Ken Fabian

These kinds of schemes have been proposed again and again - some in great detail; they are not failing for lack of imagination. But I would not call assessing such plans on their merits and finding them wanting defeatism; that very ability to use foresight and understand what will and won't work before committing valuable resources is important progress. And besides the many schemes that are found wanting there will be projects that do pass, potentially more as engineering capability advances. Flood mitigation dams do work in many events that would cause flooding even if they can still be overwhelmed. The most effective solution - and most ignored - is to use foresight and stop building vulnerable infrastructure in flood prone areas. I would call that realism from applying intelligence and foresight to planning, rather than call it defeatism.

This is hardly a new idea that no-one has thought of before. There are archives full of proposals for diverting flood water long distances to more arid but potentially agriculturally productive areas. They almost always fail on grounds of engineering difficulty and the high costs of overcoming them. Simply, the volumes of water during floods is enormous, far exceeding what any pipes or canals could manage. Leaving aside the transporting of that water to other regions and just looking at pumping water away as flood control we face the issue of just how much volume of water that will be. Consider a flood - how that volume of water flow compares to the normal watercourses. A smallish river will have much more flow than a large pipe or canal can carry and the volume during a flood far exceeds that capacity. Dams up stream are often used (and preferred) for flood mitigation - they catch a large part of the water before it reaches vulnerable cities and towns and bleed it away more slowly after the rains stop. These also work well for other water uses - at higher elevations it can be delivered for irrigation or town water supply to places downstream. As soon as you try to deliver it to higher elevations - or over them if intended for more distant regions - the costs and engineering difficulties rise. From US Geological Survey, (USGS)an example of how much more water flows due to rain events, in this case a modest 2 inches (52mm) in one day. Flow rate increased over to 150 times of base flow rate - Serious floods make that look small change. There are environmental consequences to flood mitigation and diverting water for agriculture - flood plains with ecosystems that rely on those floods are often much changed by human uses, uses that are disrupted by flooding. Human uses almost always take priority. But even all those mitigation efforts are routinely overwhelmed during serious rain events.

Most solar panels are made to cope with some hail - ours have survived numerous storms with hail, occasionally large enough to damage vehicles. Very large hail can still damage them - but we need to put that in perspective; very large hail damages all manner of things and replacing a few solar panels is not so common or such a big deal as to require a rethink of how solar power is done. My understanding is that solar installers did a lot of removal of panels after serious hailstorms in Brisbane Australia in order that roofers could fix damaged roofs - only to put the same panels back. Very few were damaged. Interesting to note that heat pump hot water systems are now similar in cost to passive solar hot water systems, have very low power usage and are reliable. Homes with solar electricity would probably not need extra solar power if they are used; our home already sends several times more power back to the grid than we consume and hot water systems are well suited to scheduled operation during the middle of each day or whenever solar electricity supply is exceeding usage.

No need for invoking any directing of mutations or motivations for bodily change. Some people think that. I don't. I wonder if that is an academic holdover from the idea that because body hair has no significant survival function (which is a false premise), those ancestors with less of it had a metabolic advantage and therefore over many generations it got lost - and this is something still going on. The problem with that is that it has a continuing sensory function, extending our sense of touch beyond the skin - and is a principle component of the skin's ability to feel things; more sensitive I would argue as small hairs than as dense fur. ie humans gained improved sensory acuity. I think there are problems with invoking sexual selection too - what kind of sexual selection results in traits that primarily and profoundly affect juveniles in ways that are detrimental? That might be unique if so. Human juveniles all universally develop without fur, whilst only in adults are there significant differences - which suggests whatever evolutionary events caused it is in our entire species not responsible for the variations amongst modern human adults. Personally I find the notion that it was specific mutations that resulted in distinct furless variants pretty much as soon as they appeared (or, if recessive, when supplied by both parents) to be compelling - and they did okay and survived as a variant because they were members of groups of intelligent problem solvers. Or perhaps their parents did some of the problem solving; caring for vulnerable young is kind of fundamental. Why the furred variants did not survive - the natural selection part of evolution - seems a more pertinent question. But this is taking this away from bipedality into hairlessness - something I've had a long running interest in and have (as might be evident) my own speculations about. Yet that matter of degree did result in a unique evolutionary history - whilst all such histories are unique I suggest that our line of intelligent tool users are more unique. I cannot really equate examples of chimpanzee tool use with what our tool using hominid forebears could do - they took it to a whole, unique new level that impacted and improved survival abilities ever after.

