admin – Page 9 – Wilmar Igl – Biosphere Protection

Angela Merkel weiß seit 1995, dass 2020 der kritische Punkt in der Klimakrise war und hat Klimaschutz blockiert

Die Bundesumweltministerin und Leiterin der 1. Weltklimakonferenz (COP1, Berlin) Angela Merkel kannte den Bericht des WBGU (1995) [1] wahrscheinlich in- und auswendig, dh Kanzlerin Merkel weiß seit 1995 Jahren, dass im Jahr 2020 ein kritischer Punkt (möglicherweise point of no return) erreicht wird. “Die Fortsetzung der gegenwärtigen Emissionspraxis (Business as Usual) würde uns zwar noch…

2020-07-04admin

Showyourstripes.info – Using a “Warming Stripes”-themed tie to raise climate awareness

I used the website #ShowYourStripes [¹] to create a localized “Warming Stripes” plot showing the temperatures changes in Uppsala from 1773 to 2019. The plots are based on data from the website “Climate Lab Book” [2]. I then used the high-quality image (png-format, 300dpi) to design a tie (classical design, 90mm width) using the website…

2020-07-01admin

Neoliberalism – An ideology based on the logical fallacy of “false equivalence” of freedom and liberty

Neoliberalism and its promotion of “freedom” is based on a logical fallacy of “false equivalence” of freedom and civil liberty. If “freedom” means the absence of laws (ie “deregulation”), this will only lead to the dominance of the ruthless and rich and oppression (ie loss of liberty) for the rest. However, “civil liberty” means that…

2020-06-22admin

Racism – A statistical comment

Big data and artificial intelligence may be useful in fighting racism, if we replace race as a (weak) predictor of future behaviour (eg past of future crime) [Reference missing] with other (sufficiently) informative predictors (eg social score?). However, this would require citizens to share personal information with public authorities, which creates new risks. However, by…

2020-06-18admin

Capitalism, growth, and the planetary boundaries

1. Introduction It is a common assumption that the global neoliberal capitalist economic system requires economic growth in terms of the gross domestic product (GDP) to avoid recession an collapse. Scientists argue that constant (exponential) growth is not possible on a finite planet and the continuing conversion of natural resources (abiotic and biotic) will deplete…

2020-06-05admin

Why climate justice needs both love and rage

Summary The following text presents the concept of the “three modes of nature”, ie tamas (“passivity”), rajas (“activity”), and sattwa (“balance”), from Indian philosophy. The basic idea states that these conflicting modes of human nature (prakriti) creates a fundamental dilemma which does not allow humans to perform good, peaceful and powerful actions in the real…

2020-06-05admin

Negative impact of universities on the climate emergency

Here, I would like to present some short reflections on negative impact of universities on the climate emergency, as pointed out by Prof Kevin Anderson [1]: international scientific collaboration most often by air travel international personal/romantic relationships locking people in high-carbon futures providing high-level education, leading to high salaries, and high consumption Ad 1) Personally,…

2020-05-19admin

Sustainable Recruitment – Questions for potential employers or business partners

1. Introduction Depending on job skills and experience, employees may have a strong leverage on policies of employers. During an existing job contract, committment (eg dependence on salary, housing, job of partner, school for children) of an employee maybe rather high, giving him or her little influence. However, during an application process while committment is…

2020-05-19admin

Covid-19 pandemic – A history of ignored warnings

After the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in December 2019, attention has been shifted to previous research and publications on risks of pandemics to global health. Although critics argue that the pandemic was unpredictable and anyone saying so suffers from hindsight bias, I would like to argue that the risks of this “low risk-high impact”…

2020-04-18admin

Interview with Bill Gates on the ARD/Tagesthemen on 2020-04-12 – Philanthrop or investor?

DE Multi-Milliardär Bill Gates gab am 2020-04-12 in der öffentlich-rechtlichen Nachrichtensendung “Tagesthemen” ein 9-minütiges (!) Interview [1], in dem er seine Sicht auf die Covid-19 Pandemie und die Verfügbarkeit von Impfstoffen darlegte. Bill Gates hat durch seine langjährige Tätigkeit im Bereich Globale Gesundheit und seinen engen Austausch mit Experten wahrscheinlich eine informierte Meinung, welche von…