You see? It's the modelling, it's always been the modelling, the reptiles have always loved to cast doubt on the modelling, and even as the real world catches up with and substantiates the modelling, still, there can't be a high degree of confidence.
And then there's the 'much too alarmist' and 'nothing to do with us' defences, with those bloody useless developing countries at the heart of it ...
Please, evoke the religious nature of the report by referring to breathless prophecies of a looming Hadean future ... (NB: "relating or characteristic of Hades, the underworld of the dead", not "relating to or denoting the period when the earth was forming") ...
Indeed, indeed, that bloody useless mob of developing world countries, how could we ignore them, how could we ignore their emissions?
We can of course ignore our own deep love of coal, because it's clean and innocent and virginal, and besides those bloody developing countries are pleased to get their grubby paws on it ... just like our beloved leader ...
Inspirational ...
Shocking. Those bloody deviant Indian and Chinese folk. Of course Scotty from marketing set a stunning example to the world by announcing to the world that Australia wasn't interested in projects such as Adani and was phasing out coal over the next decade.
The world reeled, and the pond realised it was living in an alternative universe ...
Yes, easier said than done when you've got Lloydie of the Amazon leading the reptiles in a spirited campaign of FUD ... as the coal-loving, climate science denying reptiles have done for years ...
And now before moving on to the Everest known as "Ned", perhaps a consoling word from the infallible Pope ...
And so to nattering "Ned", and the turtle words of "Ned" will soon make it clear that it's not a race.
In fact, the reptiles realised that they needed to slow things up very quickly, and so they offered two serves of "Ned" guaranteed to bring the conversation to a plodding, even screeching, halt ...
The pond groaned. Two lots of "Ned" blathering about squaring circles, and no doubt with a link to his podcast, or a player, wherein or whereby "Ned" might repeat his words in a mystical reptile incantation pleasing to himself, and sending others off into the land of nod...
Indeed, indeed, it's all about China, India, Indonesia, South Africa and such like. Nothing to do with us, nothing to see here.
And besides, technology changes everything. What technology, you might ask, given the monumental waste of money on some of SloMo's and beefy Angus's pet technology dreams, but relax, even "Ned" can't get behind that sort of bullshit ...
You see?! No need to talk of non-existent technology and truisms when you can blather on about price signals.
As for that talk of China, what a ripper ... "a welcome comment given the absence of much discussion about China in our debate" ...
And yet all the reptiles ever do is talk about China, and blame China, and never mention our own beloved coal and our attachment to it, and besides ...
Thank you Killer, but not now ... though the pond does feel mortified by the way it missed out on the best bit in Killer's last offering ...
Thank you Charlie Lewis, the pond stands corrected, but in all the above, what was most unsettling for the pond was that there was no mention of "Ned's" podcast. Had it done a Donald blog dive? Perhaps in the next bout of "Ned" ...
Oh look, shocking, filthy coal being moved around in China, quite unlike our own beloved, innocent, exceptionally clean and virginal, dinkum Oz coal ...
A retired geophysicist isn't frightened by the report? Well that's a relief, but all the same, the pond was pleased it had defanged the click bait clip by way of a screen cap...
More important, where was "Ned's" podcast? Surely the reptiles weren't going to offer sundry distracting click bait clips and ignore "Ned" reading his own words into the microphone?
Ah, back to the old technology routine, and please don't ask about the precise nature of the technology. All the pond knows is that solar and wind are useless and we must spend oodles of money on research, Bjorn-again style, and eventually we'll arrive at a solution, preferably by 2099 ...
Damn it, the pond was torn. There was "Ned" blathering on about those wretched Europeans, and there was a click-bait clip about the IPCC report not being a proper scientific document, featuring the Riddster, a real scientist, or so the reptiles say ... and yet, no news of "Ned's" podcast, wherein he no doubt repeats the wise words of the Riddster, because, while you can pretend the denialism has gone from the lizard Oz, you have to marvel at the way the climate denialists keep popping up ...
Ah yes, the world can't ignore developing nations' emissions, but of course we can ignore our own feeble efforts, and indeed our love of coal, and this message bears repeating many times ... but even as the pond defanged that click bait clip by way of a screen cap, rendering it safely inert, the pond kept wondering about "Ned's" podcast ...
It was like waiting for Godot, this waiting for "Ned" to read his own wise words ...
So what does it all mean? Well, there's no "Ned" podcast in sight, so surely it's a catastrophe.
