Ken Fabian

8 hours ago, exchemist said:

Not sure you are right about environmentalism. It seems to be the dominant ideology among the young these days, as I know from the associates of my 19yr old son, now at university. . 

Increasingly climate concerns are mainstream concerns, including by increasing numbers of capitalists who recognise both growing potential for future climate liability and emerging business opportunities. The denial thing with green-left blaming (in the US, "liberal") was always more a case of capitalists in name only seeking to evade accountability, ie using their power and influence in "soft" (but still very damaging) corruption.

Businesses being responsible and accountable for harms done under the law has always been compatible with and even essential to capitalism as an ideology. When environmentalists were the only voices people were hearing on climate it was easier for business lobbies opposed to accountability on behalf of their members to associate the issue with "anti-capitalist" fringe politics; those leaning right have been strongly discouraged from taking up the issue or admitting there is legitimate grounds for regulatory intervention - but that is no longer so clearly the case.

I'm not so sure that Environmentalism's other issues can achieve a similar level of mainstream support - and ultimately the climate issue will have no special association with Environmentalists.

On 2/26/2023 at 9:35 AM, Sensei said:

The Earth rotates around an axis.. any attempt to make "direct video" means you will get blurry video with stars looking like this:

 

To prevent this, when the object you want to record is in close range (i.e. in parsecs), the "recording device" must rotate/move accordingly with the Earth's rotation.

 

The farther away you want to record an object, the longer you have to collect photons from it.

Well, more than one observatory is needed to maintain continuous observation unless the observatory is space. It is a well known consideration. I don't know that photographic films are used any more; likely the observations themselves are continuous and the data can be combined digitally to get the best results, with arbitrary start and end points.

Observing with multiple kinds of observatories and devices across as much of the emr spectrum as possible seems in order too; I'd expect an imminent supernova to be of wide interest. Someone with more specific interest in astronomy might give more informative answers.

Apparently, yes. From livescience.com -

-

Quote

Scientists began watching the doomed star — a red supergiant named SN 2020tlf and located about 120 million light-years from Earth — more than 100 days before its final, violent collapse, according to a new study published Jan. 6 in the Astrophysical Journal (opens in new tab). During that lead-up, the researchers saw the star erupt with bright flashes of light as great globs of gas exploded out of the star's surface.

4 hours ago, sethoflagos said:

Maybe it's a generalisation, but the impression that I get from your posts is that every little bit that we can do to reverse the current trend counts. No matter how insignificant our personal efforts may seem at the time.  

I do oscillate between pessimism and cautious optimism - that we will at least avoid the worst case outcomes but I don't let the pessimism sap my conviction and commitment. And I tend towards using my votes, small as they are, to influencing institutional, especially government policy and my voice to encouraging the same from concerned others; much as individual lifestyle choices help (a bit) global warming is far too big for that to be the principle solution. And until the low emissions options are widely available - and not a financial burden - I don't expect or require significant sacrifices, certainly not as proof of anyone's conviction. Just as I wouldn't expect my individual resistance to my nation being invaded to be an effective action when that would require our institutions to have planned and coordinated responses. To me the big things seems to be what they are for.

Not just governments - I have a small sum locked in Superannuation (pension fund) and these organisations have influence as major investors and shareholders in Australia's economy. These are coming to rival banks in Australia for the scale of their investment. Lots of people each have a small say in how that money is invested and a majority want that money invested ethically and in climate terms, responsibly. Even the superannuation funds for mining workers are increasingly avoiding fossil fuel investment and favoring support for clean energy. And doing so is not noticeably reducing the financial returns to members. It is an example of cause for some optimism.

16 hours ago, Peterkin said:

the effects of each individual are not equal: some acts are a lot more consequential than others; some people leave bigger tracks than others.

This can make it more important to use the (historically exceptional) freedom to speak up and participate in the small ways available to us.

@sethoflagos - I'm not sure what I said that made such an impression; I am gratified that it appears to have been a good impression. But should I be more careful of what I say? Or more to the point, be more careful to live up to what I say?

As it happens I have seen things that I have no explanation for - a smallish globe of light that appeared to be low altitude, moving slowly in a straight line, then veering in another direction, well before drones were a thing. I could not even guess what but there was enough twilight that any balloon should have been visible. I didn't know anyone else who saw it but a mention of unexplained lights in the sky in a local paper followed. If it was an object it appeared less than 0.5m diameter. There were clouds beyond it.

