Two Guys, Calen and Leith, Drink Scotch and Talk in a Pub (Taigh-seinnse)
Calen: “Sure, sure, I think they are all serious people. They have adopted a cause, and they have used logic and science as their motivation to act. And what better place for them to meet than here in Scotland, where truly modern science took some of its first steps in Edinburgh. But seriousness is neither science nor logic. This latest conference in Glasgow is, to put it unkindly, just tilting at windmills—literally, tilting at windmills.”
Leith: “I agree that these climate conference types are serious about their cause and this COP26. It does have a noble-sounding purpose under the catchphrase ‘Uniting the World To Tackle Climate Change.’ And as the twenty-sixth such conference, they have been serious about the topic for more than two decades. Alok Sharma, the COP26 president, says that ‘Climate change has continued [during the pandemic], and it ultimately threatens life on earth.’ He warns us that we ‘cannot wake up in 2029 and decide to slash our emissions by 50% by 2030.’ Alok wants to ‘end coal power.’ But he says without much qualification that ‘Unfortunately, reducing emissions is not enough.’
Calen: “Huh? I thought carbon emissions were the the cause of climate change according to the IPCC.”
Leith: “Yeah. So, emissions are the problem, but reducing them is not enough. I guess he wants to stop the deforestation in an attempt to ‘restore Nature.’ And, of course, he wants money from the rich countries to flow into the poorer countries, specifically, I assume, into India, his homeland. And he argues that ‘clean energy, like wind and solar, is now the cheapest source of electricity in most countries.’ I’m reading this directly from the online brochure called ‘COP26 Explained.’ * I’m wondering whether the reason it is the cheapest form of power in some countries—if that’s true—lies in a simple fact: Those would be countries without adequate reserves of coal, oil, and natural gas, and without rivers for hydropower, and without the technology for nuclear power. Given fossil fuels to burn, does anyone believe a developing country would accede to the desires of the energy-rich powers by foregoing the burning of those fuels?**
Calen: “Let me see that brochure. Look at this. Here’s a bold-faced introductory statement. It reveals that those who believe in logic and science lack a bit of both:
‘Around the world storms, floods and wildfires are intensifying. Air pollution sadly affects the health of tens of millions of people and unpredictable weather causes untold damage to homes and livelihoods too. But while the impacts of climate change are devastating, advances in tackling it are leading to cleaner air, creating good jobs, restoring nature and at the same time unleashing economic growth.’ (6)
“So, if I read and understand this correctly, weather is unpredictable, and nothing in the last sentence says that weather prediction is on the table as a solution. After all, storms, though part of the weather, aren’t a climate parameter. Rainfall, yes. Temperature, yes. But storms? Only insofar as they occur during monsoonal seasons do they feature as a climate entity. The statement also conflates ‘air pollution,’ ‘climate change,’ ‘economics,’ and ‘restoring nature.’ The pamphlet has pictures of windmills on pages 9 and 10. Those windmills remind me of other windmills, those in the story of Don Quixote, and some of the people pictured in the pamphlet happen to be, just like the hildago in Cervantes’ novel, nobles like Lord Zac Goldsmith, Sir David Attenborough, and Prince Charles.” *** Ah! The aristocratic privilege of saving the little people from a chair in a castle. “Come, my little helpless ones, gather round, for I have a great tale to tell, one with kings and queens, with lords and knights, and with the rich and famous.”
Leith: “You forgot to mention that storms, floods and wildfires have always plagued humanity. But back to the point of seriousness. With all that international political firepower, including the U.S. President and his climate ombudsman John Kerry, the conference is a very serious gathering. Alas, Alok also says in the brochure that it’s important for the people to fly into Glasgow from all over the world to solve the problems caused by people flying all over the world. I guess for climate-change apologists, something bad in general can be a good thing in particular. We should go to Glasgow. I’ll bet the scotch flows like the Water of Leith, my eponym.”
Calen: “You wish. Wonder what made your mother name you after a river. But on that conference, I have to say, ‘Lord, save us from these saviors.’ Imagine the attendees. There will be some high sounding discussions by climate scientists and politicians who will report that the world is changing. They will discuss and agree that we’re in for tough times. Think about that. There will be so much agreement that the attendees will be imbued with self esteem. After all, if so many agree with one’s position, doesn’t that say something about the significance of the position-holder? How much dissent will there be in Glasgow during the conference? Talk about a time of peace and love. The only disagreements will derive from the selfish desires of those leaders who won’t part with money to support other countries’ green transition.
“I just wonder whether the people who lived during the last major ice melt when he world was transitioning into the current interglacial period understood that the world was, in fact, changing and that climates were trending toward the warmer temperatures of the past six to ten millennia. Unfortunately for humans 10,000 years ago, living during a change that took hundreds to thousands of years in a pre-scientific, pre-literate era, there were no historical records. People had no oxygen isotope data, ice cores, tree-ring analysis, and other proxy methods for determining historical temperatures. And they had no sycophantic press fawning over climate change gurus.”
