I was listening to the news the other day. More alarming reports on dramatic changes in the Earth’s climate system. The Arctic is now warming seven times faster than the global average, irreversible tipping points are tipping, self-reinforcing feedback loops strengthening, and there was a short news clip about the migration issue at the border.

Then one of the news commentators said, “But you can’t give up hope because the opposite of hope is despair”.

I’d have to agree that despair often results when hopes go astray, but despair and desperation are not the opposite of hope, hopelessness is. I may be splitting hairs here, but it got me thinking a lot about hope. What hope is, what it is that we are hoping for, and why some hopes come to be while others come to pass.

Hope can be broken down into two general categories, ‘true hope’ and ‘false hope’, each with a few sub-categories. Of the two, true hope is easier to recognize, at least once it proves itself to be so. But ‘true’ is only half of true hope. The other half, the hope, is the driving force that makes it become true (hopefully).

The problem is that false hope has hope in it too. In fact as hopes go, false hope often has much more hope in it, albeit false, than true hope, and while true hope is based mostly on one type of thing (things that are true), false hope comes in many different forms, often with significant quantities of half-truths. In fact the sum of all the half-truths often makes up more than the whole, and yet there is still room for all that hope that ends up being false anyway.

One of the reasons false hopes are so popular and prolific is that false hopes always seem to be much more achievable (easy). You’ve probably heard about the guy walking around under a streetlight looking for his car keys, right? He said he dropped them in the parking lot across the street, but it’s too dark to see anything over there.

Worse yet, false hopes are self-reinforcing and form a very strong bond to those who hope them. Add to that a vast social media network that feeds ravenously on false hopes, multiplies them exponentially, and can even add in a great sound-track.

Okay, let’s get to the meat of it. There’s a big difference between hoping for something that can’t happen and hoping for something that won’t happen. Things that can’t happen usually don’t happen because they can’t. Things that won’t happen usually don’t happen because of an unsurmountable obstacle, or one perceived to be so.

Faced with a problem as enormous and perplexing as as climate change, it’s important to get these things straight, because when we waste our hopes on the false ones, there may be very little hope left to make happen those things that seemed like they wouldn’t, but maybe could, and really should.

What can we truly hope for regarding the climate calamity? Unfortunately, individual actions (recycle, ride a bike, eat vegans) ain’t going to cut it. Neither is just doing everything we currently do, but doing it with solar, wind, and in electric cars. It’s a much bigger problem, systemic to the core, and to which there are no easy answers. In fact, depending on how you ask the question, perhaps no answers at all.

But here’s the rub, if the question revolves around finding an appropriate response to anthropogenic climate change, with hopes of avoiding the climate cliff we’re fast approaching, then a rapid and radical response from a fully functional government with all branches on board and all hands on deck is essential. Now it sounds really hopeless, eh? Maybe even a little despair creeping in?

But there is one seemingly unsurmountable obstacle that stands in the way of many things sensible and sane, and it’s the giant pipeline of dollars that flow into our nation’s capital each and every day. With over 12,000 registered lobbyists working DC, and more than $3.5 billion dollars passing through their hands back in 2020 alone, no truly meaningful legislation will be coming out of DC on anything as important as climate change until there is campaign finance reform. Big money and corporate interests have absconded with our democratic system, and as long as the money flows, the temperature will rise, the bullets will fly, and we will have a supreme court that has slashed women’s rights and ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency no longer has the authority to regulate emissions from power plants.

Sounds hopeless, right? But there is one marvelous superpower that could help save the day, a superpower that draws on the quantum power of similarities. Similarities in the influence big money has on all things happening in our nations capital.

If all the climate activists joined forces with all those who oppose senseless gun violence, and all those fighting for women’s rights, and all the MADD mothers and Earth First’ers, the save the whalers and the stop the pipe-liners. If the whole lot of them, and many more, could all momentarily put aside their individual causes and come together in superpower formation to kick the cash out of Congress, there may be hope.

Back when I first heard that Russian troops had invaded Ukraine, and that Russia was bombing Ukraine’s capital city, I said out loud, “Putin must of read the latest assessment report coming out of the IPCC”. I said it flippantly and with a heavy dose of cynicism, but the more I learned about the IPCC’s latest findings and their projections, the less flippant I became and the more concerned I grew. Regarding the cynicism, I believe it was Lily Tomlin that said, “The more cynical I become, the harder it is to keep up”. Total agreement.

The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) is composed of 195 member countries, with its ongoing climate change assessment reports composed by thousands of contributors and based upon many hundreds of scientific studies and peer-reviewed papers. The first IPCC climate assessment report was released in 1990, and since then the IPCC has released ongoing and updated assessments roughly every six years.

The most recent report, from Working Group One, focused on the physical science of climate change. It had a lot of the same verbage as all of the more recent assessment reports, however in this report the words, “worse that predicted and faster than expected”, were printed in much larger font, also in bold, and underlined as well.

Putin was already building up troops on the boarder with Ukraine when that report was released, but it was the report from Working Group Two that was even more concerning. It focused on the impacts, adaptations, and vulnerabilities of climate change, and it emphasized the fact that many of these impacts are happening now, in the present.

While earlier IPCC assessments evaluated the impacts climate change is having on the physical health of humans, this report dives deep into the impacts it is having on our mental health. It says that today, our changing climate is adversely affecting the mental health of virtually every human being on the planet. It also talks about the impacts climate change is having on world governments, politics and political systems, the economy, global food supplies, and, of course, the heightened threat of war.

