Dozens of Extinctions from the Australia Wildfires, But That’s Not the Worst

https://xkcd.com/2255/

If you’re serious about climate disruption as Nader calls it, then Bloomberg is the best chance to do anything significant about it because he’s already done something about it so he has a track record of positive results. Bernie and Warren are a net to catch stray progressives and bait & switch them to Biden at the last minute and Biden is and would be terrible related to climate disruption or related to anything really including social security.

https://www.freep.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/01/15/mike-bloomberg-other-democrats-lead-donald-trump-michigan-poll/4469175002/

But only Bloomberg and Biden did better than Trump among that 19% of voters who said they would consider voting only for someone other than the president. Among that group of voters, Bloomberg got 49% to Trump’s 30% in a head-to-head matchup against the incumbent. Biden got 48% to Trump’s 39%.

Bloomberg also does better with white voters (Trump 48%, Bloomberg 43%, with 9% undecided) than any of the other candidates while doing just about as well with black voters. And while all of the Democratic candidates are doing far better than Trump in metro Detroit, it is Bloomberg (58%-34%) doing the best — in part because, according to the poll, only he and Sanders lead Trump in Macomb County, which helped deliver the election to the president four years ago.

Bloomberg leads Trump 51%-41% in Macomb, according to the poll, and Sanders 49%-45%. Because of the smaller sample size from one count, however, the margin of error would be far greater than 4 points, and should be taken into account.

The oligarchy will rule no matter who is president. Surely that’s obvious by now. While the oligarchs have their factions, they are not political party factions. Any oligarch can assign themself to any party or no party and change parties at will. It’s what they do; it’s who they are. They are beyond party politics, and they rule the parties, just like they rule the country through their various handmaidens and agents in office. We, the Rabble, have very little to say about it. Ignoring us is also what they do.

Trump would not be in office were his presence there not pleasing to a significant faction of the oligarchy. His 2016 EC win was definitely a surprise, but it’s worked out well for the ruling class. They’re not displeased, not at all. Why should they be? He’s been looking after their interests like nobody before him. Right? That tax cut — which wasn’t just his doing but that of the entire governing class — was golden. Hardly anything like that in the history of thieving by the ruling class. They’d keep him on just for that alone.

But the way he spins up and divides the Rabble into fighting one another over… well, what, really?Honesty? Decency? Brown people? Toilets and lightbulbs? The looming climate emergency? Slaughtering (literally and figuratively) the Enemy du Jour? Just keeping them fighting one another is the key. Doesn’t matter over what. So long as they’re at one another’s throats, they won’t be inclined to turn their ire onto the operators of this little goon show, right?

The oligarchs would keep Trump on for the Show Business of his reign too. They like it just fine.

But his deterioration is obvious (all presidents deteriorate in office, have you noticed?) and potentially dangerous to people who matter. A replacement is necessary. Whether it would be God-botherer Pence or some Democrat, who can say? None of the Democrats so far quite meet the criteria for rule. Pence could probably do it, but he’s creepy and not entertaining at all.

So will the replacement be one of the oligarchs? A real one, not a pretend one like Trump? Maybe, but I kind of doubt it. Our oligarchic class has shown itself not fit to rule directly. They’re better at pulling the strings of their puppets who actually serve in office. Or even better, who actually run the permanent government. Nevertheless, these are apocalyptic-crisis times. Direct rule from On High may come out of necessity.

Crisis has led to every political paradigm shift in US history. It is doing so now, though we may not recognize it yet. The Australian fires, following on so many other massive fires in Canada, the US and elsewhere in the North, South, East, and West, together with the tsunamis, meltdowns, earthquakes, hurricanes and typhoons, droughts, floods, and volcanic eruptions have shaken complacency just enough to precipitate the shift underway. Hope says it will be a positive shift. Reality suggests otherwise.

Reality shows it’s more than climate change. Much more.


but what do we do both as individuals and as part of a collective in the midst of this unfolding apocalypse considering the political constraints with which we are strapped?

