By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
War News from Syraqistan
It’s disinformation to present the latest war on evil-doers as an “air war”; plenty of mercs contractors can join in the fun [Salon]. So we can put boots on the ground — for a price normal citizens aren’t willing to pay any more [Stars and Stripes]. Merc stories always end well [Newsweek]. The Syraqistan war “could last years,” too [USA Today].
Meanwhile, some of the Syrian “rebels” are ticked that we bombed ISIS and whoever, but not Assad [McClatchy]. I guess they must not be “vetted” Syrian “moderates.” It’s the only explanation!
Best. Headline. Ever. And not ironic, literal: “Calm Settles On Washington As U.S. Bombs Syria” [HuffPo].Yes, the political class finally has the war it wanted. Everything’s going to be OK! In shocker, the Congressional Black Caucus and the “Progessive” Caucus rolled over like puppies hoping to get their bellies scratched [Black Agenda Report]. And when you think about it, it’s sort of amazing that apparently nobody in “The People’s March on Climate” made the connection between the oil we burn and the oil states we seize. Odd.
Finally, on “harm to the homeland”: I am TV-free — I don’t own one, or watch it — so I’m always stunned and amazed when, in an airport, say, I hear the demented jabbering and watch the body language of the talking heads. Why are they smiling? Anyhow, if Patient Zero for the “harm to the homeland” talking point was on TV, I wouldn’t have noticed. I did a quick Google search and Yves’s link this morning is a top hit, so it can’t have gone viral, yet. (The natsec community seems to be the reservoir of infection. It would be.)
Readers, have you encountered the phrase “harm to the homeland” recently? Heck, have you ever heard a normal person use “homeland” at all? In real life, not the TV?
The Economy
Note: When you hear “the economy,” always ask “whose economy?”
David Dayen remembers a time when the path to corporate riches was selling a non-crapified product, not tax dodges [Salon]. Sounds like the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, to me.
Over the last 10 years, the slump in male labor force participation was the steepest for those aged 25 to 34 [Bloomberg]. Bloomberg’s headline calls them “missing men.” Of course, it’s all statistics and indices; nobody thinks to actually go look for them, assuming that in fact they want to be found.
Contracts for newly built Manhattan apartments priced at $10 million or more declined 18 percent year-on-year. Available units jumped 74 percent. For listings of at least $10 million in new developments, the median asking price climbed 3 percent from a year earlier to $16.5 million [Bloomberg]. Weird. Aren’t they making more squillionaires?
“Learn more about the billionaires who influence politics worldwide” [the liberal Brookings Instituttion]. Have you ever noticed how “learn more” always links to marketing or propaganda? Sad. I suppose that’s what our elites think learning is.
Disclaimer: I’m a Maine bear. When people say “Are you in a depression?” we answer “We’re always depressed!”
Climate
UN summit on climate change concludes. Both US and China promise to reveal their post-2020 emission plans next year [Weather Underground].
At the summit, “leaders clearly demonstrated their understanding that the impacts of climate change are real and costly, and that they no longer have to choose between economic growth and climate action” [World Resources Institute]. ‘Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished, although perhaps the banksters have given them permission to think, now [Forbes]. Here is a list of announcements [The Carbon Brief].
Richard Heinberg of the Post-Carbon Institute goes after Krugman [Resilience.org].
2014 Arctic sea ice minimum sixth-lowest on record. But Antarctic sea ice is at a record high [EarthSky].
Stats Watch
Rapture Index remains unchanged within 2 points of record high [Rapture Ready].
New home sales for July: 412,000 annual sales rate lower than expected. Sales are up 8.1% in the South, “by far the largest region for new home sales, outdistancing all other regions combined” (why?) [Bloomberg]. Total sales: With mortgage purchase applications down 10% from last year, and the percentage of cash buyers down as well, it’s hard to see how total sales could have been anything but lower [Mosler].