The final report in this sixth assessment, from the Working Group Three, focuses on efforts to halt or mitigate the effects of climate change. It can be summed up using a few of the key words and phrases found throughout the report. The situation is urgent, a narrow window of opportunity is closing, we need to cut emissions in half by 2030, keeping the temperature rise to 1.5C may no longer be in the cards, and every fraction of a degree rise in temperatures brings with it far worsening climate impacts on human society.

The IPCC was created to provide policymakers with ongoing assessments on climate change so as to assist them in taking appropriate actions (some of which may be considered inappropriate by others). The accompanying chart graphs the rise in CO2 emissions along with the dates of each of the reports the IPCC submitted to policymakers. While the line charting the CO2 emissions rises steadily, albeit in a saw tooth fashion that displays the seasonal respiration of the annual growing seasons, so too do the number of assessment reports (AR) which appear as dots along the graph.

It’s a slightly dated graph, crudely modified by yours truly and with both the AR’s and CO2 levels ‘off the chart’, but you get the picture. It clearly demonstrates a complete lack of any meaningful action on the part of our elected policymakers. What is meaningful action? Well, you’re not going to be looking at this climate catastrophe in the rear-view mirror of your high-tech Tesla, and solar powered carbon capture gizmos are just another pipe dream. Better have another hit.

The IPCC says that the narrow window of opportunity we have to save a livable planet is rapidly closing. That is very bad news, but rapidly closing also means that it is not yet shut. What has closed, and is now forever gone, are many of the easier and less painful changes that might have had a significant impact if they were implemented some thirty years ago, back when the IPCC’s first assessment was released. What has to happen now will be much more difficult, much more painful, and yet even more imperative. Are we willing and able?

The report says we may still be able, it’s the “willing” part that looks more than a little bit iffy.

Author’s note: I’m sure HAMAS got a copy of AR6, although not the official one that Netanyahu receives.

The latest report coming out of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), just in case you didn’t hear, wasn’t very good. In short it says that the worst is yet to come, that it will affect our children’s lives much more than our own, and that climate change will fundamentally reshape life on Earth. Uffda.

Now imagine that you’re a high school student reading this as you sit pondering your future. Should you spend another four years, and a hundred thousand dollars, on a college degree, or perhaps consider a two-year program at a local technical college. Of course you could choose either option, work hard to earn that diploma, and then work a couple part-time jobs while living in your parent’s basement. Tough choices in a brave new world.

When I was in high school, I signed up for a semester as an Audio Visual Aid — a student who assists teachers in showing various educational films and filmstrips to their classes. I would deliver the projector and film to the classroom, set up the speakers and screen, thread the film, run the film, rewind it, put it back in the can, etc.

I only remember seeing two of those films from the back of darkened classrooms. One was a cheesy sex-ed film for the ‘girls class’, and not worth the effort made on my part to see it. The other was a wonderful Frank Capra film, first released back in 1956, titled Our Mr. Sun. It was not only directed by Capra, but written and produced by him as well. I can say without hesitation that this film was the single best learning experience of my entire formal education.

Back to the future, and the possibility of life in the basement.

Learning involves more than mere memory, more than just remembering what the instructor said would be on the exam. To put it another way, understanding the equation that’s written across a chalkboard is always more important than just knowing the answer at the end of it. This is especially true when one graduates from normal questions with straightforward answers into the complex and multifaceted ones facing us today. Questions with formulas not yet written and where today’s answers receive a failing grade.

Wisconsin’s university system is home to an energy education program known as the K-12 Energy Education Program (KEEP). One of KEEP’s objectives is to integrate energy education across all age groups (kindergarten through twelfth grade), and perhaps more importantly, into all course types and curriculum.

In the current climate of ‘green new deals’ and ‘building back better’, there will likely be an increase of solar installations on public buildings, hopefully with a focus on our neighborhood schools. Solar on schools is a ‘no-brainer’, with perhaps the biggest benefit of school-based renewables being the huge educational opportunity. But the student body also needs a head in the process.

KEEP, and programs like it, should be placed on steroids, and students should be given real-life issues with actual numbers to write on the chalkboard.

While solarizing schools is an excellent course to take, as well as a class I’d sign up for, energy conservation is often the low-hanging fruit. It should be mandated that all applicants for renewable energy grants have a current energy audit as a prerequisite. Students should be given access to the audit, along with all of the school’s power bills and energy usage records, and while the civics class is studying the grant writing process, and the math class is doing the math, the economics class can be crunching the numbers that the debate team will use to discuss the pros and cons of conservation strategies over those of installing a solar system.

Real things to think about and to learn through, and with the school newspaper documenting the entire progress and the computer class setting up the website that provides real-time energy data to anyone who clicks on the site. Don’t get me started on the homework, because it involves energy audits and renewable energy site analysis. Yes, in your backyard!

If you have read any of my other columns, you know that I like to end on an important note, and this would be it. You, dear reader, are obviously very well read. As such, please consider running for your local school board, and if you cant, give your full support to a pro-education candidate who can.

Public schools and critical thinking are under attack right now, with those who favor blind belief over thought-filled knowledge, gaining control, changing curriculum, and burning books. The situation is urgent. Thanks for any and all of your efforts, and of course, a special thanks to all of the educators out there who are inspired by knowledge and by the gift of sharing it.

To see my film review of Our Mr. Sun, click here.

Kurt Nelson lives near Cornucopia, Wisconsin, and has worked for more than 30 years as a solar energy advocate, educator, and installer. Now retired, he is still energized by the sun.

Our Mr. Sun is a 1956 documentary film that was the first of four such films Frank Capra produced and directed for the Bell Labs Science series. The film was distributed to thousands of schools free of charge and is still available online for the same price.

