I believe you are correct, and Simplicius is half correct. Global elites are cynically using the threat of climate change to enrich themselves and increase their power. But the elites do that with every issue. It doesn't mean the issues aren't real.
And one would think the climate change skeptics would be happy about what the global elites are doing. Half the elites are openly hostile to taking action against climate change, and the other half talk about it a lot, but aren't really doing anything serious. Both halves still fly around in their private jets and make millions extracting and selling fossil fuels and in related enterprises. The climate change skeptics and the global elites are largely on the same side of this issue.
"My point being that human activity simply has to be affecting the "climate" or "weather" in some way"
Seems an interesting and plausible hypothesis.
What is tedious and counterproductive are the ongoing efforts being made to avoid pinpointing the precise and verifiable degree to which whatever "some way" may or may not be influencing natural climate variability.
There is a mounting body of evidence regarding self-limiting of various factors involved with climate variability. Saturation theories, etc. are deprived of research funding, which doesn't help with increased understanding of climate variables.
Motivated reasoning and manipulation of research funding are taking their toll, and neither assertions, that anthropogenic effects are impossible, nor that their potency has been unequivocally determined, are supported by such evidence as is being presented.
Dismissiveness and hyperbole are the order of the day and their destructive effects are becoming increasingly apparent.
Your own observations regarding propaganda and greed are astute and relevant. There are vast opportunities for concentration of wealth and coercive influence presented by the destruction of existing industrial systems.
Where wealth and influence concentrate, predators and parasites congregate. Their rapaciousness distorts and pollutes everything they are allowed to touch.
My problem is that there are too many clever folk on either side of this debate, and that, ultimately, they'll serve profiteers, directly or indirectly. Surely its commonsense to be against pollution in our backyards, and against unnecessary consumerism globally? Climate deniers don't have to support toxic rivers, and climate activists don't have to deny essential energy needs.
Well said, Mike. On issues of climate change and the debate around it, I appreciate the perspective outlined by Charles Eisenstein in his book, Climate: A New Story.
I have more books on my list and on my headphones than I could ever get through, but I have downloaded Eisentein's - thanks. I read Greer's excellent essay and the part that stands out for me, something that has long bugged me, is the gradual acceptance of declining health - societal and self. We normalise things to our detriment. Even the madness of politics is normal now. I see Greer has a sequel, 'Dark Age America'.
Good stuff. Greer has an essay on the subject on his website. His perspectives on civilizational collapse helped to free me from the prison of catastrophizing climate change/disruption, reorienting me to personal sovereignty and agency. The question has always been for me, what do I do? Or, how do I live my life in response to the historical moment? Skill up and get resilient and love harder is the answer I come up with. Get free of depending on the larger, more distal systems. And pass it all on to the kids. A Wendell Berry sort of life.
Your explanation of how you cope with the futility of "participation" within the commercial ecosystem mirrors my personal quandary about how to proceed in this life "against the grain" of societal madness. I'm finding that it's a daily practice of "going with the grain" of my/our better instincts which exist in obfuscated forms. Your comment is a succinct explanation of what I think a lot of folks are trying to articulate. I will remember it. Thank you Shagbark.
Nothing against you, but here is a list of some of the methods you employ around the net so other's can learn to recognize how its done - as one can certainly learn a lot from your formulaic writing!
So, this is what i see as being your main tools, hope you don't mind that i share:
* Creating false equivalencies - For example, giving equal weight to climate deniers and activists can wrongly imply the scientific consensus on climate change is less established than it is.
* Supporting "both-sidesism" - Treating all positions as morally equivalent can muddle issues where one side has a stronger factual or ethical stance. Climate impact is measurable, whereas fears of activism may be exaggerated.
* Enabling concern trolling - A focus on civility and balance can be used as a tactic to subtly undermine policies for climate action.
* Promoting delay or inaction - Emphasizing complexity could potentially paralyze decision making, or be used as a rationale for avoiding hard choices needed to address climate change.
* Diluting clearly-defined positions - Appeals for nuance may introduce ambiguity, allow drift to less committed stances, and undermine activists calling for definitive action.
Note .. I'm as annoyed with the fear-control mechanism as our host, keep that in mind as you read to understand the methods through the hypotheticals/examples herein.
I assume you copy and paste the same speech on comment sections everywhere. Derailer indeed, starting with the false assumption of my beliefs and intentions.
Actually, no, i don't. I've just run a bunch of your posts through my software to base my comments on observable fact. I made no inferences about you as a person, your beliefs or your intentions ..and i won't be derailed by your play at emotion.
Which .. may i point out .. is different, practically and ethically from attempting to make an ass-(out of)u(and)-me by escalation to ad hominy.
Thanks for being true to yourself. You showed much more that I thought you would and maybe other people will notice how derailed things get when you show up.
Notice how many things come wrapped in plastic? And how come we need to buy water in bottles because tap water is no longer drinkable? What fraction of what was given to Ukraine would clean up the water supply in the US and the EU?
The onus (worry?) has been put on the consumer but the producers continue maximising their profits. This is equivalent to “wear a mask to save granny”.
In Kenya recently I talked to people who were around and aware in the 80s and they referenced a time that it didn't rain for 3 years.
That actually came as a shock to me because we've been constantly told by Western NGOs that the sporadic few months without rain every couple of years was as a result of climate change.
I don't think the Climate Hoax is so much "the crisis" so much as a reliable background hum of angst that enables the elites to get away with escalating in preparation for the actual big events such as the inevitable confrontation with China, which hot war or not, will be what makes America into a dystopia so heavily policed that it makes Nazi Germany look like a libertarian paradise by comparison.
Simplicius, save this one - it might not age very well, at least in terms of climate forecast. The fact that individuals and financiers would use any subterfuge to privatize everything if possible and own everything is not news. Heck they get fat and rich from wars, climate warming is too good an oportunity to miss.
Climate change is an extremely serious problem, to which there is only one solution -- dramatic downsizing of the scale of the human enterprise (which would be just as mandatory a measure even if there was no climate change, because infinite growth is an impossibility, and sooner or later some resources runs out and it all collapses), which in turn cannot realistically ever happen without downwards wealth redistribution.
COVID was a microcosm of it -- it too is an extremely serious problem, and it was in the interest of everyone to eliminate the virus, which, unlike properly tackling the climate change issue, was actually quite easy to do. However, that could not be done without paying the peasants not to work for an extended period of time, i.e. downwards wealth redistribution, and we can't ever have that. So the propaganda machine went to work to trick the scientifically illiterate ignoramuses out there that it is all a scam and no big deal, and achieved complete success. Meanwhile at Davos they have daily testing, green passes, HEPA filters and masks for all the staff, i.e. all the things the Chinese were derided for, and then some, which tells you how seriously they themselves view the problem.
For the same reasons, the "globalists" have been skillfully doing divide-and-conquer on the topic of climate too for decades. The goal is to create confusion in the minds of the public so that there is never a strong bottom up demand for real changes. And to this end scientifically illiterate cretins like you are extremely useful (most of what you posted is either factually incorrect or should receive an immediate death sentence for the crime of stupidity incompatible with the continued right to exist and threaten collective survival if the ability to carry out proper scientific reasoning was taken as deadly serious as it should be).
It is suicidal in the long run for everyone, but some of them are not much more intellectually advanced than you are (you don't become a billionaire by reading books) while the others think they can ride it out as long as they preserve their power and privileges.
It would not be the first time in history elites have been this combination of detached from reality and convinced in their own invincibility conferred by their power and wealth.
Are they going to grift off a very real problem (as they also did with COVID) to further expand their wealth and power? You bet.
Does that mean it is not a real problem? No, neither logically (this is classic "if A therefore B; B therefore A" fallacy) nor factually.
P.S. In order to see how much your "analysis" is worth, go back to what you were writing about the war in the beginning of the blog. You were making confident proclamations about how a major war is coming within days as Russia will go in on big arrow offensives. Meanwhile in the real world here we are in mid-August and they never moved beyond Bakhmut...
P.P.S. Go back another couple months -- everyone talked about how we just have to wait for the ground to freeze and big action would come. But it never really froze. In fact there barely was a winter, in European Russia. For yet another year in a row. But sure, climate change is not happening and it is in fact getting colder. You can't make this up.
See, this is why the global conspiracy will always win.
This reminds me of the story about how some native elder in South America once commented that when the Europeans came, the natives had all the land and the Europeans had the Bible, but now the Europeans have all the land and the natives have only the Bible.
Science is a very powerful thing, and by denying it you give up power to those who want to use it for nefarious purposes.
That works both ways though -- don't think that the global elite is taking science as seriously as they should. There is plenty of magical thinking there too, and that problem has become more acute in recent decades. Same phenomenon was observed in the late Soviet elites, BTW, and we know how that ended.
And I know this because while I am not part of that elite, very far from it, I have spent a lot of time adjacent to it, and the conspiracy theories you bozos fall prey to have very little basis in reality.
