Scientists' Warning on Technology
Peter: So Bill Ripple now has, under his motivation, has got a lot of papers published on the science warnings for humanity. It's really excellent. So this is the latest one of many, right? It's a very important paper just because it's addressing technology and science and technology is our main cause for climate disruption, let's face it. And it has to be switched around to an uncause, if I can put it like that. The authors have undesign in the paper, which I like, so that's okay. [Music] Regina: Well, welcome everyone to another climate emergency forum. My name is Regina and I'm going to be your host as we in the forum discuss “Scientists Warning on Technology.” Now this was a recent paper and it is a conglomeration of a great
deal of thought that has gone into this really, really very interesting topic. That is technology, which is something that we are always looking towards and thinking about because we are in the age of technology and sure as Google's going to provide you a Chrome update, there's going to be something new under the sun that we have to learn. Now technology is an amazing gift and it can also be somewhat of, I don't want to say a curse, but can have unintended consequences and these authors do discuss that issue. One of the things that we want to look at is, of course, the promise of technology and that is further electrification, drawing us away from prior centuries use of coal, fossil fuel, what they call the clean fuel, whatever moniker you want to give it. Technology
will hopefully bring us into a realm where we're not spewing carbon emissions into the atmosphere, thereby continually warming our planet and the world that we live in. Now in terms of clean energy, there's a lot to look forward to, electrification. There's also the issue of what to do with the waste that comes from technology. Also, AI is very promising, but we are so new, we're just on the cusp of it. We know so little about what it can do and we also know so little about what can go awry. Now there is great potential. I've seen shows about drones and
how they're able to drop seeds onto areas that have been deforested through fires to help regrow these forests. So I mean that's a fantastic thing. Also, AI being used to observe animals, animal crossings, how to open up various corridors to keep them safe. This is really, really exciting, but some of the things that the scientists have wanted to warn us about, I'm going to mention here and there are three. Now the first one is some of these technologies are causing harm to the climate and climate change through habitat loss and they suggest that these technologies should be phased out as soon as possible. I couldn't agree any more if I tried. Secondly, they warned
that future technologies could very much produce harms on their own. Okay, so it's not necessarily all of them and we can't always predict what harms they can cause in advance. So while the scientists say yes, we encourage research into this and finding substitutes for our current energy sources that are harmful, they say we need to proceed with caution. There are so many things that we can look back in the past that were miracle cures. I don't know why, but for some reason thalidomide came to my mind. This was a medication that was, I believe, used to treat morning sickness and
pregnant women and unfortunately this wonder drug caused great, great problems for the gestating babies and it's just terrible monstrous problems. So while technology and science can bring us great gifts, there are outcomes that we can't always be aware of ahead of time. And then lastly, they suggest that, well, technology and AI has great promise for us that it's not the only thing that's going to do it. It's not going to be a flip of a switch and here we have this great technology
that is going to draw all the carbon out of the atmosphere. First of all, that's not near on the horizon, I hate to say it, but also we have to deal with humanity. Humans, us, our minds can be our greatest enemies and so many humans are averse to change. So we have to deal with these political, social and economic issues that we as humans are so, so enmeshed in fighting against. I remember when here in the United States, I think it was back in the 80s, they changed the driving miles per hour to 55 and there was just, people were just not having it. So even though things can be good for us, we humans are stubborn and I want to turn it over to Peter. I want to hear
what he has to say about these problems facing humanity and what we can think of in terms of what this paper brought for you, Peter. Peter: Thanks, Regina. That was a very good coverage on this fairly long article. Thanks a lot. So Bill Ripple now has, under his motivation, has got a lot of papers published on the science warnings for humanity. It's really excellent. So this is the latest one of many, right? It's a very important paper just because it's addressing technology and science and technology is our main cause for climate disruption, let's face it. And
it has to be switched around to an uncause, if I can put it like that. The authors have undesign in the paper, which I like, so that's okay. So the paper is a great basis for discussion. So I'm glad we're doing that, but hopefully there'll be a lot more discussion out there. Now I'm going to go
into some technologies and attitudes to technology that I had in my co-author book in 2018. First of all, and what we decided, what we found was very different to what is being done. So first of all, we found that the technologies and goods and services had to be completely converted. So we had to take technologies, etc., that are greenhouse gas emitting, completely switched them, no more,
onto non-polluting economies. That really isn't out there at all. Even this paper, I noticed a couple of times, mentioned reducing or phasing out fossil fuels. I was disappointed at that because we have to phase out fossil fuels. The science is definite, and this is
why we came to the conversion method. Science is definite that we must stop burning fossil fuels as soon as possible, and the paper certainly does indicate that. But it really bothers me where I see reducing fossil fuel or reducing emissions. That's universal now, and that's really all I read anymore. And the fact of the matter is, as I keep on repeating, that the IPCC is definite. The IPCC chairs for the past five years have been calling, based on the science, for the immediate and rapid decline of emissions, and that's for the two degree C limit. And so it
