Thursday, August 13, 2009

Carbon Trading Scheme



For once in the life time of this young nation, Australia wants to set an global example. Australia's responds to the Climate Change meme with a Carbon Trading Scheme, or at least tries to.

In the pre-digital age Australia was too remote from the 'civilised' world (Europe and North America) to have a voice in international politics. The acting empire of the time nevertheless involved the Australian army happily as cannon fodder in wars all over the world, a big part of the Australian National identity consists of bemoaning this useless loss of life while fulfilling 'heroic duties'.

Advances in communication and travel made Australia more accessible and brought it a little bit more on the international radar. Nevertheless, 20 million people on a planet of 6 billion can only interest a limited amount amount of people. Among those are poor and desperate people from Asia and Africa, that even keep up to date with the latest administration changes in Canberra. Although politicos claim rock star status on national level, Mr. Howards war against asylum seekers went unnoticed in most parts of the world.

Mr. Howard lost the position of primary defender of white Australian supremacy to Kevin Rudd, who recently gained global fame as roo killer. Most people involved in the planetary debate about climate change would fail to name Rudd's position in the creation of the next stage of global monetary Ponzi scheme, sorry, Rudd's position towards climate change.

From an Australian perspective his stance toward climate seems more obvious, he wants to introduce a trading scheme to tackle the problem of global warming caused by man made co2. Hold on a second, what exactly do this well sounding abstract terms mean?

The simplified mass media presentation of the 'problem of climate change' goes along that lines: A majority of climate 'experts' interpret data about global warming in a way that suggest CO2 produced by man as 'cause' for this effect. Critics of this interpretation are called 'climate sceptics', and are often pushed into one corner with conspiracy theorists and similar loonies.

The simplified discourse, popularised by George W Bush (you're either with us, or you're a climate sceptic terrorist), helps picking a site. The polarisation follows also the diversion between Dawkinists and religious fundamentalists. 'Science' backs the side of doomsday salesmen, and in our o so rational society one cannot seriously doubt the findings of science, right?

Interestingly, 'science' also backs the other side, so both sides get busy accusing each other of 'wrong science'. Luckily for us, who will have to pay for whatever lunacy is presented as 'solution' to this 'problem', the wise maintainers of our tax money have taken sides for us. They chose the side that allows them to collect more money for their uncontrollable disposal.

I confess my interest in global affairs, I believe my existence as human being entitles me to live where ever I want you, unfortunately this complicated phase of the evolution of human society denies me this natural birth right. The pleasures of every day life, however, require resources from all the world, I think it's quite absurd that the component of the computer I'm typing this rant on might have travelled further around this globe than I have so far. We can no longer distinguish easily 'local produce' and 'globally sourced' products, most manifactured products use materials from all over the world. You need to a lot of ignorance to deny the global interconnectedness of modern life.

Australia owns one of this valuable resources for an industrialised society: coal. It does not help this part of Australia's economy much to have this market taken away by penalising the use of coal for its CO2 emissions. All of a sudden the clear dichotomy of 'right' and 'wrong' science concerning an intangible problem gets mixed up with tangible local business interests, so that discussion of the topic itself degenerate to the usual rhetorical mud slinging.

When we talk about 'global climate', we mean a phenomena happening in a layer roughly 20 km wide above the surface of this planet. Powered by the energy coming from the sun, the 510 million square kilometer surface area interact with the gaseous layer above, distributing water around the globe. Roughly 70 percent of this surface area consists of water, up to 11 km deep, and weather phenomena are obviously linked to this watery quality.

But science does not really understand how this complex interaction develops. The sheer size of the object of scientific prophecy makes long term predictions very doubtable. Mankind has a natural interest in weather phenomena, agricultural societies depend on knowledge of the chance of seasons and the most likely accompanying weather patterns. But we can not seriously claim to have sufficient data of the relevant variables collected to come up with really good model.

In the political debate the focus lays on CO2, sometimes Methan rears its smelly head in discussions as well. Calling these chemicals greenhouse gases creates convenient self fulfilling prophecies: Doomsday is neigh!

But how do we know about the 'effect' of CO2, and how do we do know how much CO2 is in our atmosphere? Remember, we're talking about the volume of our planetary atmosphere, stretching 20km up from a surface of 510 million square kilometers. Pretty big, eh? The only thing possible is sampling, but without clear understanding of the system itself we can hardly estimate what information the samples really carry.

The best observed variable in this game is temperature, and that's where most panic is hinged around. We can observe an increase in average temperatures in different areas of this planet, and swamped islands provide obvious evidence for a rise of the sea level. Yet even the increase in average temperatures depends on the timescale and areas selected, a lot of pseudo scientific arguments are build on skewed data.

