Opinion of climate

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Needless to say, I didn’t attend the great Climate March a couple of weeks back. It’s a firm principle of mine never to attend an event for which a police permit has been obtained.

There were other reasons too. Climate change is a fait accompli. Nobody is going to do anything about it; probably nobody can do anything about it, at this point. It would make more sense to ask ourselves how we’re going to live through it. Probably many or most of us won’t; I’m afraid it’ll make the fourteenth-century Black Death look like a three-day suspension from school. But it might be interesting, at least, to imagine what sort of social arrangements could minimize the carnage.

Certainly not the ones we have, which I daresay few of the marchers were very interested in disturbing to any noticeable degree. It was a march in favor of rational policy choices — rational, that is, on the assumption of a universal humanity as chooser and actor. We should do this, we should do that. Of course in fact it’s not we, but they, who are calling the shots.

28 thoughts on “Opinion of climate

  1. /¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
    Nuclear Haze — NuclearDarkness.org
    http://www.nucleardarkness.org/index2.php

    Nuclear Haze

    Nuclear war between India and Pakistan could put 5 million tons of smoke in the stratosphere and produce a global Nuclear Haze that would block 7-10% of warming sunlight from reaching the surface of Earth and cause the blue skies of Earth to appear grey.
    \____________________

    No more “blue skies” for us. No more “sunny days.” The sky would stay gray forever. (And the crops would, of course, wilt and die.)

  2. Whenever I worry about man-made climate change, I remember that the place I’ve spent the past twenty years hearing about it has been the corporate media. A steady drip feed of apocalyptic warnings has ensured me that a number of highly respectable organizations, including the United States Government, NATO, the UN, the American press, and the most prominent British and American scientists and universities, all want us to be aware of climate change, and all feel that expensive new laws and regulations are necessary to save us from the problem.

    What is it that makes this particular psy-op so appealing, even to people who should know better? I think–and so do the architects of this operation–that its effectiveness is grounded in the “social responsibility” angle. Because all we so-called progressives understand that something is wrong with our society, the idea of “man made climate change” which we have caused by our “consumerism” is the perfect pill for us to swallow, since it allows us to find conformity in critiquing “the mainstream.”

    Naturally, while warning us that life on the planet could be exterminated, these grand social engineers are not planning to build a network of magnetic solar trains; to gut the auto industry; to outlaw the use of jet fuel for “vacations,” or to strongly curtail commercial shipping.

    Google, Apple, Microsoft, General Electric, Home Depot, the White House, and MSNBC want you to be concerned about climate change. How in the world could you fall for it?

  3. recycling? getting your buildings LEED-certified? buying your hybrid cars and solar panels? etc., etc. I get these blank looks or worse when I suggest to folks this is Nero fiddling because efficiency gains are automatically translated into higher levels of consumption. because of the, uh, “system” or whatever, “growing the economy,” the actions of the end “consumer” mean almost nothing.

    the exploitation & destruction of global resources is accomplished thru the hyper-exploitation of the working class. well then, there seems to be an obvious starting point, if not a “solution”: stop working. a global sabbath or secessio plebis or whatever.

    try telling that to your typical American who is obsessed, i mean gnashing of teeth obsessed, with “doing something.” we’ve got to do something, anything! we must work HARDER to “solve” the catastrophes created by overwork!

    anyway, you get the point.

  4. I made a point of avoiding the Climate March as soon as I saw that it was going to be a big-assed stage-managed astroturf circus put on by that Bill McKibben clown and his Rockefeller-funded outfit 350.org.

    The real action was next day, with a healthy crowd, but still way smaller than the huge feel-good march that was hashtagged to death on Twitter.

    I also got some serious side-eye from all the climate-change activist types when I tweeted a link to a page revealing where McKibben and 350.org got much of their funding. Pure astroturf, man.

    • McKibben is definitely a disaster, as is the notion that yet another one-off weekend is going to alter things.

      Nonetheless, there’s a lot of nihilism here, in post and comments. If we have no imaginable options left, why bother?

      Personally, I think publicizing McKibben’s financial roots and overall fakeness is exactly the right thing to be doing. He is Booker T reborn. I wouldn’t let him in my front door.

        • He is a gesturer, IMHO. If we are to have any shot at decent survival, we have to attack things that matter and that underlie superficial events. If Keystone XL gets blocked, does anybody think the tar sands aren’t going somewhere else?

          I think McKibben’s corporate funding sources confine him to tilting at such windmills.

          If you want to see more of my view, here you go.

