Supporting both is the best strategy for an important influencer like Dr Baez. I'm not an influencer and I think people should be aware of a few issues:
1. Voters with concerns for the environment support wind+solar. But the resulting RE industry is doing it for profit, not for the environment. For them nuclear is the enemy, just as it is for the fossil fuel industry.
2. The RE industry needs gas just as the gas industry needs RE. They are in an unholy anti-nuclear alliance. A lot of money goes from that alliance to supposedly environmental organisations which are then faced with perverse incentive in opposition to their claimed mission.
3. Nuclear done right avoids the environmentally destructive industrialisation of the landscape that is shown in the linked news item. We can also have less dams which are even worse for the environment (unless built by beavers).
Also somebody asked how to address fears about nuclear and I wrote:
(1) Address the exaggerated concerns about radiation. Veritasium's video is a good place to start: https://youtu.be/TRL7o2kPqw0. (2) Point out that Chernobyl didn't have containment and didn't cause the predicted cancer spike. (3) modern reactors have to be walk-away safe.
I also watched a video about the infamous 536 AD volcanic eruption, which produced the worst year in history in Europe: https://youtu.be/HOw9UlRpfSA "The Mystery Volcanic Eruption in 536; The Year of Hell". This is from the excellent GeologyHub. There were 2 big eruptions close together. The 536AD one was probably in Iceland or Alaska and mostly affected the Northern Hemisphere. The 540AD one was even bigger, coming from near Krakatau (aka Krakatoa). It affected the whole world, but merely added to the misery in Europe.
Ship building and sailing expertise was improving rapidly in the centuries on either side of 410AD when the Romans left Britain. The North Sea was a highway, linking navigable rivers on both sides. So in 410 there were already plenty of people from across the North Sea enjoying the Pax Romana in Britain, and the work opportunities it provided, such as in the army.
The change when the Romans left was that land travel in Britain became less safe and less efficient. Travel by boat was the glue that linked parts of Britain together, but also linked Britain, particularly the East coast, to the people of North-West Europe.
After 410, trade was by boat, and the traders were from those Germanic people in NW Europe. They didn't speak Latin or the British languages. They probably all grew up speaking local languages, but a trade network like that develops a common language, just as bahasa Indonesia developed across Indonesia. That language became a natural lingua franca in England as well. Everybody had to learn it to trade, and it then facilitated communication with other people in England. And it was a prestige language. No wonder it took off, replacing Latin as "the language everyone knew".
Then 536-7 hit, and a little bit later 540. The weakened population was susceptible to the Plague of Justinian that then followed. It is almost certain that Britain was substantially depopulated. The people who had a big advantage in surviving were those who could turn to the sea for food. These were the people around the coast who were most influenced by the "Anglo-Saxon" ship traders. Surviving people then came together in communities that were more mixed, and were even more inclined to take up the common language and other culture of the wealthy traders.
The North Sea was a connected world that Britain was a part of. The connection is still apparent. As the Frisians say: "Good butter and good cheese is good English and good Frieze".
Update 2024-11-05:
A recent video suggest that England was substantially German/Scandinavian before the Roman invasion: https://youtu.be/XG9gWjSxK4g?si=5xaFGDiWze4_bazH. This makes so much sense. I've put a transcript of the relevant bit below, but I recommend the whole video.
13:13
For instance, there's a near complete absence
13:15
of celtic inscriptions in England outside Cornwall,
13:19
while such inscriptions are common in Ireland,
13:22
Wales, Scotland and Brittany.
13:25
So who were the Britons living in England
13:28
at the time of the roman invasion?
13:30
The history of pre roman coins in southern
13:33
Britain points to strong connections with belgic Gaul.
13:37
In fact, many of the tribes living
13:40
south and along the southern coast during
13:42
Caesar's time had belgic names or affiliations.
13:46
Caesar himself noted that these large belgic
13:49
settlements had replaced an earlier british population
13:53
which had retreated inland, possibly including the
13:56
large celtic tribe known as the Catuvellauni.