The facts are that overall the global elites take COVID seriously enough to take every measure that their wealth provides for to get infected with it as few times as possible. Not everybody -- plenty of deniers there too -- but overall that is the norm. Meanwhile you suckers were successfully tricked into thinking it is a scam and no big deal, which in the end will take at least a decade off your life span and transfer trillions into their pockets by eliminating spending on pensions and healthcare for old people (translated it in even simpler terms -- you idiots will be dying in your 60s, many even earlier, from all the accumulated damage from repeated COVID infections, and your lifetime savings will go toward paying for megayachts, huge mansions, expensive prostitutes, and endless lines of blow for billionaires instead of supporting you in your 70s). And that was only the second-order bonus they got from the whole story -- their main concern was not to create a temporary command economy and a welfare state for the duration of a proper public health response (which was impossible without such measures), because there was a big danger it would not have been only temporary once people got a taste of it.
Similarly, a lot of them take climate change and civilizational collapse very seriously, to the point of having long ago prepared their escape mansions and bunkers in New Zealand. Which they resorted to during COVID too -- large swarms of private planes headed towards the southern hemisphere in February 2020.
But they will not do anything to actually solve the problem, because that cannot be done without destroying their wealth and privileges, and those are more important to them than the future of the species and the planet. So again, the suckers like you were successfully tricked into thinking it is all a scam, in order to eliminate any potential real opposition
And the tragic vaxtard doubles down with the WHO nonsense "you idiots will be dying in your 60s, many even earlier, from all the accumulated damage from repeated COVID infection"
DM you retarded covidiot you are wrong (or a malicious liar). Us awake and brave that did not buckle and accept an immorally pushed experimental mRNA toxin will be healthy, whereas you sad cowardly cunts are dropping like diseased flies from clots, strokes, heart attacks and sudden death (Canada has 90,000 excess deaths already this year).
FYI dickhead, corona viruses (influenzas) do not cause cancers, myocarditis, pericarditis, miscarriages, stillbirths, VAIDS, destroyed immune systems, and hundreds of other serious conditions that you fuckwits are now experiencing.
You are Anal Scwab's usefull idiots parroting the propaganda. A fool that must be ignored. Tick tock...those micro clots are increasing in your vascular system each day...you will not be missed.
There is no SARS-CoV2 you cretin. Neither is C02 causing any change in the climate. It works the other way around. The oceans, driven by solar heating and cooling, drive the temperatures and the levels of C02 in the atmosphere follow. This is proven by what has been observed in the ice cores but idiots like you ignore facts. Germ theory is BS too. It's because of retards like you that humanity is now on the verge of extinction.
See, this is why the global conspiracy will always win.
This reminds me of the story about how some native elder in South America once commented that when the Europeans came, the natives had all the land and the Europeans had the Bible, but now the Europeans have all the land and the natives have only the Bible.
Science is a very powerful thing, and by denying it you give up power to those who want to use it for nefarious purposes.
That works both ways though -- don't think that the global elite is taking science as seriously as they should. There is plenty of magical thinking there too, and that problem has become more acute in recent decades. Same phenomenon was observed in the late Soviet elites, BTW, and we know how that ended.
And I know this because while I am not part of that elite, very far from it, I have spent a lot of time adjacent to it, and the conspiracy theories you bozos fall prey to have very little basis in reality.
The facts are that overall the global elites take COVID seriously enough to take every measure that their wealth provides for to get infected with it as few times as possible. Not everybody -- plenty of deniers there too -- but overall that is the norm. Meanwhile you suckers were successfully tricked into thinking it is a scam and no big deal, which in the end will take at least a decade off your life span and transfer trillions into their pockets by eliminating spending on pensions and healthcare for old people (translated it in even simpler terms -- you idiots will be dying in your 60s, many even earlier, from all the accumulated damage from repeated COVID infections, and your lifetime savings will go toward paying for megayachts, huge mansions, expensive prostitutes, and endless lines of blow for billionaires instead of supporting you in your 70s). And that was only the second-order bonus they got from the whole story -- their main concern was not to create a temporary command economy and a welfare state for the duration of a proper public health response (which was impossible without such measures), because there was a big danger it would not have been only temporary once people got a taste of it.
Similarly, a lot of them take climate change and civilizational collapse very seriously, to the point of having long ago prepared their escape mansions and bunkers in New Zealand. Which they resorted to during COVID too -- large swarms of private planes headed towards the southern hemisphere in February 2020.
But they will not do anything to actually solve the problem, because that cannot be done without destroying their wealth and privileges, and those are more important to them than the future of the species and the planet. So again, the suckers like you were successfully tricked into thinking it is all a scam, in order to eliminate any potential real opposition
I heartily second the comments of grr and Ted ... the trifecta of fact-free assertions.
Despite my better instincts not to wrestle with this pig, I will say a little and then no more. I have tried having objective, fact and science based discussions with climate idiots and covid idiots, but in the end a rational person can't win an argument with an idiot.
On Climate: climate is too complex and multi-factorial to be amenable to simplisitic analysis. Yes, of course man makes CO2 and CO2 affects the atmosphere and therefore the climate. But does anybody analyse what is the effect, numerically and qualitatively? CO2 is a minor factor in the overall climate, and MAN MADE CO2 is a small fraction of the CO2 generated in nature. So a small fraction of an already small fraction ... is that going to change overall climate much? There are many more scientific, mathematical arguments against climate alarmism, but we'll let you digest just this one first. Please do not reply with diversions, ad hominems, etc if you do not have an answer to this.
COVID: Suffice it to say that the evidence so far and all emerging evidence is that a) the unvaccinated had lower rates of covid infection and covid deaths; b) Post vax, the number of vaccine deaths and vaccine damage incidents is off the charts . Enough said.
Yeah and there's still literally 0‰ in the atmosphere. Look it up! While there's 21% oxygen, and the two interchange in a 1:1 relationship. But you wouldn't understand what implies would you...
The term sheeple was coined for good reason, we are easily herded. It's quite astounding to observe the levels of idiocy that surround us, those that simply parrot what the media hands them, there is no objective thought. Perhaps that is simply the cycle we are currently in.
As to "the Apocryphon of John c. AD 120–180, the demiurge arrogantly declares that he has made the world by himself". H. P. Blavatsky wrote that this Demiurge is not a single being but, rather, the collectivity of all the creative powers of the cosmos, which are guided by the abstract principle of Cosmic Ideation. "But that Demiurgos is no personal deity,—i.e., an imperfect extra-cosmic god,—but only the aggregate of the Dhyan-Chohans (aka Angels) and the other forces...As that process is not always perfect; and since, however many proofs it may exhibit of a guiding intelligence behind the veil, it still shows gaps and flaws, and even results very often in evident failures—therefore, neither the collective Host (Demiurgos), nor any of the working powers individually, are proper subjects for divine honours or worship." Seems there is a differing of opinion.
I have a wager going with myself, that by the time I die the Europeans will again be performing animal sacrifice in public religious rituals. Just like in the days of Caesar.
I have been following the climate debate for around 30 years now and quickly moved from someone who was originally alarmed to someone who is still alarmed, not about any marginal levels of temperature rise but around the political response to a minor issue (IMHO). But you cannot convince a true believer. They are simply totally convinced that the establishment position is correct on this topic and that any dissenters like me are tin foil hat conspiracy theorists.
I have come to the conclusion that 30 years of propaganda and brain washing, - starting in schools and relentlessly pursued through the media and supported by a politicised scientific establishment - have created a mass delusion that no amount of facts, logic or rational sceptcism can dent. It is the new religion with its notions of original sin, purgatory and redemption. It is part of a value system - not a scientific and economic debate framed by political choices. It is part and parcel of the west's general delusions in a post fact world.
I place less reliance on the power of the "global elites" to mastermind our futures than many who haunt these sites. Nevertheless the WEF strongly supports the Malthusian solutions proposed to this "climate crisis". These are anti-human and coercive, and will reduce human population, wealth, health and happiness - and generally support the power of the state over indiviuals and families.
As a long time "climate sceptic" I used to argue that the problems was wildy exagerrated and the proposed solutions counter-productive if not actually dangerous. I realise that this was a hopeless position. The belief system is too far ingrained. I don't bother now. The realists have lost.
In regard to political response, I don't see any serious political response to climate change in the US. The Republican party, which controls most of the country, is openly hostile to the idea. And Biden has signed more oil drilling permits in his first two years than Trump did. In the US, fossil fuels companies net billions in subsidies every year. According to the International Energy Agency, globally they pull in about $1 trillion in subsidies. And, of course, we keep burning more fossil fuels (2022 was a new record). So while some politicians pander to their base by talking about climate change, the establishment position in the US (if not globally) seems to align with your personal position: It's nothing to worry about, keep burning fossil fuels.
Of course, it's possible I'm missing something. What is the political response you are alarmed by?
Ok, I will assume you are not trolling me. This frequently happens in discussions on this topic. For political response maybe read policy response.
I live the other side of the pond and whilst the US Administration and various State Governments have come down hard on what they see as carbon pollution, you may well be correct in that you percieve little difference. Hre are a few things going on in the Uk and Europe at large:
1. Closing effcient reliable coal, gas and oil fired electricity generating capacity to move to expensive, unrelaible and non-eco wind and solar. (ie in Germany, that well known southern nation with a Mediterranean climate)
2. Net zero.
3. Closing nuclear power plants.
4. Buying in electricity from abroad generated by these "bad" methods
5. Mandating the end of efficient gasoline and diesel cars in favour of eco-disaterous and uninsurable and unsafe electric cars, with shorter range and a larger lifetime carbon footprint.