You ignore the political constraints -in fact you should ignore the political avenue entirely – and take direct action to degrade the infrastructure that is causing the problem, to the greatest extent that you can, as many times and as often as you can. You do this because the only thing that really matters going forward is the integrity of the biosphere and all the eco-relationships within it, and as a member of that biosphere you have a moral and ethical responsibility to materially care for your relations who are not as powerful as you are (which is almost all of them) and protect them from the evil behavior being perpetrated upon them.

This is the only good answer to your question, and despite that fact it is the least popular of all possible responses to your question. Very few people like this answer, and those who do are typically the type of “loose cannon” idiots who should least be taking this answer to heart, because they are motivated by the emotional reward of rebellion, danger, violence or some other indicator of psychological damage, and not motivated by better condition outcomes that they won’t personally feel. Every other option that will be floated in response to your question is a distraction tactic; a delusion into which we all enter willingly in order to avoid at all costs the possibility that we might actually have to take responsibility for our own lives and place in this world and maybe actually do something for once.

Bloomberg isn’t going to save the world (neither is Bernie, to my chagrin). You can vote for him if you want, but the history of democratic political action towards saving the world is one of greenwashing facades and worsening material conditions. You can vote with your dollars for Elon Musk and all the other genius technologists, but the history of technological advances towards saving the world is one of slightly improving metrics in one area hiding worsening metrics in other areas. None of this is going to miraculously change just because the “right” person got elected, or the “best face” is currently in the news protesting climate change. Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion are the flailings of avoidance; the deeply felt fear-based avoidance of recognition that someone needs you to get up off your ass and actually help them and not just vote for them to be helped or talk about them being helped and how great that would be.

You ignore the political constraints -in fact you should ignore the political avenue entirely – and take direct action to degrade the infrastructure that is causing the problem, to the greatest extent that you can, as many times and as often as you can. You do this because the only thing that really matters going forward is the integrity of the biosphere and all the eco-relationships within it, and as a member of that biosphere you have a moral and ethical responsibility to materially care for your relations who are not as powerful as you are (which is almost all of them) and protect them from the evil behavior being perpetrated upon them.

I’m doing all of that already to the extent the system allows it. If I do any more, I will be homeless. On the street. Dead within five years. Most of may be on the street either way at this rate.

So, individually, I’m doing everything I can and that has resulted in reducing myself and my footprint to pretty much nothing without being homeless. I have no 409k. I have no job, and let’s face it, if you have a job you are contributing directly to climate disruption because most jobs if not all feed the system that not only pours CO2 into the atmosphere but that also degrades and destroys the planet in a myriad of ways.

Of course Bernie or Bloomberg aren’t going to save the world. A vote for either is a vote out of principle. A vote for posterity, but posterity and principle is pretty much all we have now except for “f**k it.”

I intend to vote for the person who would and could do the most related to climate disruption at this point. That person, aside from Bernie and let’s face it Bernie is not going to make it, is Mike Bloomberg. It’s an anti-revolutionary choice, of course, but there will be no revolution so it really doesn’t matter whether the choice is anti-revolutionary.

The article “Fake News: “The idea that “greenies” … would oppose measures to prevent fires … is simply false.”” @ https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/01/11/fake-news-the-idea-that-greenies-would-oppose-measures-to-prevent-fires-is-simply-false/ makes the following claim, but offers no proof or references for it:

“In Australia, green efforts to turn the bushfires into a political point scoring opportunity for their climate action agenda are backfiring horribly.”

Does anybody know of polling related to this claim?

Taking a superficial look, it appears that Australian volunteer firefighters aren’t blaming climate change. “Scientist David Packham on what’s really causing the bush fires” @ https://volunteerfirefighters.org.au/scientist-david-packham-on-whats-really-causing-the-bushfires

Since their lives are on the line, I imagine their opinion carries a lot of weight with their fellow citizens.

But I know next to nothing about Australia, hence my question.

I have to admit I was surprised by some of the hard-core Nazi policies adopted by the Dems recently, such as the absolute ban of colored people from their debates, canonical inferiority of females, and the proposed abolition of the Jewish nation/race (?). However, thinking some more about the climate emergency, I now understand: we just don’t have time. The majority of American voters are still swastika-waving, white-hood-wearing fascists, and unfortunately we need their votes, or by the next election planet earth’s surface will be the same as Venus, totally uninhabitable.