Scotland
Ripple effects continue. A thumbsucker from [The Diplomat]:
For Scottish people, patriotism doesn’t mean loving the ruling party, the government, or the [surely “a”?] leader. What’s more, patriotism doesn’t mean valuing territorial unity. Instead, patriotism means loving the soil beneath your feet and those who live upon it, yourself most of all. Although the earlier Crimea referendum was more complicated, the Crimean people voted to leave Ukraine and join Russia for similar reasons. Their decision cannot be separated from the fact that Crimeans believed they personally would be much better off with Russia.
The world’s major countries, including America, China, and some large states in Europe and Asia, all have their own versions of the “Scotland problem.” Ethnic minorities or remote and underdeveloped regions have rich natural resources but they export these resources [those resources are extracted by the metropolis; fixed it for ya], playing a supporting role to the unified state according to the tradition of patriotism. If there is some resentment over this, the government can suppress it through charges of opposing the government or advancing separatism.
Sure, sure, the soil, but how about the mycelial mat?
Many Scots think that “life would be easier without the entanglements that seem to them just the afterlife of an empire that has really ceased to exist” [HBR]. And now the Tories are going for English home rule [Telegraph].
A previous attempt at Federalism in the United Kingdom, when King James tried to replace Scotland’s prayer book [Atlantic].
Catalonia to call self-rule vote — a non-binding referendum — ‘this week’ [The Local].
Chinese give Uighur economics professor Ilham Tohti a life sentence for separatism [Reuters].
And ahem.
News of the Wired
- Classic: Managers find it distasteful to talk to technologists. Hence, healthcare.gov [Clay Shirkey].
- The Gartner 2014 Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle [Forbes]. Handy chart!
- King James Programming [Another Word For It].
- Oral history interview with James Krenov, revered cabinetmaker, craftsman, teacher, and “stubborn, old enthusiast” [Archives of American Art].
- Cyprus could provide Europe gas by 2022 [World Bulletin]. Hmm. Makes me wonder if the EU-engineered Cyprus “bailout” was the start in an “assets-for-pledging” long con (see this brilliant post from Golem XIV at point 4).
- War: Origins and Effects [Ingo Piepers].
Readers, feel free to contact me with (a) links, and even better (b) sources I should curate regularly, and (c) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi are deemed to be honorary plants! See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. And here’s today’s plant (diptherio):
If you enjoyed Water Cooler, please consider tipping and click the hat:
Talk amongst yourselves!
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“Over the last 10 years, the slump in male labor force participation was the steepest for those aged 25 to 34 [Bloomberg]. Bloomberg’s headline calls them ‘missing men.’ ”
Amity Schles “unavailable” for comment.
They probably don’t want to be found, having joined the underground economy. Get found, have to pay taxes.
Are there any recent figures on the “shadow economy?”
Note, in case this does appear: my posts haven’t been appearing right away, if ever. And my login doesn’t hold.
My posts almost never appear right away. However, if I wait a minute and refresh the page they appear.
“And now the Tories are going for English home rule”: about bloody time. England is the biggest country in Europe without a parliament of its own.
Fine, but where does the devolution end?
[1] Hey, that little piece from HBV about the implications of the Scottish referendum was actually insightful, especially in its pointing to the parallels with the disruption that tore apart the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the decades before WWI.
Thanks for putting the link up.
[2] As for dearieme’s comment about the Tories promoting an English parliament, true words were never spoken than Nye Bevan’s.
‘That is why no amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party that inflicted those bitter experiences on me. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin. They condemned millions of first-class people to semi-starvation.
‘Now the Tories are pouring out money in propaganda of all sorts … to eradicate from our minds all memory of what we went through. But, I warn you … they have not changed, or if they have they are slightly worse than they were.’
If you literally interpret ‘self-determination’ you resolve as the Onion did for the Mid-East,
http://www.theonion.com/articles/everyone-in-middle-east-given-own-country-in-31700,36484/
As any database programmer knows, selves to persons is an m:n relationship.
