Tag Archives: Climate change

THE BEADY EYE SAYS: THE CORONA VIRUS IS SHINING A LIGHT ON WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE WORLD AND IT IS SPREADING FAST.

21 Saturday Mar 2020

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2020: The year we need to change., CORONA VIRUS., COVID-19, Denial of Death., Disconnection., Environment, Evolution, Fourth Industrial Revolution., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Inequality, Life., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Post - truth politics., Reality., Refugees., Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, Telling the truth., The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Truth, Unanswered Questions., VALUES, WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Leaders, World Organisations., World Politics

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(Ten-minute read) 


AS IF WE DID NOT KNOW it is posing that fundamental profound question once more.

Are we going to care of the Earth so it can care for us?  

It is impossible to say which way the disease will go however there is no doubt that it is creating the biggest restriction of civil liberties “in peacetime”. 

We know that we all tracked by Google.  Behind all the restrictions governments will adopt powers that they will loath to relinquish when the crises are over. 

There is every like hood that the pandemic will strengthen the state and reinforce nationalism.  What won’t change is the inequality and greed, rather it will create a less open, less prosperous and less free world. 

Of course, it did not have to be like this but it will be the straw that brakes the camel’s back of globalization and it will probably result in uncontrolled Co2 emissions.

In the short term, with decoupling and rivalry coming to the forefront driven by a cascading sense of vulnerability there will be a race to return to full production.

However the Pandemic is proof of our interdependence but we are not or are we heading for a poorer, meaner, and smaller world.

If the Pandemic shocks us into recognizing our real interests in cooperating multilaterally on the big global issues facing us all it will have served a useful purpose. 

We all know that it is not enough to think of one nation’s power over another when it comes to climate change. The key is learning the importance that we have all to act together and Covid -19 is going to show that we are failing to adjust our strategy on many fronts to this new world. 

Either way, this crisis will reshuffle the international power structure in the way we can only begin to imagine. 

If we don’t support each other the result will be instability and widespread conflict within and across nations. 

We know that there is a dramatic new stage in global capitalism on the horizon with supply chains be brought closer to home.  We are going to see failed states with billions of economic refugees on the move. 

We are going to see the USA no longer as an international leader. 

To date, international collaboration has been woefully insufficient. 

What is needed it targeted assistance that provides hope that men and woman can prevail in response to this extraordinary challenge.  

If it gets Airborne the white full personal-protection suits that presently strike fear into the hearts of us all will be worthless.

AS IF EARTH DOES NOT HAVE ENOUGH PROBLEMS THE NEXT NASA PROJECT TO MARS IS SCHEDULED TO LAUNCH IN JULY. 

NASA’s 2020 Mars rover. 

The rover will collect and cache promising samples for eventual return to Earth.

The first pristine pieces of Mars won’t be coming down to Earth for at least another decade, but the time to start preparing society for the epic arrival is now. 

This is an extremely grave point.

On the one hand, we can argue that Martian organisms cannot cause any serious problems to terrestrial organisms, because there has been no biological contact for 4.5 billion years between Martian and terrestrial organisms. On the other hand, we can argue equally well that terrestrial organisms have evolved no defences against potential Martian pathogens, precisely because there has been no such contact for 4.5 billion years. The chance of such an infection may be very small, but the hazards, if it occurs, are certainly very high.

Martian rock that has already arrived on earth contained structures resembled the fossilized remains of bacteria-like lifeforms.

What if such samples turned out to be dangerous, and contagiously so?

Are there some Mars-oriented lessons to be learned from COVID-19. 

Here on earth, it is gruelling and potentially lethal work to identify a virus never mind virus from other planets. 

It is estimated that there are 1.6 million unknown viruses in birds and mammals. Of these, it is thought between 600,000 and 800,000 are zoonotic, meaning they have the potential to jump from animals to people. 

Virulence, contacts and the length of time for which people are infectious are the three factors that determine what is called ‘the basic reproductive rate’ – how far and fast the epidemic will spread. 

There may be a staggering 3,200 different types of coronavirus harboured in bats alone.


As with historical infectious disease epidemics, the coronavirus that’s spreading currently is another example of why it’s so important to understand the consequences of interacting with environments humans rarely contact and then distributing widely whatever [they] picked up.

If one looks at the outbreak in Africa, of Ebola and the HIV/Aids pandemic – which to date has killed 35 million and infected 70 million – started about a century ago in Cameroon when a chimpanzee virus was transmitted to a human who almost certainly killed, butchered or consumed it.