Tool use per se is not unique but hominid evolution diverged in unique ways because of it. Having the early tool use improved the survival abilities of the very hominids that were progenitors of the ancestors with improved cognitive abilities, capable of more elaborate tool use. And I said "intelligent" and "problem solving" as well as tool making/using - and intelligence and problem solving are not unique either, but the combination and the accumulated benefits and results in homo sapiens are.

I would argue that Howsois has a good point: as I see it evolution in tool using hominids has indeed been unique. Whether that is the basis for becoming bipedal is still a question - so I don't necessarily support the conclusion that it did, but I think it has been pivotal to the evolution and success of the homo sapiens variant. I would like to read the rest before looking specifically at the walking upright trait. I think intelligent, problem solving tool makers can and did overcome limitations that would otherwise seriously reduce evolutionary fitness - in ways no other evolutionary line has. It does look unique to our evolutionary line. Example - fire and clothing and built shelters overcoming the disadvantages from lack of fur. Not just compensating but overcompensating in ways that created significant advantages - in this case that allow migration into regions with climates that would have been unlivable even with fur.

I just read Paolo Bacigalupi's "Shipbreaker" trilogy - "Shipbreaker", "The Drowned Cities", "Tool of War". I am not that adventurous in my reading - mostly SF but not a lot of new or unknown authors - but even so I haven't read much SF that really treats climate change with any seriousness; the last near future SF I read was Vernor Vinge "Rainbows End" but, as impressive as it was, global warming may as well not exist for the lack of mention of it. Other global problems, sure, but, for whatever reason, not climate change. Bacigalupi does put the reader right into the middle of the worst of global warming consequences and - I expect deliberately - makes societal breakdown within the USA a major feature. A recent history of (failed) Chinese peacekeeping missions is probably also intended to get up American Exceptionalist noses. He has militias fighting over the remains of "drowned cities" including Washington (took me a bit to realise it was Washington), descended to conscripting slave labor to strip the remains for salvage, all to buy guns and bullets to keep their never ending wars, to rid the place of "traitors" (ie everyone else), going. It doesn't chronicle the breakdown, though the politics of treating legitimate opponents as traitors gets a mention. But these are as much cautionary tales about bio-engineering as global warming - and I didn't find that as compelling or believable. Though that could be my lack of imagination for how far genetic engineering can go... and go wrong. Even so, I found them compelling and very readable. It tends to emphasise a conclusion I had already made - that our social institutions and practices like functional governments within democracy and the independent rule of law - are our most essential and valuable assets.

Naitche, the feedback loops amongst and between commerce, governments, media and public mean public opinion remains subject to significant manipulation. I can see, where I am, that public opinion has shifted enough that political rhetoric is changing - but even that change has been much harder and slower in coming than it ought to have been, because people in power turned aside from the mainstream expert advice and sought, persistently, over decades, using unethical but legal means, to take public opinion with them. Apathy, ignorance and anti-environmentalist sentiment were advantageous to those pursuing Doubt, Deny, Delay politicking so as to not to have this burden of responsibility land on them - so I think the expectation was that not enough popular opinion could be mobilised on the issue to change the status quo and this became a tactical reason to throw this back on the public. Doing "the will of the people" has tended to ring hollow on this - and those who made it a justification to oppose strong climate action will be unlikely to change because of "the will of the people" has changed; rather, they can and have turned back against that public opinion, portraying it as an unthinking populist fad. It has been a remarkable effort by people taking the expert advice seriously to swing public opinion to the extent that political parties fear to openly reject the expert advice - but that is a long way short of real commitment to fixing the climate problem. Popular opinion demanding more action is a positive thing but when the people with power and influence continue to want to avoid climate responsibility it tends to lead to renewed efforts to misinform and confuse the public as well as lip-service appeasements of those community concerns - like making in principle statements that are not backed by actions or giving support to feel-good projects that aren't expected to lead to substantial change (subsidise some solar power for example, back when it really was low power and very high cost - with it's expected failures becoming the ammunition in turn to oppose more ambitious schemes - no-one expecting solar energy prices could come down so far so fast). In practice, with respect to actions that could be expected to be effective, like carbon pricing or emissions limits, opponents can continue to oppose and obstruct whilst saying how important addressing the problem is - there are too many ways to hide opposition behind rhetorical demands that the policies be better. Yes, public opinion has shifted and that is both necessary and good, but as long as overt and covert institution opposition continues the actual commitments made will be inadequate, the actual policies will be compromised and delayed action will let a cumulative, irreversible problem of unimaginable scale to continue to get worse. I think it takes the threat of legal liability to induce institutional change - based on long running legal principles around responsibility and accountability, not even introducing anything climate change specific. Including holding that people holding fiduciary duties of care are negligent by failing to give full consideration to expert advice. If our institutions of law and governments continue to provide loopholes and exceptions - ie they are corrupt - then our chances of fixing this problem in any reasonable time frame are so greatly diminished as to make me concerned that failure must become inevitable.