6. Carbon taxes on the consumer
7. carbon taxes on industry, forcing it to move abroad whewre it emits the same or worse - but not our problem
8. Closing farms down on a compulsary basis because cows and sheep fart, eat bugs instead
9. Scaring kids and the population in general with IMHO propaganda re climate catastrophe
10. being Ok with climate "reparations" and "climate" refugees.
Our great and good may have forgotten that (a) the ROW does not give that much credence to climate except for the grift they can extract from the woke west and (b) it doesn't matter what we do because the ROW will industrialise anyway and the use of fossil fuels is rising every year. You could tow the UK into the middle of the Atlantic and sink it, but it would make no difference to world temperatures in terms of carbon emissions.
The rational policy response is actually a heavy investment in nuclear power. We begin to see this coming to pass. but 20 years too late - I have been following the west's suicidal energy policy for a long time too.
The difference between our lives a peasant in the middle ages is the ability to harness machines. which run off something other than human or animal power (maybe water and wind too). Coal, oil and gas have driven human advancement for 100 years. It may well be rational to plan for another future,. To replace what amounts to civilisation with "hot air" is suicidal and policy responses based on religious dogma (promoted by a Swedish teenager) are unlikely to sustain our standard of living and well being.
And all this for a rise in temerature of 0.14C per dacde since 1979. That is a decadal shift equivalent to 6 feet in height. ie the temperature between your feet and your head. If the young folk want to get excited about that then let them. I am unimpressed with this. As you will have guessed.
And like the adherents to the climaste religion, I doubt my views can be changed!
No, I wasn't trolling. I seem to be one of the rare people that genuinely wants to hear opinions from average people who seem informed, but I don't necessarily agree with. And I never try to debate or change minds. That's just a fools errand. Often, like now, I discover we agree on a lot more than I had suspected.
For instance, I agree with you that electric cars are a marketing ploy. They are not "green." I also agree the hate for nuclear energy is ridiculous. Climate change aside, you don't want to raise your kids downwind from a coal burning power plant. And the carbon in cow farts is derived from the grass they eat. While they're clearing one pasture, another pasture is sinking carbon to grow more grass. So it's silly to compare them to fossil fuel burning.
I do think humans are negatively impacting the climate. We are not the first species to do so. But it looks like it'll be at least near the end of this century before large areas are underwater or not fit for normal human habitation. And, of course, there are already many extinctions happening. What I am skeptical about is whether anyone with any power will do anything about it before it's too late. Every time one scratches the surface of the new, big, highly-funded scheme to halt climate change, it turns out to be penny wise and pound foolish, yet another ineffectual money-making endeavor, or both.
Hi. The truth is we haven't had to use fossil fuel energy for some time. It is for the "currency." Tesla free energy is patented and blocked, but is just take electro-magnetic energy out of air like a crystal radio, or your TV.
Climate change, whether you believe in it, or not, is a self limiting symptom: the cause is burning fossil fuels, which are running out i.e. overshoot i.e. once fossil fuels are gone (a handful of decades at most) there will be the same number of humans as before the fossil age ~ under 1 billion: this background reality - the carrying capacity of humans on Earth - is the ultimate boundary within which billionaire elites play their games.
So taking your point, and with population at 9 billion and rising, how do you see some 8 billion people dissapperaring over the next few dacades? Incidentally, the argument you make is Malthusian in character and one I therefore would not necessarily accept.
Starvation and murder and not being born, the down curve of population dynamics related to resource depletion is always very steep. It took over 200,000 years of human prehistory and history for the global population to reach one billion and only 219 years more to reach 8 billion. Its doubled since 1960.
Please see my comment here for how and why with links and sources Biophysics is not "Malthusian" in the scare mongering insult fashion that's usually meant.
I prefer biophysical reality - 8bn people are supported by fossil fuels not magic wands - no fossils fuels = 1bn people, unless you know how to break the laws of thermodynamics?
I was simply responding to the word that marcjf used in their comment: "I prefer my future vison to yours". As such it's a bit silly and absurd to twist the concept of "biophysical reality" as a personal preference - the laws of physics do "not defer to people's preferences" !
Unless you know how 8billion humans can live without fossil fuels, which according to Shell & BP etc.. will decline at 2% a year, which in 70 years will be 1/4 of oil supply in 2019.
I think your estimated depletion date, and ensuing population decline, might be too aggressive, but your point is still worth noting. We don't even have to fully deplete fossil fuels anyway. We just have to deplete the cheap-ish to produce stuff, and much of what we currently use them for will become economically unviable.
To your point about the severe impacts this will have, how are we going to replace everything we do with petroleum? Even outside of fuel, petroleum products are ubiquitous in the modern world: Plastics, lubricants, food additives, cosmetics, medicines, etc. And there are not good replacements for many of the things we do with them. Are we really going to go back to lubricating our machines with lard? Lard doesn't work nearly as well, and there aren't enough pigs on Earth.
Global 'peak oil' has already happened. And as you say, "We don't even have to fully deplete fossil fuels anyway. We just have to deplete the cheap-ish to produce stuff" which is my point. For example, Shell say “oil production peaked in 2019,” and it expects its output to decline by 1 to 2 percent per year" which leaves only a quarter of it annual production by 2090 (i.e. in 70 years time) = 8 billion decline to 2 billion people if we accept the metric that population is supported by oil outputs.
Hi. The truth is we haven't had to use fossil fuel energy for some time. It is for the "currency." Tesla free energy is patented and blocked, but is just take electro-magnetic energy out of air like a crystal radio, or your TV.
Assuming you are a serious commentor ... the first assumption, that climate change is caused by burning fossil fuels is scientifically, factually, incorrect.
Fossil fuel burning does have some impact on CO2 levels but its impact on climate is negligible when compared to all the other natural factors that also change the earth's climate.
KenKam, you refer to "you" and that "all your conclusions are also false" ..? but to whom are you replying? Meanwhile, yes I am "a serious commentor [sp commentator] " Thanks Natasha
You are 100% right. But as you say and I agree, we cannot do anything about it, science and true realists have lost. We'll have to wait until this chimera of climate alarmism crashes against reality some day and people realise they have been fooled.
You miss the point. Climate change, whether you believe in it, or not, is a self limiting symptom: the cause is burning fossil fuels, which are running out i.e. overshoot i.e. once fossil fuels are gone (a handful of decades at most) there will be the same number of humans as before the fossil age ~ under 1 billion: this background reality - the carrying capacity of humans on Earth - is the ultimate boundary within which billionaire elites play their games.
Further, you can't replace fossil fuels, and you can't build solar energy flow harvesting infrastructure without fossil fuels, no matter how hard you try to ignore externalities and pretend they are infinite on a finite 'pale blue dot'.
When you consider the difference in framing between "peak oil" and "climate change" you see that the first does not grant human ingenuity quite the same purported powers as the second. The first is a matter of geological and physical limitations (ugh!) whereas the second promises endless opportunities to tinker and solve (yay!) So long as humans are prone to hubris, we are going to prefer a framing that grants us a powerful role, even if that proves to be illusory.
So it’s funny how these people on the left are worried about rising sea levels and heat waves. Yet they have no goddamn clue that the heat stroke that comes from cornering Russia and/or China really is going to burn us all good. It called nuclear war (Armageddon style). Shit gets real hot from what I hear.
“We have to stop the Russians because they won’t adhere to our Climate Change Model.” “ We have to stop them because they don’t like gay marriage or transgender rights.”
The sheer hypocrisy is staggering. I don’t mean from the higher ups. They know what they’re doing. I’m talking about the every day average Normie left of center. They don’t get it. In recent years I have followed some survivalist types. The events they anticipate are possible IMHO (not likely) but worrying about the water tables and heat increments GTFO?
Especially when the biggest purveyors of Climate Change can get loans and insurance on their primary residences on the coasts. No bank or insurance company is going to buy that paper if the actuarial data disagrees. It’s really that simple and no more complicated. Yet they persist in believing the bullshit.
In the end not sure what we do with those people. I suspect the most thuggish and poor alike could understand what I just mentioned if reasoned with enough. Not the managerial class tho. Those fuckers can’t pull it in. It’s like an imaginary anti logic bubble has been placed around them. The harder we smack them in the head the more impenetrable the bubble becomes.
When you finally come to terms with this it’s a black pill that’s hard to swallow. At this point the only way they will get it is when hell knocks on their door. Simplicius if you ever want to deep dive into how this occurred and/or how we can break the spell this would be a wonderful assignment. No worries I don’t mind if you don’t or cannot. It’s something I have struggled with for a while now. Now clue how these people got like this. Understand there’s no way this nonsense could carry on without their support and consent though.
I've come to the conclusion that there is a mental difference in the ruling class and all their followers, toadies, and apparatchiks that run all our institutions. They've become beholden to theories, to ideologies, to models. This is the result of a left brain hemisphere dominance, over the right hemisphere.
The right hemisphere is oriented to reality, to the other, it is embodied, understands the implicit and unexplainable. The right brain understands the world as complex, flowing, changing, interconnected. The left hemisphere constructs re-presentations of the world. It understands the world in parts, disconnected from the whole., frozen in time. It abstracts. It makes models. And the ruling class loves its models, especially "mathematical models." They love their scary graphs.