Markets were closed during both outbreak, but they are now once more doing a roaring trade selling tropical game including monkeys, chimpanzees, cane rats, bats and snakes. Bushmeat is entrenched in local culture and is often a vital form of subsistence, hence why the authorities are unwilling or unable to announce an outright ban.

Last, with or without artificial intelligence we continue at our collective peril to make imbalance’s in the ecosystem.

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S. ITS TIME TO STOP THE BULL SHIT. FLATTENING THE CURVE. HERD IMMUNITY. ETC.

17 Tuesday Mar 2020

Posted by in COCID-19, CORONA VIRUS.

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(Two-minute read) 

I am no scientist but it is obvious that you don’t rely on the very deadly infectious agent to create an immune population by allowing it to grow exponentially.

Viruses have host-pathogen interactions. They increase their diffusion rates, which creates opportunities for new host-virus encounters.

We are under environmental change and this virus might be the first associated with the ecosystem. The environment creates a disease triangle, animals, plants, humans, three-way interactions or hyperlinks driven by intraspecific competition.

So warm weather as we know kills off the flue till it returns in another form.

The transmissibility of COCID_19 is much greater and it is not clear what effect temperature and humidity will have on this virus.

My understanding of a virus is that it lies low in the long tall grass till its behavioural fatigue is understood.

Without strong guidance institutions and citizens will begin to make there own decisions.

This is not a time to create stamping herds however if your planning to practice social distancing your first thought turn to food.

Remember that online shopping and its delivery pass through multiple handling, so wash your hands before picking up the delivery and after.

Wash everything packeted or not.

Precaution, not panic.

Don’t believe sensational Tabloid News paper head lines.  

The Evening Standard newspaper has a headline that states “the residents in Los Angeles are flocking to buy arms.”

History has taught us that Society is capable of both untold horrors and inspiring resolve.

That said watch Sovereign wealth funds the hyena of the world economy gobble, the roadkill. 

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

 

https://youtu.be/Hks6Nq7g6P4

THE BEADY EYE OPEN LETTER TO THE DELEGATES OF THE FORTHCOMING UNITED NATIONS CLIMATE CHANGE CONFERENCE IN GLASGOW: If you thinks they we have a problem with migration today … wait 20 years.

06 Friday Mar 2020

Posted by in Climate Change.

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Fifteen-minute read.

Dear Delegate,

Although climate change undoubtedly posed an “existential threat to our world” it is not too late to take decisive action.

So far we had the Cop-out 15 to Cop 25, the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 the Paris Agreement in December 2015 and now the 2020 United Nations climate change conference in Glasgow.

As you know dealing with climate change will require coordinated action by nations around the world.

Up to this point what we have seen are countries and industries trying to gut, block or water down all efforts, in a rearguard manoeuvre that mirrors President Donald Trump’s rollback of climate policy in Washington.

24 million people were displaced by weather-related disasters this year.

As climate change begins to alter patterns of disasters, we can imagine these figures will get worse. Understand how changing weather patterns and disasters will alter patterns of migration. This will be both difficult and almost impossible to predict.

Reduction of carbon emissions has no chance of being reached through a voluntary cap and trade system utilizing the free market system. Why would countries strongly enforce caps and targets on their emissions if it puts them at a competitive disadvantage in the market place?

The fact is that if we are to save the planet from a devastating ecological meltdown, it is going to require an immediate and I mean immediate, reduction in greenhouse gases.

We must abandon the absurd notion that the invisible hand of the free market system will solve the crisis.

Why?

Because a market-driven voluntary system will not work.  

Because they are traded for huge profits. There is no baseline from which true carbon reductions can be measured, verification is lacking. 

Because it is cheaper to pollute and buy credits than it is to change production processes.

It is totally unrealistic to believe that carbon reductions on a large scale can be attained unless mandatory reductions are implemented and a full scale global. 

While rewarding carbon-reducing technologies makes sense we will only be able to take worthwhile actions if they are funded by a self-perpetuating fund with outright non-repayable subsidies. 

However, I don’t have to tell you that when it comes down to the wire as who and how we are going to fund the way forward to tackle fairly any actions the simple answer is that we do not have enough time to haggle about it. 

It can be achieved tomorrow by placing a 0.005% commission on all world activities that seek profit for profit sake. ( See previous posts)

The world stock markets are 99% run by high-frequency algorithms. Exploiting market conditions that can’t be detected by the human eye.