Another time - horizontal grouped rows of coloured lights towards or over the ocean, some "dripping" white lights. It was an area off the coast used for naval exercises. Very strange.

In neither case did I think I was seeing alien vehicles.

I didn't for a moment think aliens or hallucination - these were things that were visible - but possibly the latter were some kind of mirage-like reflection off stratified atmosphere, reflections of something on the water shooting flares? The former may have been some kind of extremely rare but natural phenomena.

Hallucination still seems more credible than ailen craft, as does secret human technology but extra terrestrial aliens with physics defying technology buzzing about with no clear purpose seems even less credible than that.

On 2/19/2023 at 10:00 AM, Moontanman said:

but at what point do we stand back and realize that the shear number of sightings by relatively competent observers  suggest something... if not extraordinary then at least highly unusual?

How many people - otherwise competent - have claimed direct communication with God, including visions? A lot more than have seen unexplained things in the sky I would expect.

But yes, it seems worthwhile undertaking some kinds of investigation to explain what people are seeing - and being alarmed by.

4 hours ago, Peterkin said:

If you don't know it, you aren't one - you couldn't even be agnostic or ignostic without holding some opinion on the matter of god(s). You can't be a Muslim or utilitarian or vegetarian without knowing it. You have to be aware of your convictions and beliefs in order to name them.

I suspect the most common kind of not belief in God(s) is not thinking about it. I considered that atheist - but is that agnostic?

I do think that human propensity to dream, often vividly with powerful emotions attached combines with the unbounded waking human imagination to see patterns in a complex world that aren't necessarily there. It leaves a lot of room to believe almost anything. Especially imagining some kind of willful intent in natural phenomena.

Having common beliefs can unite a group and provide some social cohesion. Having shared beliefs may be more important than the substance of those beliefs.

4 hours ago, Peterkin said:

Attempts (at indoctrination in atheism) have been made on quite a large scale in the USSR and China.

I'm inclined to see Communist indoctrination as practiced by Soviets and China as more like religion than not, replacing belief in God with belief in Marxism and the Socialist State, up to and including deifying their leaders - eg Mao as like the Sun and the people as sunflowers that (must) always look towards the great leader. Avowedly Atheist and anti-religion but employing the trappings of religion; to my mind these haven't been good examples of atheist societies. Other beliefs are competition.

Some people see Buddhism as different - no Gods. But for many of them there are deities and they all have supernatural beliefs.

3 hours ago, Genady said:

Several comments in this thread related the duty of care to the future of their children, grandchildren, etc. 

What about people who don't have children to care about? Do they just ignore the issues?

I think that in some respects acting to avoid harming other people applies irrespective of age or genetic or community closeness does extend our duty of care into the future, including the future beyond our lifetimes and to people we aren't closely related to.

Around here adults are expected to act to protect children - everyone's children - from harm, at least from obvious and immediate risks. It looks like a hierarchy of priority with our own children at the top, neighbors' and the local community next, children of our nation, children outside our nation. Somewhere down that line the duty of care becomes a bit nebulous as does our capacity to have an effect, except through our society's institutions. We use our institutions to do the things we are incapable of affecting by our individual actions.

And then there are those who hold positions of responsibility within our society's institutions, who can have fiduciary duties of care within those roles, sometimes with legal accountability attached. ie can be held to be negligent under the law for dereliction of those duties.

On 2/5/2023 at 11:24 PM, dimreepr said:

While we can't predict our future, we can at least mediate potential harm; but we can only do that today, tomorrow is always too late.

Well, we extrapolate and anticipate, apply foresight, have expectations and intentions. We make plans. All in the present of course. We are paralyzed without our sense of future. Predicting the future is done a lot, imperfectly but with some success. It is useful and highly valued. Climate science is expected to do so - "what will happen if?" is a profoundly important question.

20 hours ago, sethoflagos said:

Whatever our intellects and emotions tell us about the preferred trajectory and whether or not it can be achieved, it is clear that there are likely to be significant changes coming. My duty of care therefore became an issue of how well I'd equipped my children with the ability to adapt to a changing environment. And theirs in turn is to do the same as they raise our grandchildren. 

That is true. I do think our civil society and many of the best aspects of humanity become more essential rather than less; if we fail to cooperate, educate, lend aid to others and instead see it as a zero sum game where being winners means grabbing greedily and denying opportunities to others we will do worse.

Equipping your children to campaign for strong climate action, as consumers and shareholders and future business managers, as future voters, as political activists and future leaders seems appropriate in order to sustain efforts to achieve a preferred trajectory. I don't think we or they can afford to give up on as much emissions reductions as we can manage.

