Saturday, December 05, 2009

Climate Change: Does it make sense to argue with rightist believers?

I have been reading the notorious Newsmax Newsletter for a while (it really is a painful thing for me to do), and it often leaves me speechless. For one, it clearly caters to the scientifically disenfranchised (which is a mild way of expressing it). At first it was difficult for me to understand that any even remotely educated person would fall for the style and content of these right-wingers’ arguments, but apparently there are enough relatively intelligent people with a cemented – and very limited - world view. Often it strikes me as if these people live in a parallel reality, and the method is to transfer bits and pieces of the actual reality into their limited realm where those morsels of facts and knowledge are cut off their roots and interpreted in the context of a world with which they have nothing to do. And although it is not politically correct to say that: it is impossible to convince a true believer of anything that contradicts his or her belief. It means to pull the mental ground away from under their feet – so understandably there is resistance to this onslaught of science. At the same time scientific ignorance is still the norm, not the exception. Even here in Germany – nowadays a very liberal, progressive and rather well educated society. If I go out onto the street of a big city, 80% of the 2009 populace I encounter there will not be able to tell me the difference between solar thermal applications and photovoltaic. Ten years ago I actually did a survey which included question aimed at finding out whether people could distinguish between “ozone hole”, “ozone smog” and “greenhouse effect”. The result was very sobering. So how much insight can be expected from the layman, when it comes to the tremendous complexity of the global climate system meeting the tremendous complexity of the globalized economy? It is near nil. And – although I am a trained physicist, climatologist and have over 20 years experience in the field: even much of my own perceived insight might amount to not much more than an illusion of understanding. When asked about the details I too often have to say “I don’t know”. The contrarians don’t do that. They blurp out their invented facts without doubt and hesitation. They are – or act like – believers. I have likened the situation to a medieval inquisition court. Imagine a scientist attorney in court addressing the Grand Inquisitor in favor of a defendant: “Your argument does not hold, because your fundamental proposition is unproven or wrong: the presumed existence of god and the devil.” I assume the argument would not have been very successful. But this points towards a fundamental problem: as long as we are arguing with people who live in an invented reality, there is no way of countering their arguments, because every scientific argument is a signal sent into and filtered by their closed set of quasi scholastic logics. They are, by their own definition, RIGHT. This means before their argument begins, they, in their own view, already have won the argument. There is no loosing. The scientific culture on the other hand is one of arguments, debate and discourse – a culture constantly in flux. The political right wing is by definition “conservative” - their values are solid, inflexible, well defined and ideally even eternal. Every change is perceived as a threat, and nothing is more disturbing to this mindset than the ever changing world of scientists. What a scientist like me considers a fascinating adventure of the mind that will keep me motivated up and running until the end of my days, many others perceive as an existential danger. So again: I am afraid there is no way to argue with anyone who religiously believes in any given ideology or religion and who is determined to defend their views – in fact their mental makeup – with every force they can muster. In such an argument everything you do or say – no matter what – will be turned against you. Because everything you do or say, no matter what, is, by definition, wrong from the onset. The only hope is to reach some of those who are not entirely inflexible yet, who’s mind is not yet completely close. That already would be a big success.

Such is that.

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Freely quoting Laotse...

Taking others for a ride is an art.
Taking yourself for a ride is a higher art... 8-)

Thursday, November 19, 2009

What a former vice presidential candidate knows - and what not, and what she and I have in common. Or not.

Yesterday I read in the notorious Newsmax newsletter, which I receive for unknown uncanny reasons: “Sarah Palin unaware that Bristol had sex”.  Umpf. Okay, I thought, not surprised. She did not know that Africa was a continent, so it struck me as consequent that she was not aware that people in the city of Bristol also are busy with common human activities. A moment later I realized that Ms Palin, who – like my good old self – once attended Hawaii Pacific University, has a daughter named Bristol. But the wondering went on: was Ms Palin aware that Bristol is the 11th largest city in the UK and former center of the British slave industry? Did she name her daughter after the city? And if so: why would she do that? If she didn’t, she would not only not be aware that her daughter was busy with general human activities – she also would have been unaware of the origins and meaning of her own daughters name.