Of course, this begs an important question will such a commission affect the free market and can it be applied worldwide. 

Yes to both. 

It will not be climate change that creates another refugee crisis.

Rather, it will be the attempts to stop this migration that will be creating a crisis.

Climate change will not wait. Neither can we for climate refugees.

Regardless of how fast we cut emissions, we are going to see more and more people on the move and there is no single global agreement that can be signed and ratified to change this fact. 

Most of what you know about climate-linked migration is probably wrong.

We all know that climate change is the unpredictable ingredient in our rapidly changing world – and it’s potential to trigger both violent conflict and mass migration – needs to be considered as an urgent priority for policymakers.

As its effects spread, it will destabilise entire economies and overwhelm poorer countries lacking resources and infrastructure. 

When added to existing social, economic and political tensions, it has the potential to ignite violence and conflict with disastrous consequences.

Poland is highly dependent on polluting coal for power (Pic: Beemwej)
You cannot strike a bargain with Climate. 

The choice faced by politicians and all of us is not about how to prevent climate-linked migration.

That possibility is gone, several decades ago.

There is now a stark choice between two very different options:

One: Trying to stop people from moving—which will lead to something that looks like a crisis—or helping people migrate out of the most badly hit areas.

Two: Is to facilitate climate-linked migration in a legal and organised way.

Support for migrants and refugees is at an all-time low. People are already using migration as a way of adapting climate change, with little or no help.

When migration isn’t illegal there is no need to do it secretly. No need for traffickers and smugglers. And no need for migrants to hide as soon as they arrive.

There is no simple law that could be passed that would “fix” climate-linked migration.

The problem is this won’t stop people moving so we need to start by defining exactly what a climate refugee is.

Droughts, hurricanes, floods and sea-level rise are all forcing people to move but picking out one group of people to call “climate refugees” is very difficult.

WHY?

Political responses to climate-linked migration are complicated, and it’s a field where the answers are often not simple.

Because if climate change plays a role in displacement it becomes difficult to draw the line.

What do we know about the links between climate change and conflict?

Climate-linked migration is very often from rural areas into cities.

So if the seas do rise to the predicted levels and people move within there own countries they will not be refugees climate or otherwise.  

To be a refugee you have to have crossed an international border which is part of the official definition of what makes someone a refugee. But, as the impacts of climate change worsen, more people will want to migrate across borders.

Therefore there is only one course of action and that is to open approved channels into the EU and other world nations in order to determine who is a genuine refugee and who is not. 

Few politicians will risk making bold statements about making provision for more people. Climate change is also a low priority for electorates in developed countries.

This is the climate crisis, not the coronavirus. tomorrow is too late. 

These changes cannot take place tomorrow. They should have been implemented yesterday!

Capitalism caused the problem now it should pay to resolve it.

Climate change is unequivocal, that we are responsible, and that our choices before us matter”.

We were never going to get there in one go unless we spread the cost in a way that is acceptable to one and all.  

Yours Faithfully 

The Beady Eye. 

Footnote: All supportive comments appreciated.

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S. WILL THE WORLD EVER BE ABLE TO ACT AS ONE?

26 Wednesday Feb 2020

Posted by in 2020: The year we need to change., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Climate Change., Dehumanization., Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Disconnection., Environment, Fourth Industrial Revolution., Google, Human values., Humanity., Life., Our Common Values., Reality., Robot citizenship., Sustaniability, Technology, Technology v Humanity, The cloud., The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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Twenty-five minute read.

If humanity stopped fighting and competing against one another; if we bound together in a common cause, we could accomplish spectacular things.

Not true.

We would basically become mindless drones of no culture because it’d all just be one culture with no distinct forms.

If this were to become a reality, Ummm how would govern it.

China’s premier Wen Jiabao put forward the following equation in a speech: “Internet + Internet of Things = Wisdom of the Earth.”

How wrong he was, however, by 2025 there will be 1 trillion networked devices worldwide in the consumer and industrial sectors combined.

He should have said, “Internet + Internet of Things = Becoming what we do not think? Because people are truly not that intelligent.

In our houses cars and factories, we’re surrounded by tiny, intelligent devices that capture data about how we live and what we do. Now they are beginning to talk to one another. Soon we’ll be able to choreograph them to respond to our needs, solve our problems, even save our lives.

Intelligent things all around us, coordinating their activities.

Coffee pots that talk to alarm clocks. Thermostats that talk to motion sensors. Factory machines that talk to the power grid and to boxes of raw material.