Why should it?
I’m English, and a f*ckin English parliament is the last thing I want. Permanent tory rule.
You can’t “vote” to leave the UK, Britain, or the crown. All the countries that have done that are still ruled, at the end of the day, by the crown. Canada, Australia…etc. The queen let them have leave, at her pleasure.
You can’t ask for independence. You have to take it.
RE: “You can’t ask for independence. You have to take it.”
True, but before taking it, a nation can present its demand in the form of a polite request by which the recipient understands that the request covers what is ultimately not negotiable.
But “at her pleasure” is a piece of pure formality–in fact, she’s required to be ” pleased to grant leave to …” etc. whether she happens to like it or not. It’s a very long time since an English king or queen has sent someone to the block in the demonstration of political authority.
As a practical matter, the Queen (or the King, as the case may be) knows that she (or he) cannot really overrule what the Canadian or Australian or other autonomous commonwealth nation’s elected parliaments and prime ministers see fit to do. If “push” came to “shove”—which it should not!—these nations would take whatever steps necessary to make it clear that they weren’t, after all, still under the actual direct rule of the person of the king or queen.
The Queen’s speech to parliament is written, is prepared, for her by the ruling elected government, rather than the queen or any of her assistants. It’s a piece of purely formal regal pageantry.
Ebola and medical waste management in the US…. TL/DR, US hospitals are unable dispose waste from Ebola patients through normal waste disposal (CDC waste guidelines do not conform with DOT waste transportation requirements) and US hospitals have no onsite procedures or capabilities to deal with the waste volumes.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/09/24/us-health-ebola-usa-hospitals-insight-idUSKCN0HJ0AD20140924
That link from The Carbon Brief is confusing percentage of electricity from renewables with percentage of energy from renewables. Big and well-known difference there, and not one I’d expect supposed experts like them to get wrong. Very lame.
“confusing percentage of electricity from renewables with percentage of energy from renewables” I don’t understand. Is this a typo?
I don’t know what YesMaybe means and I hope YesMaybe tells us what YesMaybe means. But I can think of something that YesMaybe could possibly mean, in theory. And that is that we do get some energy from renewables in an other-than-electricity form. For example, every well-designed sun-tempered passive-house is harvesting some sunlight coming in the windows and turning it directly into heat-energy inside the house. Any building with proper skylights is letting some solar visible light into the interior space, thereby obviating the need to burn “just that much” carbon to make “just that much” electrocurrent to run lights during the daytime.
Steve Baer, a grand old man of sustainable energy design, wrote an article about why so many people find this so hard to think of.
http://www.uky.edu/~tmute2/GEI-Web/GEI-readings/Baer-The%20Clothesline%20Paradox.pdf
Well, electricity is just one part of the energy use, there’s also combustion of fossil fuel in cars and machinery, burning gas for heating and others. Suppose electricity were 60% of the energy used, and 40% of your electricity comes form renewables, that’s 24% of your total energy usage.
Climate:
Attention everyone, we have a collective action problem. Its time to go to work. (From the World Resources Institute link “It is clear that climate is back on the global agenda.”) Realistically this is not about people acting, it is about states acting. ( Caveat: individual people do effect states with powerful individuals having more effect.)
How do we prevent states from cheating and solve for the win-win equilibrium?
Maybe we should ask Ingo Piepers who posted on arVix and linked on todays cooler, War: Origins and Effects http://www.wri.org/blog/2014/09/analyzing-outcomes-un-climate-summit and ask him how, “Europe transformed from an anarchistic system to cooperative security community.” Maybe there is a homology we can exploit from understanding war. (Although for the life of me I cannot imagine the connections he was tracking for 450 years that comprised his database.)
Calling all mercenaries!! Come get some Ben Franklins.