I expect the Dems to lurch even further right after the primaries, as they seek to outflank the Hitler clone currently occupying the White House. Now you may think it impossible to get to the right of Adolph Drumph himself, but when you consider the man’s oft-evinced softness (“lowest black unemployment”, pandering to the Zionist regime), you can see how the eventual Dem nominee will easily be able to carve out an even more extreme-right position. As a bonus, some of the policies involved this flanking maneuver will be advantageous in their own right, in the all-important question of CO2 emissions: the physical elimination of the carbon-intensive population of the swarthier races, and the absolute subjection of industry to the sole discretion of the President/Reichsfuehrer.

I know that many of my comrades here will find this projection unlikely, or unpalatable, but please remember that the future of all life on earth is at stake in this upcoming election, and vote accordingly!

@450 – There is nothing “to do”.

We shall simply bear witness to this unbearable predicament.
I realise that this sounds nihilistic, but it the truth – and the truth hurts.

We are living through the “great acceleration” – and with a global population that is growing at a million new souls every four days this is only going to get worse. Far worse.

Green, techno-hopium is not going to save us, let alone mitigate a small fraction of what is coming.

Stay nimble economicaly, prepare yourself both physically and emotionally, build community, learn new skills, keep family and friends close – and love every minute of every day as if it were your last.
It soon will be.

Here’s climate scientist Paul Beckwith explaining that the loss of albedo resulting from the imminent Arctic “blue ocean” event will result in a global warming that is equivalent to one trillion tons of CO2: 40% of ALL Emissions thus far. https://youtu.be/lyMSiXIbVEU

Problems have solution, predicaments don’t.

Willy – Haha! Love it!

See, love solves everything 🙂

I’m doing all of that already to the extent the system allows it.

I thought I struck a sufficiently grave tone to communicate my intention properly, but clearly I did not. Let me clarify: if what you’re doing is allowed by the system, you are not doing enough. It is in fact precisely the kind of things that the system explicitly (and implicitly, in some cases) disallows which are required in order to effect meaningful change in the trajectory of the future. That is why the system disallows them. “If voting could change anything, it would be made illegal” goes the quote, and so the corollary should be something like, “If you want to successfully change something, expect to become a criminal”. One day sooner than I’d predict the accurate description of social reality will be “If you want change, you are a criminal”.

If I do any more, I will be homeless. On the street. Dead within five years. […] I’m doing everything I can and that has resulted in reducing myself and my footprint to pretty much nothing without being homeless.

Your personal consumption footprint is almost entirely irrelevant in societal context. If you were a jet-setter who owned a hundred mansions in the most energy consumptive suburbs in America but also were successfully destroying extractive infrastructure on a monthly basis, I’d still celebrate you. In fact, if expanding your footprint would allow you to do more towards degrading the infrastructure, then you should expand your footprint. The common social prescription to reduce personal consumption is one of those willing delusions we intoxicate ourselves with in order to feel like we are doing something when we are doing very little if anything at all. Whether you drive or walk is completely meaningless as long as the infrastructure that allows people to drive remains in place. Any abdication of access to fossil fuels that you engage in merely allows someone else to use them. Industry in particular will gladly take up any resource consumption slack you give it, because that is one way it makes money.

I want to be clear: my response was not meant as a personal criticism of you; I don’t know you or what you’re doing and I probably don’t care. When I wrote that response, I was talking to you, and to every other reader of these comments, and to Ian, and most especially to myself. The kinds of actions I am pushing for in my earlier response are the sorts of things that very probably none of us are doing, and for good reason. That doesn’t make them unnecessary. That just makes us all very good at rationalization, and very bad at being brave. Me just as much as anyone else.

shutting down coal-fired powered planets and gas-fired power plants isn’t just protesting climate change […] Bloomberg […is…] willing to do and can do what Obama couldn’t do and wouldn’t do because Obama was beholden to big dollar donors and he had his deferred emoluments to consider

No, it’s less than protesting climate change. Protests would be more meaningful, because they channel and reflect emotion back into people’s awareness, and emotion has the best chance of leading to motion.