P.S.: Ms Palin and I are no alumni – we both have in common that we did not graduate from HPU. I graduated, for example, from the University of London. London is the largest city in the UK and of the European Union. If it were situated in the US, it would be the 2nd largest city there. Not that it is important... I assume Ms Palin and I have a lot of things in common that we both did not do... I did not, among other things, become Vice President of the United States. Or any other vice president of any other state. Nor president. And I never will. Again something she and I have in common. I hope. For the well being of the world.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

We can save the World - but NOT the economy!

I recently participated in the "Climate 2009" event - an online conference hosted by a Hamburg/Germany based university and the World Meteorological Organization - one of the pre-curser events to the Copenhagen conference next month. Having been involved in climate change science and policy in the one or the other way over the last two decades I have gotten somewhat tired. The discussion strikes me as if a ship is sinking from overload, and the passengers and crews are discussing whether one form of weight pulls the ship down more than another. They stay within the system, that is. I raised a question: Is it possible to ever achieve a net reduction of energy related emissions within a framework of forced continuous exponential economic growth? Is it principally possible to find a way of de-coupling economic growth and energy/resource consumption with related emissions? As far as I can tell fundamental physical laws stand in the way of constant exponential economic growth. Unfortunately raising this question means to question one of the leading global dogmas: that growth is the savior. Economic - or rather fiscal - growth is practically divine. That question is not asked. One quickly is viewed as a nutty doomsday prophet or conspiracy theorist. On the other hand - when talking to economists, businessmen and scientists individually on a one by one base they usually quickly admit: it is impossible. Simply impossible. This means our entire beautiful globalized economic system is based upon either a big lie or a big mistake. And - everyone who thinks about it quickly realizes it. And: the proportion of the issue is so enormous that nobody has even the remotest clue what to do about it. "Recycle Aluminum" is not really an answer. As a result everyone just closes their eyes and moves on as before.

When younger I argued against children, against population growth, and now I, myself, have three daughters and cannot even plausibly argue along these lines. I also drive a relatively big car because my job (in solar energy R&D) requires me to travel, our family of 5 plus dog won't fit in a GEO Metro AND we live in the country. So it goes. And we try to recommend not using excess resources on an individual level, yet the economy as it is is entirely based upon just that: ever more consumption of everything!

Be that as it may: arguing against forced economic growth as the fundamental cause of our future demise nowadays is like standing as an attorney in front of the grand inquisitor of medieval times saying "Sir - I herewith plead not guilty for these women accused of witchery, because God as well as the Devil and their ilk are cultural inventions and do not really exist, hence, they cannot serve as arguments in court."

Tuesday, November 03, 2009

Brainless American Right Wingers Scare me Shitless

The right extremist NEOnazi Newsletter NEWSMAX had a headline today: Radical Obama won’t be re-elected. I wonder what that means? Here is an example for something that I consider so radical and extremist that it does not fit into any mainstream description of political wings: The Government of a Superpower deliberately lies about evidence and reasons for a war and then, without any such reasons, goes about and bombs an entire a country to rubbles. The American right wing self proclaimed pro-lifers/pro gunners do not seem to have much difficulties carrying out mass-abortions by blowing the expectant mothers to pieces, if those mothers speak another language or carry another passport or killing pregnant women is in the “Pro Lifers” financial interest. This is what the American Military does. Among other things – like mass murdering wedding guests in Afghanistan. This is what EVERY military machinery does that embarks in a war. Which is one of the reasons why we should avoid war altogether. There are no heroes – only desperate young men and women who are forced to do and experience things nobody should ever be forced to do and experience.