The Stars and Stripes article reminds us of that other endless imperial adventure:
“Contractors are carrying a greater share of the load in Afghanistan these days as well. The U.S. plans to reduce the number of troops deployed there to fewer than 10,000 by year’s end but, according to a Congressional Research Service report, the number of contractors in Afghanistan ballooned to 108,000 last March at a time when 65,700 U.S. troops were there. Johnson said vast numbers of contractors would likely remain in Afghanistan as troop levels declined. The contractors provide services that local nationals wouldn’t be able to sustain in an impoverished, illiterate country, he said.”
Note to U.S.: Next time we invade a country, check the literacy rates first. No wonder the country is impoverished, the GDP multiples of money we’re plowing into that country is just getting spent on people who don’t live there!
This was a conscious trend strated in the 1980s and the cause of most of the rampant corruption now in the USG. This is a kind of unconscious desire on the part of the elites to avoid, at all costs, any kind of democratic brake on various private companies in pursuing their own interests. Already there are giants competing in the “defense” contracting field–my guess is it won’t be long until the field is dominated by a few big players–it already is to some extent. These companies will be able to house their own little covert armies and threaten all who oppose it a little more strenuously than we see at present. This is yet another indications of the upcoming regime of neo-feudalism. Get used to it there are no counter-movements.
Banger, you’re right. The military gets double benefits from paying contractors fortunes, they shed liability for actions and liabilities for benefits.
I hope to have a family and raise my children to be disposable contractors for the The Grand Homeland Expedition of The United States war on the newly islandified climate change Spain which is a hive of badfellows and dark weather.
When your children are 10yrs old please connect use and we’ll swing with cash and pick them up.
Thanks
http://www.carlyle.com/
Color me confused. You said:
“New home sales for July: 412,000 annual sales rate lower than expected.”
Wall Street headline:
“Bull Storm Wall Street As Traders Cheer Housing Data”
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/stocks-drift-divergent-economic-fates-084348573.html
Oh well….
When it comes to economic data, no one is exempt from being confused…except the experts on TV, I guess.
The thing to remember with the traders is that up is down. They’re the first people to cheer if a company has massive layoffs. Why? Labor cuts. They cheer when the Fed says the economy is still shaky. Why? Rates for borrowing remain low. I have little to no doubt there is an equally stupid reason to cheer about the fact that our housing market is beginning to look like a huge roller coaster ride with homebuyers unable to pull down the safety bars.
This is true. Traders think (with justification) that when the data suggest that the Fed’s wealth-effect policies aren’t working, that the Fed’s response will be MORE wealth effect policies.
Don’t try to reason through it. This is the Fed’s model.
We aren’t making trading recommendations here…..
“homeland” has always reminded me of “fatherland”, ala nazis
I honestly think that was the intention–the idea is to play on nativism–“home” is better than “father” in this day and age–same impulse, same plan. The DHS, btw, is well known in Washington, as being full of pork, waste and fraud mainly because the pieces had a hard time fitting together when they created it and that offered plenty of opportunity for contractors to play the usual games.
Yeah, it sucks. It isn’t even an Americanism, right?
Americans have never talked about “homeland”, anymore than Brits have.
It’s completely alien to American culture, an attempt to introduce the Teutonic concept of “heimat,” made so (in)famous by the Nazis. I suspect that the great fondness of many in our “intelligence community” for all things fascist (er, stoutly anti-communist), dating back to the cold war, lies behind this attempt to shove an uncomfortable new word down our throats.
Yes. I remember distinctly this word being shoehorned into usage by Bush right after 9/11. Ever since it makes me gag every time I hear it. It’s always used by government officials and MSM sock puppets. Never have I heard a fellow citizen use it in face to face conversation. I’m pretty sure there was, or still is, a television drama using it as its title.
i wonder what the “rupture index” is at ’cause it sure seems like something’s gotta give.
Even as the bipartisan accolades roll in, it’s not entirely clear if Obama finds it all that comfortable. During a Tuesday afternoon event, a reporter asked the him if he feels at ease being seen as a war president.