Bloomberg has no willingness or ability to do what Obama could or would not. It’s not about donors, it’s about the underlying structure of how the society supports itself, materially. It doesn’t matter if Jeff Bezos himself runs for president and says that he can change things because he doesn’t need anyone’s money. A person with all the combined wealth of the thousand richest people in the world cannot protect themselves from the public outrage they would incur from doing what actually needs to be done, because that would be to reduce the society’s use of energy. The working class is no more willing en aggregate to deliberately powerdown than the billionaire elite are.

If the Dems are so concerned about Putin

The only relevance that Putin or Trump have to the long-term future is that they currently have access to nuclear weapon launch codes. That’s it. Their money – whatever the source – is irrelevant in the bigger picture. These people do not lead society, they are following society; they are rich and powerful because they are giving society what it wants. They are the people crowdsurfing atop the hands of the audience and you, the Dems and virtually everyone else in political commentary sees them as being super-people who can fly and whom the audience is desperately trying to touch. No, these people – the elite – are just the best embodiments of the social forces working beneath them. If Trump dies tomorrow, the society that produced him would produce another of him, because that society needs to be able to willfully and confidently ignore the consequences of their actions. If Putin died tomorrow, the society that produced him would produce another him, because that society needs to be able to willfully and confidently ignore the violence that must be perpetrated to win them greater access to energy resources.

From a précis of a review of the scientific literature on wildfire risks.

“Overall, the 57 papers reviewed clearly show human-induced warming has already led to a global increase in the frequency and severity of fire weather, increasing the risks of wildfire.

‘This has been seen in many regions, including the western US and Canada, southern Europe, Scandinavia and Amazonia. Human-induced warming is also increasing fire risks in other regions, including Siberia and Australia.

‘However, there is also evidence that humans have significant potential to control how this fire risk translates into fire activity, in particular through land management decisions and ignition sources.’

At the global scale, burned area has decreased in recent decades, largely due to clearing of savannahs for agriculture and increased fire suppression. In contrast, burned area has increased in closed-canopy forests, likely in response to the dual pressures of climate change and forest degradation.”

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/01/200114074046.htm

Offf topic:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/15/technology/gary-starkweather-dead.html

Laser printer inventor dies.

Hey scruff, I’m awaiting pics of your various missions to physically disrupt & destroy the system that is decimating the planet. Pics of you demolishing the Burj Dubai Khalifa, for example. I won’t be joining you. Whilst not enough, my approach is ethically and morally sound and grounded in principle, short of suicide/euthanasia which isn’t out of the question by the way. I have abstained as much as I can abstain from contributing to the effort to destroy the planet. I know it doesn’t make a difference. It would only make a difference if everyone did the same, and that’s never going to happen. Your approach gives those who are hellbent on destroying the planet, the ones who benefit the most from it and who involve themselves in all manner of machinations to keep the status quo hierarchical arrangement in place, exactly what they want — further pretext for profit and control. You destroy, they rebuild, and in the rebuilding they increase their profit. As Che Pasta has said, they make money off of anything and everything we do, and this is why we must do nothing, quite literally. Abstaining, withholding our cooperation and contribution, is our best, and most moral, bet amidst this Apocalypse Now.

The fact we live in a society that withholds medical care from those who can’t afford it yet tells the same people it’s taboo and illegal for them to take their own life is a society built by and for the devil. It is an evil society that seeks to maximize suffering and destruction. This is our society. It is evil. Any intelligent person can’t help but come to this conclusion.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/walsh-utterly-horrific-story-proves-why-there-no-matt-walsh

I’ve been keenly focusing on euthanasia these past few months and past few years actually. It’s absurd there are laws against this. Making this illegal is pure evil. Sure, the laws related to it are changing in some states, but considering the Apocalypse Now of climate disruption, this should not only be legal, but those who choose to terminate their lives early should receive compensation that goes to their family and/or friends and they should be lauded as heroes for helping to save the planet.

I believe that my next venture and purpose may be to help people die with dignity amidst the climate disruption apocalypse. Nothing could be more satisfying than depriving the vampires who set up this society, and who own it and manage it, from sucking more psychical and physical blood. I want to starve them. Won’t you join me?