I keep reading along the NEWSMAX newsletter, and I believe these people are in need of some serious mental treatment (of course the liberals do not force mental treatment upon others – only the right wing has such ideas like the “Freedom Commission on Mental Health”). I read things like “Obama care can be stopped”.  The majority of that sentence consists of the phrase “care can be stopped”. Care is an awful thing, isn’t it? It strikes me as if the believers of the market religion (who often falsely claim – or believe themselves – that they are Christians) find nothing more terrifying than the notion that people actually might CARE about each other. People apparently are not supposed to care about EACH OTHER. They are supposed to care about the market, their job, about consuming, about making money. About the economy. About paying their credit card debts. They are supposed to care about HAVING and not about BEING. All these people believe in is money. All they want is money. More of it, and ever more of it. That is their true and only faith. And there are millions of such believers – tens of millions in the US. That such people exist in the first place  scares me shitless.

Seeking Climate Change Solutions from within a Diseased Dystem?

I have been involved with global environmental and climate change related issues since my high school days in the 80s - that is well over 20 years. Having a geo and physical science background, I try to look at the entire problem from a whole systems perspective, and at the root of the entire global change syndrome seems to be the coupling of energy/resource use and economic growth. There is no evidence that economic growth (defined as fiscal/monetary growth) is going to be de-coupled from physical resource depletion anywhere soon (how could it?) - energy consumption and resource consumption pretty much follow the growth curve of the global GGP (gross global product). And yet aside from some fringe groups the topic of economic growth itself as the main cause of environmental degradation and, indeed, the main threat to the very planet itself is not taken up by anyone (Why do we need continuous economic growth? What drives it?), aside from a few fringe groups without influence in the political arena. Instead, enormous attempts are made to accommodate the climate change issue within the existing institutions and to find fixes that turn climate change into even further economic growth. In my view the wrong incentives are in place everywhere - e.g. Carbon trading focuses on trading profits, not on carbon reduction. In my view topics like our financial crisis and climate change also are deeply intertwined. And nobody could yet plausibly explain to me how a monetary and economic system requiring perpetual exponential growth in order to function could ever be sustainable - if I am not mistaken a physical and mathematical impossibility. I am not in any way ideological, but my prediction is that it will be impossible to adequately address the climate change issue within the existing economic and financial paradigm. Kyoto has been a band aid, and here in Germany - a world leader in renewable energy - the power hungry Internet alone easily outperforms all contributions of the renewable energy sector and the so called emission reduction successes in this country were nothing but a statistical trick made possible by the historical coincidence of the re-unification.

If anyone thinks that the issue will be solved by efficiency or a service oriented society: there is no 100% efficiency and there is no service that does not require any energy or resources at all, therefore a perpetual exponential growth is impossible in any case. And even if we consider that economic growth will more and more rest with non-material goods (e.g. software) there is another limited resource: consumer time. It does not matter how we look at it: perpetual exponential economic growth is not possible. And there also really is no need for it from an individual's point of view - it merely is a built in requirement of our financial system. Every single unit of money forming out of thin air results in a corresponding quantity of resource consumption and pollution.

If anyone can explain to me where I am wrong and how perpetual exponential economic growth in a limited world is possible without violating the most fundamental physical and mathematical laws, I would be very thankful. I also need to understand why even the richest country requires continuous economic growth in order to function properly. I hold a Ph.D. in Astrophysics, and studied Economics, Climatology Oceanography and more, so you are most welcome to throw some serious theory and math at me. Before you do that, however, you might want to read Prof. Binswanger's rather mathematical book "Die Wachstumsspirale", though.

Friday, October 30, 2009

Tweepy out of Touch Crown of Creation

I made an interesting discovery recently – I was vaguely aware of that before, but now it is clear: the vast majority of people cannot be at ease by simply being alone and sitting somewhere in quietude and thinking or dreaming a bit or – doing just nothing. The vast majority of people go nuts when they suddenly hear their own inner voices. That’s why they always must do something – or always must immerse in a sea of noise and continuous distractions called entertainment. I find that deeply disturbing. Conversation with others mostly amounts to one shallow, entertained and distracted mind’s surface out of touch with its own roots exchanging superficialities with a similar kin. Chippy, chippy chirp chirp. Tweepy, tweep, tweep. Crown of creation, heh?