      • Another way of saying it: The Civil Rights Movement had CORE, SNCC, and SCLC, and was trained at the Highlander School.

        350.org is a mere PR operation with no real membership or organizing content, and is sponsored by the scions of JD Rockefeller.

  5. I went to the climate march and am glad I did, though, as a terrific southern Episcopal priest once said in a sermon about the specifics of the Nicene Creed: “don’t press me on the details.” Not sure what it “accomplished” or what the “goal” was, but I was happy to be there are to be “counted.”

    Truth be told, my heart was really with Monday’s “Flood Wall Street” crowd, though I don’t have the temperament or time to get my ass arrested. If anything, I found Flood disappointingly tame, but in the right spirit. I wish they had pushed harder, flooded more.

    I was impressed and moved by the age range of the climate march: grannies all the way down to little kiddies. I regret not having brought my 7 yr old, if for nothing else to get him warmed up to protesting and dissenting. I meant to take him to Occupy — would’ve done so today — but, alas, he was a wee bit young then.

    I can’t give a stirring defense of the climate march, nor of my attendance there. Again — “don’t press me on the details.” But I did find encouragement and inspiration on the sheer size of the event and in the varied crowd it drew.

  6. Well, well! It’s the 350.org gang of washed up, rag-tag radical revolutionaries! Just look at how poor and alienated they are:

    http://350.org/about/team/

    Actually, how the hell do I know if it’s globally warming out there? Some say this, others say that.

    When I was a little kid my teachers were worried sick about EROSION. All of the continents were washing away into the oceans, and we would soon be living in Water World! Those were the happy good old days.

    Actually, we are going to run out of water before anything else happens. This is already starting to happen slightly in California, I hear.

  7. The assumption that we can do anything about global warming is based upon the clearly erroneous idea that we’re “in control”.

    We’re no more in control of what we do than the sea stars that ate all the coral in certain spots in the south pacific and then died of starvation when it ran out. The coral recovered eventually but the population of the sea stars was vastly reduced. At some point in the future the cycle may repeat again.

    We’re nothing but clever apes that can make a few complex tools. We have no control over our breeding, feeding, habits, desires and behaviors. We’ll do what we do until we can’t anymore and then we’ll adapt or die.

    I tend to think we’ll adapt but extinction is a possibility.

  8. It was happening slightly in California 20 years ago, and also 40 years ago. If the elites want us dehydrated, we’ll dehydrate, and they won’t necessarily telegraph when and if they’re serious.

    P.S. Golf continues to rise in popularity. Sic.

  9. screw that hopeless climate noise that *nobody*, and I mean *nobody* is going to act upon. Ever. Conservation appears to be anti-biological. I’m nel mezzo del camin to say the least, and I’d rather want to know what’s a good Latin text for beginners? Serious. I’d bet you know the answer. Throw an old dog a bone.

  10. I’m all for nihilism… in moderation. Hehe.

    In keeping with this site’s sentiment regarding the topic: One in four Americans think the sun circles the earth and another one in four think that the former group is the sole cause of climate change. If humans are beyond any tipping point, it was a collaborative project brought on by a cleverly veiled power play called demo crassy.

    I vaguely recall being a dick to Michael Dawson in the past, for which I herewith *apologize. He is spot on as it relates to this issue. It’s a friggin’ trap insofar as the onus is on the I in us right up to the point where we no longer have a choice: the design of cities as it relates to mode of energy consumption and feasible mass transportation; keeping our money in bank accounts so that we can get paid; using mobile phones and internets to thrive, even as freelance professionals; the list continues.

    Having long since given up on my eco-focused rantings and accepting that I can only lead by the example of my consumer behavior, clean and healthy can only begin with me. I just don’t have the energy for the rest, though I understand quite well where chomskyzinn is coming from.

    *unless it was justified;-)

    • Man, this is exactly what I’ve been thinking about lately, the part about where does choice really end. Because as you’re saying, a lot of these modern ‘necessities’ are really the cords that keep us attached to a lot of the things we are vehemently against. Based on the way I hear people speak, we’re past that tipping point into a cold, techno future and that undefined ‘speed’ and ‘efficiency’ are the true measures of progress. Taylorism has won, and it’s avatar is the Windows start up chime. Time to see if there’s a back door out for those of us who care about things like doing what we want where we want when we want without having to ask permission, or type a code into a ‘smart’ device.

  11. Again, this obsession with “we need to change.” Yes, “we” “need” to “change,” but not in the way that the standard narrative goes.