applies to the two degree C limit because we're way past 1.5 degrees C. So I think it really comes down to intention. I think it really comes down to science. The definition of science is supposedly the acquisition of knowledge for the benefit of, used to be mankind, of course, now it's humankind, which is good, So after conversion we came to the conclusion that we, and this is 2018, we had to do everything, all of these conversions, like instantly. Right, so this has been backed
up by the IPCC now. And that meant a massive Manhattan-type project, a project such as the world has never ever seen. And the Manhattan project was actually an excellent model, because they produced two bombs, not one. The work on it was only about eight months, so really they did it in less than a year. I'm explaining this because of course a lot of people say, well isn't it too late? You know, isn't it unfeasible? You know, I don't like to hear that stuff either, because we have to have the intention, as I say. So what would we do with the Manhattan project? Right, you've seen the Oppenheim movie. So they threw all the best scientists, right, and
all the resources, unlimited at this project. So we have to do exactly the same thing on climate, and anything short of that in this day is not going to do it for us. So first of all we have to tell the scientists, you've got to rapidly upgrade all of these renewable technologies, and make them as good as they potentially could be. You've got to rapidly invent, which would be like the bomb, invent safe and effective methods to cool the planet, or parts of the planet, and to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. If we don't remove CO2 from the atmosphere, we really don't have a future. Atmospheric carbon dioxide is now the highest in 14 million years, and it's increasing as fast as it's ever increased in the past tens of millions of years, the scientists are going to say. So CO2
is up there and increasing, still accelerating, it's actually increasing now, this month, faster than it ever, ever has. So I was happy to see that there was quite a bit actually in the media on a Manhattan climate project. So that's what I would promote with our technology. Regina: Thank you so much Peter, we definitely need a moonshot, we need a Manhattan project, we need it now. And the thing that kills me is we have all this technology, we have computers, we have these minds that are so amazing. It's really disheartening for me to see some of the greatest minds today spending time doing research and design on how to build better bombs, creating bigger and stronger weaponry to go to war against other countries, when this is what we need our minds to focus on, maintaining life on planet Earth. Paul,
what was your takeaway from the paper? Paul: Yes, thank you Regina and thank you Peter also. So I'll just go through some of the key points that I think could be emphasized. And you talked about harms Regina, the warnings with habitat loss, new technologies using more habitat. I mean there are calls to rewild 50% of the Earth and for, there's plans underway and actions on reforesting regions and also on afforestation putting forests where there's not regions. I mean we're you know in danger of course of crossing these tipping points including which is a huge habitat collapse. We're seeing this in the coral reefs which 25% of the ocean's fish spend part of their life cycle on. We're also seeing this with the rainforest etc., around the world, the Amazon rainforest. You mentioned the sort of miracle cures with technology with Thalidomide which
was a wonder drug for morning sickness. My mom's doctors encouraged her to take it when she was pregnant with me. It's lucky that she said no adamantly and they kept pushing her and she said no way and I think she even got a new doctor. So many people were born sort of in that generation with missing limbs, deformed limbs etc from Thalidomide the wonder drug which was horrible. It's not only technology that will do it. We need human agency. We need human political will and governments. Let's talk about EVs for example. So in the last few decades we've built hundreds of
millions of new internal combustion engine or ICE cars added to the global fleet. So the purpose I think for EVs is not to replace all of those cars. Those cars by the way produce about 45% of global emissions. Overall global emissions is the car industry. You know it exceeds even that for trucks and commercial vehicles. It's a personal car industry. So I think the EV requires how we deal with that requires a rethinking of what the personal car is and what they could do is they could replace the fleet with electric cars and with full self-driving with robo taxi ideas coming out. If people could dial up a car and get it within you know a minute or two there's no inconvenience. There'd be far fewer cars on the road, far less traffic, far less money spent
for infrastructure. Think of the housing crisis. People's garages no longer need to hold the car. There's enough space in some of those that exceeds out of shipping container, you know, for small homes and things. So EVs are taking off in leaps and bounds but how we manage them and how many and how they're deployed I think is very important. One thing I didn't notice in the paper was much talk on climate intervention or climate restoration using things like carbon dioxide removal or even solar radiation management. Carbon dioxide removal has become mainstream. The idea,
the whole idea and the policy makers language of net zero means it's emissions minus what we capture out of the atmosphere. They don't state it explicitly but they're assuming these technologies will exist. That can be very risky in itself to just assume, you know technology is so amazing that you know, we assume it's going to save us and that's the wrong way of thinking and of course there's a double-edged effect that come into place too. But there is a lot of push now on so-called climate interventions or climate restoration or climate engineering and I think that was an oversight in this particular paper not to include those things.
