Hope for a Pleasant Vernal Equinox

First a note on the new blog, Rethinking Everything. I started the blog late last year with the intention of posting some possible "answers" to questions posed over the years in this blog. My thought was to start off with something somewhat limited in scope, rethinking democracy. A very thought-provoking book by Jason Brennan, a transdisciplinarian in social sciences, "Against Democracy", had reinforced my thinking that something was fundamentally wrong with the way democracy, at least as conceived in the US, was working. I had intended to further develop that theme based on the insights provided by Brennan and follow it up with some of my latest research in the systems approach to governance. Then January 6th happened.

What the events at the US Capitol did was stop me in my tracks and forced me to rethink rethinking, that is to reconsider the notion of starting off with a limited subject. The failure of democratic institutions isn't just an indictment of democracy, but of the whole nature of governments in which those institutions are critical. I had to reevaluate my plan for RE and I spent many an evening pondering a thread of thoughts about where this would lead.

Over the years, in this question asking blog, I have noted how many institutions seem to be failing. I've examined economics, education, even science itself, and more. In asking why so many social institutions were in failure mode, I eventually came to see that the one common denominator has always been human beings and their inability to make wise choices, especially when money was involved. I explored the phenomenon of human evolution that led to our current species with the brain capacity I dubbed "sapience", what I came to see as the brain basis for the capacity to gain wisdom (also see the book that emerged from those writings: "A Theory of Sapience"). What I found is that while sapience had emerged in the hominid line, it was underdeveloped relative to the species' capacity for cleverness (intelligence + creativity). Humans are good at solving problems, especially by creating new artifacts, but do not stop to consider long-term consequences. They are motivated primarily by greed, laziness, and fear, as these were necessary motivations in the context of biological evolution and the human condition in the late Pleistocene. Humans have always looked for an "easier" way, a way to accumulate more stuff (initially food), and were always primed to encounter danger.

My intent now, for Rethinking Everything, is to start with the big picture of the human condition, our social organizations, i.e., civilizations, and reconsider, in light of our general low level of sapience and the existential threats that we have ourselves created by virtue of our social organizations and behaviors, what should the human social system be like in order to integrate positively in the whole Earth ecosystem. The answer to that question will lead naturally into what the nature of our economic and governance systems should be like to support that organization. Along the way I will introduce you to a research program that I and several colleagues are engaged in looking to be able to answer the question: What is the future of the human social system?

So please don't give up on RE just yet.

Meanwhile, as we observe current events and consider how they support the notion that the current human social system is in collapse, let us try to appreciate the coming of Spring. Of course, many more of us will not be able to enjoy much of anything as the impacts of climate change and reductions in net energy per capita move apace and are being played out in the Middle East and North Africa (look at Yemen and now Mozambique) and Central America. The media continue to blame political unrest to a revolt against brutal dictatorships. They blame the migrant hoards to people escaping that brutality. But they never ask: Why are the dictators, or in some cases the rebels themselves, acting so brutally? The answer is right in front of their eyes but they are so used to thinking in terms of political reasons or neoclassical economics reasons (economies must grow to be viable) that they completely fail to look for deeper causes. And it is not really hard to see. People have lived peacefully under dictatorships before when the average person has been able to make a comfortable living within the context of the surrounding social milieu. This is not to say that political unrest or economic hardships are not playing a role in the sequence of causes. It is that they are not the ultimate causes. People cannot make a living in a region when that region is no longer able to produce most or all of its own food, clothing, and shelters. People become agitated and will tend to blame the governments for failing to make their lives livable when the capacity for the local economy fails. Foreign aid, food aid, fuel aid, etc. can delay the onset of the societal impact, but only for so long. This has been the case in much of the MENA region for decades. But eventually, with ever increasing population pressures, the cooker will explode. Unrest develops, dictators/autocrats start to repress it, and things rapidly escalate from there. Refugees from these regions are not just trying to escape repression and conflicts, they are also leaving because there is no way to support their lives. And why?

If you look at these regions you will discover that they are among the hardest, and earliest hit by climate damage. It has become nearly impossible for local people to grow food due to droughts and severe weather events are destroying whatever assets they have. Of course their situation is aggravated by the still increasing population growths and no small part of their unrest is amplified by their being able to compare their living conditions with other parts of the world (via the Internet, of course). But the single basic cause of the problems is climate change. Spring equinox means little to these people.