As for the rest? Well the planet's fucked, and Australia's contribution to solving the problem is fucked, and the reptiles will keep on with their dissembling and their blather about a new age of protectionism as code for the planet not needing any kind of protection.
But then what would you expect from a clap happy who talks in tongues to an imaginary friend, and thinks he can heal with the laying on of hands ... a healing incidentally that will come in very handy when friend Brian fronts the bench ...
And now because winners are grinners, and because climate science denialist Dame Slap has done a Dame Groan and is safely off with the High Court this day, the pond would like to commend an effort put out yesterday by the bouffant one ...
What the fuck does that mean? The Aussie way? The Aussie way to get the job done on climate!? We're in a crisis situation involving the world, and we'll sort it out the Aussie way?
Now it's easy to see why the pond was so moved by Shanners' effort, transcribing Scotty from marketing's words ...
Where the bloody hell are ya, world, it's the 'dinkum Aussie way of doing it' time ... and if that means sangers and a barbie and bloody fair dinkum songs, so be it ...
Ah yes, world beating, world leading ... you can spout any kind of bullshit to your imaginary friend ... but wait, what's this?
There's more, including a graph, here, but the pond must attend to the last of Shanners' valiant effort featuring the blather of beefy Angus ... you know, good old beefy, the man who stood up to wind with the windy parrot and the even windier former furniture salesman back in 2013 ...
There's more on beefy Angus here, including this bon mot ...
Suffice to say, that when it comes to wind, our beefy Angus is a jolly Joe man ...
Good old jolly Joe, just another in a long line of dinkum Aussies offering practical solutions to problems that vex the world ...
Sorry for those detours, back to beefy Angus and SloMo and the dinkum Australian do nothing way ...
A practical approach, with practical solutions?
Yep, if the world adopts the dinkum do nothing Australian way, it truly will be fucked, and just to make the point clearer, the reptiles ended the bouffant one's splendid piece with a video clip ... blathering on about 'practical solutions', as you do, when you don't have a clue, and really have spent decades practising the art of clueless denialism while suffering from wind phobia ...
Naturally the pond defanged the click bait video by way of a screen cap, and after a period of decent mourning for the absence of a "Ned" podcast, turned to the immortal Rowe for a closer, with more closing Rowe - always be closing - here ...
Dorothy - thank you for the other reflections on ‘Killer’ and Dershowitz. As you say, so many angles. I doubt that we will see a modern Pope Gregory to re-categorize as ‘not angles but Angels’, which I insert only to provide a segue to the Infallible Pope. We should remember to thank you more often for providing us with his work each morning.
ReplyDeleteOdd observations - Proof that our Ned does not do irony is the header ‘Scott Morrison must work out how he can square the circle on climate targets.’ The irony being that, although humans have documented attempts to do this for at least 4000 years, we have known for just on 140 years that it is impossible, because of a simple characteristic of π (and here I find out if the site will print ‘pi’ - anyway, that one)
Of course, the Ned may be being remarkably subtle with that statement, because many people have come close to meeting the original requirement - to square the circle using compass and straightedge - by fiddling the value of π. That would be consistent with the approach by Scotty from Marketing to other challenges - make up your own mathematical ‘constants’. Alternative facts?
Actually, Chad, there are no circles in reality - some close approximations, yes, but no actual circles. π is therefore just an imaginary number. But even so the "nearly a circle" can't be "squared" with ruler and compass because those two items aren't able to measure the area of a "nearly a circle" anyway. And there are no true "straightedges" in reality, either.
DeleteBut I'd suggest that ScottyfromMarketing wouldn't be able to use the true value of π, he'd know that 22/7 is as close as he'd ever want to get.
Lots of people disagree with you,GB: http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2021/07/are-we-made-of-math-is-math-real.html
DeleteOh yes: "the justification we have for calling some mathematical structures real is that they describe what we observe". The major problem with that, Joe, is that we never observe most of the things we claim exist. When was the last time you saw square-root(-1). So although π exists in mathematics, it doesn't exist in reality because no circles exist in reality, just, like I said, some close approximations but no real circles.
DeleteAfter all, when was the last time you observed a quark ? Or dark matter ? Or dark energy ? Or a graviton ?
If you are interested, you could look up the work of N David Mermin in respect of the role of explanations and descriptions and then contemplate how many descriptions we actually have. It's in his book 'Boojums All The Way Through' I think, though it's maybe about 15 years since I read it.
