@jackofalltrades@mas.to
@jackofalltrades@mas.to avatar

jackofalltrades

@jackofalltrades@mas.to

I'm here to learn about the world and work through my climate grief.

I post about politics, climate change, economics, philosophy, being a father, programming, games, and more.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

jackofalltrades, to China
@jackofalltrades@mas.to avatar

An honest look at both coal and renewables in China.

"Barring further extreme weather events" is an interesting condition in the era of climate disruption we're living through.

https://thechinaproject.com/2023/10/25/rooftop-solar-is-a-rational-and-important-step-in-chinas-path-to-peak-coal-use-a-rebuttal/

jackofalltrades, to climate
@jackofalltrades@mas.to avatar

Is it rude to check other people's predictions? I hope not.

US emissions in 2023 went down by just 1.9%.
Coal burning dropped by 17%.

Sources:
https://mstdn.social/@GreenFire/110973530605105454

https://rhg.com/research/us-greenhouse-gas-emissions-2023/

https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/monthly/pdf/sec11_3.pdf

jackofalltrades, to climate
@jackofalltrades@mas.to avatar

https://invidious.fdn.fr/watch?v=Kfyx2FIJtM4

A lot in this interview resonated with me.

How social movements tend to fizzle out after presumably the "correct" people (like Democrats in the US) are elected to office.

Or how it's not hope that motivates people to move to the streets and demand change, but anger or sadness.

jackofalltrades, to China
@jackofalltrades@mas.to avatar

"""
Zhao Lianhai is a Chinese dissident and former food safety worker who became an activist for parents of children harmed during the 2008 Chinese milk scandal.

The police and/or public security bureau harassed him, his wife, his mother, his siblings, and volunteer students. The government also broke up meetings and a press conference.

In 2010 he was sentenced to two and half years imprisonment for 'disturbing social order'.
"""

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhao_Lianhai

jackofalltrades, to China
@jackofalltrades@mas.to avatar

"""
Huang Qi is a Chinese webmaster and human rights activist from Sichuan. He is the co-founder of Tianwang Center for Missing Persons, with the initial mission of helping to counter human trafficking, later expanded to include campaign against human rights abuse.

Huang was imprisoned by the government from June 2000 to June 2005 and again arrested in July 2008 for "illegal possession of state secrets" after he helped the victims of the Sichuan earthquake.
"""

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huang_Qi

jackofalltrades,
@jackofalltrades@mas.to avatar

"disseminating rumors"

"destroying social order"

"inciting subversion"

"illegal possession of state secrets"

👀

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sichuan_schools_corruption_scandal

jackofalltrades, to random
@jackofalltrades@mas.to avatar

Digging into this paper by Sullivan and Hickel, and I am a bit distressed by the way authors misrepresent and distort their sources to fit their political narrative.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X22002169

1/8

jackofalltrades,
@jackofalltrades@mas.to avatar

They mix and match statistics whenever it suits their narrative. They talk about a rapid increase in life expectancy in Maoist China and attribute that to expanded public health care and education, but when it comes to citing numbers, they cite the death rate.

2/8

#China #Mao #communism

jackofalltrades,
@jackofalltrades@mas.to avatar

Funny thing about the death rate is that it is as much a reflection of health, as it is of demographics. Death rate in western nations is double that of China, because, well, old people tend to die at some point.

OTOH when you look at actual life expectancy numbers, they continued to climb in Dengist China. But that doesn't fit the narrative, so it is not mentioned.

3/8

jackofalltrades,
@jackofalltrades@mas.to avatar

This gets an even darker turn when they mention infant mortality rate.

According to the authors infant mortality rose due to privatization and capitalist reforms, and only got reversed when government reintroduced social health insurance.

4/8

jackofalltrades,
@jackofalltrades@mas.to avatar

What's missing is the obvious mention of the one-child policy.

What is the most surprising here is that the source their cite describes it as an important factor in the rise of infant mortality. But again, that doesn't fit authors' narrative, so it is silently discarded.

5/8

Table 11.2 Life and death in China, 1978-1984

jackofalltrades,
@jackofalltrades@mas.to avatar

Another case of such source abuse is their mention of BNPL (Basic Needs Poverty Line) for China. In the main text they unflinchingly say that according to this measure, extreme poverty was 0.2% in 1990 and 24% in 2005.

6/8

Footnote Moatsos questioned the validity of this finding on the grounds that goods may not have actually been available at official government-set prices in China in 1990. However, there is an extensive literature showing that China’s socialist provisioning systems were generally capable of delivering key goods, and improving health outcomes for the population (e.g., Dreze & Sen, 1989; Li, 2008).

jackofalltrades,
@jackofalltrades@mas.to avatar

But when you read the source they cite it has two very different estimates and notes a high uncertainty about both of them.

To their credit, they do add a footnote about this.

Source: https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/3d96efc5-en/1/3/9/index.html?itemId=/content/publication/3d96efc5-en&

7/8

Figure 9.13. Extreme poverty in China based on different estimates Note: CBN stands for the Cost of Basic Needs threshold; DAD is the standard (survey-based) USD 1.9/day poverty-line; GDP 1.9 is the USD 1.9/day poverty line adjusted using GDP per capita as the mean value of the distribution. Low CBN estimates based on nominal prices from Chinese Statistical Yearbooks; the high CBN estimates line relies on food prices and keeps non-food prices fixed at 1995 levels.

jackofalltrades,
@jackofalltrades@mas.to avatar

I have more gripes with the paper (like no mention of fossil fuels, green revolution or technology in general), but that's for another day.