Then there is the growing extent of climate disruptions in more developed nations as well. 2020 saw some of the most severe weather events in history. There were more named Atlantic hurricanes than ever before. More tornadoes. More floods. More loss of life and of physical assets than ever before. Clearly, climate chaos is no longer a supposition. It is here. Crops all over the world are in jeopardy. Can much more extensive food shortages be far behind?

And then there is still the pandemic. In spite of the race to produce vaccines and get them into arms, we are still faced with economic hardships due to earlier responses to the disease. And what about the new variants to the SARS-CoV-2 virus? If any of them prove resistant against vaccines (even if marginally so), will this result in new waves and new lock-downs? We might not even need that to be the case. Look at the number of people still defying public health practices (for their God-given freedoms), the number of people who will not get a vaccine for fear it isn't safe or that Bill Gates will take control of their minds.

It is this latter point that brings me back to thinking about sapience, or rather the lack thereof. I said before that people are basically driven by greed, laziness, and fear. And when the latter begins to take over, even as a subconscious factor, whatever sapience a person might possess is submerged. Judgment is impaired. Paranoia takes hold. And QAnnon emerges.

I still think that we are observing an evolutionary event, where the pandemic is a major selective force. Those unwise enough to not moderate their greed, subdue their fear, and overcome their laziness will eventually succumb to the environment generated by the pandemic. The wise will inherit the Earth.

Get what enjoyment you can from Spring. The cheery blossoms and daffodils are popping out along with some under story green shoots. The bright green new leaves always cheer me up.

 

Comments

[Steven B Kurtz]

Hi George,

I agree with everything up until your conclusion that Climate Change is the root cause of increasing suffering and unrest. Yes we are short term clever and long term dumb. But it is our biological success as seen in a population chart which indicates an 800% increase in our numbers in a mere 2 centuries which is the root cause.

It is not PC to say this. The three main global institutions (government, business, religion) are all addicted to growth in population for revenues and power. Like all life we expand niches as possible. We will shrink as physical limits are finite.

I hope you and your colleagues reconsider your conclusion.

[Peter Salonius]

Hello George

Your statements regarding current climate:

"growing extent of climate disruptions"
"2020 saw some of the most severe weather events in history."
"more hurricanes, more tornadoes, more floods,more loss of life and physical assets than ever before"
"more tornadoes. More floods. More loss of life and of physical assets than ever before"
"climate chaos is no longer a supposition. It is here. Crops all over the world are in jeopardy."
......must be the result of your reading popular press, as actual recent global climate observations show that not one of these statements is true.

Do contact
Roger A. Pielke Jr. to obtain rebuttals to each of these popular misinformation's.

[Peter Salonius]

Hello George, again

Further to what I wrote this morning about the wrongness of your statements about climate .... I refer you to an interview with Roger A. Pielke Jr at :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrZTWHCA5L4

[Eric Lee]

When I got to "But the single basic cause of the problems is climate change" I figured you'd left out a word like "proximal" before "cause of", which is arguably true, but if someone could push a button today and reset the climate to 1950 norms for the next century tomorrow (and did) it would change nothing that mattered. We would still be on the same Anthropocene trajectory amid our perfect storm with merely one fewer issue.

And if there are no political solutions, democracy as a failed subsystem is a distraction. When growth falters in China, the CCP will be blamed. That Khrushchev's promise to bury the West by out growing it failed is merely because capitalism/democracy is better at growing the economy than 5-year plan committees of expert ideologues.

Soon, social-capitalist democracies will be the worst form of political economies along with all the others. An apolitical naturocracy might be alternative, but alternatives to BAU or BAU in sheep's clothing (e.g. GND) is unthinkable (at least until most are looking over, with that deer in the headlights look, the net-energy cliff). And then what? I don't know. But I'll guess daffodils will bloom in the spring in southern costal Oregon where they have become a mildly invasive species where little Dora Daffoseed has been.

[George Mobus]

Eric is quite right, I should have added the word "proximate". My point is that the current triggering of unrest and failing states is the climate chaos and speaking to the fact that the MSM miss this as a rule.

I too often assume readers are familiar with my past writings on issues like population in which I do acknowledge the importance of population as for example in the IPAT formulation. I fully grasp that population size and densities contribute to the growing pressures/tensions and are an underlying cause of our problems, including climate change itself (c.f., https://questioneverything.typepad.com/question_everything/2011/10/seven-billion-and-counting.html).