“POTUS responded with a smile and a ‘Thank you,’” reads a White House pool report.
••
“As these vessels get bigger and bigger, the career possibilities for Plymouth students multiply as there is a worldwide shortage of crew for both commercial cargo ships as well as superyachts. In fact last year a brand new graduate, with professional Merchant Navy qualifications gained as part of his course, went straight into a Navigating Officer’s job on an 88m superyacht.”
http://www.falmouthpacket.co.uk/news/2045047.students_learn_about_superyachts_at_pendennis/
••
from the index: “38 Wild Weather: The US sets a record for the longest span without seeing landfall of a major hurricane. ”
from the index: “45 Floods: Massive flooding in Great Britian has upgraded this category.
from me: “156 Weird Gulf Stream: Yikes.”
••
eek, time’s up! “Scotland was first decisively settled after the end of the last glacial period (in the paleolithic), roughly 10,000 years ago. ” from qwiki.
Re your query about why home sales are rising in the South: This was precisely where most hedge funds were buying foreclosed properties for ALL CASH. First, they rented them out, and now they’re selling out to close out the funds at a capital gain. Charlotte N.C. was one such city where this has been happening.
In our area, Lake Norman, there are a lot of people moving in, many tell me they are escaping the cold weather and lack of opportunity in the North–so it isn’t just speculation. Having said that the Big Banks are a source of a lot of spending locally now that they are in the catbird seat in our society.
Ditto. And the banksters are the only ones “creating” “jobs” since “our” “economy” doesn’t make or do anything of real value. BofA runs this place and it use to be a decent place to live.
And, thanks to Cuomo and the HVCC, the banks control the appraisers, and they will get whatever value is needed to keep their jobs with the banksters. Control fraud
Should be interesting to see how they feel about opportunity in a few months when they learn that there is a financial trade off and the reason there is opportunity is low wages.
Ha! I thought it might be PE/hedgies! I guess the warm weather in the south leads to all kinds of infestations….
Thank you, that’s horrible. Imagine all the lives disrupted for this nonsense.
Ebola and medical waste ..
Throw it in cement kilns, these monsters have flame temperatures of 3,500F and would decompose contaminated waste to elemental species, typically >12ft diameter and +300ft long, >4,000 MT/day rates..done, done and done.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cement_kiln
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_and_cities_in_Africa_that_manufacture_cement
“List of companies and cities in Africa that manufacture cement”
I love that this is an actual Wikipedia page.
Based on my read of an article I posted above, the issue is the *transporting of waste* from the hospital to a disposal facility such as a kiln, not that adequate disposal facilities do not exist.
Probably the lowly paid garbage dudes are thinking to themselves “DOT says we can’t haul ebola waste, and hells to the no, we aren’t going to until the waste is free of ebola kooties. They ain’t paying us enough to deal with that. See DOT regulation X, Y, and Z and you can’t make me.”
Emory hospital, where Dr. Brantley and Nancy Writebol were treated, got around this problem by bringing in a large autoclave. They heated the waste for period of time. Only then would their disposal company actually pick up the waste for transport to the disposal facility. At this point, the garbage was probably 100% free of ebola while still contaminated with “normal” medical waste.
This was proposed as a way to dispose of old tires (HUGE disposal problem): use them as fuel in the kilns. The idea was that the lime would soak up most of the toxics, besides simply burning them up. Don’t know why it wasn’t carried out.
The big problem is getting the waste there: “not on MY street!” Or mine, I’d say.
Oregon,
The strategy was that scrap tires were to be a supplemental fuel to displace NG and/or pulverized coal. . What fundamentally caused it to be economically unviable was the zinc oxide content in the rubber used as a filler/ reinforcement amendment (in addition to the carbon black) ended up degrading the mechanical properties of the cement, if on the energy balance, more than 15% scrap tire was used to fuel the process. It needed to be a higher % displacement of the conventional fuel to make the effort commercially viable.