Get past, or get into, the hand-animation, and the fact that some of the material is a bit ‘dated’. One school teacher has used the film in their classroom for over three decades and said that, while the film raises some questions about the sun that today’s scientists have long ago answered, it simply provides a great segue into exploring the latest scientific developments and understandings.

A couple sections of the film are heavily infused with religious doctrine which may feel somewhat out of place in today’s classroom, but the film should be viewed as a period piece. Capra was quoted as saying that in making it, he wanted to investigate the relationship between science and religion. Personally, I don’t feel that connection was well made, but others will surely find it to be the film’s bonus feature.

In any case, the film does an excellent job of making the connection between the sun and all life on earth, with the sun being the primary energy source of virtually everything alive on planet Earth. Dr. Research also introduces viewers to the concept of anthropogenic climate change in the section discussing fossilized solar energy. This, in a film that was produced almost 70 years ago!

It stars Dr. Frank Baxter as Dr. Research, a character today’s Dr. Fauci is loosely based upon. Eddie Albert, an actor that is perhaps best known by some from his role in the TV series Green Acres plays the part of Mr. Fiction Writer, a writer who assists the good Doctor in the exploration of the film’s primary star. Lionel Barrymore plays the part of Father Time, with it being the actor’s very last film role, the film being released almost two years after his death.

All of this said, Our Mr. Sun is well worth 57 minutes of your time, so pop some corn, crack open a cold beverage, and cast it to the big screen (TV). Then sit back and enjoy this extraordinary vintage film, and the amazing wonders of the sun the film so well illuminates.

Undeniable changes in Earth’s climate systems, occurring faster than expected and worse than predicted, have led to new classifications and categories of people who deny human-caused climate change.

Those individuals formerly known as ‘Climate Deniers’ are now officially divided into two newly formed categories. The Organization for Common Sense (OCS) has officially retitled those who were previously known as Climate Deniers, but who secretly know catastrophic climate change to be occurring, into a new category known as ‘Climate Deceivers’. Furthermore, the organization now categorizes those formerly known as Climate Deniers, but who actually believe the Climate Deceivers, as simply ‘Deceived’.

Chairman of the OCS, Norm Frymark, added that there a growing concern within the Deceiver group regarding the sheer volume of half-truths, whole lies, and ‘Red Herrings’ that has been cast over the entire issue. “The whole pile of it is starting to stink in all this record-breaking heat and weather weirding”, said Frymark.

Yet while there is some unrest within the group, their concerns seem to be largely unfounded. “Some people just can’t deal with it (the greatest threat ever to face all of humankind) and so they actually prefer the deception”, said Frymark. “Denial is the new comfort food, and they’re lining up for heaping helpings of the Herring Du Jour”.

The truth is that we are in the midst of abrupt climate change, the consequences of which will be monumental if not downright Biblical. It is human caused simply because humans are releasing millions of years of organically sequestered carbon in the ‘geological moment’ of a couple hundred years. The big question, and it’s the question the Deceiving Deniers are intent on deflecting attention from, is simply this. Why don’t they want us to know?

If Climate Change really is happening (and it is), and if it is likely to get really bad (and it is), and if they know it is actually happening (and they do), then why do they lie, deny, distract and deceive? Could it be they fear the reaction of billions of people from all over the planet, all freaking out at the exact same moment? Or perhaps it’s a total economic collapse they fear, aided by the near-term rapid decline of the planet’s most valuable real estate (think coastlines), much of which they own. Then again, maybe they just aren’t quite ready for it yet, and they want to buy a little more time to get the whole global hegemony thing together.

Most of these fears are very well founded, and it does seem that people all over the world, as well as all the world’s leaders, are a bit on edge lately. Could it be a collective collapse of cognitive dissonance?

With that in mind (cognitive dissonance), some might argue that it’s better not to know how bad it will be if climate change is left unchecked. Perhaps they feel it’s already too late and there’s nothing that can be done about it anyway. But now that we earthbound humans are faced with a runaway climate system, it’s even more important for people to fully understand both what is happening, and why.

Amuck in lies, deceit and misinformation, denialism only leads down a long, dark path. A path that is well-trodden and dutifully patrolled by the proverbial four horsemen of the apocalypse. Not a good way to go.

Kurt Nelson lives near Cornucopia, Wisconsin and has worked for more than 30 years as a solar energy advocate, educator, and installer. Now retired, he is still energized by the sun.

Are you a doomer, a climate change doomer? I’ve been called one, although I don’t really feel like one.

Okay, I did fly down to Belize, rented a vehicle with the 4WD option, bought the insurance to cover tire damage (both options highly recommended by Crystal Rentals, thanks Crystal), and drove up into the jungles of Belize to meet with Professor Guy McPherson, known by many as Dr. Doom.

So, you’re thinking doomer with a capital D, right? But wait, before you box me up, it’s important to understand that I didn’t even know that the good professor lived in Belize until after my partner Phyllis had already bought the plane tickets. She also rented a small thatched hut at Mayan Mountain Lodge, largely due to its location, which was a short distance (but an hour’s drive) from Stardust Sanctuary, the cool little permaculture farm that Guy’s partner Pauline owned. More on Guy in a moment, but first let’s get back to you and your own personal doomer status.

Wikipedia says doomer, and by extension doomerism, are terms which arose primarily on the internet to describe people who are extremely pessimistic or fatalistic about all of the problems facing us today. Climate change tops the list, with all its irreversible tipping points looking a tad bit tippy and weak at the knees, but the list includes everything from political and economic instabilities, peaking fossil fuel resources, overpopulation, faltering food production, unbridled consumption, pollution, pandemics, nuclear weapons, nuclear energy, and one of the new kids on the block, artificial intelligence.

