Take a flip flob for example.

The flip flop is one of globalisation’s darker stories connecting smugglers, disposable workers, garbage pickers and the poorest of consumers.

Their story begins in the hydrocarbon economy – in the oilfields of the Middle East. From crude oil are made into little plastic pellets. The plastic pellets are bought by millions of small and medium-sized flip-flop factories throughout the world in production clusters where labour is cheap.

Like all products, they have a massive carbon footprint in setting up its Manufacture – materials- energy -etc.

Bought online they probably started there life in China transported either by air or sea – Package – reflown and then driven to the buyer.

We humans need to think about how we manage our rubbish. It’s not only about people on the other side of the earth, but it’s also about ourselves.

We need to stop buying unrecyclable items.

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