The system we live in selects for people who think like this. It selects for compliance and consensus. For ideology. For believing the narrative, the latest dogma, The Science. What is important to understand about left hemisphere thinking, is that it is full of denial. This type of thinking will not, cannot, accept any deviation from its mental model, reality be damned. You cannot question the ideology. You cannot point out real world examples. The left brain does not live in the real world.
This is especially true for the so called global 'elite.' They are ideologically bound. Mentally imprisoned. And they are supported by millions of ideologically captured followers., who happen to run all of our institutions, professions, and cultural production. It got this way because the system selects for true believers, highly compliant people, who constantly pick up on the latest groupthink.
People with this mindset are incapable of solving problems. Solving problems means you must check your solution to see if it actually works, and if it doesn't, you must change what you are doing. Otherwise, how will the problem get solved? Have we ever seen the deluded clowns in charge changing their approach? Or is it doubling down, ad infinitum? Every bureaucratic organization operates as if it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies. Conquest was right. The Germans set about to reduce carbon emissions, and are now burning dirty coal, emitting more carbon than before. So, serious global climate problem or not, these deluded clowns aren't going to solve it. They will only make it worse.
I tend to think that yes climate changes naturally, but also yes modern life can influence climate - or better put the environment - we all should be better custodians of nature and minimise the ‘disposable’ feature of the products our society has come to rely on - we humans make a lot of waste and a lot of needless crap. However, I do believe the biggest weakness in these climate scaremongers campaign - a weakness so significant that I can’t rule out the ‘crazy’ and insidious ploys that you portray as deliberate - is the refusal to push nuclear energy. In fact ‘they’ refuse to entertain nuclear power as a solution - an energy source which is clean, cost effective and would improve the quality of life worldwide. Instead, it’s demonised it and portrayed as dangerous even though the stats say otherwise.
Uranium is running out. Fast-breeders could extend the time line but like all energy harvesting infrastructure can't be build with low energy density electricity: you need diesel to mine and refine and transport minerals to make nuclear reactors and electricity delivery infrastructure and all those end use machines too.
Fascinating how it all comes together with energy and the dollar and the empire versus the commodity producing counties. There is new technology that produces energy out of the electromagnetic vibrations in the air, like crystal radios. Everything will become diode based like LEDs and all those things that turn electro-magnetic energy to electricity.
Am less convinced that this is all part of a well managed conspiracy. Yes. There are some truly bad actors. But in general this is various elites responding to incentives and creating an ideology that justifies what they want to do anyway: gain power and make money while feeling good about themselves. They are not organised enough though to drive a “conspiracy”, although it has the appearance of that. As western economies have become increasingly unequal and living standards for ordinary people have stagnated over the past fifty years so one could argue that some form of ideology or religion was likely to be naturally embraced by elites to justify this and keep the peasants in their place. Climate Change seems to be precisely that. In the past, it might have been Christianity with the promise of nirvana in the after life if you accept your hardship in life.
I see the whole Climate Change “thing” as modern day Malthus and I never fail to marvel at how easily influenced educated people seem to be by nonsense.
The hyping of weather reports is something I had noticed too. In the U.K. we have had quite a cool and wet summer this year. My basement “heat sanctuary” has not been needed once this year! Yet, there has been no reporting of this. Instead, we have been regaled with stories of “Europe” in sweltering heat. But when I was in both Austria and Hungary in July it seemed they were just having a normal continental summer. Period.
The link to geopolitics and maintaining western elite hegemony is very much part of this too, as you say. Fascinatingly, China plays along with electric vehicles, for example. But I suspect they are also being smart: China has no oil but can generate electricity. A lot of this suits her interests. Particularly given that (in common with Russia under Putin) she has now avoided the financialization of her economy and prevented western elite interests from taking ownership of key assets that they can extract economic rent from.
Note that global warming caused by CO2 released by burning fossil fuels can be BOTH real* AND a racket. Just like SARS-2 was a real virus, it wasn't a pure fabrication of fantasy, yet it was co-opted and manipulated by the same people to serve their interests. When I was a kid I direclty saw how the corporatocracy co-opted recycling for their own profits. I lived on the west coast and saw the growth of a vast homeless services industrial complex that reaps in tens of billions each year and never shows any results. The same is true of the war on terror, the war on drugs, the military industrial complex, the surveillance state, the censorship industrial complex, etc., all they have to do is to frighten people about a problem and rake in the bucks. That problem can be real or invented. It can be exaggerated, twisted, distorted, blamed on the wrong sources, and more. The problem can also be created in order to justify paying for a solution (the classic definition of a racket), like an arsonist who sells fire insurance.
And...most importantly: That problem must never be solved! Because if it is solved, the racket disappear.
*Simple radiative energy balance models with known properties and abundances of CO2 that closely follow the burning of fossil fuels explains observed temperature changes to first-order. I've done the calculations myself, as part of my graduate studies in planetary science, it was an exercise in a core course on atmospheric physics. This is straightforward physics, and it works. From a deep time perspective, releasing oxidized carbon into the atmosphere in a couple centuries that required hundreds of millions of years to bury is expected to have some kind of effect. Does that mean that this is necessarily the only explanation? No (that would be affirming the consequent, a logical fallacy). However, it is a fairly obvious explanation. And it is a working hypothesis that has not been disproven thus far...and the way science works, that means it is still alive and well. Should we be looking for alternative explanations? Absolutely, we should.
Plus there is the long term, human prospects, whole system perspective point: 'climate change' whether you believe in it, or not, is a self limiting symptom: the purported cause is burning fossil fuels, which are running out i.e. overshoot i.e. once fossil fuels are gone (a handful of decades at most) there will be the same number of humans as before the fossil age ~ under 1 billion: this background reality - the carrying capacity of humans on Earth - is the ultimate boundary within which billionaire elites play their games. This is in addition to whatever degree of climate change catastrophism one wishes to indulge in.
Further, you can't replace fossil fuels, and you can't build solar energy flow harvesting infrastructure without fossil fuels, no matter how hard you try to ignore externalities and pretend they are infinite on a finite 'pale blue dot'.
Hi. You can replace fossil fuels. There is money in oil and utilities and electical lines, and not as much in Tesla free energy, which is real. We no longer need fossil fuels, we need the profits to both Russia and the US they bring.
Dream on Jim: I built a couple of so called "free energy" machines 25 years ago, Stanley Meyers patented HF water splitting cell and the SMOT, needless to say any proposal to break the 2nd law of thermodynamics will fail - but I learned about many of Tesla's inventions that still work e.g. AC electricity, and extended my electrical and mechanical engineer skills etc.
Hopefully eventually more people will wake up to see trough agenda, some will never( like that dude in video))). It’s seems like some of positive developments happening lately in China for example:
“Chinese leader Xi Jinping declared in remarks reported Wednesday that Beijing alone will decide how — and how quickly — it addresses climate change.”
“China would pursue its commitments “unswervingly,” but the pace of such efforts “should and must be” determined without outside interference, Xi said late Tuesday. Xi’s approach marked a break from the 2015 Paris climate accord, where a Chinese-U.S. agreement.”
“Xi was showing that “China will decide its own path in achieving carbon goals and will not be ordered about by others,” he said.”
There is very interesting article as well, if readers is interested, about eco terrorism- one of the scariest tool they are using to create more fear and distraction.
I believe you are correct, and Simplicius is half correct. Global elites are cynically using the threat of climate change to enrich themselves and increase their power. But the elites do that with every issue. It doesn't mean the issues aren't real.
And one would think the climate change skeptics would be happy about what the global elites are doing. Half the elites are openly hostile to taking action against climate change, and the other half talk about it a lot, but aren't really doing anything serious. Both halves still fly around in their private jets and make millions extracting and selling fossil fuels and in related enterprises. The climate change skeptics and the global elites are largely on the same side of this issue.
"My point being that human activity simply has to be affecting the "climate" or "weather" in some way"
Seems an interesting and plausible hypothesis.
What is tedious and counterproductive are the ongoing efforts being made to avoid pinpointing the precise and verifiable degree to which whatever "some way" may or may not be influencing natural climate variability.
There is a mounting body of evidence regarding self-limiting of various factors involved with climate variability. Saturation theories, etc. are deprived of research funding, which doesn't help with increased understanding of climate variables.
Motivated reasoning and manipulation of research funding are taking their toll, and neither assertions, that anthropogenic effects are impossible, nor that their potency has been unequivocally determined, are supported by such evidence as is being presented.
Dismissiveness and hyperbole are the order of the day and their destructive effects are becoming increasingly apparent.
Your own observations regarding propaganda and greed are astute and relevant. There are vast opportunities for concentration of wealth and coercive influence presented by the destruction of existing industrial systems.
Where wealth and influence concentrate, predators and parasites congregate. Their rapaciousness distorts and pollutes everything they are allowed to touch.
The Icelandverse will replace the Metaverse - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-peUrRUH218
My problem is that there are too many clever folk on either side of this debate, and that, ultimately, they'll serve profiteers, directly or indirectly. Surely its commonsense to be against pollution in our backyards, and against unnecessary consumerism globally? Climate deniers don't have to support toxic rivers, and climate activists don't have to deny essential energy needs.