Oxford describes doom as, “death, destruction, or some other terrible fate”. While this does sound rather bad, apparently doom does not have a strangle hold on death, with destruction, as well as other terrible fates, offering other possible outcomes. Terrible is defined as something “extremely or distressingly bad or serious”, with the ‘fate’ part apparently making it something of a sure thing.

Some people say that one word more accurately defines doomers, and that’s extinction. The belief that for humans, and for all of humanity, the end is near. But, as professor McPherson points out, no one will ever know if humans will go extinct, not even the last human alive on planet Earth.

That said, some of us alive today will know if humans will become what is known as ‘functionally extinct’. Functional extinction refers to an animal species on the edge of extinction, perhaps a rare bird species that while not extinct, can no longer live anywhere outside of a zoo. They live in a conditioned environment, are fed food that can no longer be obtained from their former environment, and have lost the skills to do so should they suddenly be released back into the ‘wild’. Within their caged environments, parent birds who themselves were born into this world, now teach their offspring how to peck food from a tin dish.

Might this sound eerily familiar, this living in a conditioned environment, eating food that comes from an unknown location, and learning how to peck at the buttons on a microwave oven or those on a cash register at the local Walmart? All of it, by the way, precariously perched atop a dwindling supply of ancient sunlight in the form of prehistoric atmosphere, fossilized in dead stuff.

An interesting side note about doom is that how it descends upon the doomed can make a big difference. Doom can usually be broken down into two basic types. There’s the doom that happens suddenly and strikes without warning, a category that would include asteroids, hurricanes, earthquakes, etc. It’s been shown that when a community of individuals are faced with sudden doom, their immediate response is to pull together to help others around them in greater need. When, however, it takes a while for the doom to bloom, it can be quite a different story. As they say, Rome didn’t fall in a day, and the decline was not only very unpleasant, but it lasted for many generations.

A slow societal unraveling likely includes political instability, economic collapse, unemployment, loss of social services, food insecurities, infrastructure decay, heighted war probability, etc. It may even occur so slowly as to not even reach true doom status, at least not until you add in the human response element, which in the case of slow-motion doom, does not typically include a lot of the kumbaya moments seen in sudden doom. But I digress.

A google search of Guy McPherson lists him as an American scientist, and professor emeritus of natural resources, ecology, and evolutionary biology”. He’s published a bunch of peer-reviewed papers, written a number of books, and he’s a very nice person with a good sense of humor, dry and on the rocks (doomer humor).

Most of the experts on the subject of anthropogenic climate change are in total agreement with McPherson in regards to the immense threat it poses. They do, however, deviate from him on the topic of Near-Term Human Extinction (NTHE), and especially in any attempt to put a time-line to it. I suspect that Guy now regrets having made predictions as to when doom would descent. Predictions, as you may have heard, are difficult to make, especially about the future. Of course, I don’t believe Guy has made many predictions since back in 2018 when he said that he couldn’t imagine there would be any humans living on planet Earth by 2026. I won’t point out the obvious on that one, that would be too doomerish.

In any case, I feel comfortable calling Guy McPherson a doomer, but only in the best sense of the word. What I don’t like, and what I believe to be a dangerous trend, is the use of the word doomer to dismiss and discredit anyone pointing out that what we are doing to avert a climate catastrophe is simply not working. The plan, if you can call it that, is fatally flawed, literally. What we are currently doing is not working, and the things we should be doing, perhaps better described as things we should not be doing, are not being done.

The population of humans on planet Earth has grown to 8,045,319,417, a population that exploded exponentially with the discovery of hundreds of millions of years of concentrated sunshine in the form of fossil fuels. We are Hell-bent on burning it all, and Hell-bound in doing so. This is not a problem, it is a predicament. Stop burning it, and that big number listed above rapidly reduces in a very bad way. Continue burning it, and that big number listed above rapidly reduces in a very bad way. That’s not a problem, that’s a predicament, a dilemma, and yet we are still approaching it as a problem that needs a fix. Our changing climate is probably best understood as a symptom of something much more systemic.

The current ‘fix’, apparently, is to replace the 1,750,345,202 petro powered cars that are currently in use on the planet with electric ones, and of course, pepper the planet with charging stations powered by the sun and wind. We should also use solar energy (present day, not the past) to heat and cool our homes, heat our water, grow our food, and power up all our manufacturing and energize its ongoing resource depletion.

Okay, (deep breath), if this is the fix, we need to get going. The report released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), way back in April of 2022, said that in order to stay below the 1.5 degree centigrade temperature threshold, and thereby avoid toppling the irreversible tipping points and feedback loops, we need to get half of this done by 2030. That’s now just six years away, and greenhouse gases have only increased since the release of that IPCC report. Couple this with the fact that we already saw 1.5C in 2023, and it’s now being said that 2C will be the new 1.5. Can’t hit the target? Move the target.

What we are currently doing is taking a problem that is deeply systemic, rotting at the core and fouled by an economic system that requires continuous growth, and simply treating all of the many problems that fester within and rise to the surface with a giant can of green spray paint.

Ok, I guess I am a doomer, but before I’m am dismissed and discredited as such, I have a couple more things to say in doomer defense. First, doomers don’t want to be doomers and they find no satisfaction in being one.

Second, people seem to think that being a doomer means you give up. Perhaps that’s true for some doomers, but most are only giving up on the concept that we can keep doing what we have been doing and expect different results.