I think those in positions of trust, responsibility, power and influence throwing this issue back onto the public is responsibility avoidance written large. Making it a matter of individual lifestyle and purchasing choices or a matter of popular public opinion and voter choice to address (or not) collectively through our society's institutions - whilst being active participants in misinformation to influence that opinion and choice is doubly problematic; rejecting the mainstream advice may be an individual's "free" choice but it is textbook negligence for those with broader fiduciary duties of care. But to actively misinform ("educate") the community or use their reach and influence to endorse and give respectability to campaigns of disinformation is a much more serious kind of negligence. And we are going to continue to struggle to get Joe Public well informed enough to make rational and ethical choices. And still the widespread ability to know better but do things that are not in our longer term best interests anyway (personal experience here) makes personal choices an unreliable means of addressing this, whether by our individual actions or our voting choices. Especially if the voting options themselves are skewed.

I disagree. Responsibility and accountability, especially on the really big things, where there are big vested interests, only really get dealt with through legal precedent and regulation - making it a personal choice whether to act responsibly never really works. Especially when a lot of people with power and influence really, truly don't want to be held responsible on this; we may all be shareholders in this mess but we are not, individually, the majority shareholders. A lot of the big decisions that need to be made are institutional ones, not individual ones, and our institutions of government, law, engineering and commerce have heavy investments in doing things the way we have been, without counting the externalised costs of fossil fuels, which turn out to be very large; the lengths they have been going to to avoid being held responsibility should not be underestimated. Nor the effectiveness of the techniques available to well resourced opponents of climate responsibility to influence the thinking of the Right People as well as Enough People, to sway voting options as well as voting choices. It is a toolkit that includes Lobbying, Strategic Donating, Tactical Lawfare, Post-Politics Payoffs, Advertising, PR and Tankthink. Also I think a lot of people are too engaged in living their lives within the opportunities, obligations and constraints of their individual circumstances to be able to push past what their preferred news and current affairs programs might tell them about these issues. It isn't only scientists and elected or appointed officials that have an obligation to act responsibly - news editors and journalists have repeatedly shown themselves to be active participants in those efforts to influence public opinion on climate change - which ought not be a surprise when their biggest commercial customers tend to be strongly opposed to climate responsibility adding any burden of costs on their activities. Doing the Advertising and PR and Paid-for Opinion on the issue is a big commercial opportunity for media companies. ( A "campaign" by a leading Australian newspaper is currently active, slandering the Bureau of Meteorology over how they process temperature records, despite unprocessed data shows the warming trend as clearly as the processed. Plus other persistent misinformation continues to be prominent - all more shrilly than previous campaigns; exposure to extremes of drought, heat, fire and flood are exacerbating the growing trend towards community acceptance of it's reality - and to a more limited extent, it's urgency - their influence and persuasion is losing effectiveness).