We might be seeing the dawn of an era when the most mundane items in our lives can talk wirelessly among themselves, performing tasks on command, giving us data we’ve never had before? This intelligence once locked in our devices will flow into the universe of physical objects.

We are already struggling to name this emerging phenomenon.

Some have called it the Internet of Things or the Internet of Everything or the Industrial Internet—despite the fact that most of these devices aren’t actually on the Internet directly but instead communicate through simple wireless protocols.

Others are calling it the Sensor Revolution.

I call it the Programmable Profitable in a World of profit-seeking algorithms.

It’s the fact that once we get enough of these objects onto our networks, they’re no longer one-off novelties or data sources but instead become a coherent system, a vast ensemble that can be choreographed, a body that can dance in the era of the cloud and apps and the walled garden— of Google, Apple, etc, which connotes a peer-to-peer system in which each node will not be equally empowered.

These connected objects will act more like a swarm of drones, a distributed legion of bots, far-flung and sometimes even hidden from view but nevertheless coordinated as if they were a single giant machine, relying on one another, coordinating their actions to carry out simple tasks without any human intervention.

So the world will act as one. Or will it?

Once we get there, that system will transform the world of everyday objects into a design­able environment, a playground for coders and engineers.

It will change the whole way we think about the division between the virtual and the physical putting intelligence from the cloud into everything we touch.

Call it “smart exploration.” 

The rises of the smartphone have supplied us with a natural way to communicate with those smart objects. So far they include watches, heart rate monitors, and even some new Nike shoes. Smartphone making payments to merchants wirelessly instead of swiping a card, and some billboards are using the protocol to beam content to passersby who ask for it. As a way to sell more products and services—particularly Big Data–style analysis—to their large corporate customers.

The yoking together of two or more smart objects—is the trickiest, because it represents the vertiginous shift from analysis, the mere harvesting of helpful data, to real automation.

In my view no matter how thoroughly we might use data to fine-tune our lives and businesses, it’s scary to take any decisions out of human hands.

It can be hard to imagine the automation you might someday want or even need, in your daily life. There are all sorts of adjustments you make over the course of any given day that is reducible to simple if-then relationships.

Facebook, which has famously described the underlying data it owns as a social graph—the knowledge of who is connected to whom and how.

Would you want to automate all of these relationships?

A world where every one of us would have a sensor on us. “Presence” tags—low-energy radio IDs that sit on our keychains or belt loops and announce our location, verify our identity.

This is the principle behind Square Wallet and a number of other nascent payment systems, including ones from PayPal and Google. (When you walk into a participating store today, Square can let the cashier know you’re there; you pay simply by giving your name.)

A tracking tool that monitors not just your pet’s movements, but your movements.

GPS reliably know our location within 100 feet, give or take, and that knowledge has and is transforming our lives immeasurably: turn-by-turn driving directions, local restaurant recommendations, location-based dating apps, and so on.

With presence technology, Google has already the potential to know our location absolutely, down to a foot or even a few inches. That means knowing not merely which bar your friend is at but which couch she’s sitting on if you walk through the door.

It means receiving a coupon for a grocery item on the endcap at the moment you walk by.

Think about a liquor cabinet that auto-populated your shopping list based on the levels in the bottles—but also locked automatically if your stock portfolio dropped more than 3 per cent.

Think about a home medical monitoring system that didn’t just feedback data from diabetic patients but adjusted the treatment regimen as the data demanded.

Think about how much more intelligent your sprinklers could be if they responded to the weather report as well as to historical patterns of soil moisture and rainfall.

It does not stop just there think about applications on top of these connected objects.

This means not just tying together the behaviour of two or more objects—like the sprinkler and the moisture sensor—but creating complex interrelationships that also tie in outside data sources and analytics. 

Plugged into that information, your system wouldn’t just know how much water is in the soil it could predict how much there will be, based on whether it’s going to rain or the sun will be baking hot that day.

It means walking through an art museum and having your phone interpret the paintings as you pause in front of them.

This simple link—between a tag on us and a tag in the world—stands to become the culmination of the location revolution, delivering on all the promises it hasn’t quite fulfilled yet. A simple link—between a tag on us and a tag in the world—will complete the location revolution.

The treasure that it digs up could be considerable.

This is obviously true for retailers:

It’s a future where the intelligence once locked in our devices will now flow into the universe of physical objects. Users and developers can share their simple if-then apps and, in the case of more complex relationships, make money off of apps, just like in the mobile marketplaces.