Even more fundamental in my mind is that humans are unable to self-regulate or consider consequences of their actions due to the fact that our brains are just not evolved enough in terms of sapience (links to this theory in the post). The average human being is not able to consider what it means that everyone is having so many babies.

@Peter
I am very familiar with the work of Pielke the younger. I take my cues from actual climate scientists not a political scientist.

George

[Peter Salonius]

Actual climate scientists are few and far between.

Patrick Moore, Eisenhower's warning, and reponse to Nobel Summit misinformation

In case you have not encountered Patrick Moore's views about climate science ... here for your interest is a 5-minute video at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkdbSxyXftc

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Subject: Eisenhower warned against a scientific-technological elite dominating public policy

Most commentators on President Eisenhower’s Farewell Address given sixty years ago emphasize that Eisenhower warned against an industrial-military complex dominating US public policy. But as importantly, perhaps more importantly today, Eisenhower also warned against a scientific-technological elite dominating public policy. With the Biden Administrating making “climate change” a priority, the fear of such dominance has become real.

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Contrary to what the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), NASA’s Goddard Institute on Space Studies (NASA-GISS), and other government organizations proclaim, the greenhouse effect is poorly measured by changes in surface temperatures, because surface temperatures have been changing for hundreds of millions of years for reasons not fully understood.

Atmospheric temperature trends are a more direct measurement of changing greenhouse effect, but they do not separate changes in water vapor from carbon dioxide. These measurements have been taken for over 40 years. The most direct measurements of the influence of carbon dioxide are found in the databases of observations from the atmosphere such as the high-resolution transmission molecular absorption database (HITRAN), which has been compiled for about 50 years. These observations support decades of laboratory experiments which were used to conclude that increasing CO2 in today’s atmosphere would not have a significant effect on temperatures.

In short, a politically motivated scientific-technological elite has proclaimed a “climate crisis” which does not exist. As is occurring in Western Europe, the North American public may fall victim to this false crisis

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Subject: Nobel Prize Summit - re: climate prognostications

I have just read the announcement:

https://www.nobelprize.org/events/nobel-prize-summit/2021

Nobel Prize Summit - NobelPrize.org

Our future depends on our collective ability to become effective stewards of the global commons – the climate, ice, land, ocean, freshwater, forests, soils and rich diversity of life. The first Nobel Prize Summit brings together Nobel Prize laureates, scientists, policymakers, business leaders ...
www.nobelprize.org

FROM Not a Decade to Spare for Climate Action | Project Syndicate included in the announcement ---we read the following knee jerk unsupported litany as follows:

--------"POTSDAM – The last decade was the hottest on record, according to independent data analyses from NASA and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration."

MY NOTE: except for the heat waves in the 1930s and the Roman and Mediaeval warm periods.

.-------"The reality of climate change is sinking in, with millions now feeling its effects – from rising sea levels and disappearing coastlines to more frequent extreme weather such as droughts, floods, and wildfires."

MY NOTE: watch the following short interview about the wrongness of these statements about climate .... in an interview with Roger A. Pielke Jr at :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrZTWHCA5L4

-------"Indeed, given current atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and the projected trajectory of future emissions, more record temperatures are inevitable."

MY NOTE: re: the projected trajectory..... this trajectory is projected by using climate models that cannot even match climate observations of the last few decades during which there has been minimal climate warming in the face of soaring carbon containing greenhouse gas emissions.

This just gets tiring.

[Peter Salonius]

Try the short read at the URL below:

Schooling Alarmist College Students on Bogus Climate Claims | Principia Scientific Intl. (principia-scientific.com)

[Steven B Kurtz]

Walter Youngquist revisited:

http://energyskeptic.com/2021/youngquist-geodestinies-population/

[Heiner Benking]

interesting that you highlight not only Earthday but Equinox. We have celebrated the 50th anniversary last year https://worldhappinessbird.com/2021/03/13/earth-day-2021/ and now uploaded Saturdays celebration. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olZwTcH_jKs&t=1109s Enjoy and maybe start thinking how to question the unknowable and surprise. Maybe also the EarthBeat as a video-making challenge exercise with Youth: https://worldhappinessbird.com/2021/03/13/earth-day-2021/

[George Mobus]

@Heiner,

I got your invite for LinkedIn but at my old UW email address. LI doesn't recognize me there. My email for LI is george dot mobus at gmail dot com. I would send you an invite but I refuse to become a premium member since I am retired and LI has minimal value for me!
George