Not much to say that has not been said elsewhere. You might want to read more (and check cool pics) here

A few days ago I noticed that I was incurring in a big mistake: Copenhagen might really be important. Not because of the problem at hand, but because of the changes that it might entail.

So, what is Copenhagen? I don’t have a complete and total opinion, but the “smoking gun” points in two directions: A mechanism for banks to profit (a.k.a. the privatization of the atmosphere). About this I recommend reading the blog Naked Capitalism (a popular blog maintained by a very moderate and thoughtful left-of-centre American lady – who believes in anthropogenic GW and has a strong environmental background). I mainly recommend Woman Who Invented Credit Default Swaps is One of the Key Architects of Carbon Derivatives (if you know what CDSs are – financial instruments that were in the core of the current meltdown – you might be scared) or Head of California’s Cap and Trade Offsets Program: Cap and Trade Won’t Work for Climate, It’s a Scam. You might want to read This article about VAT fraud in the EU with Carbon offsets (note the source: The Guardian). So your dear Copenhagen might end up being yet another source of pollution, inequity and fraud.

You might want to spend 10 minutes with this video (from AGW believers):

The other argument that I have read (In this case I have nothing more to offer than “insight” and “speculation”) is that Copenhagen is another attempt (after the failure of the WTO Doha rounds) to make force emergent countries to “bend over”. No facts to offer here, only insights from sources I trust… Until, this surfaced: Copenhagen climate summit in disarray after ‘Danish text’ leak.

From where I stand, Copenhagen might do more harm than good.

My involvement with this has been little, but being a skeptic of predicative “science” and of predictions of temperature change in particular, putss me at odds with the community of “informed” citizens. If you go to a AGW forum and just question this small issue of prediction, the immediate reaction will be personal offense, you will be called all names possible. You will immediately be labeled as “anti-green”, a “cancer”. The AGW side is clearly riddled with intolerance, totalitarianism and blindness. The rationality and science are nothing more than a facade. Behind it one can find lots of people with a dogmatic, fundamentalist perspective of the world. “Science” is not more about creative inquiry, healthy skepticism or rational and free exchange of ideas. It has become a cover for authoritarian dogma – the exact opposite of what science should be. When totalitarianism hides behind what should be one of the most open and rational forms of human existence, if becomes pretty clear that we live in dark times.

What terrorism is to conservatives, AGW is to progressives: a source of fear. A source of irrationality and fundamentalism.

• Climate change?
• Financial issues?
• Resource constraints? Oil depletion?
• Unlimited growth?
• Cultural wars?

Some people think they can predict the future. These are mainly a bunch of self-centered ignorants that do not even have the notion of their basic cognitive limits as Homo sapiens (we are only slightly more smart than Baboons).

Our brothers. Only slightly more stupid than us.

But even if you believe that predicting the future is beyond human capability that does not mean that we can forget the future. Our actions today (especially our ability to stand discomfort) are based on the premise that they are useful in the long run. Just one example to make this clear: If you have a job that you don’t like and you strongly believe that the world will end in 2012, the correct course of action might be to stop working and enjoy the last moments of your life. Most people don’t believe that the world will end and 2012 and thus, put up with a lot of discomfort in order to assure food on the table in the long-run and a retirement in peace.

So, even if you think that the future is uncertain you still have to make a few bets based on your uncertain beliefs and faiths about the future.

The current paradigm of development is based on growth. Mainly on the growth of a cooked up number called GDP. You can hear things like: “If we don’t grow at 2% a year, unemployment will increase” or “Nation A is better than B as the GDP per capita is bigger” or “if we grow we can eliminate poverty” and such propaganda.

Notice how ridiculous this concept is, a few examples: Hurricane Katrina was good for American GDP. Why? It increased economic activity (rebuilding, rescue operations, hiring more security to control rioting, …).

Katrina added to the American GDP

Growth might also be strangely distributed, in some developed countries (which have “grown”) the wealth of middle and lower classes has actually lowered or stagnated when compared to roughly 30 years ago. “Growth” was pocketed by someone else. In fact one could say that apparent increases in material wealth have more to do with technological advance than real increases in wealth: The TV that I have is much better than the equivalent of the ones my parent’s bought 20 years ago not because I can buy more, but because technology evolved. My parents, by the way, had stable jobs with assured job security. “Growth” also came with job insecurity (we have to compete with Chinese serfdom now).