Processing it all in the cloud in a language unheard of.

On Google Maps, you can now navigate inside certain airports and stores, with Wi-Fi triangulation helping out your GPS. 

And according to a mobile couponing firm called Koupon Media, some 80 per cent of customers who buy gas at one major convenience-store chain never walk inside the store, so presence-based coupons could make a huge impact on the bottom line.

But it’s also true for our everyday lives. Have you ever lost an object in your house and dreamed that you could just type a search for it, as you would for a wayward document on your hard drive? With location stickers, that seemingly impossible desire has become a reality:

A startup called StickNFind Technologies already sells these quarter-sized devices for $25 apiece.

Think about a thermostat app pulling in readings from any other device on that platform—motion sensors that might say which room you’re in, presence tags that identify individual family members (with different temperature preferences)—as well as outside data sources like weather or variable power price.

An even more natural category for apps is security. It locks itself up, shuts down the lights and thermostat, and activates an alarm system complete with siren, flashing lights, and auto-notifications, and notifications with an on-call platoon of off-duty cops all coordinated through the Smart­Things.

This, finally, is the Programmable World, the point at which the full power of developers, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists are brought to bear on the realm of physical objects—improving it, customizing it, and groping toward new business plans for it that we haven’t dreamed of yet. Indeed, it will marshal all the forces that made the Internet so transformational and put them to work on virtually everything around us.

However, there are obviously some pitfalls lurking in this future of connected objects.

As a sanity check.

Our fears about malicious hackers preying on our email and bank accounts via the cloud might pale in comparison to how we’ll feel about those same miscreants pwning our garage doors and bathroom light fixtures.

The mysterious Stuxnet and Flame exploits have raised the issue of industrial security in the era of connected devices.

Vanity Fair recently detailed nightmare scenarios in which hackers could hit connected objects, from our high tech cars (university researchers have figured out how to exploit an OnStar-type system to cause havoc in a vehicle) to our utility “smart meters” (which collect patterns of energy use that can reveal a great deal about our activities at home) to even our pacemakers.

The idea of animating the inanimate, of compelling the physical world to do our bidding, has been a staple of science fiction for half a century or more.

No, the main existential threat to the Programmable World is the considerably more mundane issue of power. Every sensor still needs a power source, which in most cases right now means a battery; low-energy protocols allow those batteries to last a long time, even a few years, but eventually, they’ll need to be replaced.

Just as with social networking, the privacy concerns of a sensor-­connected world will be fast outweighed by the strange pleasures of residing in a hyperconnected world.

A bigger concern, perhaps, is simple privacy. Just because we’ve finally warmed up to oversharing in the virtual world doesn’t mean we’ll be comfortable doing the same in the physical world, as all our interactions with objects capture more and more data about where we are and what we’re doing. iStock_000049614472Medium1

What’s coming is ubiquitous connectivity that will accelerate how people collaborate, share, learn, gather, do business, and exchange knowledge.

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S. IS IT TO BE GDP OR RIP. THERE IS NO REASON THAT EVERY BUILDING SHOULD NOT HAVE SOLAR PANELS.

17 Friday Jan 2020

Posted by in Climate Change.

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(fifteen-minute read)

Irreversible by 2030. 

Up to 200 million people could be displaced by climate change by 2050.

50% of all carbon emissions are emitted by the richest 10% of the world’s

population.

Half of the world’s coral reefs have died in the last 30 years.

 At our current rate of consumption, we’d need 1.7 planets to support the

demand on the earth’s ecosystems.

Greenhouse gas levels are at an all-time high.

Have we lost all common sense!

So why are governments not enacted a simple law requiring solar panels on homes?

The main reason is.

None wants to foot the bill – GDP greed- 

it is being turned into a product to sell – Bio this Bio that  – Carbon Credits – etc.  

climate change

It’s a vicious circle.

What is required is a step towards a circular CO2 economy.

Take Air condition for example.

As the climate grows hotter, there’s more need to stay cool.

It is projected that there will be 1.6 billion new AC units to be in use by 2050 throughout the world.

Air conditioners consume huge amounts of energy and that’s adding to climate change. It pumps out heat straight into the atmosphere. Using powerful greenhouse gases called hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), thousands of times more potent than carbon dioxide.

Surely it would be not that difficult technically to add CO2 capture functionality to an A/C system. The necessary technology is already commercially available.