Monday, October 19, 2009

The Oppositeness of It All

Mails coming in claiming “Importance” to themselves are always spam – almost without exception. Statements that are shouted in most cases should not be listened to. And so it continues: no justice among the righteous, total control in self proclaimed free states (even if it is only the rope called money tightening around your neck), and reasons for war (another word for mass murder) usually are non-existent – or quite different from the public claims, and so-called truth in general is mainly nothing but unfounded belief.  Practically everything within the human world is based upon is a lie.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Masters of the Universe

When I chanced upon this video, I thought: the mites are the banksters and speculators aka the self proclaimed "Masters of the Universe". And the lady with her vacuum cleaner - she is Mama Natura. Mother Nature, aka "Reality". So no matter who you think you are: you are only a dustmite in the big scheme of things.

Masters of the Universe

When I saw this video, I thought: Ah - these mites are the banksters and speculants - aka the "Masters of the Universe". And the lady with the vacuum cleaner - she is mama Natura. Mother Nature, aka "Reality". No matter who you think you are - you are just a dust mite in the big schemes of things.

Saturday, September 05, 2009

Internet indifference

Some time ago I wrote that the internet is pointless. That may or may not be true, but the internet is not an ideology or a religion and it also is not an end in itself. And yet people believe in it. I think the price we pay for its existence may by far outweigh the benefits (what are the benefits?). The energy consumption of the net alone is mind blowing. Be that as it may, I today discovered that I lost my interest in the net. I use it on a daily base as part of my work, for reference, for communication, but that is it - the evolution - or devolution - from the thrill of having "the world at my fingertips" to a thing, a collection of systems and services, that are not more than telephone, fax machine, library, bookstore, postbox and so on, only with different means. What I mean is that my feelings towards the internet by now are about the same as my emotional attachment to a postoffice. I feel a vast indifferene towards this technology - after a decade and a half with periods where I was in danger of getting addicted. So here is the good news: if you are in risk of internet addiction - that, too, will pass! ;-).

Saturday, July 25, 2009

White Noise Conspiracies

Sometimes I think about the myriad of conspiracy theories out there, that many conspiracies are real, but there are so many of them, working in opposite directions, that they basically nullify each other on the macro scale. Entertaining in detail, but merely fluctuations of white noise in the big scheme of things.

Thursday, July 23, 2009

The Stain, the Mirror and the Log

After years – if not decades – of complaining about mirrors and people who waste their life in front of them, I today, suddenly, empirically, understood what mirrors are for. They are not only there to serve vanity and pamper some women’s bloated and narcistic egos. No. They have a rather practical purpose: to help avoiding embarrassment...

When tooth-brushing with little Sophie (5), I noticed a stain on her blouse. A brown stain. Choc-milk stain. I suggested to change the blouse. What impression does it make when she goes to Kindergarten with a stained blouse? My child, the dirty, unwashed one, the one in stained clothes... no! It is not so bad, she said, and marked a size by putting the tips of  her thumb and index finger together. “This is the size that is bad. Or bigger.”. A size a bit larger than a quarter or a 50 Eurocent coin. Okay, I thought. She is a girl. She knows better.