I think in this case prevention being better than cure is, if anything, short of the mark; the cumulative nature of the problem means we effectively can't achieve a cure - there is no going back to how it was - but we/they may still slow and arrest the further progression and regain something like the stability of climate the Holocene had previously enjoyed.

Clean energy is our most effective action - cost effective in the present - and if scientists and engineers and entrepreneurs had not made solar and wind cost competitive with fossil fuels I think we would be in a lot worse position. With a clear cost disadvantage compared to fossil fuels nuclear would not have thrived - in an alt-world where solar and wind never worked climate activism may have split with anti-nuclear activism and thrown greater (Greta?) support behind nuclear but climate science denial and opposition to clean energy ambitions in support of fossil fuels exists for it's own sake and would probably just been more openly anti-nuclear instead of (conveniently) anti-green, anti-renewables.

39 minutes ago, sethoflagos said:

The CEOs currently feel no pressure to pay attention to environmental matters around most of the globe because their shareholders most certainly don't care, and there is precious little political pressure being put on them.

Like iNow says, this is changing. Shareholders aren't all apathetic and pressure on Boards and executives from them is growing. In Australia's case Superannuation Funds (pension funds) have huge investment share portfolios and increasingly demand climate responsible management as institutional shareholders. Mobilising smaller shareholders to vote together for a common cause is becoming more common too. And from another direction there is more awareness of potential for climate liability from their legal advisors and for increasing regulation from their business associations and other lobbyist. Of course this is less of an influence where corruption flourishes.

57 minutes ago, sethoflagos said:

So I guess we're back to petty, ineffectual virtue signalling. It's the only option available to us. Short of starting a revolution.

I oscillate between deep pessimism and cautious optimism but I am a long way from despair. We have a lot of options, without revolutions - which would only make things worse. Revolutions aren't the prerequisite to adequate responses, they'll more likely be a consequence of inadequate responses and the conflicts and blameshifting in the face of back to back climate fueled weather disasters.

That - all along - there have always been enough people in positions of power and influence that the climate issue cannot be made to go away - is a good sign. An IPCC, international agreements, support for clean energy development are all good signs. The independent rule of law, that already has corporate responsibility for harms caused as a long running principle, can be the friend of climate policy - where courts are independent. Even the recent fossil fuel price surges and brazen profiteering has worked against ongoing dependence on them - a carbon price they imposed on themselves. Admittedly one where they get to keep the proceeds and divert some of it to FUD - but claiming their failure to deliver low cost reliable energy is because of green politics and failures of renewable energy hasn't worked.

9 hours ago, dimreepr said:

My duty of care is my lifetime first, which, at some point becomes their lifetime first, but that point can only be today; where-ever we find ourselves in Maslows pyramid's. 

Taking into consideration how our choices and actions will affect people now living during their lifetime requires some understanding longer term consequences of those choices. We need both the understanding and caring about it.

5 hours ago, TheVat said:

I can virtuously broadcast how much I care about ecological and climatic changes over the next couple generations, but if I keep serving beef or pork at every  meal and driving an Escalade everywhere I go and sitting with my wife in a 2500 square foot propane-heated house with a heavily irrigated quarter acre of bluegrass lawn, then my caring has minimal ethical component.  The duty of care is to implement those worthy concerns I have in remedial actions.

The long term influence of our individual choices varies a lot; if I choose to go stone age vegan because I care about the impacts of global warming beyond my own lifetime that would not be effective. People would be much more likely to mock me than see me as highly principled and therefore worthy of respect and listening to - speaking of hypocrisy. It could also be harmful to deny minors in my care the economic and social opportunities my withdrawing from the greater economy and society might cause - we do have social responsibilities and societal expectations. However, if the CEO of a large manufacturing conglomerate chooses to care (or not care) about the emissions his/her business make and makes choices with respect to transition to low emissions it will have much greater impact than any personal lifestyle choices I might make.

People in positions of high trust and responsibility in government with a duty of care to the well-being of their constituencies, make choices with great significance. Their choices can influence the CEO's and cause business choices to change in turn and make low emissions choices much more widely available at the consumer level.

I see the climate problem as one that requires economy and society wide change, with a shift of the primary energy our economy relies on from high emissions fossil fuels to zero emissions alternatives as the single most significant action. I have solar on my roof and batteries too but I am a long way short of zero emissions; the whole energy supply needs to be low emissions for me to achieve that. Until companies began manufacturing these technologies my choices for low emissions were reduced to going without stuff - which is never going to be popular, let alone so popular that everyone will do it, even if they can be induced to care. Going without is something I do to some extent but it is not enough and not a choice everyone can make.

