Awake, for morning in the bowl of night has flung the stone that puts the stars to flight.

And, lo, has caught the sultan’s turret in a noose of light!

Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable

 Christopher Howse: ‘A Pilgrim in Spain’

Cosas de España/Galiza

I think we have a new political party, headed by a very ambitious – and traitorous? – lady. It’s left-of-centre and is called Sumar. Until yesterday it was just a ‘movement’. Like Podemos, which has refused to get into bed with it. A bit on it from a right wing commentator here.

I wasn’t really expecting a procession to go past the window of El Casino yesterday morning. As an ex-Catholic, I’m familiar with some pretty pointless gestures, but stroking a wooden statue with an olive branch is new to me and probably takes the biscuit . . . C&P this colindavies.blogspot.com in your browser for the 2 videos WordPress won’t allow me to upload. Nor will permit me to put in a link.

I wrote that comment about pointless gestures before I read this article, headed The ‘Rescued Christ’ still brings secular Spaniards to their knees. Some interesting stats in it-

Near one of our beaches last weekend, I noticed this very scruffy bit of land sandwiched beteeen 2 impeccably kept plots of the same size:-

My daughter suggested – probably correctly – that the original finca had been divided into 3 minifundios on inheritance and that the middle one belongs to the black sheep of the family.

Yesterday, I called one of the lovely waitresses in El Casino Clara when her name is really Carla. Clara means both egg-white and shandy in Spanish so, when I apologised, I pointed out it was better than Cerveza. Or Caña.

The UK

A columnist has complained about a price increase from BT taking her internet charge to to 20 quid a month. Well, mine costs €50 and is among the cheaper options avilable-

Italy

Under a statute proposed by the right-wing government, companies, universities and government officials using English words in their output could be fined up to €100,000. Allegedly, 9,000 English words have crept into the Italian dictionary, leading to claims that the “obsessive” use of English risks causing the “gradual disappearance” of the Italian language. The language bill has the aim of banning all foreign words but claims that English is a particular danger and should be avoided since the UK has left the EU. Italian linguists are said to have long fretted about the adoption of English words and phrases, including “management”, “car sharing” and “sexy shop” to describe a retailer of sex toys and lacy underwear. Echoes of Canute? Maybe the British should ban all words coming from (Italian) Latin . . .

(A)GW

Well, I finally finished the book Fossil Future and will comment on it tomorrow. My plan was to do that today but I’ve been frustrated by a series of problems in drafting this post with WordPress. Presumably connected with my failed attempts to upload videos. Below, though, are the author’s Part, Section and Sub-section headings which will give you some idea of his comprehensive approach to his arguments in a book of over 430 pages.

The Way of the World

I endorse the reference – in this article – to the ludicrous hyperbole of gender activists, who claim that any querying of their ideology causes trans children to kill themselves and casts trans people’s literal existence into doubt. 

Quote of The Day

In the increasingly insane world of identity politics, in which an accusation of racism has become akin to a sentence of social and career death, perhaps the worst feature of all is that an accused person is guilty until proved innocent.

Finally . . .

There’ve been thousands of deaths in Ukraine but none of the reports have reduced me to tears like the one I couldn’t bring myself to mention yesterday morning – of 4 Galician teenagers who died around 6am on Sunday, when a car of 6 of them left the road when they were returning from a concert in La Coruña and were only 200m from home. Proximity makes it easier to relate, I guess. And to fear for one’s own.

For new readers:- If you’ve landed here looking for info on Galicia or Pontevedra, try here. If you’re passing through Pontevedra on the Camino, you’ll find a guide to the city there.

FOSSIL FUTURE

PART 1: FRAMEWORK

1. Ignoring benefits

Questioning the “expert” moral case for eliminating fossil fuels

How to know when the “experts” are wrong

How research works

How dissemination can go wrong

How evaluation can go wrong

The unique, massive, and desperately needed benefits of fossil fuels

Fossil fuels are a uniquely cost-effective source of energy

Cost-effective energy is essential to human flourishing

Billions of people are suffering and dying for lack of cost-effective energy

Do our designated experts really ignore the benefits of fossil fuels?

