Climate Lynx

 Bravely Looking Forward The speed, scope and scale of societal, economic, and cultural change has made the past seemingly irrelevant, and the future uncertain. I might also add, both mainstream media and social media exacerbate these uncertainties causing anxiety. Since I read science magazines, I take comfort in the progress being made by scientists to solve our problems. In the past ten years the cost of solar panels has decreased 90% while improving 90%. Wind turbine technology has been on an equal tear making it the cheapest form of industrial power. We are the beneficiaries of an energy race, the race to be the clean and efficient energy source. Recently I read a chapter on technologies being developed to keep wind turbines turning by improving maintenance technology.   At first, I was dumbfounded such progress was possible but then I thought back to my career in helicopters and realized I was a witness to rapid change in wind turbine technology. When you have so...

  Before I launch into the shortcomings of our gray matter, I will make an assertion. To act on a problem, we must have knowledge about it. Then, we must have a moral compass capable of motivating us to act. Finally, we must have courage to act. I will come back to this at the end of the column. When I started writing four years ago my initial area of climate focus was not physics but how we think. Physics was easy but many people simply refused to pursue knowledge. This, psychologists tell us, is because we have many mental processes which are, to put it bluntly, illogical. If you lump logic inadequacies together three aspects stand out. First, we all form beliefs. Beliefs are sometimes called ideologies or worldviews. Second, after we form ideologies, we naturally and selectively choose more information to bolster our ideas.   This is called confirmation bias. Third, we are herd or tribal animals, so we gravitate to groups with similar ideologies. As the saying goes, b...