Once collected, water and CO2, can be converted into renewable hydrocarbon fuels into renewable synthetic oil.

Office buildings throughout cities could produce more than 120 million gallons. The same process could happen on buildings everywhere.

If this additional cost was added to the mortgage of a new home, the purchaser would actually be in the pocket, because the mortgage costs on the additional £2,000 will be less than the energy costs savings that the solar panels bring.

When will we come to our senses?Solar panels

The amount of sunlight received by the earth in one hour is more than the total energy used by the entire world for an entire year!

Solar panels and wind turbines coupled with energy storage offer better hope for tackling climate change.

Harmless benign solar panels producing useful heat energy and saving harmful emissions.

There is no valid reason to wait ten twenty or thirty years not to start using it.

It could replace current fossil fuels like coal and gas for generation of electricity that produces air, water, and land pollution.

It could be achieved in five years.

We all know.

That, Climate Change has led to an increase in flooding and hurricanes due to disturbed weather patterns.

That climate change is happening and perhaps faster than expected.

That, Higher carbon dioxide concentration is making oceans acidic and killing marine life, like corals.

That, Climate change causes extinct of species from Sub-Arctic Boreal forests to tropical Amazon forests.

That, Higher temperatures result melting of polar ice caps, reducing habitats for wildlife and also increase sea level.

That, Irregular rainfall or increasing droughts affect agriculture and livelihoods of the weaker sections of society globally.

That Emissions are blamed for the rise in global temperatures, and changes in weather patterns leading to a cascade of effects.

That, the momentum for change is currently too slow.

That, given that climate change is inevitable, we are not doing nearly enough to save hundreds of millions of people from a miserable future.

That, the worst effects are yet to come. Submersion and loss of land displacing people.

That, the current targets would put the world on track for 3C of warming, which will ultimately lock in irreversible sea-level rises of perhaps two metres.

That, the greatest difference would be to nature. Insects, which are vital for pollination of crops, and plants are almost twice as likely to lose half their habitat at 2C compared with 1.5C. Corals would be 99% lost at the higher of the two temperatures, but more than 10% have a chance of surviving if the lower target is reached.A firefighter battles a wildfire in California

Against the above background it’s a line in the sand and what it says to our species is that this is the moment and we must act now.

What we are witnessing is patchy international efforts to prevent it from happening.

On one hand, we have Sir David Attenborough, “So we have to realise that this is not playing games. This is not just having nice little debates and arguments and then coming away with a compromise. This is an urgent problem that has to be solved.

”https://youtu.be/r-91umZ7cQE

On the other hand, I am sure he would puke at hippocras of countries declaring Climate Emergency and then bailing out Airlines.

The truth is that this is a global problem that will require a global solution.

We can’t shy away from that.

The Glasgow 2020 event with 30,000 delegates could be key to the fight against climate change only if China, India and—most importantly the US, participation in any future multilateral agreements.

If the UK is not stable enough to act as a diplomatic facilitator ahead of the summit (The Conservative manifesto devoted just two pages to climate change, skirted the issue) perhaps it might be a good idea to move it to Australia where the 30,000 delegates can witness first hand the effects A HEATING CLIMATE CAN DO.

Of course, this is not going to happen.

So how might be achieved other than Boris “Get Net Zero Done.”

It will be one of the first major tests of the UK’s influence on the world stage after it leaves the EU.

Collins Glacier in King George Island, Antarctica.

The main sticking points of international climate diplomacy are well known.

There are tensions between so-called ‘Global North’ and ‘Global South’ countries over financial and technological flows in aid of decarbonisation, and debates over how best to support those most vulnerable to climate risks, such as island nations.

If we are unwilling to make profit pay market-based instruments need to be sensibly designed to not negate the disproportionate costs of climate change on different groups.

What appears fundamental to the success of market-based instruments to reduce emissions is how government actually spend the revenue they generate.

If revenue is reinvested in other, complementary policies—especially supporting those on low incomes—and there is a consistent political and public dialogue, market-based instruments might work like Green Government bonds.

The problem is that none of the market-based instruments can be policed and will not produce the necessary funds to tackle the problems.

Because climate change does not affect everyone equally there is only one just solution we must make a profit for profit sake foot the bill, it will produce a perpetual world fund. ( See the previous post on a world aid commission of 0.05%)

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

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S; WE ARE ABOUT TO ENTER THE END GAME.

29 Sunday Dec 2019

Posted by in 2019: The Year of Disconnection., Climate Change.