Finally, the term doomer is obviously abused, too broadly used, and has become a kind of comfort food for those who can’t stomach the truth. It’s also too small a box to try and fit so many different individuals into — too binary, too myopic. I’d suggest freeing up a little space, opening the door for all of those who have feared coming out with thoughts of their own, and simply refer to us doomies as being on the ‘Doomer Spectrum’. I’ll even go so far as to make a prediction of my own. I predict that we will all be on the spectrum someday. Someday very soon. Maybe then we can get something done. One can always hope.

Kurt Nelson lives near Cornucopia, Wisconsin and has worked for more than 30 years as a solar energy advocate, educator, and installer. Now retired, he is still energized by the sun.

How You Think About Climate Change Affects the Weather in Your Back Yard

I used to think that the answers to averting cataclysmic climate change were technological, and that the primary barriers to a bright and sunny solar future were mostly about securing the necessary funding. That our wealth of knowledge, combined with good old-fashioned human ingenuity, would save us all from hothouse Earth, at least from the really bad stuff.

Actually, when I first became aware of climate concerns, now more than thirty years ago, I thought that our rapidly rising carbon emissions would soon be capped, then cut, by ‘peak oil’. That the inevitable decline in global oil extraction would simply force us into that sunny solar future, and everyone would live happily ever after. Cool.

But technology saved us from peaking oil supplies, at least for the short term. High-tech, high pressure, hydrofracking of oil bearing tight-rock formations, using the latest and greatest oil rigs, saved the day. These rigs can drill two miles down, then make a right turn and drill another mile or more horizontally. Fracking a single well requires hundreds of big trucks hauling in millions of gallons of water. Add to that, millions of pounds of ‘frac sand’ and tons of fricking chemicals, and you have fracking slurry. It’s pumped down the well hole at pressures high enough to open fractures in the rock, and to force the frac sand into the cracks to keep them open. Voila, America is back in the oil business.

It’s easy to see that hydrofracking for oil, as well as the other forms of ‘secondary’ and ‘enhanced’ oil recovery methods, have a lot of energy inputs. The inputs, in relation to the energy captured in the process, are what is termed ‘energy return on energy invested’ (EREI), which in this case is rather poor.

Think of it this way, while Americans are purchasing newer vehicles with higher fuel efficiency, over the same time period, the energy EREI has been in decline. Yes, be happy that your new car goes eight miles farther on a gallon of gasoline than your old car, a decent increase in miles driven per gallon, but understand that with the declining EREI, more energy was spent getting that gallon. You are essentially spewing the same amount of gases out the rear end of the new car, and of course that’s without factoring for all the embodied energies within that new car’s manufacture. But let’s not forget the environmental ‘costs’, and of course the costs to the taxpayer who is stuck with the cleanup of thousands of fracked up oil and gas wells, abandoned by highly profitable bankrupt developers.

Back to the weather in your back yard.

The real barrier to any truly significant climate action lies not in the funding, not in what we know or don’t know, and not in what we think about it either, but rather in how (how) we think about it. When you think about it, a crisis that is far bigger than any that humankind has ever faced and that seems to have no easy answers, very few answers that are very hard, and none that allow for business as usual, cognitive biases come to mind.

In their 2022 edition of the Encyclopedia of Behavioral Neuroscience, Hans Korteling and Alexander Toet defined cognitive biases as, “Systematic cognitive dispositions or inclinations in human thinking and reasoning that often do not comply with the tenets of logic, probability, reasoning, and plausibility”.

I would go so far as to say that cognitive biases rule ‘our’ thought processes, were it not for the cognitive bias that psychologists have termed the Blind Spot Bias. The Blind Spot Bias makes it easy for me to recognize the impacts biases have on your thought processes, and those of others, but leads me to feel that I am somehow immune to biases in my own thinking. That bias is probably not so bad, because I’m usually right anyway, which itself is a good example of the Overconfidence Bias.

Some cognitive biases can serve a useful purpose, mental shortcuts essentially, but they fail miserably when it comes to dealing with huge, complex issues such as climate change.

The Confirmation Bias is a biggie. It says that you listen most attentively to information about climate change that confirms your preconceptions on the subject. The Confirmation Bias didn’t used to be so big, until it received a ginormous kick in the butt when it was, unbeknown to you, programmed into your social media platform. Add in a little Band Wagon Effect, which, by the way, pairs nicely with GroupThink, and suddenly stormy clouds appear on the horizon.

Of course, every time you look at your phone or switch on your computer, the screen lights up to the Repetition Bias. Have you heard that climate change is a hoax invented by Al Gore? That’s nothing. After you hear, for the hundredth time, that Hillary Clinton drinks baby blood while face sitting a young child topped with a slab of pizza, you start believing it, pepperoni and all. Keep eating crap, you start buying bullshit.

One hundred and eighty cognitive bias circuits are hardwired into your brain, with a heavy bias for now over what may come later. Also helping you is the Easy Bias, providing for options that are much better than the hard ones that work. This, with a bit of influence from the Status Quo Bias. Let’s just keep things as they are, the Hope Bias says it’s much better than facing up to unpleasant facts.

What do you, and your First Impressions Bias, think of when you hear the words Extinction Rebellion? Extinction Rebellion (XR), is a climate change action group that promotes citizen actions and public protests that disrupt the status quo, often through actions of non-violent civil disobedience. Not quite as nice and friendly sounding as a Green Revolution or the Greening of America.

So, Extinction Rebellion is kind of up against it from the get-go, eh? But let’s try to set aside as many cognitive biases as your thoughtful brain can manage and take a quick look at the three primary demands Extinction Rebellion is making on governmental bodies world wide.

First, tell the truth.