I think it may have more immediacy but I think not more urgency. Not necessarily less urgency - and these are connected, but whilst better efforts at preserving natural areas won't have a major impact on the climate problem, the climate problem will have a major impact on those efforts at conservation. Reforestation can help with climate but isn't capable of significantly compensating for ongoing, unconstrained emissions - although maybe important carbon draw down after we approach zero emissions. Global warming will drastically alter the climates for natural ecosystems and be a long running cause of effective habitat loss even in well protected and managed areas, through change in vegetation types, spread of pests and diseases - and vulnerability to fire. If we haven't fixed the climate problem the fundamental requirements for saving or recovering existing remnant natural ecosystems won't be in place.

I'm in a "Watch and Act" fire warning situation as I type - conditions eased a bit today but without substantial rain (we've had less than 10mm since mid-December, with a lot of very high temperatures in that time) any reprieve is going to be temporary. Having blackened leaves falling from the sky - from a fire 20km away - is sobering; ember fires have started many kilometres ahead of large fire fronts. Another fire is much closer, but that other one is probably the bigger threat, given the inevitable return of hot conditions and being West of us - where the hottest winds come from. Even well prepared homes will be in danger (6 homes confirmed lost around here in the past 2 days) - we know we will have to leave and hope the volunteer firefighters have the resources to defend individual homes; they do try wherever they can. Beyond the call of duty very often. The thought of these circumstance but with another 3-5 C of warming is genuinely terrifying; those who live in cold climates may imagine that as an improvement but a large portion of the world's population live in places that already get extremely hot in summer.

We make more waste CO2 than all other waste combined - really staggering amounts of it. As far as big things we are not doing well at go, I think global warming is the biggest of the lot. We are profoundly changing the climate of the whole planet in ways that are cumulative and very long lasting. And not readily reversible without enough abundant clean energy to do that, as well as take over all the energy services we've been getting burning fossil fuels. It isn't the only problem we have that is extremely serious - but many have a lot more immediacy. Which induces complacency on climate - which presents a test for humanity in how good we are at foreseeing consequences and responding to them pre-emptively - bearing in mind inaction means the problem gets worse the longer it is allowed to continue unchecked. Action versus inaction is inverted in this, so that failure to take action is actually the allowing of the continuation of serious, planet altering actions, of a scale that is truly unprecedented. It requires levels of competency and good management that test our institutions even more than individuals - our institutions of science, of government, of law, of business. Not just competency but ethics - because if we choose to perpetuate ongoing avoidance of responsibility through self-interested rejection of expert advice, ie cheating/corruption, we allow the problem to grow and the burden of consequences to pass to those who did not make the problem or directly benefit. Of course the same ethical and competency issues impact how we manage all our serious environmental and social issues. I don't see climate change as being about socialism or capitalism - much as many wish to make it about those - but about responsibility and accountability. Cheating by decree in authoritarian regimes or cheating by fixing the rules of the game, by capture of regulators by powerful interests in democratic ones - either way avoids that responsibility. It is a profound test of our ability to sustain civilised behaviour in the face of selfishness and short-sightedness.

My mistake - Phi for All and Swansont can speak for themselves. I would expect most scientists actively seek to avoid reliance on questionable assumptions - and whether it accompanies the process of writing up their work for publication or preceded it (during their education) a lot of questioning goes on, unremarked. I think the extent of questioning of science's assumptions is sufficient; "always" questioning them can be wasteful of time and resources.

I think that is a matter of interpretation - although it is quite possible my views on this do not align with Swansont's; that does not mean you have shown that significant mistakes are being perpetuated within "science" or are being concealed or go unaddressed when they become known. This a forum, not a science institution; I'm offering my opinions, as is Swansont. You do not win this argument because Swansont and I don't agree - (The Fallacy of the Fallacy). Working scientists operate within codes of conduct, with expectations that standards for professionalism - including honesty, accurate record keeping and logical consistency - are adhered to; careers can be ruined by failures in these areas. My main point is that science that gets used all the time gets questioned all the time - not only by scientists questioning their assumptions and attempting to find mistakes in their own work (if only to avoid having them pointed out by others) but by the consistency or lack thereof with existing theories within their results. This kind of questioning does not have to be emphasised or even mentioned within published results to have taken place. You can find areas of science which don't get used widely and the extent to which they are subjected to critique can be limited by their obscurity and the small numbers of scientists engaged with them. Or find subject matter where fundamental questions remain unanswered and competing schools of thought exist. Such levels of uncertainty do not usually go unacknowledged or unquestioned - more often the first thing they will say is they don't know. I would note that the examples of science getting things seriously wrong and scientists getting stubborn about it have mostly not occurred in recent times. They are almost all examples of better grounded understandings ultimately displacing those erroneous positions, ie of science asking questions and working. It is not only the body of knowledge that is science's product that has grown and improved; the systems and practices science is conducted within have grown and improved too.

