Still essential environmental AI inflation and tariff comments on YouTube vids

https://xianleft.blogspot.com/2025/05/did-climate-skeptics-get-this-right.html

https://xianleft.blogspot.com/2026/01/artificial-superintelligence-must-be.html

https://xianleft.blogspot.com/2025/08/why-do-we-still-need-to-work.html

https://xianleft.blogspot.com/2025/04/vat-tariff-and-industrial-policy.html

Happy 250 America?

America marked this milestone by staying in air conditioning, or at least I did. Trump did not ruin the celebration - he was irrelevant to it. His national state fair was planned before he was elected again - it was just another version of the annual folk-life festival. The ferris wheel was tacky in the way the London Eye is tacky - but I bet the view would have been great in cooler weather with crowds on the Mall.

Blame climate change. Scientists will not say that warming caused the heat dome - but given the way the Barents Sea has warmed and its effect on the Artic Ocean, with the Arctic's effect on the jet stream - and that this keeps happening year after year - its a good bet that whatever changed since 1960 (cars everywhere) is at fault. 

If Trump put the blame for the quiet of the holiday on warming rather than his imagined enemies and then did something about it, he would be seen as great in hindsight.

This year, however, we just ignored him. Probably the best result. Protestors showed up on both sides, with the worst Trumpers among them, and no one watched his big speech. I was watching the World Cup. 

Frankly, the best thing about America 250 was hosting the tournament - even as I write this after America's loss to my ancestral Belgium (which included Luxembourg when my great grandfather left). My mother's people were from England and Norway, with a dash of German. Will the winner of that gain make it into the finals? Not likely. My bet is Argentina v. France. And yes, I plan to keep watching.

Climate neutered.

 Does the carbon footprint of an enterprise include commuting by employees and travel by customers (as well as climate cost of vehicle and road construction)? That gets at the real cause of heat domes, which is arctic warming driven by the warming of Barents Sea, which has been steadily warming by 3 or 4 degrees per decade since 1980 (and possibly since 1960). In summer, the Arctic does not have the force to stop these domes - and stopping driving using gasoline wherever possible is the only solution that matters. The next level is employee driving to shop - unless someone else is counting the shopping.

To really do something, employers need to cooperate in any given city to install limited access (i.e., zero pedestrian) tethered electric vehicles which drive home after taking commuters to transit. Transit has a last 100 yard - 15 minute problem. If it takes 100 meters to get to it and waiting takes more than 10 minutes, people will drive.  It would almost (ok, it will take) some form of corporate socialism to get this done - although I would love it if capitalism surprised me on this.

Climate budgeting without considering this factor is just green washing, as is planting trees in unprepared soil which die within a year.