The government has been lying. Look up at the comet in the sky and at the weather in your own back yard. Yes, if everyone on the planet suddenly could see what is coming, and just how unavoidable it is at this point, that knowledge would have a huge impact on everything from Wall Street to the work place. In fact, it’s quite likely that if people understood the full scope of the crisis, a sense of panic would reverberate plane-wide and throughout all of human society. But, as the young climate activist Greta Thunberg says, that might be exactly what is needed. Put simply, it is necessary for people to understand the severity of the problem in order for them to accept the kind of changes that need to happen now.

That’s the second demand, act now!

Catastrophic climate collapse is not a problem in a distant future. To begin with, it’s not actually a problem at all, it’s more of a dilemma or a predicament. It is happening right now, and a big chunk of life changing climate is already baked into the cake, already making this planet less habitable for all living things and all of the planet’s life sustaining systems. Governments, and their inherit complexities and vulnerabilities, can’t deal with a problem of this magnitude, especially when each and every single governmental official also has their own personal biases, as well as a healthy dose of cognitive dissonance.

That’s what makes it necessary for these demands to be communicated via huge protests, complete with acts of non-violent civil disobedience and people willing to get arrested while doing so.

Third, “Beyond Politics”.

Elected officials can not deal with a problem this systemic and of this magnitude. In order to avoid the worst consequences of our changing climate, the changes necessary exceed the abilities of a four-year term, and need to operate outside of election campaigns.

Extinction Rebellion originated in the U.K., where when dealing with complex issues such as Brexit, a Citizen’s Assembly may be formed. Ordinary citizens, not elected officials, are charged with the task of investigating options and strategies in the absence of politics and big money, thereby side-stepping the political clusterfuck that often forms around such issues.

Extinction Rebellion demands that a Global Citizens Assembly be formed on climate change. An assembly composed of ordinary people, perhaps two, selected at random from every nation on the planet, regardless of size, population, or the nations wealth and power. That the assembly should spend a specific period of time, perhaps as long as one full year, hearing from all sides and from all the experts. That they should investigate all the options, effects and outcomes, and most importantly, that every nation agrees to the findings of the Assembly and its conclusions.

Did your ‘Doesn’t Stand a Chance in Hell’ bias just kick in? Give it a little more thought. Try weaving your way through the web of biases that exist inside all our cranial cavities and see what you can come up with. Who knows, maybe you’ll be selected for the Assembly.

Kurt Nelson lives near Cornucopia, Wisconsin and has worked for more than 30 years as a solar energy advocate, educator, and installer. Now retired, he is still energized by the sun.

Climate Change. It’s always in the news, it’s never good news, and yet even if you don’t pay any attention to the news at all, it’s still just as bad. Or is it?

When I think of things like climate change, cognitive dissonance comes to mind. Cognitive dissonance is an unpleasant state of mind in which those who are experiencing it attempt to hold two conflicting beliefs at the same time. A psychological conflict resulting from incongruous (contradictory) beliefs and attitudes, both held simultaneously.

We humans survive, and have a long history of doing so, by having our brain alert us to problems that may otherwise go unnoticed. We all know about the alarm signal our brain sends us when we touch a hot stove. It’s a strong signal that leaves behind a lesson that is well learned and hard earned. But our brains are capable of alerting us to dangers well beyond those at our extremities.

Much like the annoying beep of a home’s smoke detector in need of a new battery (it beeps every three seconds, seemingly forever), when our thoughts and beliefs don’t add up, our brains will send us distressing and even painful signals that can impair both our mental and physical health.

If we are unable to establish unified or harmonious cognition, there are a few strategies we may use to help relieve the pain and discomfort. Some of these are referred to as cognitive biases, and a simple concoction consisting of a few of these alarm disarming biases, first developed in sub-Saharan Africa, has been found to offer profound relief in treating the symptoms of a brain in cognitive disorder. The process is simple — find a good spot, dig a small hole, stick your head in it.

Wait, wait! Don’t run for the shovel, or turn the page thinking that you already know all about burying your head in the sand. Please read on, as there are some things you may need to consider, as well as a few important cautionary notes. I’ll also toss in a few tips and helpful suggestions that you may find useful when you find yourself in amongst the grains.

First of all, get comfortable. The carbon released today will remain in the atmosphere for many centuries, and its climate changing impacts will get much worse long before they get better. You may be down there for a while, and although the traditional method does work (on your knees, lean forward, insert head into hole), it can be a major pain in the neck. However the bigger concern with this approach involves gravity, and the tendency to inadvertently bury one’s head too deep. Going too deep can be very dangerous, not only to yourself but also to others around you. I will go into greater detail on this below.

That said, all that’s really needed to do it right, and with much less risk to yourself and others, is a small depression scooped out of the sand. Simply lie on your back, tilt your head back into the hole, and reach back to pull some of the loose sand or soils in around your head. When you think about it, climate change and all of the nasties that will surely accompany it, the pain and discomfort originates deep in the back of your brain, and that’s the part that craves those cool and comforting sands.

Two words — beach sand. But do consider making it a family affair as well. The kids can bring their colorful plastic beach buckets, shovels and rakes, and in doing so you can pass on a family tradition that your children may find very useful if they get old enough to face the future on their own.

I’ve already mentioned the biggest concern facing those who partake in this process, namely going too deep. When we first find that wonderful relief in a bit of subterranean cranium insertions, it’s just human nature to immediately think that deeper must be better. The opposite is true, as it is within the deeper, damp and musty sands that many of the other, and much more dangerous, cognitive biases lurk.

How deep is too deep and how can you tell when your earthy habits have become downright delusional? Unfortunately, it can’t be measured in inches of sand or depth from the surface. Sand and soil types vary, as do individual sensitivities to them. I do, however, have a couple thoughts and suggestions that may help you in finding your own personal safety zone, and hopefully prove useful in keeping you safely in the shallows.