Leith: “Speaking of ‘pre-scientific,’ do you think the US President has looked at the actual climate data?”
Calen: “If someone put it on a teleprompter, you mean?”
Leith: “Funny. Yeah. That. But let’s not get too personal. The Americans chose him as their leader. He must have something going for him.”
Calen: “I think the Americans have themselves a modern-day Don Quixote.”
Leith: “Good analogy. But his windmills are knights fighting on his side to build more windmills, an army of windmills.”
Calen: “So, according to the actual data, world temperatures have not risen as predicted by the IPCC just two decades ago. Not close to the predictions of 2000; not close to the predictions of the Pentagon’s climate experts in 2003, the predictions that warned of wars over food and water. Not close to any predictions from the 1990s or any of the 2000s. But during that time America, the country richest in fossil fuel reserves when you look at coal and natural gas plus their oil, has reduced carbon emissions significantly while China has increased its emissions.”
Leith: “I’m guessing that the projections of temperature rise will continue to be higher than the actual temperature rise. There are so many variables: Sunspots, volcanic eruptions, increased Chinese and Indian emissions that offset American decreased emissions, giant ocean cycles that alter currents, El Ninos and La Ninas in the Pacific, and other influences on the atmosphere, all playing varying roles in Earth’s overall temperature profile and in local temperature changes.
“I’ve been looking at some studies of climate models. Did you know that the IPCC averages models in the belief that the average will give the reality of climate? But what if those individual models are erroneous? What if they take models that are applicable to a region and apply them in a world assessment?”
Calen: “You know, when I think of Cervantes’ famous character and the current US President and his adherence to the standardized fear projected by the climate change apologists, I want to apply a statement by Solomon, Greenberg, and Pyszczynski made in their book The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life. In regard to the human recognition of life’s brevity and the threat imposed by our mortality, the authors argue that ‘we need to sustain faith in our cultural worldview, which imbues our sense of reality with order, meaning, and permanence.’ **** Biden has repeatedly called climate change an existential threat. What better way to battle it than by adopting the propagandized ideology of climate-change apologists? It isn’t a close examination of data that drives him and others in his administration, it is the culture of climate change itself. Remember that Don Quixote lived by a code he found in chivalric tales in his personal library. Remember that he embarked on a quest motivated by those tales. It wasn’t reality, harsh reality that drove him toward the absurd tilting at windmills. It was because he saw as real a world that was no longer real. He pictured himself as the knight errant par excellence. He set out on his quest because it was a noble quest he understood in a cultural context, the milieu of knights and damsels in distress. Biden is going to save a climate Dulcinea from the vicissitudes of planetary processes and the energy gluttony of seven billion people. And he and his ombudsmen will punish the evil humans who put her in distress. Remember that incident in the Cervantes’ novel when Quixote stops the master from beating the slave Andres? When Quixote leaves, the guy resumes beating the slave. What do you think is going to happen when Biden leaves Glasgow, when all of them leave Glasgow? Does anyone believe that China, Russia, and India will stop ‘beating Andres.’ That they will stop using cheap energy sources in favor of a UN mandate to curb emissions? Isn’t China still building coal power plants?
“You should look at the Solomon, Greenberg, and Pyszczynski book sometime if you want to understand Biden, Kerry, Prince Charles, and the conference attendees. Those authors argue that ‘we cling to our culture’s governmental, educational, and religious institutions and ritual to buttress our view of human life as uniquely significant and eternal.’ (9) Nothing bespeaks life’s brevity more than a changing world, specifically, a changing climate. All these people would want to stop your eponymous river from flowing, Leith. They want a world that has never been at rest to rest. And they meet on the British Isles without acknowledging that just ten millennia ago, one could have walked, not flown or ridden through the Chunnel, from France to England across a patch of dry land. Biden is concerned about rising seas while meeting on a landscape that was separated by a rise of over 100 meters long before the release of anthropogenic carbon emissions.”
Leith: “It really doesn’t matter. All these details, all the failed modeling of the past, all that means nothing when the prevailing culture gives you a sense of purpose. All the chivalric heraldry long gone is revived in the current tilting at windmills. Don Quixote lives, and his name is Joe Biden.”
Notes:
*UN Climate Change Conference UK 2021, in Partnership with Italy. COP26 Explained. P. 7. Online at https://ukcop26.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/COP26-Explained.pdf Accessed on a chilly morning in Pennsylvania November 1, 2021.
**https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_coal_reserves
***Cervantes. El ingenioso hidalgo (in Part 2, caballero) don Quijote de la Mancha
**** Solomon, Sheldon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski. 2015. The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life. Random House (Penguin Random House).
