Comments

2
Well, he'd be more persuasive if he could demonstrate their interest in scientific (engineering really) solutions which already exist

Geoengineering is only necessary if you see it as a way of solving the issue while continuing to use all the stores of fossil-fuel. We did "geo-engineering" before anthropogenic climate change existed (see the Netherlands) and we have other technological adaptations for energy production and environmental change, just not the ones that permit us to keep pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere with abandon.

What this is now and always has been about is the protection of the value of as-yet unextracted fossil-fuel resources.

What a silly trope this "leftist thinker" engages in - I guess he makes his book off of being contrarian - taking the Simon-Ehrlich wager seriously and grossly over-extending it's "the market solves everything" premise. I fully believe humans will figure out how to adapt after an environmental catastrophe but that is not the same thing as undoing the catastrophe - adapting is not undoing.
4
We're apparently well on our way to having released a trillion metric tons of sequestered carbon into the atmosphere, carbon which will not be reabsorbed by the biosphere at all under current conditions. Sequestered carbon is all that oil, gas, coal, and peat we burn for fuel and industrial processes, as well as the limestone we kiln to make portland cement.

The last thing I read recently on the subject said we not only had to stop it this minute, but somehow recapture 100 million metric tons of the carbon we've already liberated into the atmosphere, back into forests and the soil to prevent the otherwise inevitable calamity.

Depressing, no? How are we supposed to do that? Somehow turn the Sahara Desert back into a flourishing grassland?
6
@3 - The problem isn't that they don't work very well; the problem is the load they're asked to bear. It's like that Einstein quote: "If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid." Fossil fuels have done a great job of fueling the construction of an unsustainable way of life.
7
@3 - there are plenty that work very well, just not for cars. This isn't just about cars. They'll quit resisting once the oil is all pumped and be all down with public transit and dense cities, electric street cars run off a new grid, one that's tolerant of multiple intermittent generation systems.

More importantly: they'll finally stop fighting efforts to actually develop alternative technologies that do work just as well.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

I actually believe they do understand, but they can never admit it. They're just representing their clients and themselves.
8
"The right, then, is either in the past (denial) or in the future (science fiction) but nowhere to be found in the moment, the concrete science, the current hard data. Where the left is is still where the science is. "

I think Mirowski speaks to this point more clearly in this lecture:

http://sydney.edu.au/podcasts/2012/The_M…

http://ideaseco.files.wordpress.com/2011…

His central point is roughly: Who cares what "real" science says when large interests can buy their own science, and the populace is not able or willing to understand the difference? The Left doesn't seem to understand how persuasive the Neoliberal thought collective actually is.
9
Charles Mudede: "The right, then, is either in the past (denial) or in the future (science fiction) but nowhere to be found in the moment, the concrete science, the current hard data. Where the left is is still where the science is. "

I think Mirowski speaks to this point more clearly in this lecture:

http://sydney.edu.au/podcasts/2012/The_M…

http://ideaseco.files.wordpress.com/2011…

His central point is roughly: Who cares what "real" science says when large interests can buy their own science, and the populace is not able or willing to understand the difference? The Left doesn't seem to understand how persuasive the Neoliberal thought collective actually is.

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