First, I think it’s best to exercise a reasonable amount of caution around all sands with a greenish tint. While it is a good substrate, and can offer fast relief that’s often free of individual commitments, the greenness itself may conceal a layer of quicksand lurking just below. Quicksand, quick fixes, and more of the status quo, yet even within giant dunes of pure, white sands, it is still possible to get sucked into this thinking.

That said, it may be safe to linger a bit in something like “If climate change was really that bad, I’m sure they’d be doing something about it”. Reassuring and fairly harmless, but don’t spend too much time there because of course ‘it’ is and ‘they’ aren’t.

Some folks find relief in the concept that aliens will come to save us, showing up at the last moment to offer us their superior technologies. I used to take a lot of comfort in the aliens, but then, through the intrusion of another thought process called Occam’s razor, I came to a more rational realization.

In short, Occam’s razor says that given a number of reasons why something may be happening, the simplest answer is the one most likely to be true. Of course it is much more likely that the aliens have invaded the minds of our elected leaders, and through them they are terraforming our planet (they are mostly aquatic and just love the heat).

As a side note, it’s a good idea to take an Occam’s razor with you with on every trip to the beach, and as a helpful tip, consider keeping one wrapped up in your favorite beach towel.

The Deep. When perplexing and persistent thoughts of a dystopic climatic future get buried too deep, far from the light of reason, they inevitably fester and ferment into a putrid, primordial stew. Born out of fear, denial and anger, and nourished through hate and prejudice, they rise from the sands, half alive, fully evil, and in human form (perhaps you’ve seen the movies). These are the deep sands of darkness, dread and despair that must be avoided at all costs.

So, before summer comes to an end and the cold arctic winds of winter flow down behind a faltering jet stream, it might be good to get in a few more trips to your favorite sandy hideaway. Amidst all that is happening in the world, it really is important to find those reassuring moments that clear away the alarming clutter within our brains. But please, do take these cautions to heart and keep the darkness out of your head.

Kurt Nelson lives near Cornucopia, Wisconsin and has worked for more than 30 years as a solar energy advocate, educator, and installer. Now retired, he is still energized by the sun.

Can Solar Save Us?

In a recent issue of the Duluth Reader, I tried to answer at least part of the question “can solar save us?”, the part about the sun. Sure, it’s a no-brainer, the sun radiates 173,000 terawatts of energy onto the face of the Earth continuously, 10,000 times what we humans use. However, to properly answer the question really depends upon what your definition of what “us” is.

Webster says that ‘us’ refers to more than one of you or I, and is the objective of ‘we’, yet this definition doesn’t even begin to describe us. We humans number 7,874,965,825 seven billion, eight hundred and seventy-four million, nine hundred and sixty five thousand, eight hundred and twenty five. Multiply that number by the average amount of energy each of us consumes daily (something Americans are way above average at), and ‘we’ become a bit more complicated. In 2019, the total amount of energy consumed by us on planet Earth, in tons of oil equivalent (toe), was thirteen billion, nine hundred million tons of the stuff, or one hundred and one billion, eight hundred and eighty-six million, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, six hundred and forty-two barrels of it. By putting a match to it all, we released thirty-six billion, four hundred and forty-four million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere.

These big numbers are really not much help in understanding the situation, but if we take a look back to a time when our numbers were smaller, and life somewhat simpler, ‘we’ might gain some insight into ‘us’ today.

About 300,000 years ago, we humans chased down our food in bare feet and beat it to death with sticks and stones. If, in doing so, we expended more energy (burned more calories) chasing the little animals around than we got from eating them, we died. Those of us who were light-of-foot and quick with the club lived on to eat bigger animals by inventing things like pointy sticks with stone tips. Still, there had to be more energy returned from the hunt than the energy invested in the hunt, and now the investment included the energy expended in making stone-tipped spears, literally from scratch, a task requiring flint, wood, twine and the energy spent getting the materials and fabricating the tool. Some years later, this concept came to be known as “Energy Return on Energy Invested’, or EREI. Put simply, it’s the amount of energy you get in relation to the amount of energy spent getting it.

Through the ages of stone, bronze, iron and oil, and through hundreds of thousands of years of technological developments in our hunting and gathering techniques, today’s EREI is insanely out of balance and completely dependent upon inputs external to the process, namely ancient sunlight in fossilized atmosphere.

Modern day food production alone has an EREI of 1:10. In other words, it takes ten times the energy to produce our food than we get from eating it. It gets even worse when you consider the whole process, from the genetically modified seeds and the artificially inseminated cows, to the pizza that comes from the convenience store, frozen to a disposable pan and ready from the nuke-oven in minutes.

A closer look reveals that the energy invested is not just in our mechanized farming system, food processing, packaging, and of course the continuous convoy of refrigerated tractor-trailers along our nation’s highways, something author James Howard Kunstler refers to as the 1,500 mile-long salad bar. It’s also the fact that essentially all commercial fertilizers and chemical pesticides manufactured today use oil and natural gas as their primary chemical feed-stocks. You just can’t make this stuff up.

Speaking of which, a lot has changed since the days when Jed Klampet was shootin’ at some food, and up from the ground came some bubbling crude. Early oil fields held energy so rich-and-ready that the black gold literally gushed out of the ground at an EREI greater than 60:1. Today, with oil rigs afloat in mile-deep waters, and the fracking of older and mostly depleted oil fields, the returns are much lower. It’s also worth noting that some EREI numbers may be calculated at the wellhead, while the numbers at ‘finished fuel stage’ (at the pump) are much lower, with some of the tar sands and shale oil coming in at a finished fuel stage below 2:1. In regards to oil, an EREI of 7:1 is said to be necessary just to keep the petroleum industry afloat. Many of the top oil executives would claim their returns need to be even greater, but then they need to float their boats too.