Just a little something for you, Chad:
ReplyDeleteA World Awash In Capital
https://ritholtz.com/2021/08/so-much-cash/
Is an inflationary spiral building up ?
GB - it took me a couple of attempts to link to Ritholtz - your actual link set off warnings in both Google and Safari, but there are always work-arounds.
DeleteI did start with a wry smile about people going off into the Maine woods to consider a trillion dollars in funds under management; did they take copies of Thoreau’s book, ‘The Maine Woods’ with them?
Ritholtz seems to be indulging in a version of ‘trickle down’ reasoning - that with so much money sloshing about, for effectively no cost (the main reason that ‘this time it is different’ - low to negative interest rates putting no actual value on the money as it stands) that, somehow, some of it might spark wholly new technology, which will do - something. Maybe something good.
On the reasoning of Cesare Marchetti - who suggests that we are due for another ‘wave’ of technology, but technology that has to be of a kind that satisfies wide human wants - I would think that supply of electrical power without fossil fuels could constitute a likely ‘wave’, which may be covered by Ritholtz’s ‘rare earths/climate change technology’
I don’t see how ‘crypto/blockchain’ is likely to do any of that. Its appeal so far seems to lie with odd libertarians, wildcat ‘investors’, and, as it ‘matures’ - to out and out grifters. ‘Non fungible tokens’ are a grifter’s dream.
Otherwise - cheap money is being used by companies to salt their own shares, without need to introduce much actual innovation in most of them.
The great, cautious, mass, do not need to think beyond real estate, particularly when they have existing real estate to comfort the banks in lending. Of course we have no thought to the long-term effect of that - until someone realises that there are shanty-towns on the outskirts of Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.
I note that Ritholtz lists ‘farmland’, but I could not find any hint of ‘water’ as the much more strategic investment. I guess it was not easy to imagine lack of water while sitting around in the Maine Woods.
Anyway - interesting perspective.
Disclaimer - nothing that I have written here is intended to be investment advice. Readers should consult their own financial advisers before committing to new investments.
Hmm. The URL works fine exactly as it is with Bing - I always test my links.
DeleteYes, Ritholtz isn't a financials professional by any stretch of anybody's imagination, which is probably why he gets an audience. That link came via Yves Smith's 'Naked Capitalism'. But talking about investments, how about this one:
Secret buyer nabs Microsoft grandee’s superyacht for £200m
"For £1m a week you can rent 126-metre ship built for Paul Allen, with two helicopters, two subs and a recording studio."
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/aug/06/secret-buyer-nabs-microsoft-grandees-superyacht-for-200m
Now that's an investment I'd be glad to make, wouldn't you ?
Something the Bromancer might like to read:
ReplyDelete$5.6 billion Boxer armoured vehicle fleet faces lengthy delays over multiple technical issues
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-11/army-boxer-light-armoured-vehicle-delays-turret/100343228
What a day: two Nullified Neds (ie no podcast) and a Shanahanana plus, joy of joys, a Lloydie as he continues his denialism by any other name. Nothing outright, just the same old same old about how it's all down to the "developing economies" because they just won't come to the party until they've burned every last gram of mineable coal on the planet.
ReplyDeleteThe old dodge: if others are committing crimes, then we might as well commit them too. No point whatsoever in displaying any virtue ourselves, and no point trying to develop and implement ways for the "developing economies" to escape from the bind.
And of course it's all down to the cost, and despite Barry Ritholtz's contribution above, well, the planet's economies are all broke with huge debts that "as yet unborn generations" will have to keep paying off forever. Or at least for as long as human life remains possible on the planet:
"Humans have not existed in a climate like this before, and it's getting worse."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-10/coal-climate-change-covered-in-ipcc-reports-key-questions/100355954
Well, as a few wise personages, and possibly even Greta Thunberg, have said: if you think tackling climate change is expensive, consider the cost of the alternative. But then, according to the Lloydies and other reptiles of this world, there couldn't possibly be any cost in doing nothing, could there.
Oh, and just a small addendum:
DeleteTomago, Australia’s largest aluminium smelter, vows to switch to renewable energy by 2029
"The move by the country’s biggest power consumer could signal the end for AGL’s Bayswater power station."
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/aug/11/tomago-australias-largest-aluminium-smelter-vows-to-switch-to-renewable-energy-by-2029
Just fancy that, maybe we can have a "manufacturing industry" without having to burn heaps of fossil fuel in coal-driven power stations. And maybe we won't even need to invest $trillions and wait a decade or two to replace them with nuclear.