I brought her to Kindergarten, long good bye ceremony. I said hello to other parents, who looked at me in a somewhat indefinable way. Well. I went to my office. I passed by that silvery light reflecting pane on the wall and... I saw it. IT. THE STAIN! Not a little stain. Not a bit of choc on a little girl’s blouse. It was a huge stain, stretching almost from shoulder to shoulder. White stuff covering much of the chest area of my expensive dark shirt. Now I recalled what I forgot on that stressful morning after a long, sleepless, humid, tropical night. I had forgotten that baby Stella had emptied the content of her stomach onto me last night. I had forgotten that my favourite shirt was covered with half digested milk all over. All that would not have happened, if I simply had dressed up in front of the mirror in our sleeping room – the huge mirror ranging from floor to ceiling. The mirror I always hated, because it always reminds me of – me. It always shows me mercilessly who I am – at least on the outside. So they do serve a purpose, those mirrors! And the whole thing reminds me of the biblical proverb about the log in the eye. While being concerned about Sophie’s little stain, I was one huge walking stain myself...

Saturday, July 11, 2009

Nurtering the "Human Capital"

Although I do not like the term "human capital" or "human resources"  (it sounds derogative to me) human capabilities are the number one resource of our civilization. It also is a known fact that complex minds tend to be more sensitive. From my experience I believe that wrong educational approaches combined with peer pressure can destroy the most gifted among us. It also is possible to literally bore clever child into oblivion - and certainly what we do not want is an army of highly intelligent people with unstable personalities. But that is something we do have around the world! Children - including the gifted ones - also need some form of moral and ethical guidance, but it must be open and honest. Rigid scholastic systems do not work - they only serve to let the child perceive his or her parents and teachers as hypocrites since they never manage to consequently live up to their own moral and intellectual standards. There also is a sad saying I once heard after just such a case had happened: "The most gifted among us commit suicide before they reach puberty". We must take care that we do not destroy what keeps us alive. There is no progress - in fact there is no hope - if we do not manage to employ the best minds of the world to solve the problems of the future. And they also need to be encouraged instead of being regarded and treated as outcasts and nerds and barely accepted weirdoes. Schools, Universities and other establishments of research and higher learning must provide sheltered, positive environments. Clever companies will do the same. We must get away from seeing intelligence a disease when the real disease of mankind is stupidity. As I have often mentioned I for myself re-named our species to "Homo Sapiens Potentialis". We should nurture those few who actually realize their potential - at least partially. We must feed the fishes that swim against the stream, for only they will spawn the ideas that make the future a place we want it to be for our children!

Human - and other Animal - Emotions

It may be unscientific to speculate, but it is duly scientific to express a hypothesis based upon observation, anecdotal evidence and logical deduction. The hypothesis could start from an elevated point of view - alien, so to say. Looking at animals and humans it is obvious that they have more in common than parts them. The same basic substances, the same fundamental functions, nearly the same genome in some cases, much of the same environments and challenges throughout natural history and evolution. It then is not so far fetched to speculate or - indeed - hypothesize, that similar life forms have similar inner responses. There is no way to know for sure. But let's face it: a human psychopath is well able to mimic emotional responses and display emotions he does not have. In reality we cannot know for sure if the animal we observe feels what we feel, but in that same reality we also cannot know if any given human feels the same as we do - in fact in many cases they don't. I also do not see, what emotional responses have to do with reasoning. The two inner phenomena or processes seem quite separate, and every dog owner knows the grieving dog that doesn't eat when his or her best human friend is absent. Maybe what scientists call anthropomorphism occasionally is an intuitive understanding of what really is going on in our fellow animal inhabitants of earth? Emotions also are fundamental guiding tools in situations where reason only sends us into endless loops of unsolvable thought webs. There is much evidence suggesting that we ourselves - good old self proclaimed Homo Sapiens (or Homo Sapiens Potentials, as I like to call our species) bases many of his most important decisions on momentary emotions. Buying a house, choosing a partner for life - occasionally even starting a war: all that is mainly based upon animal emotions upwelling from the dark, (or illuminated - who knows?) uncharted depths of our souls.