I'm not even saying I'm disagreeing with most of their conclusions or framings, but examples like these show a poor scientific rigor.

I lost a lot of respect for Jason Hickel after reading this paper.

Makes you wonder if his other work also rests on such shaky ground.

8/8

jackofalltrades, to Texas
@jackofalltrades@mas.to avatar

"""
Spot prices at the North Hub, which includes Dallas, jumped to more than $3,000 a megawatt-hour just before 7 p.m. local time, versus about $32 at the same time Tuesday, according to data from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas.

Unusually hot weather in the region has boosted demand for cooling and lowered the efficiency of many power plants. Wind output has also fallen from a day earlier and there are more outages.
"""

https://archive.ph/Nbatb

#Texas #electricity #ClimateChange

jackofalltrades, to Collapse
@jackofalltrades@mas.to avatar

"""
Almost 80% of the respondents, all from the authoritative IPCC, foresee at least 2.5C of global heating, while almost half anticipate at least 3C. Only 6% thought the internationally agreed 1.5C limit would be met.

Many of the scientists envisage a “semi-dystopian” future, with famines, conflicts and mass migration, driven by heatwaves, wildfires, floods and storms of an intensity and frequency far beyond those that have already struck.
"""

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/08/world-scientists-climate-failure-survey-global-temperature

#ClimateDiary #collapse

jackofalltrades, to sustainability
@jackofalltrades@mas.to avatar

If true, this is quite a problem for visions of a deglobalized, sustainable, post-fossil-fuels world.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-020-0060-7

#sustainability #food #polycrisis #future #famine

jackofalltrades, to climate
@jackofalltrades@mas.to avatar

Great, another source of emissions that has been underestimated.

The US obviously tops the charts, but other notable mentions are China, Australia and Norway.

https://norwegianscitechnews.com/2024/04/big-data-reveals-true-climate-impact-of-worldwide-air-travel/

Direct link to study: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ad3a7d

#ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateDiary #climate #aviation #USA #China #Australia #Norway

jackofalltrades, to climate
@jackofalltrades@mas.to avatar

"""
The destruction of the planet isn't a mistake, isn't a misunderstanding, isn't an accident. It's largely a deliberate process driven by economics and the material reality of the society we live in. Everything that we produce and consume in an industrial civilization is dependent upon the destruction of the planet.
"""
-- Max Wilbert

jackofalltrades,
@jackofalltrades@mas.to avatar

Strong, true words of Max Wilbert.

Most environmental discussions nowadays are a carbon-measuring contest of this or that technology.

Source: https://www.planetcritical.com/p/bright-green-lies-max-wilbert

jackofalltrades, to Meme
@jackofalltrades@mas.to avatar

This is the saddest meme.

Source: https://reddit.com/comments/1cj4yu3

urlyman, to random
@urlyman@mastodon.social avatar

One day, people who write about the importance of climate change, will not fly all over the world doing book tours

jackofalltrades,
@jackofalltrades@mas.to avatar

@urlyman

Still thinking about your post.

According to one estimate, only 12% of air passengers travel for business reasons: https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/041315/how-much-revenue-airline-industry-comes-business-travelers-compared-leisure-travelers.asp

Another estimate puts that number at 29%: https://www.airlines.org/news/air-travel-more-accessible-in-2017-according-to-latest-air-travelers-in-america-report/

In either case, this means that...

jackofalltrades,
@jackofalltrades@mas.to avatar

The majority of air travel is a personal choice.

If people truly cared about climate change they could cut aviation emissions in half basically overnight.

And yet, they don't.

@urlyman

jackofalltrades, to China
@jackofalltrades@mas.to avatar

"""
Online mentions of Xi Jinping are so frequently censored that netizens have taken to jokingly calling Xi “Voldemort,” after the Harry Potter villain also known as “He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.”
"""

https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2024/04/quote-of-the-day-do-you-think-xi-jinping-is-a-dictator/

pvonhellermannn, to random
@pvonhellermannn@mastodon.green avatar

#ClimateDiary These are the kinds of calculations the poorest have to make in the #Heatwave

"If we are going to take a bath in the creek, we have to go far away from the camp," she said.

"It's not a walkable distance under this temperature. If we go by motorcycle, it's not worth it because of the cost of fuel. If we save money for fuel, we may as well use it to buy water."

#Myanmar

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/fuel-water-heatwave-myanmar-displaced-misery-4310706

jackofalltrades,
@jackofalltrades@mas.to avatar

@pvonhellermannn

This is grim.

Especially compared with calculations and choices I get to make in my daily life.

The following quote from the History of the Peloponnesian War (often quoted by Yanis Varoufakis) comes to mind:

"The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must".

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • JUstTest
  • osvaldo12
  • DreamBathrooms
  • mdbf
  • InstantRegret
  • ngwrru68w68
  • magazineikmin
  • everett
  • thenastyranch
  • Youngstown
  • slotface
  • cubers
  • kavyap
  • tester
  • megavids
  • cisconetworking
  • tacticalgear
  • khanakhh
  • ethstaker
  • Durango
  • rosin
  • modclub
  • anitta
  • normalnudes
  • GTA5RPClips
  • Leos
  • provamag3
  • lostlight
  • All magazines
    •