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(Sixteen-minute read) 

WHY?

Because there is no point any longer carry on claiming that we are a victim of world events…Climate change, Artificial intelligence, Capitalist greed etc. 

If Everyone’s Finger–Pointing, Who’s to Blame?

The answer, it seems, is someone else.

We think blaming means we get away with it.

Getaway with what?

If we stop it may become evident that this blame game is getting us nowhere and maybe, we need to look deeper at that word RESPONSIBILITY.

Could it be possible that our choices got us in the mess and our new responsible choices could get us out of the blame game forever?

The issue at hand is a vicious circle. Greed versus Common sense.

It is important that the leadership of countries are responsible for governing but does anyone remember the last time that a government actually took responsibility for their own actions?

No.

Politicians — hostage to the tyranny of short election cycles — instead wooed voters seeking instant gratification, the protection of unsustainable entitlements, and shortcuts to continued prosperity they pander to popularism. 

Its no wonder we use blame like an auto-pilot switch?

At no point do we want to think that our choices may be contributing to what is going on in our life.

The media changed our perception of so many things preventing us from coming to a consensus not only on how to dig ourselves out of this mess but also on how to prevent it from happening again.

All that has been positive is slowly being replaced with only more negative.

And so no goes the endless, useless recriminations.

The blame game, however, is a lot more dangerous than it sounds. This never-ending cycle not only diverts responsibility but distracts from coherent responses.

That has two immediate consequences.

First, it is virtually impossible to generate a sense of shared responsibility that must underpin any sustainable, effective solution.

Second, the temptation increases for each country to turn inward, significantly raising the risk of protectionism.

As the species that have taken over the planet.

The world is looking for bold leadership, and in the absence of it, dysfunction that will make 2019 merely a flesh wound risks is becoming an ever more likely reality.

There is the possibility that our struggle to halt destructive climate change is going to make most of the people around the world very conscious of changes on the planetary level that need to be stopped, and species extinction is in that category. . . .However, unless humanity learns a great deal more about global biodiversity we will soon lose most of the species composing life on Earth.

WHY?

Because we need to do one big thing that people could get together on that would solve the problem and it needs to happen politically, globally in order to fulfil this vision? 

We might have achieved many small victories in a losing war but what is immediately relevant at the present time is our collective inability to act as one. If not what we will see soon—it is on the horizon—is a second great environmental crisis, and that’s a shortage of freshwater.

It’s a shortage of fresh water that is rapidly growing, that’s causing some of the most tragic humanitarian problems . . .  and it’s going to get worse and worse.

We the grownups we have to start somewhere.

The era that we have to create ahead of us is going to have to include action and research in multiplicity.

I mean, lots and lots of people involved in order to keep the whole planet and all the plants and animals in it, in order to understand how the living world works….where life came from, where we came from, and what we need to be preserving in order to make Earth a livable, habitable place—a planet to be our home. 

Billion of us live in our technologic bubble called cities, indifference to what is taking place outside our own worlds thanks to the Smartphone. If that remains true for the next decade what is left won’t be worth saving.

Where to start?

We now face a substantial possibility of seeing a complete collapse of the ecosystem which will have an irreversible impact of human activity.

The slide toward extinction with all our efforts around the world has not slowed, nor will it in the near future. 

Like conservation efforts around the world had consisted of targeted procedures to save a species here or there or to save a habitat here or there.

Rather than point the finger of blame here a few things we could change.

Hope is after all one of the great attributes we are all ushered towards…

Profit-seeking Algorithms. Regulation

Technology leapfrogging.  Transparency.

Currency manipulator. Emerging economies gained a competitive advantage by manipulating their currencies, weakening labour standards, degrading the environment, or engaging in various forms of implicit protectionism.  Unsustainable national policies. 

Consumption.  Ban Media/TV Advertising that is promoting consumption for consumption. 

Multilateral institutions.  The UN are only as strong as our member nations let it be.  When push came to shove, these institutions shie away from their duties, hindered by widespread representation and legitimacy deficits. Remove the Veto.

Bogus blame:  Remove False News from Social media 

All those things together intrinsic, to human instinctive behaviour?  

They could go long way to helping us remain in the game.The End Game

Politicians, of course, will say: “It’s not our fault. They are right as to do not hold them to account. 

Education. Stop educating for the market place. Children have to take out of the classroom and learn where fresh air, fresh water, fresh vegetables, fresh everything comes from. To learn true human instinct are not a Tweet, a Like, a Smartphone, a Virtual game.