If there is no evidence that existing science based understandings could be wrong there is not a lot to question. When such evidence arises it tends to get addressed - and such evidence does get noticed when it arises; scientific careers can be made out of it. Is the evidence valid and significant enough to overturn existing understandings? How do you know? When scientific understandings are widely applied the opportunities to notice things that don't fit are increased, not decreased; it isn't a matter of constant, deliberate searching for things that don't fit - they are an inevitable outcome of using theories that are wrong. If you make your own personal judgement the basis for accepting a theory as valid - and make your not understanding (or remaining unconvinced) the basis for your rejecting it then you are on very shaky ground. Appeals to authority may be a genuine logical fallacy, but presuming you know better than the experts is a fallacy too and it is the fallacy of the fallacy to think appeals to experts make the experts wrong. What sources have you looked to? Do you have competency in the skills needed to make sense of complex arguments? Do you expect random people on internet forums to convince you and do you claim a widely accepted theory is false if they can't? Perhaps their comprehension is lacking, or perhaps yours. Perhaps they are not very good at explaining. Perhaps they are not able to penetrate a fierce determination to admit no mistake or any lack of comprehension or deviate from an existing belief. Perhaps you need to have the skillset that comes with years of undergraduate study followed by years of post-graduate research.

One addition to my tool selection that I now use all the time - and wonder how I ever did without - is my Triton Superjaws - It is foot operated, portable and can clamp items up to 950mm (over 3 ft) . I am seriously considering getting a second one to use paired instead of using saw-horses.

Looking from outside, I don't expect gun control to be introduced in the USA in any meaningful way. Rebellion as a last resort is always implicit, irrespective of legality, but I've never thought an explicit right to overthrow tyrannical governments has ever been a necessity - most democratic nations with high levels of personal freedom do quite well at avoiding tyranny without it, which suggests the essential ingredient for avoiding tyranny isn't an armed populace but relies on things like an independent judiciary and honest and courageous news services. But it seems like it's a widely held belief that US democracy depends on ordinary people being armed - and for many of them the prospect of access to arms being restricted is sufficient evidence of tyranny to prompt a call to arms. Not a good circumstance for attempting to introduce gun control. I'm not sure a repetition of the War of Independence, with similar, clear goals, clear enemy and potential for decisive and ultimately positive outcomes is reasonable; even if it worked once those who put this 'safeguard' in could not foresee the full range of consequences. I doubt a rebellion could be carried out effectively in a modern USA without making things worse and would have a high risk of replacing it with a different kind of tyrannical government. Empirically - looking around at examples - armed freedom fighters (where they are not acting as the tools of outside interests) leave horrendous, intractable messes from their battles with tyranny in their wake. It makes me think armed insurrection is less than ideal solution; rebellions rarely win decisive victories against professional armed forces and it is usually when those armed forces change sides that resolution becomes possible. With a high likelihood that military dictatorship - differently flavoured tyranny - will be the result. I think an armed populace as the essential bulwark against tyranny is illusory but a lot of Americans appear to take it seriously.

Thank you. I've been pleased with the end results - and have enjoyed the learning process involved. I'd wrongly imagined that style of woodworking would be intrinsically easy and was surprised at the challenges it presents. I began with what grows on our own land, harvesting the poles - more demanding than it sounds to preserve the natural surfaces without bruising or blemishes. I was making the tenons with draw-knife and spoke shave, moved to using hole saws and cutting away the excess around - having to grind down spade bits to get the right fit - and only much later discovered there were such things as a tenon-cutters and forstner bits, which are like giant pencil sharpeners and clever hole cutters for larger diameters. Whatever you have in mind, it's likely there will be some kind of specialised machine or tool out there. Yet there is a lot of satisfaction working with hand tools - which is good because I've found myself needing them again and again.

I enjoy working with round poles, only rarely sawn or dressed timber -