Regina: Thank you so much for pointing that out Paul. I mean I found that interesting too and you know I wonder what that omission means. For me and I think you know and people who watch the show regularly know that I am very cautious when it comes to messing with Mother Earth. There used to be an ad when I was a kid I think it was about butter I don't remember. I think it was of all things to sell margarine. Paul: I mean messing with mother earth we're actually committing a geoengineering experiment right now by removing sulfur from shipping fuels.
It's been in there for years causing a huge warming of the planet. So we're taking sulfur out of the system and I would argue that's geoengineering because we've had it in it's been in these fuels for a long long time and it's created low-level clouds over the ocean which have cooled the planet and we've removed it as James Hansen clearly points out; it's causing warming to greatly accelerate. So we're doing these interventions whether we realize even know it or not or whether and whether we like it or not. So we have to at least understand the science behind them and be smart about it. You have to be very careful with with what what you do but you know we're at the stage where the changes are so bad and so negative you know, the warming is huge. The
extreme weather events, you know, that conference in Dubai. Dubai's underwater right now the airport's under foot of water. Planes are coming in going through the water. I mean this is in the desert so if you're thinking about mother nature getting back at the fossil fuel industry then this is a perfect example of that happening. Regina: Yeah I would argue that from the moment that primitive man or woman first discovered the spark that led to fire that's when we started geoengineering. That's when we started messing with the planet and you know that the tagline for that ad was, I think it was “You can't fool mother nature,” or “It's not nice to fool mother nature.” Either way just us being here human beings are environmental disruptors. It's an unfortunate thing to say but I would have to say that it's true and and and we look at you know like you talked about removing the sulfur from the atmosphere. Well what got it there in the first
place? I mean we did to the degree that we did. You know some of our greatest inventions have been our greatest folly especially with the invention of the combustion engine and automobiles. It's a conundrum. I don't own a car but that doesn't mean that if a friend's going to pick me up and and say that they'll take me upstate for a weekend I'm going to say oh no no I'm not going to go in a combustion engine car. I understand that a lot of people need cars to get around. I'm fortunate I live in a city that has mass transit but also it has been created this way. There was a lot of mass transit before GM came and started tearing up the infrastructure that we all paid into to have trolleys and buses and cable cars that was destroyed by the automobile industry and then they forced us to depend upon their product. I'm going a little bit far afield with this but just
to say it can be a good friend and it can be, well, technology can stab us in the back. So I'm going to switch it back over to Peter and hear other things that you got from this paper. Peter: Thank you Regina and thank you Paul. I'm very happy to see you say that you agree with me that the personal private automobile has had its day and you know it's a pretty lousy way to move people around in the first place. So yeah thanks very much for that. Now to me the big point on science and technology is evaluation, choosing and regulation. Now long long long ago I was
involved in that quite a lot and I learned how it worked and we've actually abandoned it now because of the power of the corporations. So the corporations are making the decisions now for us, we're not making them anymore. So I would like to start with a lot more public review, you know, promoted and funded by governments for the public to see and assess and see what they think of all these things. So what used to happen of course is that a corporation or a manufacturer or a chemical industry would come up with some new science and technology and say to the governments we want to use this, we want to make it, and then the government would put a science panel together and the panel would evaluate, if it's AI for example, would evaluate it in respect of, is it safe, is it effective, is it for the benefit of people, right, and what does it do to the environment? So all of that was examined by, over many, many, many months by panels of scientists. Now it was absolute anathema to have the government involved in any way at all, right, in this process. Of course with the IPCC, which I think was unavoidable, we've broken that rule, right,
so the IPCC is influenced now by corporations of course. Now in the day the governments had the power to ban, right, eventually DDT and other pops were banned, but that took years and years, but it did happen, right. Now new pesticides, you wouldn't believe how many are being produced, and they're just going through the market and they're not being evaluated at all, right. So then the government and this, the scientists make a report, the report sent to the government, and the report is published. So only then do the governments decide whether they're going to approve this, whatever it is at all, or regulate it. And in the day the regulations became very,