I can vote. I can make my views known to elected leaders. I can contribute to campaigns to raise awareness and influence political representatives and parties, but broadcasting my virtuousness when anything less than going stone age is way short of what is required only invites accusations of hypocrisy. If the solutions rely on everyone being virtuous we are screwed.

When primary energy is clean energy and used by industries as well as households, when EV's are widely manufactured and they are commonplace within the used vehicle market as well as new, until every product, whether essential or indulgent, is made with clean energy then the lifestyle choices we make will be low emissions.

I think we have a duty of care to people now living that lasts at least as long as their lifetimes - >100 years. That is long enough to include caring about climate change impacts well beyond my own lifetime.

On 1/31/2023 at 7:56 AM, cladking said:

is not explicable in terms of modern beliefs about stone pounders and brutish force.  

Precision doesn't always take advanced technology. The surface plate, that is (still) an important element of precision  engineering can be made with engineer's blue and a hand scraper. Hobbyists still grind telescope mirrors to very fine tolerances by hand. Having a reflective surface allows the human eye to detect minute variations of shape.

This is a real possibility, a simple, clever solution. Of course it uses ramps. This is another possibility -

And for moving the blocks to the site, these kinds of circle segments have been found and moving blocks by rolling them has been suggested as their use. The objection was there was no obvious way to secure them. I'd try wrapping with leather straps to see how they roll.

9 hours ago, Genady said:

How does one separate the "nature" from the "nurture"?

Different cultures can be used as examples perhaps; not all have had long running prohibitions against homosexuality. It is more acceptable around here now but it is more likely people are aware of each other's sexual orientiation. Seems like that will make unwanted advances less likely. The extent to which observing or contemplating sexual acts trigger revulsion? It seems to me most ordinary sexual acts can trigger revulsion; being aroused changes perceptions of them. Oral sex? Gross! When not aroused. Mmm, yeah, when aroused. 

I personally think homophobia is learned. To what extent personal experiences - unwanted advances - might cause homophobia would vary; I don't see how advances that stop when you say no would be traumatic. But persistent unwanted advances can be. Sexual subjugation and rape would do it. Combine a bad experience with the too human inclination to typecast and it can become homophobia; a homosexual did bad things to you, therefore all homosexuals are bad, in similar ways to racism and other bigotry often pivots on individual experiences. A black person robs you, black people are criminals. A white person rejects your job application because you aren't white; white people are racists. An indigenous person kills a colonist; retribution is taken against the tribe and is considered justified.

Storm in teacup. People devoted to Feminist or Race Studies will tend to make every issue they explore about patriarchy and misogyny and racism.  As Socialist idealogues make everything that is wrong about Capitalists and Capitalist ideologues make everying wrong about Socialists.

A lot of the media can't help themselves; they trawl for people saying stupid or outrageous things that press people's buttons, in order to press people's buttons. Otherwise no-one would care what those people say, certainly not chemistry faculties.

Encouraging participation in chemistry irrespective of gender or race or religion is mainstream reasonable and widely supported.

Many inland peoples (eg African Bushmen, Australian desert Aborigines) who lived for many generations without any access to sea-foods have been healthy with fully working brains; the idea that early hominids couldn't develop large brains without an aquatic lifestyle sounds doubtful to me.

11 hours ago, studiot said:

If the lower atmosphere (ie the air directly above the ground) absorbed the incoming IR and only radiated 50% down to the ground as you seem to suggest that surely would result in a cooling compared to what would happen if the absorbing gases were not there so 100% reached the ground ?

I was referring to outgoing IR, ie from sun warmed ground radiating heat upwards. Optical depth in the IR band decreases with higher GHG concentrations, a bit like a fog getting thicker; more outgoing IR is captured at lower altitude with stronger down radiation. 50% upwards, 50% downwards is an alternative way to think of re-radiating equally in all directions; I've seen it described that way but it may be an approximation.

For incoming solar IR high in the atmosphere - it isn't a large part of incoming solar radiation but it is there - about 50% re-radiates back to space and the rest adds it's energy to the atmosphere. Not sure if that is changed by having more CO2; it should be absorbed a bit higher up, yes, but not more - unless slower re-radiation (due to lower temperature) allows atmospheric circulation to carry a bit more of what energy is absorbed to lower altitude, before it re-radiates, ie retains a bit more in the atmosphere, ie a bit of warming.