"Growth" in China

So, the present (and late 20th century) narrative is that growth is good and that growth is eternal. Before you dismiss this idea as totally unsustainable note that technological advances have delayed Malthusian predictions at least until now. And there are good arguments to support the idea that this can go on for longer. In fact, in the long run, solar energy, is in practice infinite. So, in theory energy can be seen as infinite. For now in theory only, I will get back to that in a moment. But also note other obvious constraints for unlimited growth: physical space and maybe other environmental considerations.

So what will dominate the future narrative of the next two decades? Well, my initial bet (leap of faith) will be Financial Armageddon. Remember that the Great Depression was in fact a double-dip recession. The initial ‘29 stock market fall was followed by a small “recovery” period, and all those images of famine and poverty that we associate to the Great Depression are normally of ‘31 and onwards. The parallels between now and then have their limits, but the same kind of greedy, corrupt, intellectually impaired, self-centered baboons are in control. Though I don’t give too much credit to predictions I do see some sovereign defaults happening in the next 12 months (think Dubai in a big scale).

The financial crash was in 29 but the ripples were felt later (image from 36)

But finance is mainly a social construction. Money, gold are mainly psychological and sociological constructs, their value is based on Human trust. Don’t get me wrong, primates are social species and social issues are 90% of defines the human variety. So social constructions are very important. But physical constraints, if they exist, take precedence.

Before we go into the physical world, some last words for social and political realities. Note the disconnect between the elites and the average Joe: The unpopular bailing out the of the banks. Not putting the EU’s Lisbon treaty to a referendum for the fear of the democratic option. The disconnect between the politically correct “minority integration and respect” and the Swiss referendum vote, or the Austrian and Dutch support for anti-immigration parties. These all points to a strong disconnect between “the will of the people” and the ruling elites. Note that I am not stating any preference for any of the sides, I am just observing this ever growing disconnect.

The type of leaders that tend to appear in chaotic times

Ok, now the hard constraints. Oil (easy access oil) is probably peaking. I say “probably” because there is no open, reliable information about reserves in some key countries (Saudi-Arabia, Iraq, Iran, …). But, for the transparent ones (Norway, UK, US, …), peak oil theory works like a charm and fits data very well.

The ubiquity of oil is amazing. Yes it is a form of energy, but more than that, it is a flexible one: Try putting wind, solar or nuclear in your car. Modern agriculture is also totally dependent on oil: fueling the machines but also making fertilizer. Most plastics: oil derivative. Replacing oil is not just replacing energy. It is way much more. One could say you eat oil, which is transported because of oil.

And yes, maybe in the future we will have full renewables, hydrogen as a storage of energy, another kind of agriculture. I am a full believer, in the long term, on the practical infinity of solar energy. But until that bright future gets here, there will be a transition period. This transition period has to exist in lots of fundamental areas. Errors will be made (e.g., most biofuels are a “nice” way to destroy food to create fuel) before good solutions. The transition has the potential to be chaotic.

What about global warming? I don’t care at all. Let me explain.

• Being a “Talebist”, a philosophical fan of the Black Swan, the future predictions of temperature change strike me as something not to be called Science. I am afraid I cannot develop this idea much further as I unfortunately work very close to predictive science and until I finish my PhD I don’t think it will be wise to exercise full freedom of expression. Note that I am not a denialist. I am just a skeptical/agnostic, I have no position on the issue.
• I see some political hijacking of the whole issue, especially by banks. The whole cap and trade solution strikes me as yet another strategy for the intermediary institutions to profit. Even if climate change is a real problem that can be mitigated, the solutions proposed see to me like more of the same: a complex web of rules and regulations to make financial institutions profit as middlemen.
• Finance and oil will become urgent priorities. If people are unemployed, if food is not arriving at tables, the hypothetical warming of the planet in 5 decades time becomes, in the short time, a non-problem. People will want to eat first. In fact you can see what is happening in Canada as an harbinger of things to come: societies will scuffle for basic resources.
• The solutions that I see fit for the resource crisis are totally compatible with controlling carbon emissions: Less and more rational consumption. Public transport. Renewables. Localized economies. Protectionism.