Well, though I still remain mostly ignorant about details of fire management (and intend to remain so ignorant), nevertheless, I hereby do declare that the notion of the current brushfire catastrophe in Australia to be due mostly from climate change is a damnable derangement.

It reminds me a bit about laying the blame for increased kidney failure amongst some agricultural workers on climate change, when there was no reason to believe that, if they were hydrating properly, with clean, unsweetened water with electrolytes, and perhaps avoiding or scaling back their activities on the hottest of days, there’d be any blip in their rate of kidney disease. Any more than we see amongst Australian outdoor tennis players, e.g.

My basis for this declaration is the chart shown @ https://www.bushfirefront.org.au/ , viz., https://www.bushfirefront.org.au/wp-content/themes/bushfire/img/area-of-bushfires.jpg . Right above it appears the text,

“The graph and table below show the situation in Western Australia in recent years – an increasing number of disastrous bushfires. These data are slightly out of date but will be updated for WA at the end of the 2019-2020 fire season. The graph demonstrates how a well designed and implemented fuel management system virtually eliminated large bushfires from 1961 to 1995.”

I came upon this website via an interview @ sky tv @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s1st9GC5K4

The interviewee points out that aboriginal bushmen were doing fire management for 100’s of generations, before recent times.

I don’t know how deranged and manipulated Australian society is, but my guess is that it’s similar to the US. Hence, rational, detailed debates, complete with cost/benefit analyses (of climate change mitigation vs. historically proven fire management), are unlikely to occur.

Therefore, I’m gonna guess that the most useful strategy for so-called “climate change deniers” is to non-maliciously make fun of the CO2 catastrophists.

If I was a comedian, looking to work this angle (say, e.g., on the politically incorrect youtube channel “Comedy Unleashed”), I’d make fun of the racism of the CO2 catastrophists, since they obviously think the bushmen were too stupid to manage fires. They were just lucky, for 100’s of generations! Why don’t they do something useful, like opening casinos?

The system is all-encompassing, scruff. It not only surrounds, but it also permeates. Even the homeless are part of the system. In fact, the homeless are a feature of it every bit as much as Trump is a feature of the system. Fighting the system is contributing to the system. Absent not being part of the system, i.e. committing suicide/euthanasia, the best bet is to contribute as little to the system in every aspect of your life while minimizing your personal suffering. This doesn’t mean checking out. Checking out is going homeless and giving up on everything and everyone entirely. Euthanasia/Suicide is a wiser and more dignified approach than going homeless. I’m at the level or stage that’s directly prior to going homeless or committing euthanasia/suicide. I’ve maintained at this level for a while now but I’m intelligent enough to know it can’t and won’t hold much longer. Then it’s lights out for me and I’m fine with that. It’s my choice. I choose not to contribute to this evil system and my early death will be the consequence of it. What I regret is that this same evil system that tortures your existence keeps the ratcheted wrench tight until you are fully gone meaning it won’t even allow you to take your own life, a life it considers valueless outside of a meat sack to torture, in a dignified manner. Instead, the evil system wants you to suffer even when you decide to terminate your worthless life. It wants you to pay your violent dues to the very end and shoot yourself in the head or slit your wrists or jump off a building or a bridge and it prefers you to take as many with you in the process as you can. You have to admit, it’s sick. Diabolical, actually.

“Climate is what you expect. Weather is what actually occurs.”

Hugh, everybody knows that NOAA and NASA are in cahoots with the CIA and FBI. One must only listen to St. The Donald (and maybe Jordan Peterson) for they’re on a mission from God.

Climate scientists prone to “openness” only have peer review to keep such a terrible thing disciplined. But Jordan Peterson, psychologist by trade, uses the power of peer persuasion to debunk scientific consensus in one fell swoop. And maybe just a bit of well-funded rationalization.

Pay no attention to all the Peterson debunkers, for they’re all in league with Satan. Take no time to be “openness” enough to carefully consider all sides of an argument, for you too shall become in league with Satan. One must fight these demonic bicycle company forces arrayed against the meek fossil fuel good.