Calen: “Sure, sure, I think they are all serious people. They have adopted a cause, and they have used logic and science as their motivation to act. And what better place for them to meet than here in Scotland, where truly modern science took some of its first steps in Edinburgh. But seriousness is neither science nor logic. This latest conference in Glasgow is, to put it unkindly, just tilting at windmills—literally, tilting at windmills.”
Leith: “I agree that these climate conference types are serious about their cause and this COP26. It does have a noble-sounding purpose under the catchphrase ‘Uniting the World To Tackle Climate Change.’ And as the twenty-sixth such conference, they have been serious about the topic for more than two decades. Alok Sharma, the COP26 president, says that ‘Climate change has continued [during the pandemic], and it ultimately threatens life on earth.’ He warns us that we ‘cannot wake up in 2029 and decide to slash our emissions by 50% by 2030.’ Alok wants to ‘end coal power.’ But he says without much qualification that ‘Unfortunately, reducing emissions is not enough.’
Calen: “Huh? I thought carbon emissions were the the cause of climate change according to the IPCC.”
Leith: “Yeah. So, emissions are the problem, but reducing them is not enough. I guess he wants to stop the deforestation in an attempt to ‘restore Nature.’ And, of course, he wants money from the rich countries to flow into the poorer countries, specifically, I assume, into India, his homeland. And he argues that ‘clean energy, like wind and solar, is now the cheapest source of electricity in most countries.’ I’m reading this directly from the online brochure called ‘COP26 Explained.’ * I’m wondering whether the reason it is the cheapest form of power in some countries—if that’s true—lies in a simple fact: Those would be countries without adequate reserves of coal, oil, and natural gas, and without rivers for hydropower, and without the technology for nuclear power. Given fossil fuels to burn, does anyone believe a developing country would accede to the desires of the energy-rich powers by foregoing the burning of those fuels?**
Calen: “Let me see that brochure. Look at this. Here’s a bold-faced introductory statement. It reveals that those who believe in logic and science lack a bit of both:
‘Around the world storms, floods and wildfires are intensifying. Air pollution sadly affects the health of tens of millions of people and unpredictable weather causes untold damage to homes and livelihoods too. But while the impacts of climate change are devastating, advances in tackling it are leading to cleaner air, creating good jobs, restoring nature and at the same time unleashing economic growth.’ (6)
“So, if I read and understand this correctly, weather is unpredictable, and nothing in the last sentence says that weather prediction is on the table as a solution. After all, storms, though part of the weather, aren’t a climate parameter. Rainfall, yes. Temperature, yes. But storms? Only insofar as they occur during monsoonal seasons do they feature as a climate entity. The statement also conflates ‘air pollution,’ ‘climate change,’ ‘economics,’ and ‘restoring nature.’ The pamphlet has pictures of windmills on pages 9 and 10. Those windmills remind me of other windmills, those in the story of Don Quixote, and some of the people pictured in the pamphlet happen to be, just like the hildago in Cervantes’ novel, nobles like Lord Zac Goldsmith, Sir David Attenborough, and Prince Charles.” *** Ah! The aristocratic privilege of saving the little people from a chair in a castle. “Come, my little helpless ones, gather round, for I have a great tale to tell, one with kings and queens, with lords and knights, and with the rich and famous.”
Leith: “You forgot to mention that storms, floods and wildfires have always plagued humanity. But back to the point of seriousness. With all that international political firepower, including the U.S. President and his climate ombudsman John Kerry, the conference is a very serious gathering. Alas, Alok also says in the brochure that it’s important for the people to fly into Glasgow from all over the world to solve the problems caused by people flying all over the world. I guess for climate-change apologists, something bad in general can be a good thing in particular. We should go to Glasgow. I’ll bet the scotch flows like the Water of Leith, my eponym.”
Calen: “You wish. Wonder what made your mother name you after a river. But on that conference, I have to say, ‘Lord, save us from these saviors.’ Imagine the attendees. There will be some high sounding discussions by climate scientists and politicians who will report that the world is changing. They will discuss and agree that we’re in for tough times. Think about that. There will be so much agreement that the attendees will be imbued with self esteem. After all, if so many agree with one’s position, doesn’t that say something about the significance of the position-holder? How much dissent will there be in Glasgow during the conference? Talk about a time of peace and love. The only disagreements will derive from the selfish desires of those leaders who won’t part with money to support other countries’ green transition.
“I just wonder whether the people who lived during the last major ice melt when he world was transitioning into the current interglacial period understood that the world was, in fact, changing and that climates were trending toward the warmer temperatures of the past six to ten millennia. Unfortunately for humans 10,000 years ago, living during a change that took hundreds to thousands of years in a pre-scientific, pre-literate era, there were no historical records. People had no oxygen isotope data, ice cores, tree-ring analysis, and other proxy methods for determining historical temperatures. And they had no sycophantic press fawning over climate change gurus.”