Ignoring the benefits of all cost-effective energy

Supporting efforts to eliminate cost-effective nuclear energy

Supporting efforts to eliminate cost-effective hydro energy

Indifference to “green” opposition to solar and wind

Ignoring energy experts

A broken knowledge system

Our knowledge system’s apparent hostility towards cost-effective energy could be driving it to overstate fossil fuels’ negative side effects

2. Catastrophizing side-effects

Our knowledge system’s real track record on climate: 180 degrees wrong

The error of catastrophizing

The “expert” prediction of catastrophic global cooling

Catastrophizing resources

Catastrophizing environmental quality

Catastrophizing nuclear energy

An uncorrected failure

Deadly prescriptions

Our missing protection

Understanding both our knowledge system’s energy failure and ours

3. The anti-impact framework

An anti-human moral goal and standard

Eliminating human impact

How our knowledge system’s anti-impact goal drives it to oppose cost effective energy

On the goal of eliminating human impact, the significant impacts of cost-effective energies development are immoral and in need of elimination

How our knowledge system’s anti impact goal drives it to ignore the benefits of cost-effective energy

How our knowledge systems “delicate nurture” assumption drives it to catastrophize the side affects of cost-effective energy

Replacing the anti- impact framework with the human flourishing framework

The goal: human flourishing

Pro-human environmental terminology

The wild potential premise

Full-context evaluation

The human flourishing framework versus the anti-impact framework on C O2 emissions

My project

PART 2 BENEFITS

4. Our unnaturally livable fossil- fuelled world

The full benefits of continuing fossil fuel use

Our knowledge system’s trivialisation of cost effective-energy

What is a “livable planet”?

Looking at the livability of the planet from a human flourishing perspective

Being open to ways in which fossil fuels profoundly benefit the “livability of the planet”

The hydrocarbons and human flourishing hockeystick

The problem of human weakness on a naturally deficient and dangerous planet

Benefit high from denying externality claims This solution: cost effective machine labour and machine food

Humanity’s unprecedented, fossil-fuelled productivity and progress

Powering ultra-cost-effective machine labour

Super-specialisation

Rapid innovation

Fossil fuel materials

An unnaturally nourishing world

An unnaturally safe world – unprecedented shelter

An unnaturally safe world – unprecedented sanitation

An unnaturally safe world – unprecidented medical care

An unnaturally fulfilling world

Fulfilling productive time

Fulfilling nourishment and protection

Fulfilling leisure time

Fossil fuel’s increasingly overwhelmed, reduced, and neutralised negative side effects

Fossil fuels energy’s side-effects are overwhelmed by its benefits

Benefits overwhelming side-effects: the case of coal in the 1800s

Fossil fuel energy’s side-effects are largely reduced by its benefits

Our knowledge system’s pseudoscientific benefit denial via “studies” and “externality” calculations

Benefit-denying negative studies

Benefit-denying “Externality” claims

5. The unique and expanding cost-effectiveness of fossil fuels

The comparative cost- effectiveness of fossil fuels versus alternatives in a world that needs much more energy

More energy is needed to empower the unempowered world

More energy is needed to further empower the empowered world

More energy is needed for new types of empowerment

Energy efficiency does not mean we need less energy

What is fossil fuel’s secret source?

Looking at the full process of energy production

The first ingredient: the remarkable natural attributes of oil, coal, and natural gas

Natural storage

Natural concentration

Natural abundance

The second ingredient: generations of economic innovation and achievement

The epic replacement challenges for fossil fuel heat and fossil fuel mobility

Ultra-cost-effective heat energy

Reliance on non existent economic achievements such as ultra cost effective multi day electricity storage Ultra-cost-effective mobile energy

The future cost-effectiveness of fossil fuels

6. Alternatives: distortions versus realityy

What is the true potential of alternatives?

The incredible claims of our anti-energy knowledge system

They embrace the anti-impact, anti-flourishing goal of reducing energy use

They insist on “green” (i,e. “low impact”) alternatives while expressing little concern about the anti -impact opposition to these alternatives

They deny the unique cost-effectiveness of fossil fuels today

The current, denied realityy of solar and wind energy

The costs of diluteness

The costs of intermittency

The true potential of solar and wind energy

Denial of the reality of today’s current, small scale solar and wind electricity

Reliance on non existent economic achievements such as ultra-cost-effective multiday electricity storage

Our anti-energy knowledge system’s phoney enthusiasm for solar and wind

The truth about biomass

The truth about geothermal

The suppressed potential of hydroelectric energy

The suppressed potential of nuclear energy

The truth about capturing CO2

Continuing fossil fuel use: 8 fundamental and irreplaceable value

PART 3: CLIMATE SIDE-EFFECTS

7. The enormous power of fossil-fueled climate mastery

How to evaluate rising CO2 levels

Factoring in the overall benefits of fossil fuels to human flourishing

The climate mastery benefits that will come with rising CO2 levels

The climate impacts of rising CO2 levels, understood without anti-impact bias

The dangerous, diverse, and dynamic global climate system

Dangerous

Diverse

Dynamic

How powerful is fossil fueled climate mastery?