very strict. I was very glad to say, particularly with respect to carcinogens of course, but all of this applies to technologies more than they ever ever have, right, because number one we've geo-engineered the planet to death, right, the ocean as well as the land, the ice caps, everything, everything is in a state of rapid degradation and rapid decline, right. The IPCC 2018 1.5 degrees C assessment stressed something really important, and that was that we had to have fundamental change at every level of our society, and that's what we have to do. But that requires a new way of thinking, that requires a new intention, and if the public are allowed to, you know, look at these things, it would be, it would be very positive, I believe. Anyway, that's some bit of history there, which needs to be brought back.
Regina: Thank you so much for bringing in that bit of history, Peter, because I think it is always helpful to provide context, like what we're talking about here didn't occur in the vacuum, so it's really helpful to get that information. And in terms of information, I hope that you've gotten something so far from what we've been sharing with you. By the way, I do recommend this article, it's very interesting, it's freely available and we'll share the link to the PDF in the description down below, and maybe you can read it as well. I have to say it's very readable, accessible to anyone, you don't need a hardcore science background. And you know, if you find something upon reading that
you think that we've left out of the conversation, please let us know in the comments. We'd love to hear your thoughts. And as always, like, share, and subscribe. And now I'm going to switch it back to Paul. Paul, bring us back to the science. Paul: Yes, thank you. I was just going to talk a little bit about the politicians and the, it's very inexpensive for the fossil fuel industry to buy off the politicians, because large checks from their companies or shell companies make a big difference to congressmen, to senators. And I just think that a rule should be put in place
where instead of them wearing three-piece suits or fancy dresses, they wear a t-shirt with the logo of the person who's bought them off, you know, of the fossil fuel company, with the amount of money in big letters, you know, how much it is. Because it's hard to distinguish between the government and corporations sometimes, it really is. In fact, in Canada, you know, some oil companies have been known to write the actual documents that then go into the legislation that are pushed by Canadian politicians. And that's just absurd, because there's no, you know, we need independence of government from these very, very powerful corporations. Because as Peter says, basically,
the corporations are running the show now, and they don't have our best interests at heart, the general public, they have the profit motive is at interest. So I always like Bill Ripple papers, because they always, you know, bring up lots of things to make you think, you know, he does a very critical, critical in the sense of very detailed, very educational, informative analysis of issues, in this case of technology. And they put out quite a few papers, as both you and Peter have, have alluded to have mentioned that we've covered some of their previous papers as well. So it's well worth listening to them. Most of them are somewhat, I would say that they're leaning towards more of the mainstream science view than the outlier view. And this is, I think,
the simple reason why they just didn't want to touch on the still controversial ideas of solar radiation management. And also, there's a large lead, lead in time to publication. So I don't know when the draft was completed, you know, they may have submitted this paper to the journal, like a year ago, and then had feedback and revisions and more and more information. So you know, it's, it's the information in it is probably going to be from probably a year ago, I'm guessing. I mean, people could go and check that because there's sometimes that information is within or on or on the scientists warning website or whatever. So, you know, I'm sure that working on things now, great stuff, things now that will come out in a year, maybe one of them, I hope will be on, on interventions and restoration and so on some of the things that, that I'm, you know, that I was hoping would be in this report, but, you know, overall, you know, very good job. And
the more you can inform yourself, and the more you can, you know, read about on, you know, it all helps. And then every individual, every listener here has certain skills, you know, which are unique to them. And if they can figure out how best to use those unique skills to get information to other people, like, you know, a school teacher can talk to her kids about some of these sort of things, you know, if you work for a corporation, you can bring in that information to the groups within the corporation that are concerned about the environment, and so on. So the best way to not