Good news, there's an associated video about the space rocketeers - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmOISr3k3y0
:)
I can only afford to travel to Substack.
We have a serious social problem.
Well said, Mike. On issues of climate change and the debate around it, I appreciate the perspective outlined by Charles Eisenstein in his book, Climate: A New Story.
https://charleseisenstein.org/books/climate-a-new-story/
For a broader perspective on collapse (civilizational), check out The Long Descent by John Michael Greer or the condensed version in this essay: https://www.ecosophia.net/long-road-decline-deindustrial-future/
I have more books on my list and on my headphones than I could ever get through, but I have downloaded Eisentein's - thanks. I read Greer's excellent essay and the part that stands out for me, something that has long bugged me, is the gradual acceptance of declining health - societal and self. We normalise things to our detriment. Even the madness of politics is normal now. I see Greer has a sequel, 'Dark Age America'.
So many books, so little time. 😂🤷🏻♂️
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZ1H3DcVsSE
Good stuff. Greer has an essay on the subject on his website. His perspectives on civilizational collapse helped to free me from the prison of catastrophizing climate change/disruption, reorienting me to personal sovereignty and agency. The question has always been for me, what do I do? Or, how do I live my life in response to the historical moment? Skill up and get resilient and love harder is the answer I come up with. Get free of depending on the larger, more distal systems. And pass it all on to the kids. A Wendell Berry sort of life.
I'll post an advertorial about him tomorrow.
Shagbark,
Your explanation of how you cope with the futility of "participation" within the commercial ecosystem mirrors my personal quandary about how to proceed in this life "against the grain" of societal madness. I'm finding that it's a daily practice of "going with the grain" of my/our better instincts which exist in obfuscated forms. Your comment is a succinct explanation of what I think a lot of folks are trying to articulate. I will remember it. Thank you Shagbark.
May a comment suggestion not fuck up my schedule like this again :)
https://mikehampton.substack.com/p/our-collapsing-civilisation
Check out Mattias Desmet’s article from today: https://open.substack.com/pub/mattiasdesmet/p/nobel-prize-winner-john-clauser-climate?r=drfbd&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
Thanks. In line with my in between view, but said better than I could.
Hello Derailer of Threads!
Nothing against you, but here is a list of some of the methods you employ around the net so other's can learn to recognize how its done - as one can certainly learn a lot from your formulaic writing!
So, this is what i see as being your main tools, hope you don't mind that i share:
* Creating false equivalencies - For example, giving equal weight to climate deniers and activists can wrongly imply the scientific consensus on climate change is less established than it is.
* Supporting "both-sidesism" - Treating all positions as morally equivalent can muddle issues where one side has a stronger factual or ethical stance. Climate impact is measurable, whereas fears of activism may be exaggerated.
* Enabling concern trolling - A focus on civility and balance can be used as a tactic to subtly undermine policies for climate action.
* Promoting delay or inaction - Emphasizing complexity could potentially paralyze decision making, or be used as a rationale for avoiding hard choices needed to address climate change.
* Diluting clearly-defined positions - Appeals for nuance may introduce ambiguity, allow drift to less committed stances, and undermine activists calling for definitive action.
Note .. I'm as annoyed with the fear-control mechanism as our host, keep that in mind as you read to understand the methods through the hypotheticals/examples herein.
I assume you copy and paste the same speech on comment sections everywhere. Derailer indeed, starting with the false assumption of my beliefs and intentions.
Actually, no, i don't. I've just run a bunch of your posts through my software to base my comments on observable fact. I made no inferences about you as a person, your beliefs or your intentions ..and i won't be derailed by your play at emotion.
Which .. may i point out .. is different, practically and ethically from attempting to make an ass-(out of)u(and)-me by escalation to ad hominy.
Thanks for being true to yourself. You showed much more that I thought you would and maybe other people will notice how derailed things get when you show up.
Hell, you're funny. Clever trolls are no different to dumb ones.
Notice how many things come wrapped in plastic? And how come we need to buy water in bottles because tap water is no longer drinkable? What fraction of what was given to Ukraine would clean up the water supply in the US and the EU?
The onus (worry?) has been put on the consumer but the producers continue maximising their profits. This is equivalent to “wear a mask to save granny”.
In Kenya recently I talked to people who were around and aware in the 80s and they referenced a time that it didn't rain for 3 years.
That actually came as a shock to me because we've been constantly told by Western NGOs that the sporadic few months without rain every couple of years was as a result of climate change.
https://issafrica.org/iss-today/the-cycle-of-drought-in-kenya-a-looming-humanitarian-crisis
I don't think the Climate Hoax is so much "the crisis" so much as a reliable background hum of angst that enables the elites to get away with escalating in preparation for the actual big events such as the inevitable confrontation with China, which hot war or not, will be what makes America into a dystopia so heavily policed that it makes Nazi Germany look like a libertarian paradise by comparison.
Simplicius, save this one - it might not age very well, at least in terms of climate forecast. The fact that individuals and financiers would use any subterfuge to privatize everything if possible and own everything is not news. Heck they get fat and rich from wars, climate warming is too good an oportunity to miss.
It’s clearer than ever that you are either:
1) Controlled opposition
2) Complete retard.
Your lunatic ravings on COVID showed it too.
Climate change is an extremely serious problem, to which there is only one solution -- dramatic downsizing of the scale of the human enterprise (which would be just as mandatory a measure even if there was no climate change, because infinite growth is an impossibility, and sooner or later some resources runs out and it all collapses), which in turn cannot realistically ever happen without downwards wealth redistribution.
COVID was a microcosm of it -- it too is an extremely serious problem, and it was in the interest of everyone to eliminate the virus, which, unlike properly tackling the climate change issue, was actually quite easy to do. However, that could not be done without paying the peasants not to work for an extended period of time, i.e. downwards wealth redistribution, and we can't ever have that. So the propaganda machine went to work to trick the scientifically illiterate ignoramuses out there that it is all a scam and no big deal, and achieved complete success. Meanwhile at Davos they have daily testing, green passes, HEPA filters and masks for all the staff, i.e. all the things the Chinese were derided for, and then some, which tells you how seriously they themselves view the problem.
For the same reasons, the "globalists" have been skillfully doing divide-and-conquer on the topic of climate too for decades. The goal is to create confusion in the minds of the public so that there is never a strong bottom up demand for real changes. And to this end scientifically illiterate cretins like you are extremely useful (most of what you posted is either factually incorrect or should receive an immediate death sentence for the crime of stupidity incompatible with the continued right to exist and threaten collective survival if the ability to carry out proper scientific reasoning was taken as deadly serious as it should be).
It is suicidal in the long run for everyone, but some of them are not much more intellectually advanced than you are (you don't become a billionaire by reading books) while the others think they can ride it out as long as they preserve their power and privileges.
It would not be the first time in history elites have been this combination of detached from reality and convinced in their own invincibility conferred by their power and wealth.
Are they going to grift off a very real problem (as they also did with COVID) to further expand their wealth and power? You bet.
Does that mean it is not a real problem? No, neither logically (this is classic "if A therefore B; B therefore A" fallacy) nor factually.
P.S. In order to see how much your "analysis" is worth, go back to what you were writing about the war in the beginning of the blog. You were making confident proclamations about how a major war is coming within days as Russia will go in on big arrow offensives. Meanwhile in the real world here we are in mid-August and they never moved beyond Bakhmut...
P.P.S. Go back another couple months -- everyone talked about how we just have to wait for the ground to freeze and big action would come. But it never really froze. In fact there barely was a winter, in European Russia. For yet another year in a row. But sure, climate change is not happening and it is in fact getting colder. You can't make this up.
Congrats GM on the trifecta; a vaxtard, a covidiot, and a climatetard. Now run along like a good little sheep and get your 8th booster.
Gullible morons like you are the reason we are in the shit.
See, this is why the global conspiracy will always win.
This reminds me of the story about how some native elder in South America once commented that when the Europeans came, the natives had all the land and the Europeans had the Bible, but now the Europeans have all the land and the natives have only the Bible.
Science is a very powerful thing, and by denying it you give up power to those who want to use it for nefarious purposes.
That works both ways though -- don't think that the global elite is taking science as seriously as they should. There is plenty of magical thinking there too, and that problem has become more acute in recent decades. Same phenomenon was observed in the late Soviet elites, BTW, and we know how that ended.
And I know this because while I am not part of that elite, very far from it, I have spent a lot of time adjacent to it, and the conspiracy theories you bozos fall prey to have very little basis in reality.
The facts are that overall the global elites take COVID seriously enough to take every measure that their wealth provides for to get infected with it as few times as possible. Not everybody -- plenty of deniers there too -- but overall that is the norm. Meanwhile you suckers were successfully tricked into thinking it is a scam and no big deal, which in the end will take at least a decade off your life span and transfer trillions into their pockets by eliminating spending on pensions and healthcare for old people (translated it in even simpler terms -- you idiots will be dying in your 60s, many even earlier, from all the accumulated damage from repeated COVID infections, and your lifetime savings will go toward paying for megayachts, huge mansions, expensive prostitutes, and endless lines of blow for billionaires instead of supporting you in your 70s). And that was only the second-order bonus they got from the whole story -- their main concern was not to create a temporary command economy and a welfare state for the duration of a proper public health response (which was impossible without such measures), because there was a big danger it would not have been only temporary once people got a taste of it.