Our energy imbalance becomes even better defined by Richard Heinberg, author of The Party’s Over. Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies. To paraphrase Heinberg, “It takes the average person two weeks of hard labor to push a car 20 miles along a flat, paved highway. We pay two bucks for that at the gas pump and complain about it the whole way”.

Our dependence on fossil fuels has been described as an addiction, something we can’t live without, but the truth is that it’s not fossil fuels we are addicted to, it’s energy itself, and in any form. Solar is not going to save anyone if it is administered as just another ‘fix’ to ever-growing demands, and our addiction has deepened into something that is well beyond what individual actions alone can accomplish. Some things demand a rapid and well-coordinated response, and this is exactly the type of thing we have governments for. Eminent threats, like enemy armies massing on our boarders, or moon-sized asteroids entering near-earth orbits.

Climate Change is on a self-guided collision course, threatening us with an impact that could shatter ‘our world’ to its core. Yet those in government who we assign with the task of overseeing our safety are either downplaying or denying the threat, or bickering and bargaining for small steps in the right direction that actually accomplish nothing. This is the ‘us’ that solar can’t save.

Kurt Nelson lives in Cornucopia, Wisconsin and has worked for more than 30 years as a solar energy advocate, educator, and installer. Now retired, he is still energized by the sun.

Can Solar Save Us?

As numerous tipping points appear upon the horizon, and newspaper headlines read, “Climate Change, worse than predicted and faster than expected”, can solar save us? The answer is easy, it’s the question that is both complex and perplexing. A couple fundamental concepts about energy may help to simplify the complexity, although the perplexing parts may persist.

The most important thing to understand about energy is that it can’t be created, manufactured, or produced. While we may hear the experts talk about “billions of barrels of oil produced annually”, there’s actually no ‘production’ whatsoever. On a more positive note, energy also can’t be destroyed. Put simply, energy can’t be created, it can’t be destroyed, it can only be transformed.

With that in mind, another very important thing to understand is that virtually all energy we use, or have ever used, is solar energy. Something in excess of 99.9% of all energy ever consumed on this planet came from the sun. The only energy we humans use that isn’t (or wasn’t) solar energy is nuclear energy, along with a bit of gravitational forces still flying about following that ‘Big Bang’ billions of years ago.

So, if salvation is in the cards for us humans, the sun will be the deal. Not only does the radiant energy from the sun power all our solar thermal and solar electric systems, the sun also pumps the water to our hydro-electric dams and is the ‘Sol’ force behind our wind and weather. But while the sun shines freely, transforming that radiant energy into forms that satisfy our society’s energy demands and energy addictions can come with a hefty price tag, and a load of baggage as well.

Take for instance the ‘payback period’ of a photovoltaic (PV) module. It’s been said that the amount of energy it takes to manufacturer a PV module is ‘paid back’ by the energy it produces in the first couple of years it sits in the sun. Yet any payback doesn’t even begin until that PV installation has actually replaced (decommissioned) an equal amount of fossil fuel plant generation, not just a power addition chasing after growing demand.

Adding insult to injury, let us remember that a PV module never removes the carbon from the atmosphere that was released in the manufacturing and installation of the solar electric system. Couple that with the fact that the natural carbon removal process, involving the sun, life, the earth and its atmosphere, will take a thousand years or more to sequester that carbon, and more of the perplexing parts emerge.

Despite all of these concerns, solar, wind, geo-thermal, and tidal energy, still compose our best options for replacing carbon-based energy sources. That said, there is one other ‘source’ of energy that may hold even greater promise.

Amory Lovins, Chairman and Lead Scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute, discovered the ‘Negawatt’ on March 21, 1985. What Amory had ‘discovered’ was the vast amount of energy available to us in the form of energy conservation. Research conducted by the Institute indicates that as much as 60% of all the energy consumed by Americans could be ‘supplied’ through energy conservation measures.

These conservation measures generally fall into two general categories. The first, and by far the most popular, is energy efficiency. Efficiency improvements made to all of our systems, loads and appliances, and that result in reduced energy demands, are essentially the same as ‘producing’ more power to operate the same stuff less efficiently. However, along with their savings and their R-Values, their SEER ratings and MPGs, and of course their incentives and paybacks, comes much of the same baggage as renewables, namely resource depletion and huge upfront energy inputs, and carbon outputs. All of this, as we dutifully get out our credit cards and go about upgrading to the latest efficiency standards released, in stages, by the Department of Energy.

There is, however, another hugely untapped resource in Amory’s negawatt arsenal. A resource that receives much less attention and news coverage, especially when considering that it has no up-front costs to either the environment nor the tax-payer, making payback immediate. It requires no new infrastructure development nor resource extraction and emits no greenhouse gases whatsoever.

What is this magical miracle that could save us all? It’s energy conservation in its simplest form, intentional non-use. Yes, it’s the old ‘turn off the lights, turn down the thermostat’ (and cancel the trip to Spain).

Unfortunately, one of the main obstacles to the widespread implementation of ‘intentional non-use’ is directly coupled to one of its biggest advantages — it costs nothing. This, of course, is another nail in our climate coffin, as it makes these simple and effective conservation strategies completely incompatible with our deeply entrenched, growth-based corporate economy, and all of the political puppetry it animates in our nation’s Capital.

Kurt Nelson lives in Cornucopia, Wisconsin and has worked for more than 30 years as a solar energy advocate, educator, and installer. Now retired, he is still energized by the sun.