The alleged stop in trend of warming lately, which didn't help to break the current drought in Victoria, might be just the use of rough science. Changing the global albedo by chemtrails reduces the amount of solar energy that heats the surface, but without knowing what really happens in the upper layers of our atmosphere deliberately experimenting with nukes and chemicals does not really look like a good idea.

Reducing the amount of toxins we release into the atmosphere, produced by cars, power plants and industry seems like a better idea. If you ever lived next to a coal power plant, or in an area with heavy industry, or in a city overcrowded by cars, you'll instinctively know that this stuff is not really good for the survival of our species. The current target of panicky hyperactivity coincides with those polluters of our more immediate environment, which still fails to convince me about the simple 'more Co2 = more warming = global chaos soon' formula.

I can identify with the alleged targets, reducing the amount of dirt produced by burning fossil fuels, globally, yet I still don't buy into the simplified fallacies promoted with it. I deny to panic if 'nothing happens to tackle the problem'. I rather panic when a trading scheme gets implemented. It looks either ignorant or stupid or brazen to me to praise a financial product as solution to an ecological problem, especially in a year that showed the detrimental effects of inventing monetary schemes. Markets were always quite mysterious 'beings', now they can even cure the climate. Hooray, long live the age of reason.

Science is just not advanced enough to give a reliable prognosis about the development of climate for 50 or 100 years. I don't dare the leap of faith to base my current and future decisions on the prophecies of these kind of 'experts', especially if they attack such a massive problem. Science investigated most of the time dead matter, exploring and understanding of living systems as a systematic part of science is much younger than the time scales spanned by their prognosis.

The idea of the planet as a living system is not intellectual property of the scientific community, they could no longer deny the public interest in the experiental reality of life. Spiritual communities around the globe have no problem considering the planet as living being, although couldn't properly recite any specific story of this type.

So to distract from the fruitless intergroup competition about the meme global warming I ask Mother Earth to inspire me to tell the 'real story' about climate change.

After its birth, given by the sun, young mother earth circled playful around her own father. Looking for expression, she spit out lava, sending her tentacles into the atmosphere around her skins. The outburst of lava, at different places, created a fiery symphony of mother earth's breath. Soon her breath moistened, and fell back on her skin, bringing the four elements together.

The play of fire and water provided pleasure for mother earth, happily humming in sight of her heavenly father. O lovely daughter, her father said, I will nurture you for the rest of my life, but you will have to learn to keep my love. I send you out with enough energy to play with, Unlike me, you cannot shine from the inside, but glow on my rays. Enjoy the ride.

Mother earth felt her skin, hardened surfaces poking out of swaying oceans, and tried to sense the connection to her source. Without heat, the pleasant bubblyness she bathed in, would cease. Bacteria were her first messengers sensing the presence of her father, using his energy to transmit the good news.

Sensing her fathers presence filled her with joy, so mother earth wanted to connect more to gift of her father. Her senses became more complex, and with it her wisdom about the wonders of life. Capturing her fathers energy requires a delicate balance, and sometimes her breath poisened the atmosphere, making the skin shiny by layers of ice.

Her endless desire for more beauty and love for her father made mother earth experimental. Her senses worked independent, creating more and more complexly interconnected balanced systems. But those sensors capable of choosing to merge with the beauty of all life can also choose to destroy the balance required for their own survival.

Mother earth likes diversity, capturing her father's rays in myriad of ways. That makes her feel warm, buzzing, cosy, vibrant, alive. Many species happily became mother earth companions, mankind seems close to make up its group mind whether to go for beauty or destruction.

Millions of years pass away fast for mother earth, having a little fever doesn't disconnect her from her father. A disconnected acting mankind destroys the balance for its own survival, and the tool will be Global Government.



created at TagCrowd.com


9 comments:

Anonymous said...

what's an uberate?

Anonymous said...

i know, but i actually am too fucking lazy to google it myself.

Anonymous said...

also, that's some language you krauts got there.

Winston Smith said...

uberate? No fucking clue, doesn't even sound close to something I wrote...

Funny thing is, once you simplify thinking you start to use much more words than ever.

Winston Smith said...

Okay, I got ya now.... It's liberate, not Uberate.

Anonymous said...

i know man, i was just funnin' ya.

Anonymous said...

i think i uberate too much cake, me can't read so good.

Anonymous said...

much like "mother earth" fiendin' for "energy" & -

wait, "uberate TOO MUCH cake"?

how the fuck is that even possible?

Winston Smith said...

In this universe everything is possible, but nothing allowed. don't uberate with way too much cake, you will no longer fit into societies fashion ideal.

No bread? Let them ubereat cake! wait, that might cause a public outrage...