And trust me — no one will want to take the blame for that tragedy.

Our evolution now is a competition, greed against all of us. 

Everyone can get it eventually, if they just think.

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

 

 

 

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

10 Tuesday Dec 2019

Posted by in Climate Change.

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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% )

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are no right or wrong answers, just your insights.

 

 

 

 

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)

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

 

 

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THE BEADY EYE ASK’S. IS THIS THE WORLD YOU WANT TO LIVE IN NEVER MIND LIVE ON.

14 Thursday Nov 2019

Posted by in 2019., Artificial Intelligence., Humanity., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Reality., Sustaniability, Technology, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World

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(Twenty-minute read) 

Never mind standing on the moon here are some depressing reality about your planet Earth.

We live in a world of trillions of living organisms and billions of humans and few millions of other species.

There are over 35 major conflicts going on in the world today.

There are nearly 210 million orphans in the world.

More than 500 million small arms and light weapons are in circulation around the world.

There are approximately 30,000 nuclear warheads in the world today.

Current global military spending is approximately $800 billion per year; more than the total annual income of the poorest 45% of the global population.

Genocide and other mass murders killed more people in the 20th century than all wars combined.

AND THAT JUST FOR OPENERS. 

35% of the world’s people live in countries in which basic political rights and civil liberties are denied (such as freedom of speech, religion, press, fair trials, democratic political processes, etc).

Over 100 million people live in slums.

1 billion people – 1/3rd of the world’s labour force, are unemployed or underemployed.

Cows earns more than 1.2 billion of the world’s poorest people.

An estimated 27 million people are enslaved around the world, including an estimated 20 million people held in bonded labour (forced to work in order to pay off a debt, also known as ‘debt bondage’). 

At least 700,000 people annually, and up to 2 million, mostly women and children, are victims of human trafficking worldwide (a modern form of slavery — bought, sold, transported and held against their will in slave-like conditions)..

About 246 million, or 1 out of 6, children ages 5 to 17 worldwide are involved in child labor

3 billion of the world’s people (one-half) live in ‘poverty’ (living on less than $2 per day). 1.3 billion people live in ‘absolute’ or ‘extreme poverty’ (living on less than $1 per day). Both in rich countries and poor, a staggering 30-50% of all food produced rots away uneaten.homeless

By 2025, at least 3.5 billion people or nearly 2/3rd’s of the world’s population will face water scarcity. More than 2.2 million people, mostly children, die each year from water related diseases.

The richest 1% of the world’s people earned as much income as the bottom 57% (2.7 billion people) The top 5% of the world’s people earn more income than the bottom 80%. One fourth of humanity lives without electricity.

The wealth of the world’s 7.1 million millionaires ($27 trillion) equals the total combined annual income of the entire planet.

The combined wealth of the world’s richest 300 individuals is equal to the total annual income of 45% of the world’s population. 

The world’s 3 wealthiest families have a combined wealth equal to the annual income of 600 million of the world’s people.  The wealthiest one-fifth of the world’s population receive an average income that is 75 times greater than the poorest one-fifth.

Half of the forests that originally covered 46% of the Earth’s land surface are gone.

Between 10 and 20 percent of all species will be driven to extinction in the next 20 to 50 years.

Almost a quarter of the world’s mammal species will face extinction within 30 years. Up to 47% of the world’s plant species are at risk of extinction.

60% of the world’s coral reefs, which contain up to one-fourth of all marine species, could be lost in the next 20-40 years.

Land degradation threaten nearly one-quarter of the land surface of the globe.

An estimated 40-80 million people have been forcibly evicted and displaced from their lands to make way for the construction of large dams,

Global warming is expected to increase the Earth’s temperature by 3C (5.4F) in the next 100 years.

While we witness the horrific events that are occurring within our society and world today now with a blink of an eye, our world is constantly changing, for the good, but also for the worst.

With technology, we are losing sight of what is important.

We have begun to categorize people based on how they act, what they wear, their political party, their skin color, where they live and so many other factors. 

We are always forgetting ourselves until someone wakes up to remind us of who we really are.  Humans?

The world was always beautiful. It’s only becoming lesser and lesser.

There is only this world, only this single reality, and its shared by everybody, everyday… Not created.

 Were economically and morally bankrupt.

THIS IS THE WORLD WE LIVE IN.

The world has no one society. Surely its time we started to vote with our eyes not our ears. 

All human comments appreciated

. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin. 

 

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.

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