Category: Uncategorized

Greenhouse Gases

Greenhouse gasses are the thermostat (or an important part of it) of the planet. Dial up the greenhouse gasses and the planet’s temperature goes up. Dial them down and the planet’s temperature goes down.

The pre-Industrial Revolution thermostat setting was relatively stable for the last 15 million years and set the conditions that made it possible for many of the planet’s current species to exist. A change in that thermostat setting and the planet’s temperature will change what species can survive on the planet.

So greenhouse gasses are an important element of the current biosphere and a foundation for life on the planet.

Greenhouse gasses make the atmosphere function like a greenhouse by holding a certain amount of heat from the sun (much of the heat from the sun is reflected back into space). This ability to store heat makes the temperature of the planet’s surface conducive to many forms of life.

Since the Industrial Revolution homo sapiens have increasingly relied on the burning of carbon (wood, coal, oil, gas) and since the beginning have dumped the waste product (CO2) of this activity into the atmosphere. This dumping of CO2 waste into the atmosphere continues today and at higher levels each year. Currently, the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are higher than there were for the last 800,000 to 15 million years. As a result the planet is now in the early phases of another mass extinction. This extinction is being called the Holocene extinction (current rates of extinction are estimated to be 10,000 times higher than a typical species extinction rate) and resembles, in terms of the changes to the atmosphere, the Permian-Triassic extinction event.

See this short video primer and this explanation of the role of greenhouse gasses in the biosphere.

Denial (aka Closed Cognition)

1) A act of willful ignorance that is often described, or excused, by the person doing it as an act of skepticism.

2) The act of holding two different standards for an idea; the person holds a very high standard of evidence for the side of the argument they don’t like (and this standard may be even higher than scientific procedure requires) while simultaneously holding a very low standard of evidence and support for ideas and the side of the argument they like.

3) A phenomenon whereby a person 1) fears what a fact or scientific finding would mean to them if it were true and so 2) denies the fact or the validity of the scientific finding.

4) It is being closed off from knowledge.

For example, let’s say a person considers the fact that scientists have found evidence to support the idea that greenhouse gasses will increase the planet’s average temperatures to the point where much current life on the planet will be unsustainable. This person then sees this evidence through the lens of their lives. They think, “If this is true, and I agree that it is true, then I’ll have to burn less gas and less home heating fuel. I’ll have to increase the insulation in my home and reconsider my consumption of meat. But I don’t want to do any of those things. So I’ll deny the validity of the scientific evidence.” By rejecting the person can then continue their current behaviors—and do so without a sense of guilt or shame that would come with accepting the scientific evidence and not changing their behavior.

Denial can serve a number of purposes for those who resort to it. One. It can be a way to avoid responsibility. If a person a polluter, for instance, they may deny the harms caused by that pollution. Two. Denial can be a way to defense in favor of a person’s near-term financial interests. If a person is making money from a company or investment which is polluting or causing harm to ecosystems, denial allows the person to avoid the conflict their financial self-interest and their obligations to others and to the planet. Third. Denial can be a way to please those within your social and ideological tribes. If a person denies the validity of facts and evidence that others within your tribe are ideologically against, then you can increase group cohesion and show your loyalty to that group and foster your identity as a good member of that group.

DENIAL VERSUS SKEPTICISM

Those who opt for denial and willful ignorance may justify their behavior by calling themselves skeptics. But there is a wide gulf between the skeptic and the willfully ignorant. The skeptic studies the evidence but avoids making a conclusion. The willfully ignorant refuse to study the evidence and come to a conclusion. The skeptic is open, awaiting new evidence and new information, and the willfully ignorant is closed, certain of their conclusion even if evidence is found to support a claim or scientific theory. The skeptic accepts uncertainty. The willfully ignorant refuse it.

DENIAL AND INVENTED REALITIES

Denial can occur when our invented realities (religions, ideologies, currencies) come into conflict with the fundamental laws of biology, chemistry and physics or when it comes into conflict with the viability of ecosystems. As a cooperative species human beings invent and then cling to these invented realities (which often have no basis in the physical world) as a way increase the cooperation between large numbers of people. However, because of their social role or their role in establishing a person’s role and membership within a group, these invented realities can seem more urgent and emotionally salient than the laws that govern the planet’s ecosystems.

Anti-Cooperation Mechanisms

A mechanism which subverts the inclinations among humans to cooperate with each other and usurps or weakens the bonds and relationships between human beings.