Leith: “Speaking of ‘pre-scientific,’ do you think the US President has looked at the actual climate data?”
Calen: “If someone put it on a teleprompter, you mean?”
Leith: “Funny. Yeah. That. But let’s not get too personal. The Americans chose him as their leader. He must have something going for him.”
Calen: “I think the Americans have themselves a modern-day Don Quixote.”
Leith: “Good analogy. But his windmills are knights fighting on his side to build more windmills, an army of windmills.”
Calen: “So, according to the actual data, world temperatures have not risen as predicted by the IPCC just two decades ago. Not close to the predictions of 2000; not close to the predictions of the Pentagon’s climate experts in 2003, the predictions that warned of wars over food and water. Not close to any predictions from the 1990s or any of the 2000s. But during that time America, the country richest in fossil fuel reserves when you look at coal and natural gas plus their oil, has reduced carbon emissions significantly while China has increased its emissions.”
Leith: “I’m guessing that the projections of temperature rise will continue to be higher than the actual temperature rise. There are so many variables: Sunspots, volcanic eruptions, increased Chinese and Indian emissions that offset American decreased emissions, giant ocean cycles that alter currents, El Ninos and La Ninas in the Pacific, and other influences on the atmosphere, all playing varying roles in Earth’s overall temperature profile and in local temperature changes.
“I’ve been looking at some studies of climate models. Did you know that the IPCC averages models in the belief that the average will give the reality of climate? But what if those individual models are erroneous? What if they take models that are applicable to a region and apply them in a world assessment?”
Calen: “You know, when I think of Cervantes’ famous character and the current US President and his adherence to the standardized fear projected by the climate change apologists, I want to apply a statement by Solomon, Greenberg, and Pyszczynski made in their book The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life. In regard to the human recognition of life’s brevity and the threat imposed by our mortality, the authors argue that ‘we need to sustain faith in our cultural worldview, which imbues our sense of reality with order, meaning, and permanence.’ **** Biden has repeatedly called climate change an existential threat. What better way to battle it than by adopting the propagandized ideology of climate-change apologists? It isn’t a close examination of data that drives him and others in his administration, it is the culture of climate change itself. Remember that Don Quixote lived by a code he found in chivalric tales in his personal library. Remember that he embarked on a quest motivated by those tales. It wasn’t reality, harsh reality that drove him toward the absurd tilting at windmills. It was because he saw as real a world that was no longer real. He pictured himself as the knight errant par excellence. He set out on his quest because it was a noble quest he understood in a cultural context, the milieu of knights and damsels in distress. Biden is going to save a climate Dulcinea from the vicissitudes of planetary processes and the energy gluttony of seven billion people. And he and his ombudsmen will punish the evil humans who put her in distress. Remember that incident in the Cervantes’ novel when Quixote stops the master from beating the slave Andres? When Quixote leaves, the guy resumes beating the slave. What do you think is going to happen when Biden leaves Glasgow, when all of them leave Glasgow? Does anyone believe that China, Russia, and India will stop ‘beating Andres.’ That they will stop using cheap energy sources in favor of a UN mandate to curb emissions? Isn’t China still building coal power plants?
“You should look at the Solomon, Greenberg, and Pyszczynski book sometime if you want to understand Biden, Kerry, Prince Charles, and the conference attendees. Those authors argue that ‘we cling to our culture’s governmental, educational, and religious institutions and ritual to buttress our view of human life as uniquely significant and eternal.’ (9) Nothing bespeaks life’s brevity more than a changing world, specifically, a changing climate. All these people would want to stop your eponymous river from flowing, Leith. They want a world that has never been at rest to rest. And they meet on the British Isles without acknowledging that just ten millennia ago, one could have walked, not flown or ridden through the Chunnel, from France to England across a patch of dry land. Biden is concerned about rising seas while meeting on a landscape that was separated by a rise of over 100 meters long before the release of anthropogenic carbon emissions.”
Leith: “It really doesn’t matter. All these details, all the failed modeling of the past, all that means nothing when the prevailing culture gives you a sense of purpose. All the chivalric heraldry long gone is revived in the current tilting at windmills. Don Quixote lives, and his name is Joe Biden.”
Notes:
*UN Climate Change Conference UK 2021, in Partnership with Italy. COP26 Explained. P. 7. Online at https://ukcop26.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/COP26-Explained.pdf Accessed on a chilly morning in Pennsylvania November 1, 2021.
**https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_coal_reserves
***Cervantes. El ingenioso hidalgo (in Part 2, caballero) don Quijote de la Mancha
**** Solomon, Sheldon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski. 2015. The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life. Random House (Penguin Random House).
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