Yes the post consumer scrap tire recycling remains a problem.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/elidoturco/sets/72157605500459873/
wow
Yikes!!!
In a breakthrough that is bound to catch the attention of the oil industry and even electric car makers, a company has just gained approval for its ‘salt water’ powered car in Europe.
The e-Sportlimousine, built by the German company Quant, runs on an electrolyte flow cell power system made by NanoFlowcell that generates a staggering 920 horsepower, goes 0-62 mph in 2.8 seconds, and propels the car to a top speed of 217.5 mph!
What is an electrolyte flow cell you ask? According to Green Car Congress, “Flow cells or flow batteries combine aspects of an electrochemical battery cell with those of a fuel cell. The electrolytic fluids in flow cells—usually metallic salts in aqueous solution(salt water)—are pumped from tanks through the cell. This forms a kind of battery cell with a cross-flow of electrolyte liquid.”
http://earthweareone.com/salt-water-flow-cell-car-gets-the-go-ahead-in-europe/
Yeah, that’s pretty cool, the germans need to work on the name a bit
.http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-07/21/quant-nanoflowcell
At least 3 Green Man images.
Most of those were made by juxtaposing an image with its reverse; hence the perfect symmetry. Not all, though.
Senecidal maniac Ezekiel Emanuel tells you exactly when you’re going out on the ice floe.
http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/09/why-i-hope-to-die-at-75/379329/
That’s exactly how I read it. What are the odds that as the, er, date approaches, we’ll hear a recantation from Zeke?
You first, Zeke! You first!
I often think it would be preferable to die before then too, given the state of the world. But I might change my mind if the planet’s still livable then. I find it hard to believe there will be any ice floes left ….
How old is Rahm?
i bet it was a soy latte.
ISIS are reportedly a kilometer outside the Syrian Kurdish city of Kobane, and may be about to commit what might be the worst genocide since 1994.
This is a fairly reliable, Kurdish source….https://twitter.com/SlemaniTimes/status/514806586921865216
A story you may have missed about Syriaraqistan…https://twitter.com/SlemaniTimes/status/514806586921865216
ISIS about to carry out genocidal massacres. Not sarcasm. Not smark. Not in the MSM. No response from the R2P state department messianics.
Oh, do be fair. One-handed typing is slower.
If there’s any hot Scottish babes out there feeling like they want to secede they can come live in Magonia, if they can make sandwiches with the football games on. Magonia overlaps the Highlands at about 3000 feet. I believe that’s where Reverend Kirk was last seen (not Captain Kirk, although Captian Kirk might have been a reincarnation of Reverend Kirk in a later life. it’s funny how future and past exist simultaneously if you can see clearly enough).
Here’s a little note on the Good Reverend: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kirk_(folklorist)
That’s where everybody will end up after the Rapture — Magonia. We’ll keep the lights on for you. hahahaha
Please send a bikini pic to:
Profeser D. Tremens, NFL, GED
Magonia
it’s very hard to get rich quick in silver when it goes down. that’s what I’ve learned from reading years of doom & gloom macroeconomic articles on the internet. That alone, plus some familiarity with multiple regression and principal components analysis should be enough for a GED degree in futility. Thank goodness it’s football season, as an escape.
Dr. Tremens;
I was under the impression that Magonia was a Department of France. Dr. Vallee was the Prefect in the ’70s I believe. Anyway, the Scots have always been welcomed in France. Napoleon had several Scots generals in his army.
Getting rich quickly in silver is almost as easy as getting rich overnight in gold. (Although gold did form the dreaded “Death Cross” several days ago. Keep watching the skies!)
I luv, sorry, I heart today’s tree.
It could be 500 years old or 10 years old. You can’t tell.
I know a lot of people would be jealous to be that mysterious (but not to the NSA – they KNOW your age).
loved it too. I love the old arms reaching out at the bottom of the trunk. curious what the detritus is covering the ground, though.
It’s scree (rubble off a mountainside.) I wonder where they have that much purple scree?