feel helpless about the situation is to actually take action. And we all have unique skills, and we can use those skills as best we can. And I guess the three of us, or the five of us doing this channel, think that, you know, this is one of the best ways that we can use our own skills, the five of us to get this information to use. So thank you, I’ll echo Regina, thank you for watching these videos and subscribing and keep us in mind for suggestions, if you like, for future videos or things that we've missed, and so on, because we do read all the comments that you provide. So thanks, I just wanted to say that. Peter: So the science tells us, and does tell us, that we have to do this immediately, right? And we do. It's a survival issue now, a question of survival. To do it instantly we need a plan, a definite plan. There are a couple,
and they're very good, and there's no awareness of them really whatsoever. The International Energy Agency produced a climate change plan for net zero by 2050, a few years ago. It was absolutely excellent. I mean, I just couldn't believe how right on the science it was. And I thought, ah, now we've got something that everybody will listen to, but it really wasn't used, and I can't understand why not. On sustainability we do have a plan. The plan was made and agreed to back in 1992 in the Earth Summit. The Earth Summit didn't
just result in the biodiversity convention and the climate change convention. It produced, with all kinds of experts over several years, a comprehensive, even to the point of being costed, plan for complete transformation of what we call development to sustainable development. Probably not a lot of people are aware of that term at all now. 1992, can we go back to that? Absolutely we can. We can use that plan. They've got all the principles like pollution prevention,
the precautionary principle, pollution pays, okay? Everybody was agreed on that. So we've got to get the plans out of the libraries and the bookshelves and dust them off and apply them, because we have to do this right away. Regina: Thank you so much, Peter. I agree we have to do this right away. What other thoughts do you have? Just closing us out with,
I really like the idea of ending the show with what you said, Paul, about, you know, for those people who are having a hard time bearing witness to climate change, even if they do just one thing, if everyone just did one thing that was within their realm, as it were, the world would be an amazing place. I would love to close out. Thank you. Thank you, Peter, for your thoughts, and I would love to close out with yours, Paul. Paul: Thanks. Just a couple things. I mean, the paper, you know, many other papers have referred to it, but IPAT is a term where the impact on the planet or on anything is the population times the affluence times the technology. You know,
in technology, it all comes down to energy, right, in order to run things, in order to have any new technologies actually do something, you know, unless it's a can opener or something, right? I mean, there's energy, well, even that has human energy involved in operating it, right? But there's energy. So I'm thinking of, you know, we wasted a tremendous amount of energy with things like cryptocurrencies, you know, they were huge, and prices went to the moon, and they just use up entire huge warehouses full of operating servers running next to a waterfall that can provide the power if we're lucky, if not just taking it from a coal burning grid or something. So we have to be careful, you know, AI, you know, the same sort of thing applies. There's huge amounts of energy involved with these technologies. So we always need to consider that that impact sort of and try to minimize the impact. And there's lots of technologies that can actually reduce energy usage. And we mentioned the EV revolution, but also heat pumps is an amazing technology. So there's lots of things that we can still do. I don't subscribe to
this doomerism, even though, you know, we approach these Earth system tipping points, whether they be glacier calving, or ocean currents slowing down, these things are very real, we're seeing signs, early warning signs, a lot of these things that will be starting to trigger. But there's also human agency involved. And there's a whole article by Exeter University on global tipping points, which talks about all the Earth system tipping points. But there's also lots of positive tipping
points where human agency can actually counteract the negative tipping points. So I think that's, you know, important to keep in mind, we're not defenseless here who are alive, we're on this planet, we can be smart, we can also be very dumb. So let's be smart and not dumb. Regina: I'm all for that, Paul. Let's be smart. Let's not be dumb. You know what that sometimes
some of the most profound sayings are very pithy. And I think that one fits the bill perfectly. And it's one to end the show with. So everyone out there, let's be smart. Let's not be dumb. And I look forward to seeing you again on the next Climate Emergency Forum.
2024-05-11 03:56