14:01
The roman historian Tacitus also remarked that the
14:04
languages of Britain and Gaul were quite similar.
14:08
However, the common language Tacitus referred
14:11
to may not have been celtic.
14:14
It's possible that the language spoken by the
14:16
Belgae in southern England was more germanic as
14:20
Caesar suggested, this hints that a germanic type
14:23
language might have already been spoken in England
14:26
before the roman invasion.
14:29
Recent research by Cambridge geneticist Peter Forster and
14:33
colleagues supports this idea, showing that the split
14:36
between Old English and continental germanic languages occurred
14:41
much earlier than the dark ages, suggesting that
14:44
English could have been a distinct branch of
14:46
the germanic language family before the Romans arrived.
14:51
Besides the belgic presence in the south, genetic
14:54
evidence also shows significant scandinavian incursions into northern
14:58
and eastern Britain, from Shetland to Anglia during
15:02
the neolithic period, long before the Romans.
15:05
These findings align with the strong
15:07
cultural exchanges across the North Sea
15:10
during the neolithic and Bronze Age.
15:13
Early anglian dialects, such as those found
15:16
in the old English epic Beowulf, owe
15:19
much of their vocabulary to scandinavian languages.
I agree with Brian that improving the health and productivity of the world's oceans is a likely route to reducing atmospheric CO2 and ocean acidification. I was pleased to see that in Australia, CSIRO is investigating ocean fertilization: Ashes to ashes, dust to life: how iron improves anaemic oceans – CSIROscope.
Fire
One of the problems that is claimed to be caused by Climate Change is the increased severity of wildfires (called bushfires in Australia). There is a little bit of truth in this, because the increase in CO₂ and water in the air increases plant growth. But really the problem is this:
Vegetation without herbivores is an environmental disaster.
Fire is the herbivore of last resort.
The herbivores that you need to stop the understorey of forests building up to dangerous levels are the megafauna, which have sadly disappeared from most of the world outside Africa. I used to think that we needed to completely take over the role of megafauna, perhaps using fire as the Australian Aboriginal people did so successfully. The use of fire seems regrettable in our current situation, and it may not be necessary. We can use middle-sized fauna to eat through the underbrush (and also fertilise the land) if we help it by pushing over or cutting the larger stuff down to a level the animals can reach. Here's a video on using goats to improve the land:
Desertification
Photos of degraded land are often shown as if associated with Climate Change. In fact the problem is almost invariably:
Herbivores without predators are an ecological disaster.
We see that in Australia with feral horses in the High Country, camels in central Australia, water buffalo in the north, and often kangeroos anywhere. Famously wolves were introduced to Yellowstone National Park and the land regenerated because the deer changed their behaviour. In places like Australia where plant growth varies a lot from year to year, preadators are very likely to suffer boom and bust that is out of sync with the herbivores. We see this with the mouse plague at the moment. By the time feral cat populations rise it is too late. At any rate there is no chance that Australia will introduce predators large enough to deal with the larger herbivores.
Humans need to fill the role of the top predator, and indeed we can do it in a way that protects the herbivore population as well as preserving the flora. Unfortunately there is strong opposition to culling. But this is where the pandemic comes to our rescue. People are now used to hearing "On the best scientific advice we are going to do X", where X is something people don't like. Let's extend this to environmental actions. "On the best scientific advice we are going to cull species X to allow the regeneration of its environment".
We need to manage the landscape of Australia much better, as the Aboriginal people did before European arrival. To do it we need to collect a lot more data to understand what's happening. Luckily technology is to hand. We can do a lot from satellites. On the ground we can install unattended intelligent monitoring that uses solar power and communicates its findings by 4G or satellite. Maybe people would like to adopt a monitoring station and check the pictures and sound and other data for things like: animals, birds, insects and weather.
