Den stora tråden om global uppvärmning/växthuseffekten

The Global Wind Energy Council recently released its latest report, excitedly boasting that ‘the proliferation of wind energy into the global power market continues at a furious pace, after it was revealed that more than 54 gigawatts of clean renewable wind power was installed across the global market last year’.

You may have got the impression from announcements like that, and from the obligatory pictures of wind turbines in any BBC story or airport advert about energy, that wind power is making a big contribution to world energy today. You would be wrong. Its contribution is still, after decades — nay centuries — of development, trivial to the point of irrelevance.

Here’s a quiz; no conferring. To the nearest whole number, what percentage of the world’s energy consumption was supplied by wind power in 2014, the last year for which there are reliable figures? Was it 20 per cent, 10 per cent or 5 per cent? None of the above: it was 0 per cent. That is to say, to the nearest whole number, there is still no wind power on Earth.

To quantify this in terms of environmental damages, consider that mining one ton of rare earth minerals produces about one ton of radioactive waste, according to the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security. In 2012, the U.S. added a record 13,131 MW of wind generating capacity. That means that between 4.9 million pounds (using MIT’s estimate) and 6.1 million pounds (using the Bulletin of Atomic Science’s estimate) of rare earths were used in wind turbines installed in 2012. It also means that between 4.9 million and 6.1 million pounds of radioactive waste were created to make these wind turbines.

For perspective, America’s nuclear industry produces between 4.4 million and 5 million pounds of spent nuclear fuel each year. That means the U.S. wind industry may well have created more radioactive waste last year than our entire nuclear industry produced in spent fuel. In this sense, the nuclear industry seems to be doing more with less: nuclear energy comprised about one-fifth of America’s electrical generation in 2012, while wind accounted for just 3.5 percent of all electricity generated in the United States.

Nowhere are the consequences of hypermasculine machismo braggadocio isomorphic identification with the conceptual penis more problematic than concerning the issue of climate change. Climate change is driven by nothing more than it is by certain damaging themes in hypermasculinity that can be best understood via the dominant rapacious approach to climate ecology identifiable with the con- ceptual penis. Our planet is rapidly approaching the much-warned-about 2°C climate change thresh- old, and due to patriarchal power dynamics that maintain present capitalist structures, especially with regard to the fossil fuel industry, the connection between hypermasculine dominance of scientific, political, and economic discourses and the irreparable damage to our ecosystem is made clear.

Destructive, unsustainable hegemonically male approaches to pressing environmental policy and action are the predictable results of a raping of nature by a male-dominated mindset. This mindset is best captured by recognizing the role of the conceptual penis holds over masculine psychology. When it is applied to our natural environment, especially virgin environments that can be cheaply despoiled for their material resources and left dilapidated and diminished when our patriarchal ap- proaches to economic gain have stolen their inherent worth, the extrapolation of the rape culture inherent in the conceptual penis becomes clear. At best, climate change is genuinely an example of hyper-patriarchal society metaphorically manspreading into the global ecosystem.

The deep reason for this problematic trend is explained, in its essence, by McElwaine (1999), where he writes, “Pickett suggests that we have to choose between capitalist rationalism and cultural sub- capitalist theory” (Pickett, 1993). Contemporary capitalist theory, a.k.a. neocapitalist theory, derives its claim on rationalism directly from the hypermasculine focus in science and society that can best be accounted for by identification with the conceptual penis. Paxton and Scameron (2006) seem to agree, noting that, “neocapitalist materialist theory holds that reality comes from the collective unconscious, but only if the premise of dialectic objectivism is invalid; if that is not the case, sexuality has significance.” Toxic hypermasculinity derives its significance directly from the conceptual penis and applies itself to supporting neocapitalist materialism, which is a fundamental driver of climate change, especially in the rampant use of carbon-emitting fossil fuel technologies and careless domi- nation of virgin natural environments. We need not delve deeply into criticisms of dialectic objectiv- ism, or their relationships with masculine tropes like the conceptual penis to make effective criticism of (exclusionary) dialectic objectivism. All perspectives matter.

One practical recommendation that follows from this analysis is that climate change research would be better served by a change in how we engage in the discourses of politics and science, avoiding the hypermasculine penis-centric take whenever possible (Kaijser & Kronsell, 2013).

Posted on February 23, 2017 | Comments Offon Global polar bear population larger than previous thought – almost 30,000


The results of three recently-released studies that were not included in the last IUCN Red List assessment add more than 2,050 bears (on average)1 to the official 2015 global polar bear estimate, a point you won’t likely hear next Monday (27 February) from most polar bear specialists, conservation organizations, their cheerleaders and corporate sponsors on International Polar Bear Day.

Hur seriösa spectator är när det gäller klimatfrågor kan man läsa sig till här:

Do penises cause climate change?

http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/auto/Regional/TMAX/Figures/northern-hemisphere-TMAX-Trend.png

http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/auto/Regional/TMAX/Figures/southern-hemisphere-TMAX-Trend.png