What happens at the bottom of the atmosphere is significant to surface temperatures but it is really just moving the same total amount of energy around - it isn't changing the amount of energy in the climate system. What happens at the top of the atmosphere is affecting the rate of outgoing IR reaching space and that is changing the overall balance between incoming and outgoing. That changes the total amount of energy. Top of atmosphere change is what makes heat accumulate.

20 hours ago, lightforyoou said:

Does the negative result of the glass greenhouse experiment prove that climate change is not caused by greenhouse gases?

No, you need a lot better designed experiment than that and begin by showing that what happens with a glasshouse is the same thing (at smaller scale) as The Greenhouse Effect. It is not. What you will "prove" is that a glasshouse does not work like The Greenhouse Effect.

Both get their heat primarily from visible light heating light absorbing materials - ground, water, plants etc including in the TGE case, absorption by clouds. A glasshouse works primarily by confining heat transfer by convection to a small volume, preventing loss of that heat to the greater atmosphere by that route. The Greenhouse Effect works by absorbing Infrared and re-radiating it. At the bottom of the atmosphere radiated heat is absorbed in the atmosphere above it, with about 1/2 of that radiating back downwards; more GreenHouse Gases means it is absorbed at lower altitude and down radiation is increased. At the top of the atmosphere the IR out to space is slowed by increased by more GHG's - it has to radiate from higher altitude to escape to space but the air is colder and it radiates less.

A few metres of optical depth within a glasshouse is not equivalent to 20,000m in the atmosphere, even at 3,000 ppm of CO2. You would need concentrations in the hundreds of thousands of ppm to have equivalent IR absorption - and you still have to address the differences from convection.

The question remains - why do you assume decades of top level science based studies and reports are wrong?

4 minutes ago, StringJunky said:

It might be an age thing. There is alot more methods for faking things now, rendering greater scepticism about less tangible things, like the Apollo landings if you weren't around then,

Yes, it was the technology for successfully faking the Apollo moon landings that didn't exist 50 years ago. Not sure it exists now, but good enough for successfully faking a story about the moon landings being faked - good enough for the gullible, a low bar to step over - sure.

@PeterBushMan - Was that the best you've got? I seriously doubt the production equipment used for making model T Fords exists anymore and lots of the documentation for that equipment is likely lost too but that doesn't mean model T Fords were fake. Anyone making a model T Ford now will use different methods.

These kinds of options appear to offer ways to reduce the harms from the enhanced greenhouse effect but they don't address the emissions and the enhanced greenhouse effect that are the source of the problem, which are cumulative and get progressively more serious the longer emissions are not addressed. They also tend to not actually exist as actual, viable options. It is always worthwhile to explore all options, including the big geoengineering ones, but not as alternatives to addressing the emissions themselves using the capabilities that we have now and/or are within our grasp.

Building clean energy that displaces fossil fuel use isn't hypothetical and at this moment in time isn't even a more expensive option. As I see it we should allow nothing to divert the primary focus of our efforts away from shifting our primary energy supply to non-emitting alternatives.

In large part the current global growth of wind and solar, around and above 20% pa - I haven't checked but expect that solar alone is being added to the world's inventory faster than fossil fuel power plants were ever added. Largely the current growth is due to becoming cost competitive with fossil fuels without emissions considerations, but I believe a true zero emissions goal requires more foresight and commitment with greater growth of low emissions/no emissions alternatives than leaving it up to "free" markets that continue to give unfair advantage to fossil fuels, including by the enduring amnesty on climate accountability they enjoy. I don't think "free" ever truly meant free from accountability, nor that requiring it is anti-capitalist.

The current market advantage of RE is far from absolute or happening everywhere and there are potential resource constraints and other bottlenecks - although I expect the worst of them will come from nationalistic geo-political gamesmanship, more akin to the denying supply that features with fossil fuels than any genuine resource shortages.

It is still remarkable how well RE/EV's/batteries are doing, especially given that fossil fuels have powerful advantage from pre-existing incumbency - they are what energy companies and banks and energy planners know best and what cashed up fossil fuel companies lobby for relentlessly. And there is that enduring amnesty on any accountability for externalised climate harms, ie they continue to (mostly successfully) avoid accountability and they socialise those emerging costs to sustain exceptional corporate profitability, usually with systematic and successful tax avoidance thrown in. And if anyone can mass manufacture low cost, ultra safe, reliable, low cost modular nuclear that are low cost (did I mention low cost?) and conservative-right politics support for climate action comes out from behind their fossil fuel defending Wall of Denial we may see nuclear options become more widely used as well. But I don't expect much actual stratospheric aerosol injection, or Direct Air Capture or other CCS that isn't tied to efforts to extend the use of fossil fuels.