Every organism and species on the planet depends on cooperation with other species or members of its own species for its survival—and evolved accordingly. Human beings are no exception. Human beings cooperate other of its own species for food, safety, reproductive success, child rearing and so on. It also cooperates with other species (domesticated animals) and organisms (the bacteria on its skin, in its digestive system). However, human cultures developed mechanisms that undermine the cooperative instincts and abilities and facilitate anti-social behavior.

Companies. These constructs are inherently antagonistic to the interests of others by making the interests of the owners of the company different than the interests of the group and by excluding those owners from group obligations. (For millions of years different homo species, including sapiens, functioned as groups with its members all serving the interests of the group.)

Currency and financial systems. These inventions subverted the bonds between human beings and the role of an individual within a group by making commerce and markets the way in which human being define themselves and organize their efforts. A human being was previously defined by their role within a group and by their relationships within that group. Now those relationships (and the obligations between individuals that grow out of those relationships) are subordinated or even destroyed by the relationships (and obligations that grow out of this relationship) imposed on individual by those with no obligations to the group or concern for the group. In the past an individual’s group helped to provide his or her food, shelter and security—from those with which they had intimate contact and histories. Now markets serve this function and the relationship is transactional instead of relational, intimate or cooperative.

Myths. Myths can foster cooperation but there are also myths that attack the idea of cooperation and as result dislodge an individual from his or her history and from the ethics that fostered cooperation. Individualism and rags to riches stories are two such narratives designed to compliment the structures that destroy the cooperative instincts of human beings.

Fossil Fuel Economy

A process whereby carbon that is sequestered within the planet for millions of years is extracted and then pumped into the atmosphere and oceans as a waste product (which radically changes the chemistry of the atmosphere and oceans and reduces their ability to support life).

Approximately 36 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide are dumped into the atmosphere as a waste product every year.

Here is a brief history of fossil fuels and carbon waste.

Media

1) A disseminator of information that shapes public perceptions according to the interests of the companies that advertise with them; these companies often are responsible for the destruction of ecosystems.

2) The maker of representations of the world who holds its viewers and readers in thrall and persuades them of the authenticity of the representations.

3) A vehicle used to increase the information asymmetries between people and companies; companies use these information asymmetries to reduce opposition to their efforts and gain a favorable bargaining position when purchasing land or resource rights, advocating for legislation that subordinates people and ecosystems to the interests of their business.

4) A spokesperson for those beliefs and claims most conducive to the interests of the management and shareholders of a select number of companies and so a collaborator with those who regularly destroy ecosystems and who see as being in their interests to do so.

Politics

1) Politics is a fight among human beings over how all of the resources of the planet are apportioned among those humans who currently reside on the planet. It’s dividing the pie, with no allowance for the interests of other living things or the biosphere and its systems; it’s a fight over who gets what.

2) It’s a process of deliberation and decision making that neglects to weigh or consider the dependence of human beings on the biosphere and the planet’s ecosystems.

3) It’s a process that sees the planet’s resources and living things as a sum of money and privileges to be divided among the parties at the table, with all other living things and the systems that support life are all defined as commodities or assets (i.e., a proxy for money that can be bought or sold).

4) It’s a process whereby the wants of groups and individual are decided by what these individuals and groups can dream up as opposed to by what is feasible given the finite resources of the planet or the limitations of the living system of the planet. The primary concern of the different parties in the process is one questions (“Am I getting my fair share?”) and all other considerations (such as the proposal’s potential impact on ecosystems and the systems of the planet that support all life) are subordinated to this one.

5) It’s a contest between humans to allocate and distribute all existing resources and the earth’s bounty among themselves, without consideration of other living things, the biosphere or living things (including humans) of the future.

The decision making apparatus of political systems is biased against the systems of the planet that supports life as it excludes or avoids certain types of information, such as the finitude of resources, the fragility of ecosystems, the laws of biology, and the interests of the millions of species that reside on this planet with us. The interests of trees or bears or microorganisms or bees are not considered relevant to the process. In many political systems even the most modest environmental proposals or expressions of concern for ecosystems are scorned and resisted as though the preservation of the planet’s ecosystems were an imposition or even an attack against one party in the political discussion or another.

The participants of political systems often experience a distortion of perception whereby every action or event is seen as either allocating more resources to them or the members of their group or allocating less resources to them or the members of their group. This binary formulation (“Am I getting more or less?”) can consume their thoughts and strongly influence what actions and behaviors they see as permissible or desirable. This distortion of perception can prevent these participants from thinking that “we all part of a larger system and that system includes the biosphere and other living things” and acting accordingly.