The Sweet Spot

  It is worth noting that Whitestone's official biography (found only on the back of his book) fails to state his position as executive director of an organization committed to promoting the virtues of C02.Gregory Whitstone is Executive Director of the C02 Coalition The CO2 Coalition was established in 2015 as a 501(c)(3) for the purpose of educating thought leaders, policy makers, and the public about the important contribution made by carbon dioxide to our lives and the economy. The Coalition seeks to engage in an informed and dispassionate discussion of climate change, humans’ role in the climate system, the limitations of climate models, and the consequences of mandated reductions in CO2 emissions. Funding for the C02 Foundation is available here . Donors include the Mercers and the Koch Brothers , always to be found behind right wing causes, including Trump's "big lie". Not surprisingly Whitstone is a frequent "talking head" on the subject of Climate C...

Be warned: this is a nerdy impression about what is behind the scary graphs that are the main source of "information" behind the Climate Scare. We have all seen graphs like this: In an interview with Sabine Hossenflelder, Tim Palmer tries to explain the range of "predictions" at the right of the graph. Are they uncertainty inherent in the model? Uncertainty in the assumptions? A symptom of inherent chaos? I would ask why some models start at a very different point than the real world data - this didn't come up. Tim Palmer, one of the major minds behind climate models gives an astonishing answer. The spread is political . It is the attempt to show everybody's "predictions", no matter the quality, to avoid people with big fast computers ("the rich") from dominating the picture. In other words, good models with thousands of iterations along with crappy models with arbitrary assumptions and one run. This comes from the open source nature of...

Press "coverage" is 99.99% alarmist and activist. Phrases like "Climate Crisis" don't raise eyebrows any more. Senior politicians routinely talk about impending doom. The net effect is to make skeptics appear as "denialist" - denying what "everyone" knows. There seems to be no air left for anyone expressing the mildest skepticism over the core claims: 1.5 degrees is some kind of "tipping point", beyond which is catastrophe 2030 is a critical deadline Economic collapse now is totally justified since the alternative is economic disaster in the near future These days, a Climate "skeptic" is someone who doubts that the world will avoid catastrophe - skeptical about the promises. Everybody is a "skeptic" these days and that refers to universal skepticism over COP26 achieving anything PLUS a sense of despair, since the goals of COP26 are "universally" accepted. We are fucked. To my mind, the panic itself is n...

A friend recently asked me, Is there hope for the world? I said, We're fucked*. Does anyone seriously that that Russia, Nigeria, Canada or Australia will give up its main source of revenue - while there is one cc left to sell? Will Nigeria voluntarily become a basket case by refraining from selling its one major resource? Can we imagine India and China stopping from pulling on that chain until they have reached a level of comfort common in the "first world", with all its destructive consequences? I love the image of Pandora. I imagined that we pulled coal, oil, nuclear energy out of the box and thought they were wonderful gifts. We pulled and pulled, filling the world with cheap energy and the wonders it creates. Now we are faced with the fact that all these miracles can't be stuffed back into box before they destroy the world as we know it. The climate peril slipped beyond our control decades ago, yet people repeat the "if we don't do something soon" ma...

What did "we" do to get Greta Thunbertso pissed off!  Nobody feels themselves to be part of that "we"   One over-used word, appearing in all the speeches at COP26 is "we". There is no "we". No "we" stepped up to defeat the pandemic. No "we" has ever volunteered to to make real sacrifices for any cause at all.  "We" send our young men to war. "We" make sure "we" all get vaccinated before 99% of the word. One thing that's unique about "we" is how it dissolves when you get closer and closer. Who is the "we" speaking in the corporate statement of values? Surely not the employes or the shareholders. Can any world leader claim, on behalf of his fellow citizens, what "we" want? It is rare for such leaders to enjoy the support of even the majority of their own party, let alone the general public. And who is the "we" who needs to do something about climate change...

The fundamental flash of insight Buddha had under the banyan tree is that suffering is the result of attachment. The strongest attachment we have is to the "self itself" - fear of dying, fear of letting go entirely. Part of his insight was that all things are impermanent, including the "self".  My comments reference both the impermanence of "self" and the importance of the self-created illusion of self-who we imagine ourselves to be. Attachment to our self-image causes a lot of suffering. Attacks on this self-image (challenges to the story we tell ourselves about who we are) are met with the vigorous defense which attempts to defend our "selves" or re-define them in some way that seems to turn away the attack. This has the effect of strengthening our attachment to our "self", weakening our ability to hold it lightly and detach. This is the wrong direction to take in life - at least according to Buddha - and the net effect is increasing ...