Proclaiming human emotion to fundamentally differ from the emotions of other animals is laughable in the face of all the evidence to the contrary. That merely is an aspect of the outdated attempt to establish our species as the crown of creation, as something outside - or above - the rest of nature, rather than an integral part of it. Only the twisted human mind can speak of the environment as something surrounding him, something separate from himself, while in that very moment his heart pumps water that used to be part of the ocean, while at that very moment his lungs inhale gases produced by the metabolisms of myriads of photosynthesizing organisms. We are animals and as such an integrative part of the nature we live in and from. Our difficulties acknowledging that result from the very animal emotions we deny to have. We are jealous, we want to be special. We want to be something better than that perfect Tiger, Shark of Orca out there, because we feel small, weak and ugly in comparison to those magnificent and indeed near perfect creatures with who we share a planet - and a common ancestry. And if we look more closely at the word animal that we gave them, I must say yes, I am an animal, and I want to be one! For the word "animal" comes from the Latin word animale, neuter of animalis, and is derived from anima, meaning vital breath or soul. Considering this, if we say we are not animals, doesn’t that mean we have no soul? Is that a possible deeper truth about what become of humans?

Friday, July 10, 2009

fifty/fifty

Currently I work on an article about the international year of astronomy. While at it, I stumbled over a quote by Prof. Sir Martin Reese, the British Astronomer Royal:

“I think the odds are no better than 50/50 that our present civilisation will survive to the end of the present century.”

I have to let that sink in. A statement along the lines of the “Scientists Warning to the World” of the early 90s. A statement not coming from a nobody, but one of the most eminent scholars of our time. And he is not the only one. Something to think about.

Wednesday, July 08, 2009

The illusion of free will

Free will ultimately does not exist. In any case our decisions are limited by natural laws. To define free by "being able to make two different decisions in two identical situations" does not satisfy logical criteria for a number of reasons. One is: what determines my decisions? Can I really decide freely, or am I a prisoner of my own internal programming leading to thoughts and decisions that are at best a guided random walk? Among external influences I cannot control are natural laws. Can I decide to fly? Can I decide to read someone else’s thoughts? Can I decide to spontaneously understand the math behind string theory? I can't. Of course we are also bound by society, economy - money. Even committing suicide might not be what in German is called "Freitod" (voluntary death), but in fact may be a result of what Kurt Vonnegut referred to as a "chemical imbalance of the brain." We are controlled by so many deterministic factors that talking about "free will" is complete nonsense. And when we have to define free will as only applying within certain limits, situations, frameworks, we already have defined free will into oblivion. Therefore: free will does not exist.

Tuesday, July 07, 2009

Life is a book - das Leben ist ein Buch

The Internet is Pointless!"

Why are people blogging day after day, after day, writing down tidbits of their empty lives or mostly shallow analysis of problems they are far from understanding from within their isolated little spheres? Loneliness. Marketing. An attempt to transcend the own perceived meaninglessness - the overwhelming pointlessness amidst the endless ocean of life. Unfortunately when millions upon millions are blogging, one is just another anonymous part of a huge anonymous mass of faceless individuals -  with a few (totally random) outstanding stars. Things like Twitter are even worse than blogging. Institutionalized shallowness. Often it seems to me that everyone is connected, which results in a witches brew of opinion and information leading to a dilution of quality and facts so deep and profound that ultimately the entire web becomes questionable. What is it for? Does it enhance our life or does it merely keep us from living? And does it have a value to realize that for anything you do, no matter how clever and talented you are, there is someone who already did it - and better so? I am seriously asking: would I perhaps be better off without the Internet? Maybe not professionally, but privately... There practically is nothing anymore I want to do privately on the Internet. Over the years it has become boring. And too hectic and commercial and it becomes increasingly difficult to filter valuable content from junk. Like Earth itself, the Web is drowning in garbage and gibberish, and we destroy real world resources causing real world emissions to keep this cycle of commercialized mental shit up and running at ever higher speed. The Web goes the same path as cable TV in the 80s. As Pink Floy then sang: “13 channels of shit to choose from...” but there is nobody home. Connected to billions, and yet totally alone. Nobody is out there. Brave new world. And someone out there already saw this coming 20 years ago, and wrote about it, much better than I could ever do...