Similarly, a lot of them take climate change and civilizational collapse very seriously, to the point of having long ago prepared their escape mansions and bunkers in New Zealand. Which they resorted to during COVID too -- large swarms of private planes headed towards the southern hemisphere in February 2020.
But they will not do anything to actually solve the problem, because that cannot be done without destroying their wealth and privileges, and those are more important to them than the future of the species and the planet. So again, the suckers like you were successfully tricked into thinking it is all a scam, in order to eliminate any potential real opposition
And the tragic vaxtard doubles down with the WHO nonsense "you idiots will be dying in your 60s, many even earlier, from all the accumulated damage from repeated COVID infection"
DM you retarded covidiot you are wrong (or a malicious liar). Us awake and brave that did not buckle and accept an immorally pushed experimental mRNA toxin will be healthy, whereas you sad cowardly cunts are dropping like diseased flies from clots, strokes, heart attacks and sudden death (Canada has 90,000 excess deaths already this year).
FYI dickhead, corona viruses (influenzas) do not cause cancers, myocarditis, pericarditis, miscarriages, stillbirths, VAIDS, destroyed immune systems, and hundreds of other serious conditions that you fuckwits are now experiencing.
You are Anal Scwab's usefull idiots parroting the propaganda. A fool that must be ignored. Tick tock...those micro clots are increasing in your vascular system each day...you will not be missed.
Haha are you the angry dipshit in that video? I think someone needs his booster. Honestly I do want to say Thank you for going willingly.
There is no SARS-CoV2 you cretin. Neither is C02 causing any change in the climate. It works the other way around. The oceans, driven by solar heating and cooling, drive the temperatures and the levels of C02 in the atmosphere follow. This is proven by what has been observed in the ice cores but idiots like you ignore facts. Germ theory is BS too. It's because of retards like you that humanity is now on the verge of extinction.
See, this is why the global conspiracy will always win.
This reminds me of the story about how some native elder in South America once commented that when the Europeans came, the natives had all the land and the Europeans had the Bible, but now the Europeans have all the land and the natives have only the Bible.
Science is a very powerful thing, and by denying it you give up power to those who want to use it for nefarious purposes.
That works both ways though -- don't think that the global elite is taking science as seriously as they should. There is plenty of magical thinking there too, and that problem has become more acute in recent decades. Same phenomenon was observed in the late Soviet elites, BTW, and we know how that ended.
And I know this because while I am not part of that elite, very far from it, I have spent a lot of time adjacent to it, and the conspiracy theories you bozos fall prey to have very little basis in reality.
The facts are that overall the global elites take COVID seriously enough to take every measure that their wealth provides for to get infected with it as few times as possible. Not everybody -- plenty of deniers there too -- but overall that is the norm. Meanwhile you suckers were successfully tricked into thinking it is a scam and no big deal, which in the end will take at least a decade off your life span and transfer trillions into their pockets by eliminating spending on pensions and healthcare for old people (translated it in even simpler terms -- you idiots will be dying in your 60s, many even earlier, from all the accumulated damage from repeated COVID infections, and your lifetime savings will go toward paying for megayachts, huge mansions, expensive prostitutes, and endless lines of blow for billionaires instead of supporting you in your 70s). And that was only the second-order bonus they got from the whole story -- their main concern was not to create a temporary command economy and a welfare state for the duration of a proper public health response (which was impossible without such measures), because there was a big danger it would not have been only temporary once people got a taste of it.
Similarly, a lot of them take climate change and civilizational collapse very seriously, to the point of having long ago prepared their escape mansions and bunkers in New Zealand. Which they resorted to during COVID too -- large swarms of private planes headed towards the southern hemisphere in February 2020.
But they will not do anything to actually solve the problem, because that cannot be done without destroying their wealth and privileges, and those are more important to them than the future of the species and the planet. So again, the suckers like you were successfully tricked into thinking it is all a scam, in order to eliminate any potential real opposition
Remarkably fact-free bit of ad hominem, but a lovely rant nonetheless. Hope you found it cathartic.
I heartily second the comments of grr and Ted ... the trifecta of fact-free assertions.
Despite my better instincts not to wrestle with this pig, I will say a little and then no more. I have tried having objective, fact and science based discussions with climate idiots and covid idiots, but in the end a rational person can't win an argument with an idiot.
On Climate: climate is too complex and multi-factorial to be amenable to simplisitic analysis. Yes, of course man makes CO2 and CO2 affects the atmosphere and therefore the climate. But does anybody analyse what is the effect, numerically and qualitatively? CO2 is a minor factor in the overall climate, and MAN MADE CO2 is a small fraction of the CO2 generated in nature. So a small fraction of an already small fraction ... is that going to change overall climate much? There are many more scientific, mathematical arguments against climate alarmism, but we'll let you digest just this one first. Please do not reply with diversions, ad hominems, etc if you do not have an answer to this.
COVID: Suffice it to say that the evidence so far and all emerging evidence is that a) the unvaccinated had lower rates of covid infection and covid deaths; b) Post vax, the number of vaccine deaths and vaccine damage incidents is off the charts . Enough said.
>MAN MADE CO2 is a small fraction of the CO2 generated in nature
Humans have increased it by 50%.
Kill yourself.
Yeah and there's still literally 0‰ in the atmosphere. Look it up! While there's 21% oxygen, and the two interchange in a 1:1 relationship. But you wouldn't understand what implies would you...
The term sheeple was coined for good reason, we are easily herded. It's quite astounding to observe the levels of idiocy that surround us, those that simply parrot what the media hands them, there is no objective thought. Perhaps that is simply the cycle we are currently in.
As to "the Apocryphon of John c. AD 120–180, the demiurge arrogantly declares that he has made the world by himself". H. P. Blavatsky wrote that this Demiurge is not a single being but, rather, the collectivity of all the creative powers of the cosmos, which are guided by the abstract principle of Cosmic Ideation. "But that Demiurgos is no personal deity,—i.e., an imperfect extra-cosmic god,—but only the aggregate of the Dhyan-Chohans (aka Angels) and the other forces...As that process is not always perfect; and since, however many proofs it may exhibit of a guiding intelligence behind the veil, it still shows gaps and flaws, and even results very often in evident failures—therefore, neither the collective Host (Demiurgos), nor any of the working powers individually, are proper subjects for divine honours or worship." Seems there is a differing of opinion.
That may be Blavatsky's rationalisation of his worship of this demiurge. I don't agree with Blavatsky.
The new god is Gaia, and the new Other is you and me. The pagan religions of the ancients have returned
I have a wager going with myself, that by the time I die the Europeans will again be performing animal sacrifice in public religious rituals. Just like in the days of Caesar.
I have been following the climate debate for around 30 years now and quickly moved from someone who was originally alarmed to someone who is still alarmed, not about any marginal levels of temperature rise but around the political response to a minor issue (IMHO). But you cannot convince a true believer. They are simply totally convinced that the establishment position is correct on this topic and that any dissenters like me are tin foil hat conspiracy theorists.
I have come to the conclusion that 30 years of propaganda and brain washing, - starting in schools and relentlessly pursued through the media and supported by a politicised scientific establishment - have created a mass delusion that no amount of facts, logic or rational sceptcism can dent. It is the new religion with its notions of original sin, purgatory and redemption. It is part of a value system - not a scientific and economic debate framed by political choices. It is part and parcel of the west's general delusions in a post fact world.
I place less reliance on the power of the "global elites" to mastermind our futures than many who haunt these sites. Nevertheless the WEF strongly supports the Malthusian solutions proposed to this "climate crisis". These are anti-human and coercive, and will reduce human population, wealth, health and happiness - and generally support the power of the state over indiviuals and families.
As a long time "climate sceptic" I used to argue that the problems was wildy exagerrated and the proposed solutions counter-productive if not actually dangerous. I realise that this was a hopeless position. The belief system is too far ingrained. I don't bother now. The realists have lost.
In regard to political response, I don't see any serious political response to climate change in the US. The Republican party, which controls most of the country, is openly hostile to the idea. And Biden has signed more oil drilling permits in his first two years than Trump did. In the US, fossil fuels companies net billions in subsidies every year. According to the International Energy Agency, globally they pull in about $1 trillion in subsidies. And, of course, we keep burning more fossil fuels (2022 was a new record). So while some politicians pander to their base by talking about climate change, the establishment position in the US (if not globally) seems to align with your personal position: It's nothing to worry about, keep burning fossil fuels.
Of course, it's possible I'm missing something. What is the political response you are alarmed by?
Ok, I will assume you are not trolling me. This frequently happens in discussions on this topic. For political response maybe read policy response.
I live the other side of the pond and whilst the US Administration and various State Governments have come down hard on what they see as carbon pollution, you may well be correct in that you percieve little difference. Hre are a few things going on in the Uk and Europe at large:
1. Closing effcient reliable coal, gas and oil fired electricity generating capacity to move to expensive, unrelaible and non-eco wind and solar. (ie in Germany, that well known southern nation with a Mediterranean climate)
2. Net zero.
3. Closing nuclear power plants.
4. Buying in electricity from abroad generated by these "bad" methods
5. Mandating the end of efficient gasoline and diesel cars in favour of eco-disaterous and uninsurable and unsafe electric cars, with shorter range and a larger lifetime carbon footprint.