    Climate change hits all the right American buttons: we’re narcissistic, arrogant, entitled, convinced that we are so mighty and powerful that we’ve severely wounded a billions-of-years-old planet because of our mighty one-hundred-year orgasm of industrialism, which that frail bitch Terra just couldn’t handle. Yeah, that’s right–we do her so hard compared to all those loser volcanoes and hurricanes. Better watch out for those vital, excessively potent hairless apes! We need learned scientists and enlightened government regulators to save us from a problem that we ourselves contribute to every day, and but for their education and intervention, we would perish. What a sordid mixture of non-specific guilt, self-flattery, and Police State Saves All.

    The exact people who created this narrative, and who bolster it every day, are of course acting like it’s a non-issue. They’re writing books on computers, printing them on printing presses, shipping them cross-country, using print media to sell them and the internet to conduct the transaction. They’re gobbling gas, funding highways, flying on jets, and buying lithium batteries for their new car and iPhones for their new brains. And then acting guilty about it. Are these the actions of people who are concerned about the destruction of their planet?

    Chicken little, second coming, same old story. And working on you savvy, media-analyzing progressives, somehow. Don’t let them make you lose hope. Basic Hope.

    • I once heard the late Stephen Jay Gould speak on a similar topic. This was some years ago, before global warming was really on anybody’s radar, and he was addressing the then-current worry about nuclear annihilation. He made a couple of very good points. One was against the idea that the nuclear holocaust, or NH, would ‘extinguish life on earth.’ Are you kidding, he said, more or less. Just another extinction event. From the point of view of ‘life on earth’, ho-hum. The other, and an implication of the former, was that we shouldn’t be concerning ourselves with the big picture; with life on earth or the fate of the planet. We’re just human and we should modestly confine ourselves to the human scale. We should worry about our children and grandchildren, and stop there. I found it very bracing.

      • Gould is himself an evil bastard, arguing that life is futile and meaningless. As far as he compares to High Arka, he’s a straw man, because this one isn’t saying that we “shouldn’t be concerned about the environment,” but rather, the particular environmental narrative espoused by the elites is 100% broken.

        Example: copper mines worldwide dump unfathomable quantities of bromide into vital groundwater sources, poisoning billions of children (yes, with a “b”) in mostly small, sometimes horrific ways. The London Metal Exchange and the Fed ensure that no one gives a shit, but Arianna Huffington wants us all to march for “climate change.” We’re all eating American-built Fukushima cakes right now, and we will be for the next ten thousand years, but we’re signing online petitions about car efficiency standards instead of indicting the past five Presidents for crimes against humanity for failing to properly supervise the Nuclear Regulatory Agency.

        The largest sources of environmental destruction have nothing to do with carbon emissions, but that’s where all our focus is: a clear indicator that we’re being played like a violin. And like all of these games, the thing that they focus on–Afghanistan, Iraq, generalized warming–may indeed be a problem caused by an asshole(s), but it has little to nothing to do with their fearmongering or our focus, and, once addressed, will only end up strengthening state power and making them another trillion dollars.

  12. OT i know, and no i’m not gonna link to it, but Saint Jimmy Carter is now calling for boots on the ground vs. Almighty ISIS. “it’s the only way we can defeat the fundies zbig & I started recruiting back in ’79.” My brother went down to Americus, GA to work with him at Habitat for H. one spring break. When he came back glowing with the peanut oil, I asked him how many houses does J.C. have to build or mildly-contrarian books to write to atone for his many sins? He was shocked at my utterly cynical implication that Carter’s private morality Doesn’t Mean Shit.

    • He’s senile, I guess. A few years back he was clear-sighted enough to write a book about Israel which actually used the A-word. Now of course he’s landed a brisk left hook right on the Tar Baby’s jaw.

    • Only ZEUS (Zionist EU and US) is powerful enough to destroy ISIS (Israeli Sectarian Instigation Service). This is a battle of the titans.

      ISIS has been doing a wonderful job killing nobody but Muslims and Christians in countries on ZEUS’s hit list. They haven’t managed so much as a fart in Israel’s general direction or a Parthian shot across the Rio Grande at the Great Satan, a fact which tells you all you need to know.

      Unfortunately. Big Daddy Al Baghdadi hasn’t succeeded in whacking Assad as his contract demands, so remedial, humanitarian bombing a la Libya is clearly needed. Bigger boobs on the ground than ISIS has may be necessary as well.

  13. I think the commitment–however vain–to climate change has some useful side effects. Flying to Barcelona every spring gets harder to rationalize. No one’s stopping doing it; but the shame is apparent. And this goes for a lot of liberal goodies, too–high tech gadgets and Cloud servers, for one.

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