Today’s the day everyone leaves Facebook
http://www.dailydot.com/technology/ello-facebook-real-names-policy/
Also the day when people remind Ello, “you know That Site? don’t be That Site”.
It seems like the best solution would be torrent-like hosting of people’s individual profiles and pages (i.e. you upload to one person; then both of you upload to two other people; then all four of you upload to four more people, etc). No central servers, much much lower costs. Some stability and accessibility issues I’m sure, and it probably only seems easy to me because I Am Not A Web Developer. Maybe Diaspora was going for something like that, but their ‘pod’ system was nonsensical.
Regarding the mercenaries (excuse me, security contractors): I’m confused. Are they American nationals, or Afghani freedom fighters on H1Bs? If they are American, isn’t it just a way to get our disadvantaged youth to fight battles for us while avoiding the reciprocal obligations usually assumed by the state in the case of armed forces deployments?
From the Stars and Stripes article:
Using contractors, who, most studies show, are cheaper than soldiers, trims the official presence and still accomplishes the logistical and security objectives, he said.
Have we carefully considered the implications of extending free market neoliberal thinking to security operations and warfare? (It’s not looting, it’s maximization of utility!)
I suppose they save on health care? One wonders how strong their affiliations are, though.
http://usna.edu/Users/history/abels/hh381/mercenaries.htm
Considered implications are not, repeat NOT a part of free markets at any extension. The efficient market theory renders all thought to be mere noise. If you must stand around like Socrates in the Agora, at least profit by contacting your Senator or Representative and find out how you can bill to save the homeland.
So over in the Links page… everyone is clear-eyed about the shortcomings of modern science as an institution. But we still have total faith in climate scientists.
Problem I have is, why is the major media so on-board with global warming (now climate change)? “Yep, it’s a done deal little people.. the science is in!.. Get used to it, we’re changing things around here.”
Thankfully the Republicans are not bought in yet. At least not “the base,” I’m sure their “leaders” will do whatever their money masters tell them to.
But yeah, we know who the media is… they’re bought and paid shills. And if they’re for it, I’m agin’ it. Seriously.
I remember back when I had a TV, and NBC was doing things like a “green week”, and putting global warming branding all over their station. I can’t even remember, I just know it was BS propaganda. Currently I listen to NPR some, and they are big on Climate change, i.e. they got no questions for nobody. Other than, “oh dear, this gentleman isn’t on board with the program.. obviously (we will imply by our tone) an undeducated [un-brainwashed] primitive of some sort.. a backwoods hick, who unfortunately occupies a position of power.”
I can just FEEL the creepy manipulation dripping off this issue. No, it doesn’t impress me that *(&#@ing “scientists” tell me it’s a big deal okay? I know how this country works, and every @#$ing institution is politicized. POWER and MONEY rule the roost, science be damned. And don’t think the Oil companies are the top of that heap. Hell, even they have tried for a long time to get on the AGW bandwagon. And the top execs will be just FINE, okay? They don’t care if BP, Shell, Exxon, bite the dust… they will just jump ship to some other cozy roost up there in the stratosphere (now free of greenhouse gas I guess) and still be part of The Club. You and I will not be okay though. We are not in The Club. So, we will get the @#$& end of Carbon reduction schemes. Because this @#$ will not be rolled out in a pretty, sensible way. (see: Obamacare, e.g.) No, this is just an excuse to have massive centralization, ruled over by the same creepy eugenicist &#$%suckers who have been running us collectively off a cliff for the past 100+ years. Running wars for profit, treating the pop. as farm animals and cannon fodder. YOU will not be a prime concern in the post-carbon economy. Even more so than now, my friends.