6. Carbon taxes on the consumer
7. carbon taxes on industry, forcing it to move abroad whewre it emits the same or worse - but not our problem
8. Closing farms down on a compulsary basis because cows and sheep fart, eat bugs instead
9. Scaring kids and the population in general with IMHO propaganda re climate catastrophe
10. being Ok with climate "reparations" and "climate" refugees.
Our great and good may have forgotten that (a) the ROW does not give that much credence to climate except for the grift they can extract from the woke west and (b) it doesn't matter what we do because the ROW will industrialise anyway and the use of fossil fuels is rising every year. You could tow the UK into the middle of the Atlantic and sink it, but it would make no difference to world temperatures in terms of carbon emissions.
The rational policy response is actually a heavy investment in nuclear power. We begin to see this coming to pass. but 20 years too late - I have been following the west's suicidal energy policy for a long time too.
The difference between our lives a peasant in the middle ages is the ability to harness machines. which run off something other than human or animal power (maybe water and wind too). Coal, oil and gas have driven human advancement for 100 years. It may well be rational to plan for another future,. To replace what amounts to civilisation with "hot air" is suicidal and policy responses based on religious dogma (promoted by a Swedish teenager) are unlikely to sustain our standard of living and well being.
And all this for a rise in temerature of 0.14C per dacde since 1979. That is a decadal shift equivalent to 6 feet in height. ie the temperature between your feet and your head. If the young folk want to get excited about that then let them. I am unimpressed with this. As you will have guessed.
And like the adherents to the climaste religion, I doubt my views can be changed!
1
And apologies once more for the typos but I am seeing a black background and white font here which makes it difficult for me to proof read.
No, I wasn't trolling. I seem to be one of the rare people that genuinely wants to hear opinions from average people who seem informed, but I don't necessarily agree with. And I never try to debate or change minds. That's just a fools errand. Often, like now, I discover we agree on a lot more than I had suspected.
For instance, I agree with you that electric cars are a marketing ploy. They are not "green." I also agree the hate for nuclear energy is ridiculous. Climate change aside, you don't want to raise your kids downwind from a coal burning power plant. And the carbon in cow farts is derived from the grass they eat. While they're clearing one pasture, another pasture is sinking carbon to grow more grass. So it's silly to compare them to fossil fuel burning.
I do think humans are negatively impacting the climate. We are not the first species to do so. But it looks like it'll be at least near the end of this century before large areas are underwater or not fit for normal human habitation. And, of course, there are already many extinctions happening. What I am skeptical about is whether anyone with any power will do anything about it before it's too late. Every time one scratches the surface of the new, big, highly-funded scheme to halt climate change, it turns out to be penny wise and pound foolish, yet another ineffectual money-making endeavor, or both.
Hi. The truth is we haven't had to use fossil fuel energy for some time. It is for the "currency." Tesla free energy is patented and blocked, but is just take electro-magnetic energy out of air like a crystal radio, or your TV.
Climate change, whether you believe in it, or not, is a self limiting symptom: the cause is burning fossil fuels, which are running out i.e. overshoot i.e. once fossil fuels are gone (a handful of decades at most) there will be the same number of humans as before the fossil age ~ under 1 billion: this background reality - the carrying capacity of humans on Earth - is the ultimate boundary within which billionaire elites play their games.
So taking your point, and with population at 9 billion and rising, how do you see some 8 billion people dissapperaring over the next few dacades? Incidentally, the argument you make is Malthusian in character and one I therefore would not necessarily accept.
Starvation and murder and not being born, the down curve of population dynamics related to resource depletion is always very steep. It took over 200,000 years of human prehistory and history for the global population to reach one billion and only 219 years more to reach 8 billion. Its doubled since 1960.
Please see my comment here for how and why with links and sources Biophysics is not "Malthusian" in the scare mongering insult fashion that's usually meant.
https://darkfutura.substack.com/p/climate-paranoia/comment/22255554
I prefer my future vison to yours.
I prefer biophysical reality - 8bn people are supported by fossil fuels not magic wands - no fossils fuels = 1bn people, unless you know how to break the laws of thermodynamics?
In general, the future does not defer to people's preferences. Or, do you think it does? should?
I was simply responding to the word that marcjf used in their comment: "I prefer my future vison to yours". As such it's a bit silly and absurd to twist the concept of "biophysical reality" as a personal preference - the laws of physics do "not defer to people's preferences" !
Unless you know how 8billion humans can live without fossil fuels, which according to Shell & BP etc.. will decline at 2% a year, which in 70 years will be 1/4 of oil supply in 2019.
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ftsa&q=Global+%27peak+oil%27+has+already+happened&ia=web
I think your estimated depletion date, and ensuing population decline, might be too aggressive, but your point is still worth noting. We don't even have to fully deplete fossil fuels anyway. We just have to deplete the cheap-ish to produce stuff, and much of what we currently use them for will become economically unviable.
To your point about the severe impacts this will have, how are we going to replace everything we do with petroleum? Even outside of fuel, petroleum products are ubiquitous in the modern world: Plastics, lubricants, food additives, cosmetics, medicines, etc. And there are not good replacements for many of the things we do with them. Are we really going to go back to lubricating our machines with lard? Lard doesn't work nearly as well, and there aren't enough pigs on Earth.
Thank you all for a useful and interesting exchange of different views, while remaining civil. More of this! Say I. :)
Global 'peak oil' has already happened. And as you say, "We don't even have to fully deplete fossil fuels anyway. We just have to deplete the cheap-ish to produce stuff" which is my point. For example, Shell say “oil production peaked in 2019,” and it expects its output to decline by 1 to 2 percent per year" which leaves only a quarter of it annual production by 2090 (i.e. in 70 years time) = 8 billion decline to 2 billion people if we accept the metric that population is supported by oil outputs.
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ftsa&q=Global+%27peak+oil%27+has+already+happened&ia=web
Hi. The truth is we haven't had to use fossil fuel energy for some time. It is for the "currency." Tesla free energy is patented and blocked, but is just take electro-magnetic energy out of air like a crystal radio, or your TV.
Assuming you are a serious commentor ... the first assumption, that climate change is caused by burning fossil fuels is scientifically, factually, incorrect.
Fossil fuel burning does have some impact on CO2 levels but its impact on climate is negligible when compared to all the other natural factors that also change the earth's climate.
Therefore all your conclusions are also false.
KenKam, you refer to "you" and that "all your conclusions are also false" ..? but to whom are you replying? Meanwhile, yes I am "a serious commentor [sp commentator] " Thanks Natasha
You are 100% right. But as you say and I agree, we cannot do anything about it, science and true realists have lost. We'll have to wait until this chimera of climate alarmism crashes against reality some day and people realise they have been fooled.
This article makes some clever points but is mainly shite - in sharp contrast to the coverage of the Ukraine conflict which Master Simplicius has a good handle on. Climate Change IS a reality. Here is a more cogent view.... https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/why-action-on-the-climate-crisis?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=476450&post_id=135949732&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email
You miss the point. Climate change, whether you believe in it, or not, is a self limiting symptom: the cause is burning fossil fuels, which are running out i.e. overshoot i.e. once fossil fuels are gone (a handful of decades at most) there will be the same number of humans as before the fossil age ~ under 1 billion: this background reality - the carrying capacity of humans on Earth - is the ultimate boundary within which billionaire elites play their games.
Further, you can't replace fossil fuels, and you can't build solar energy flow harvesting infrastructure without fossil fuels, no matter how hard you try to ignore externalities and pretend they are infinite on a finite 'pale blue dot'.
When you consider the difference in framing between "peak oil" and "climate change" you see that the first does not grant human ingenuity quite the same purported powers as the second. The first is a matter of geological and physical limitations (ugh!) whereas the second promises endless opportunities to tinker and solve (yay!) So long as humans are prone to hubris, we are going to prefer a framing that grants us a powerful role, even if that proves to be illusory.
Hi. Climate change is a government psyop to cover up the coming cataclysm. Prep up, son.
So it’s funny how these people on the left are worried about rising sea levels and heat waves. Yet they have no goddamn clue that the heat stroke that comes from cornering Russia and/or China really is going to burn us all good. It called nuclear war (Armageddon style). Shit gets real hot from what I hear.
“We have to stop the Russians because they won’t adhere to our Climate Change Model.” “ We have to stop them because they don’t like gay marriage or transgender rights.”
The sheer hypocrisy is staggering. I don’t mean from the higher ups. They know what they’re doing. I’m talking about the every day average Normie left of center. They don’t get it. In recent years I have followed some survivalist types. The events they anticipate are possible IMHO (not likely) but worrying about the water tables and heat increments GTFO?
Especially when the biggest purveyors of Climate Change can get loans and insurance on their primary residences on the coasts. No bank or insurance company is going to buy that paper if the actuarial data disagrees. It’s really that simple and no more complicated. Yet they persist in believing the bullshit.