This is important for addressing climate change because a landscape with a healthy level of vegetation will take advantage of the rain that falls and stash the water away. Rain on degraded land is much more likely to evaporate, and though it will fall as rain later that might be over water or other useless place. We know that where plants grow the soil improves and stores carbon.
Update 2022-06-21: This video on "Dingoes save the outback" makes the point beautifully: https://youtu.be/eRp2xp73n0s.
Drought
We all experience that drought years are warmer than rainy years. It is natural for the voters to assume that global warming will be associated with droughts. Droughts certainly raise the public's concern about the changing climate.
This is a misunderstanding. As the oceans warm there is increasing evaporation and, in general, more rain. Historically the ice ages were cold and dry, and the interglacials were, and are, warm and wet. The last time the world was significantly warmer than now, there were rain forests extending nearly to the poles.
However climate change does shuffle the deck. It is guaranteed to make most places wetter, but it can and probably will make some places drier. Some climate models show southern Australia getting drier, and that would be inconvenient because that is where most agricultural production happens.
Summary
Let's build on the experience of the pandemic to get scientific and engineering advice front and centre of the decisions we need to make to fix the problems of the Anthropocene, including the problem of global warming.
It is an easy out to declare that a particular problem is caused by global warming. All problems need to be addressed, and fixing the greenhouse gas levels is unlikely to be the immediate solution for any of them.
In the context of our increasingly wealthy worldwide civilization, global warming is a fixable problem that is not going to cause any huge loss of human life. It is very bad for biodiversity, particularly in the oceans where acidification makes it a double whammy. I think even the Greens know all this. If they really believed the danger was as great as they say, then how could they also continue to argue that nuclear power should not even be given any consideration?
There is now a lot of money getting allocated to address climate change. While most people are keen to fix the problem, there are also a lot who are thinking "How can I get my hands on that money?". Voters need to be aware of this so that they can turn on their radar, even if their radar isn't very good. Unfortunately the linkages between the wealthy and the politicians mean that governments will not protect us as much as we would hope. Parliamentary enquiry will be crucial and needs to be better resourced.
Recordeded lectures don't work well for education: Why too many recorded lecture videos may be bad for maths students' learning (theconversation.com). This applies to educational videos in general, not just lectures. Even if we pay attention, it just washes over us, giving a warm glow of understanding that actually lacks the depth to answer questions in the subject area. It is also boring when you know some of the subject matter and are keen to get to the stuff that is new to you.
It is now possible to control video in a browser with javascript. This is currently available in Safari, and with experimental settings in other browsers. This provides the opportunity to turn watching into a more engaged experience, and to pick up when the viewer has missed something. Here's the plan:
With the lecture on one frame, another frame shows a sequence of easy multiple choice or short answer questions. The viewer is told not to guess.
If the viewer answers questions before that part of the video has past, then the video will jump past that material.
There is an "I don't know" answer for questions, but it is greyed out until the user gets past the relevant part of the video.
When the video has gone past the material for a question then the video pauses waiting for the viewer to answer.
If the viewer answer "I don't know" then something useful happens, such as showing an alternative explanation, or repeating a section, or getting a tutor or other viewer involved. Wrong answers might have more complicated responses.
The video can also have some larger questions which are associated with longer breaks. These might require human evaluation, so might be timed to when a tutor is available to evaluate it.
Global warming seems to start earlier than one would expect at the start of the Industrial Revolution. Of course a lot of other stuff was going on around the world at that time. One thing was whaling on a huge scale. Well it turns out that whale poo is an important fertiliser in the ocean, and dead whales carry a lot of carbon to the ocean floor. The whales will come back in a few centuries, but meanwhile we need to do their job to get the oceans full of fish again: https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2018/01/iron-fertilization-of-the-ocean-is-as-natural-as-whale-poop-and-it-can-save-the-planet.html.
Update: Another great video with stuff I didn't know about humans compensating for problems: https://youtu.be/cfl7mSG13e0. In this case, Thiamine deficiency in wild animals and fish, probably not related to megafauna extinction.