Let me just clue you the #@4 in, if you don’t know who Carroll Quigley is (an establishment academic cited by Bill Clinton as his mentor), or have familiarity with his book Tragedy and Hope… (Plates of which were destroyed after the original printing, and books attempted to be destroyed.) And if you do not know who Cecil Rhodes is, beyond just his diamond magnate status, I mean his involvement in fostering a continued hidden British Empire, via the CFR and other groups… Basically, if your knowledge is confined to schooling or to major media and mainstream publishing… That is, if you have not looked into suppressed history, you are completely deluded about the real facts of our situation. We are not living in the world described by major media. And that includes AGW, which is a key part of their propaganda attack, whereby they normalize something that is completely unreal, and induct people into a mass cult of sorts, in order to further their giant scheme to centralize the entire planet into a matrix ruled over by their blessed DNA. And you will be kept or discarded at will.
It’s in the news now because the solution supports oligarchs’ interests. Same as any other topic that’s in the news. Duh.
Now tell me why you’re spending so much time trying to exempt yourself from responsibility, why it matters *who’s* causing the phenomenon, if the mitigation procedures for either case involve abandoning the resource exploitation that drives economic growth.
Dude. Are you Neo? Did you take the red pill?
Tim,
Climate change and global warming are two different things, get you argument premise right and come back.
I do agree the hyperbolic claim ” the profession of science broken” while simultaneously cherry picking disciplines of science that aren’t is inconsistent. But this inconsistency requires whomever “feels” science is broken is also is onboard w/ the science of climate change.
http://skepticalscience.com/climate-change-global-warming.htm
So to sum up, although the terms are used interchangeably because they are causally related, ‘global warming’ and ‘climate change’ refer to different physical phenomena. The term ‘climate change’ has been used frequently in the scientific literature for many decades, and the usage of both terms has increased over the past 40 years. Moreover, since the planet continues to warm, there is no reason to change the terminology. Perhaps the only individual to advocate the change was Frank Luntz, a Republican political strategist and global warming skeptic, who used focus group results to determine that the term ‘climate change’ is less frightening to the general public than ‘global warming’. There is simply no factual basis whatsoever to the myth “they changed the name from global warming to climate change”.
People have occasionally been able to make an impact, when they organize and act. To fend that off, postmodern capitalism’s go-to strategy is Recuperation. Gandhi got it a little wrong- what actually happens is that first they ignore you, then they fight you, then they laugh at you, then they propose half-measures that fail to solve the problem and which keep the power structure intact and allow a small number of the complaining people access to privilege while employing even greater violence against any of the remaining die-hards who still want an actual solution.
Outside of the US where scientific research is *less* degraded, there is an overwhelming consensus that AGW is a thing and that we’re hosed, and that most of the scientists who agree with you are US-based.
The world you live in is not connected to facts on the ground. Typical bourgeoisie.
Hunkerdown,
Are you saying there isn’t overwhelming consensus in the US (amongst those in relevant disciplines of science) that AGW is a real phenomena??
I’m pretty sure the antecedent for “home, homeland, homeland security, etc.” was the LDV in Britain in WWII. The Local Defense Volunteers included veterans who were too elderly to serve in the regular armed forces in WWII. As First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill wrote to Lord Privy Seal arguing in favor of naming the force the “Home Guard,” which operated from 1940 to 1945. As I recall, in his six volume history of the war, Churchill stated he wanted it called the Home Guard, because “home” was emotive; the public would relate to that name better than an acronym like LDV. Also, he thought any other name would fail to evoke feelings of attachment to hearth and home, feelings he felt necessary to arouse in determination to defend the island.
The Archdruid has a few choice words about our Good Democratic Friend, Paul Krugman. Dark Age America: The Senility of the Elites
That essay by the Archdruid is very impressive. However, he should have nodded to Mills, whose ideas he borrows wholesale. I’m reminded of the bandit played by Eli Wallach yammering on to the storekeeper in “The Magnificent Seven”. When the storekeeper says, pointedly, “I see”, Wallach slaps him across the face, grabs him by the collar, and says “Don’t see!” I think that sums up where the mainstream media and pundits stand vis-a-vis the powerful in our global crisis very nicely.