In the end not sure what we do with those people. I suspect the most thuggish and poor alike could understand what I just mentioned if reasoned with enough. Not the managerial class tho. Those fuckers can’t pull it in. It’s like an imaginary anti logic bubble has been placed around them. The harder we smack them in the head the more impenetrable the bubble becomes.
When you finally come to terms with this it’s a black pill that’s hard to swallow. At this point the only way they will get it is when hell knocks on their door. Simplicius if you ever want to deep dive into how this occurred and/or how we can break the spell this would be a wonderful assignment. No worries I don’t mind if you don’t or cannot. It’s something I have struggled with for a while now. Now clue how these people got like this. Understand there’s no way this nonsense could carry on without their support and consent though.
Always love your work brother!
I've come to the conclusion that there is a mental difference in the ruling class and all their followers, toadies, and apparatchiks that run all our institutions. They've become beholden to theories, to ideologies, to models. This is the result of a left brain hemisphere dominance, over the right hemisphere.
The right hemisphere is oriented to reality, to the other, it is embodied, understands the implicit and unexplainable. The right brain understands the world as complex, flowing, changing, interconnected. The left hemisphere constructs re-presentations of the world. It understands the world in parts, disconnected from the whole., frozen in time. It abstracts. It makes models. And the ruling class loves its models, especially "mathematical models." They love their scary graphs.
The system we live in selects for people who think like this. It selects for compliance and consensus. For ideology. For believing the narrative, the latest dogma, The Science. What is important to understand about left hemisphere thinking, is that it is full of denial. This type of thinking will not, cannot, accept any deviation from its mental model, reality be damned. You cannot question the ideology. You cannot point out real world examples. The left brain does not live in the real world.
This is especially true for the so called global 'elite.' They are ideologically bound. Mentally imprisoned. And they are supported by millions of ideologically captured followers., who happen to run all of our institutions, professions, and cultural production. It got this way because the system selects for true believers, highly compliant people, who constantly pick up on the latest groupthink.
People with this mindset are incapable of solving problems. Solving problems means you must check your solution to see if it actually works, and if it doesn't, you must change what you are doing. Otherwise, how will the problem get solved? Have we ever seen the deluded clowns in charge changing their approach? Or is it doubling down, ad infinitum? Every bureaucratic organization operates as if it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies. Conquest was right. The Germans set about to reduce carbon emissions, and are now burning dirty coal, emitting more carbon than before. So, serious global climate problem or not, these deluded clowns aren't going to solve it. They will only make it worse.
Remember, this has all happened before. How do you want it to end?
I tend to think that yes climate changes naturally, but also yes modern life can influence climate - or better put the environment - we all should be better custodians of nature and minimise the ‘disposable’ feature of the products our society has come to rely on - we humans make a lot of waste and a lot of needless crap. However, I do believe the biggest weakness in these climate scaremongers campaign - a weakness so significant that I can’t rule out the ‘crazy’ and insidious ploys that you portray as deliberate - is the refusal to push nuclear energy. In fact ‘they’ refuse to entertain nuclear power as a solution - an energy source which is clean, cost effective and would improve the quality of life worldwide. Instead, it’s demonised it and portrayed as dangerous even though the stats say otherwise.
Uranium is running out. Fast-breeders could extend the time line but like all energy harvesting infrastructure can't be build with low energy density electricity: you need diesel to mine and refine and transport minerals to make nuclear reactors and electricity delivery infrastructure and all those end use machines too.
Fascinating how it all comes together with energy and the dollar and the empire versus the commodity producing counties. There is new technology that produces energy out of the electromagnetic vibrations in the air, like crystal radios. Everything will become diode based like LEDs and all those things that turn electro-magnetic energy to electricity.
Very interesting that wiki politicized as it is does not provide a German edition….
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Report_from_Iron_Mountain
Good article.
Am less convinced that this is all part of a well managed conspiracy. Yes. There are some truly bad actors. But in general this is various elites responding to incentives and creating an ideology that justifies what they want to do anyway: gain power and make money while feeling good about themselves. They are not organised enough though to drive a “conspiracy”, although it has the appearance of that. As western economies have become increasingly unequal and living standards for ordinary people have stagnated over the past fifty years so one could argue that some form of ideology or religion was likely to be naturally embraced by elites to justify this and keep the peasants in their place. Climate Change seems to be precisely that. In the past, it might have been Christianity with the promise of nirvana in the after life if you accept your hardship in life.
I see the whole Climate Change “thing” as modern day Malthus and I never fail to marvel at how easily influenced educated people seem to be by nonsense.
The hyping of weather reports is something I had noticed too. In the U.K. we have had quite a cool and wet summer this year. My basement “heat sanctuary” has not been needed once this year! Yet, there has been no reporting of this. Instead, we have been regaled with stories of “Europe” in sweltering heat. But when I was in both Austria and Hungary in July it seemed they were just having a normal continental summer. Period.
The link to geopolitics and maintaining western elite hegemony is very much part of this too, as you say. Fascinatingly, China plays along with electric vehicles, for example. But I suspect they are also being smart: China has no oil but can generate electricity. A lot of this suits her interests. Particularly given that (in common with Russia under Putin) she has now avoided the financialization of her economy and prevented western elite interests from taking ownership of key assets that they can extract economic rent from.
"...creating an ideology that justifies what they want to do anyway: gain power and make money while feeling good about themselves."
I feel like this quote accurately sums up the work of mainstream economics over the last 50 years.
There is a "well managed conspiracy."
Note that global warming caused by CO2 released by burning fossil fuels can be BOTH real* AND a racket. Just like SARS-2 was a real virus, it wasn't a pure fabrication of fantasy, yet it was co-opted and manipulated by the same people to serve their interests. When I was a kid I direclty saw how the corporatocracy co-opted recycling for their own profits. I lived on the west coast and saw the growth of a vast homeless services industrial complex that reaps in tens of billions each year and never shows any results. The same is true of the war on terror, the war on drugs, the military industrial complex, the surveillance state, the censorship industrial complex, etc., all they have to do is to frighten people about a problem and rake in the bucks. That problem can be real or invented. It can be exaggerated, twisted, distorted, blamed on the wrong sources, and more. The problem can also be created in order to justify paying for a solution (the classic definition of a racket), like an arsonist who sells fire insurance.
And...most importantly: That problem must never be solved! Because if it is solved, the racket disappear.
*Simple radiative energy balance models with known properties and abundances of CO2 that closely follow the burning of fossil fuels explains observed temperature changes to first-order. I've done the calculations myself, as part of my graduate studies in planetary science, it was an exercise in a core course on atmospheric physics. This is straightforward physics, and it works. From a deep time perspective, releasing oxidized carbon into the atmosphere in a couple centuries that required hundreds of millions of years to bury is expected to have some kind of effect. Does that mean that this is necessarily the only explanation? No (that would be affirming the consequent, a logical fallacy). However, it is a fairly obvious explanation. And it is a working hypothesis that has not been disproven thus far...and the way science works, that means it is still alive and well. Should we be looking for alternative explanations? Absolutely, we should.
Plus there is the long term, human prospects, whole system perspective point: 'climate change' whether you believe in it, or not, is a self limiting symptom: the purported cause is burning fossil fuels, which are running out i.e. overshoot i.e. once fossil fuels are gone (a handful of decades at most) there will be the same number of humans as before the fossil age ~ under 1 billion: this background reality - the carrying capacity of humans on Earth - is the ultimate boundary within which billionaire elites play their games. This is in addition to whatever degree of climate change catastrophism one wishes to indulge in.
Further, you can't replace fossil fuels, and you can't build solar energy flow harvesting infrastructure without fossil fuels, no matter how hard you try to ignore externalities and pretend they are infinite on a finite 'pale blue dot'.
Hi. You can replace fossil fuels. There is money in oil and utilities and electical lines, and not as much in Tesla free energy, which is real. We no longer need fossil fuels, we need the profits to both Russia and the US they bring.
Dream on Jim: I built a couple of so called "free energy" machines 25 years ago, Stanley Meyers patented HF water splitting cell and the SMOT, needless to say any proposal to break the 2nd law of thermodynamics will fail - but I learned about many of Tesla's inventions that still work e.g. AC electricity, and extended my electrical and mechanical engineer skills etc.
John: * The most sensible, balanced comment on the topic so far!
Great article, thank you.
Hopefully eventually more people will wake up to see trough agenda, some will never( like that dude in video))). It’s seems like some of positive developments happening lately in China for example:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/07/19/climate-change-heat-wave-china/
“Chinese leader Xi Jinping declared in remarks reported Wednesday that Beijing alone will decide how — and how quickly — it addresses climate change.”
“China would pursue its commitments “unswervingly,” but the pace of such efforts “should and must be” determined without outside interference, Xi said late Tuesday. Xi’s approach marked a break from the 2015 Paris climate accord, where a Chinese-U.S. agreement.”
“Xi was showing that “China will decide its own path in achieving carbon goals and will not be ordered about by others,” he said.”
There is very interesting article as well, if readers is interested, about eco terrorism- one of the scariest tool they are using to create more fear and distraction.
https://canadianpatriot.org/2023/06/16/the-roots-of-modern-eco-terrorism-revisited-in-context-of-the-canadian-wildfires-and-ohio-toxic-train-crash/