There was silly research that showed that phytoplanton take up carbon, but it all gets released when they die, so fertilization doesn't work. Of course many phytoplankton don't get to die of old age, and as their predators (and their predators, etc) defecate and later die, then a significant amount of carbon goes to the ocean floor. This video explains how some of that happens: https://youtu.be/Yo-AdMHu2ec.
To make Democracy work as well as possible we need to get three things right:
The Head of State should be the umpire of politics, not a player;
The main (lower) house of parliament should have parties from the whole political spectrum, not two parties riven with internal divisions.
Misinformation and disinformation are poison to democratic decision making. The second (upper) house should have the job of responding to these with open enquiries and using its powers to identify the sources of disinformation campaigns.
Head of State
The Head of State needs to combine ceremonial roles with acting as the umpire of the political process. This is the way the Governor-General acts in Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Having a Head of State with political power is a recipe for demagoguery which can easily tip over into dictatorship. Instead we want the political leader to be first among equals in a Cabinet drawn from and supported by the elected legislature which can change the leader quickly when necessary.
The failed attempt to make Australia a republic showed that the politicians were well aware that an elected President would be impossible to constrain to the ceremonial and umpiring roles of the Governor-General. However the voters were not interested in any other way of choosing a President. This proved to me that a monarchy is a valuable thing if a country has it. They do the ceremonial bit better, and they have the respect that an umpire needs. A remote monarch with a local representative has worked well in Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
We can add some needed democracy to monarchy. When voters are at the polls it is a convenient moment to allow them to vote to remove people from the succession, or even to request a vote on the removal of the current monarch.
The Main House of Parliament
The main (Lower) House of Parliament should be the main source of power, both legislative and administrative. Separating the two leads to endless difficulty. Single seat electorates lead to the 2 party system we see in most places. Instead we need to get the extremists out of the main parties and let them be represented in Parliament by small parties that accurately reflect their views. This allows sane centre parties to govern, and allows the majority to directly and personally confront extremist views on the floor of Parliament.
The government is formed by the Umpire (Head of State) speaking privately to those elected and finding a Prime Minister most likely to be supported by the House. The Prime Minister builds a Cabinet of senior ministers, who are constrained to resign if they wish to publicly disagree with Cabinet decisions. The Head of State should not dismiss the government unless it receives a vote of no confidence in the House.
The House of Review
In a democracy the people are the government. Even though it seems they act rarely and only through representatives, in fact the politicians are constantly aware of the voters feelings and beliefs.
To act wisely the voters need, as far as possible, to be well and accurately informed. We admit that sometimes the people want to be misinformed, and it will be hard to prevent that. The Constitution should clearly state the importance of correcting misinformation and identifying and calling out people creating and spreading disinformation.
The second (Upper) House of Parliament should be specifically tasked with pursuing the truth in open enquiries. It should be independently funded to support teams of well qualified researchers to support investigations into the correct information relevant to public policy, and into the sources of deliberate disinformation. It should be able to hold up legislation which does not contain adequate or correct justification.
Addendum
Compulsory voting impresses on people that voting is a duty, not some optional right. It has various advantages. It makes it hard to exclude groups through voter suppression. The processes that search for people who don't vote would also find people who vote more than once, if that were to ever become a problem.
Preferential voting, also called "Single Transferable Vote", requires the voter to number the candidates in order. It isn't perfect and it is easy to prove that there is no perfect voting system. What it does do is allow people to vote for who they actually support without wasting their vote. The importance of this is consistently understated by those who think they are advantaged by first past the post voting.
There is also confusion in democracies because sometimes we vote for individuals and sometimes we feel we are voting for parties and feel betrayed when the winning candidate leaves the party but remains in Parliament. I have a post on addressing that: Gramp's Grumps: How to integrate political parties into the electoral process.
I have a proposal for a social media platform designed to resemble parliament in some ways. It's a bit nutty: Gramp's Grumps: AutoParliament.