Mastering dangerous temperatures

Mastering drought

How to think about climate damage

Mastering wildfires

Reducing wildfire fuel load

Barrier building

Direct fire fighting

Mastering storms

Mastering floods and sea level rises

Recognising growing mastery in a world of climate mastery denial

8. The problem of systemic climate distortion

Understanding the likely climate impacts of rising CO2 levels

How (un)trustworthy is the modern climate knowledge system?

The “CO2 benefit denial” distortion

The “deliberate overstatement” distortion

Punishment of climate catastrophe scepticism

Equation of consensus on some climate impact with consensus on massively negative climate impact (the 97% fallacy)

Deliberately overstated report summaries

Deliberate overstatement by designated experts for effect

Finding the full range of minimally distorted expert assessments

Questions and standards for assessing climate claims

9. Rising CO2 levels: the full context

The likely climate impacts of rising CO2 levels: the full context, pro-human evaluation

The impossibility of an unlivable earth

The global climate system is near historic lows in CO2 and temperature

We have no near-term mechanism of reaching even 1/4 the historical high of CO2

Life on earth thrived at far higher CO2 levels and temperatures in the past

Planetary warming is concentrated in colder parts of the earth – it is not truly global

The diminishing and mild greenhouse effect

The limited, masterable, and speculative amplified greenhouse effect

Limited

Masterable

Highly Speculative

Even catastrophist organisations like the IPCC admit that extreme climate CO2 sensitivity is highly speculative

The temperature record supports are much more mild climate CO2 sensitivity

There are myriad ways in which the climate predictors are inclined and incentivised to make extreme predictions

What other climate impacts will warming cause?

How much will sea levels rise?

“Ocean acidification”: new “catastrophe”, same old pattern

Given that life has flourished when CO2 levels were far higher, whatever change is happening to the oceans is from some state where a wide variety of life can flourish to another state where a wide variety of life can flourish

The rate and consequences of the change are being wildly, negatively distorted by our knowledge system

No possible negative change in the ocean is going to be significant enough to even offset the benefits of CO2 on land-based life, let alone the benefits of global empowerment

There is a significant ability to master the oceans that is being dismissed

The path forward on climate: full steam ahead

PART 4: A FLOURISHING FOSSIL FUTURE

10. Maximising flourishing through energy freedom

A flourishing fossil future: possible but not inevitable

Billions of newly empowered people lifting themselves out of poverty

Continuing and accelerating progress throughout the world

An increasing ability to deal with problems of every kind

Continuing evolution and progress in the realm of energy, including alternatives to fossil fuels

Freedom is fundamental

Protect the freedom to trade

Protect the freedom to develop

End all anti-development incentives to the unempowered world

And anti-impact permitting policies

Protect the freedom to compete

Eliminate all government preferences, above all “green” preferences

Where governments have a monopoly, use the pro-human standard of cost effectiveness

Properly protect the freedom from endangerment

Protecting against abuses of energy

Protecting against endangering side-effects

Endangerment criterion 1: demonstrably and significantly harmful

Endangerment criterion 2: reasonably preventable

Decriminalise nuclear energy

Establish local pollution standards

11. Reframing the conversation and arguing to 100

The seemingly unstoppable movement to eliminate fossil fuels

Why I’m optimistic

The key to the anti-fossil fuel movement success: framing the conversation and arguing to 100

Fossil fuel advocates’ mistake: arguing to 0

Is reframing actually possible?

Reframing the conversation using the human flourishing framework

The undeniable power of properly-framed fundamental truths

The uniquely cost effective energy we get from fossil fuels makes the world an unnaturally livable place – including unnaturally safe from climate – for billions of people

The world is still a barely livable place for billions of people who lack cost-effective energy

No combination of alternatives, least of all unreliable solar and wind, can replace fossil fuels’ ability to provide cost-effective energy for the billions who have it and the billions who need it

Fossil fuels CO2 emissions have contributed to and will continue to contribute too slow, masterable, and often beneficial warming as well as significant global greening- nothing resembling a crisis

The growing energy humanist movement

The limitless power of sharing

The benefits of being an energy champion