On 1/17/2023 at 9:23 AM, exchemist said:

The only unresolved issue now is the bit I read somewhere about absorption of IR by sulphate. I'll have to find that again and re-read.  

I don't see how any solar IR absorption in the atmosphere could result in anything other than adding some energy into the atmosphere, ie add to warming. Affected incoming solar IR at the top of atmosphere should result in about 1/2 re-radiated back to space, from being absorbed from one direction and re-radiated equally in all directions, approximately half going up, half going down, with a net gain in energy in the atmosphere. IR from ground level mostly doesn't make it to space in one go.

It has been a common misconception that CO2 should block incoming solar IR, as it blocks outgoing but that isn't the case; any energy absorbed within the atmosphere becomes energy inside the climate system. To "block" incoming IR takes reflection, not absorption.

12 hours ago, exchemist said:

Does anyone know?

3 hours ago, exchemist said:

- selective IR absorption to block short IR from reaching the ground

If it were absorption within the atmosphere that energy would be added to the atmosphere. It isn't absorption.

3 hours ago, exchemist said:

- efficient reflection/scattering by sulphate

This appears to be the correct option. As I understand it gaseous Sulphur Dioxide is the precursor to droplets of sulphuric acid that are reflective to sunlight. Being initially gaseous probably makes it easier to get pushed high in the atmosphere by volcanoes and for the resulting droplets to linger there, up to 2 years and global in effect. Human sources ie from fossil fuel burning rarely make it that high and have residence times of a few days and is more regional in effect.

3 hours ago, exchemist said:

- nucleation for formation of high altitude clouds

 From NASA -

Quote

The sulfate aerosols also enter clouds where they cause the number of cloud droplets to increase but make the droplet sizes smaller. The net effect is to make the clouds reflect more sunlight than they would without the presence of the sulfate aerosols.

This source doesn't specify the altitude of the clouds, but sounds like it has a reflective cooling effect.

Regarding the initial question(s) -

On 1/15/2023 at 6:11 AM, Airbrush said:

But what if we could get a volcano to erupt on demand?  Or kept erupting to deliver enough dust to the atmosphere to cool the earth enough to stall global warming? 

First, we don't know how to get volcanoes to erupt on demand or continuously. There are proposals for deliberately adding sulphate aerosols to the stratosphere but with (usually) aircraft, not via volcanoes.

Sulphate aerosols aren't dust. Not sure dust is such a highly significant factor - probably doesn't linger long enough. But, to echo MigL, massively increasing volcanic activity seems counterproductive.

The cooling effect of aerosols depends on the rate you keep adding, whereas global warming is dependent on the accumulated total of CO2 (over the timescales that matter). It doesn't fix the cause, just masks the effects - and the consequences are more complex than simply reducing global warming, ie may induce significant unwanted regional climate changes.

My view is that - given existing climate politics - anything gives the illusion that we can keep burning fossil fuels at high rates and avoid the climate consequences is unhelpful -  even where those attempts are sincere. Whether intended as an adjunct to commitments to building an abundance of clean energy and reducing emissions it will be used by opponents - and the apathetic - to reduce those ambitions.

"Wheels" as a lasso style arrangement of tail or tentacle or flagellum type structures seems hypothetically possible to me - they wouldn't have axles or need them but could rely on twisting back and forth within each appendage itself to maintain near continuous motion. Near continuous because (off the top of my head) it seems to require a momentary "skip" on each turn, for the appendage to recover from the winding motion. No such structures have been observed to my knowledge.

Wheels work best on smooth open ground with either low or no vegetation; only in a few habitats would wheels provide significant advantage.

If we are chasing conspiracies, maybe it was developed in the USA on President Trump's order and deliberately released in Wuhan at the wet market near the lab ahead of the President's accusation/suggestion it came from the Wuhan lab. China would be hurt by the virus and by the accusation and America would be fine, having the world's best healthcare system and America will be great again... 😉 There is as much evidence for that theory as for Alfred's "must have come from the Wuhan Lab" theory - more "evidence", since we know Donald Trump could, unlike the scientists in Wuhan, be capable of that level of dangerous stupidity.