Believe it or not, I am not a doomsday person. Most of the issues above are circumventable. A more stable society (with less growth, less uncertainty, less interconnectivity) also seems to be not that bad in my eyes. The physical and financial constraints could be a good opportunity to redesign society in a more decent way without much pain. The reasons why I despair have little to do with the constraints the world imposes us, but the expected reactions of both the ruling elites and the general public to the big issues that we are now entering. The last 30 years developed the idea that greed, consumption, atomization, globalization, lack of autonomy and massification are “good” moral values: this will serve us very poorly in the years to come.

The devil of greed

Interesting times, indeed.

Hope

Credits: Most images are from Wikipedia. The image on Chinese pollution is from here. I strongly recommend you to have a look.

Black Swan

I would like to address one of the most powerful and well-crafted arguments against the Black Swan model of the world: The argument that Black Swans are really not Black Swans in the sense that they are predictable.

Nouriel Roubini once said (sorry, I lost track of where, so I cannot offer a citation) that the current economic crisis was not a Black Swan because it was easy to predict. In fact he, as it is widely known, predicted it. So the current economic crisis is really not a Black Swan, but something that any average person, with a sense of clarity and average maths would have seen. This argument has two main flaws:

1. Yes, it is true that the current crisis was easily predictable. But for most people it was not, especially economists. What I mean is that the narrative that the majority of people have in their heads (unlimited credit, unlimited debt, unlimited growth) made the economic crisis a Black Swan because most people were not (are not) cognitively and culturally prepared to see the event.
   Think about the typical Black Swan example of the turkey for Christmas: A turkey is well fed throughout the year. Because of that, it thinks all life is good. Every day reinforces that feeling. Then comes Christmas eve and the poor soul is slaughtered. It is easy for an outside observer (or a not-so-stupid turkey) to note the dramatic circumstances of the turkey (in opposition to the turkey’s expectation of good life).
   Our turkey is mainly the economic, political and media elites (we end up being all slaughtered as they decide our fate) plus all people who accrued more debt that they could obviously hold or supported policies of unsustainable debt.
   The fact that the mere unbiased observation of a US private debt chart in 2006 would be enough to make anyone (anyone with basic maths understanding and an open mind, that is) shiver is irrelevant: most “smart” people totally failed to do that. They (we all, at the end) are turkeys.

2. Yes, this crisis was predicable. But lets not overgeneralize. Any complex, intertwined system will have parts that are more important than expected and will behave in strange ways, sooner or later. If you are familiar with the crisis of 1929, think Credit-Anstalt. Credit-Anstalt (a small Austrian bank) is credited in starting the second part of 29 crisis when it defaulted in 1931. A small Austrian bank started the domino chain that brought the world the WORST (more socially damaging) part of the depression of 29.

Nonetheless, point 1 can be mitigated. A discussion about that will require talking about ideology and fundamentalism, especially in the light of one of the modern fundamentalist religions: neo-conservative economics. As with all fundamentalist ideologies it serves us bad, especially if it is (as it still is) the main narrative dominating power circles.

Julaftonen (The Christmas Eve), a watercolor painted 1904-05 by Carl Larsson (1853-1919)

By The Way, my previous post was a visual depiction of Excesses in Dubai

Credit where is due: Images taken from Wikipedia

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Those are a set of artificial islands. Notice their pattern that they form? Rotate a bit in your head… they are shaped as a world map!

Better yet, what about a set of artificial islands shaped as a palm tree?

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Now, even better, a second set of islands shaped as a palm tree (why have only one when you can have two?):

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This was to be a luxury development, but it seems that the global financial crisis is putting some brakes to it. Read more at Wikipedia.

Montana is a “lots of open space” american state. If you like nature, check these photo albuns:

Flathead Lake Biological Station, Montana, USA

Missoula, Montana, USA

Rattlesnake trail, Missoula, Montana, USA

The best “gallery” seems be available by
Googling for images using Sebastiao Salgado as a keyword.

There is also an official homepage. The navigation is not very intuitive, but if you dig down the site, you can find some gems.

Liv Ullmann, Julia Dufvenius (actresses) and Ingmar Bergman (director)
Making of Saraband (2003)
Photo by Bengt Wanselius (Sony Pictures Classics)

The photo speaks by itself.

Stolen from sound + vision (Blog in Portuguese).