So endeth today’s gospel lesson.

Australia’s severe persistent drought is due to a weakening jet stream that causes stalled conditions. Those conditions can be excess rainfall that results in catastrophic flooding or hyper expansive high pressure domes that cause severe drought and super heating. This trend is only going to worsen. The planet is increasingly going to burn and flood. Burn and flood. Burn and flood. Burn and flood.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2018/10/extreme-weather-increases-50-percent-2100-jet-stream-stalls-climate-change/

Economic historian John L. King once wrote a fascinating little book called How To Profit From The Next Great Depression. People who thought the title meant it would be a detailed cookbook about how to “profit from the next great depression” would have been disappointed. Actually, the book was about the history of credit collapse depressions in America, what lead to them, what followed from them, etc. And why/how the next one is being set up to occur. The last page contained one little set of classic instructions about how to preserve some money-wealth in a form which would enable one to pick up distressed assets in the long grinding post-crash phase.

Why would I reference that book here? Somewhere in it, John L. King offered the little saying:
“him that is not surprised when the future comes, lives very close to the truth.” Whomsoever is least surprised over the next 2-5 decades as the climate “works itself out” will be the people revealed to have been living closest to the truth all along. Darwin will reveal who those people are over those next 2-5 decades.

Mankind is beginning its Long Death March through the Valley of Selection. Darwin’s discards will fall out along the way. Darwin’s select ( if any) will emerge at the far end of the Valley.

Climachange is either real or it is not. If it is real, it is either all natural, all man made , or somewhere on the gradient between those two Poles of Possible Causation. I have already offered my best understanding of what I think the picture is.

A shark either exists or it does not, irregardless of who “believes in” it and who “denies” it. I have decided to live my personal and political life as though the shark exists. Now . . . a shark may have suckfish free-riding on its body. The existence of suckfish does not prove the NON-existence of the shark. The salesmen of Thunberg are the suckfish free-riding on the shark of man made global warming. They are NOT the shark, and their existence and money-grubbing agenda is NOT proof of the shark’s NON-existence. I don’t think the forensic analysts of the Thunberg-Industrial Complex have said that the existence of the Thunberg-Industrial Complex proves that man made global warming does not exist.

Bushfires in areas deprived of proper prescribed-burn fuel-reduction maintenance are a real thing. The fires in Southeast Australia are not bushfires. They are forest fires, burning in areas which were not part of any traditional fire-ecology region. Some are burning in areas of heretofore moist or even rain-ish forests. Climachange drought has made them dry enough to be fuel-beds for any arsonist’s spark. The same is true of recent fires in the moist rain-ish parts of Tasmania which have burned down some ( hopefully not all) of the Tasmanian blue gums which are supposed to be among the tallest hardwood trees in the world.

So who is right? About what? Let Darwin decide.

I have suggested now and then that a way be provided for people to offer actionable survival information here in these comment threads. I don’t think that will happen any time soon. It may happen some day.

So where might such comments begin clumping up? Perhaps in the appropriate threads over at Naked Capitalism. One of the guest bloggers at NaCap is named Jerri-Lynn Scofield. Many of her posts are about “what we can do” about one thing or another. The threads to such posts seem a perfect place for people to contribute weaponizable disseminationizable information about particular aspects of survivalizing, conservation-living, etc. If enough people place such comments there, and enough other people hunt for such comments there, the growing existence of such comments there will become a self-feeding self-amplifying reality.

Mankind is beginning its Long Death March through the Valley of Selection. Darwin’s discards will fall out along the way. Darwin’s select ( if any) will emerge at the far end of the Valley.

With the advent of civilization, natural selection was replaced by unnatural selection. Nature would never have selected for this latest group of “survivors.” In fact, this unnatural selection, weaklings that the “select” are, is responsible for the strong possibility of the premature extinction of human and many other species as well if not most life on the planet as the Australian wildfires is proving not to mention the Sixth Great Extinction.

For example, look at Donald Trump. Do we really believe nature selected this incoherent befuddled orange dildo? He’s an invalid for all intents and purposes. An invalid who has had everything done for him his entire life. An invalid who cannot do anything for himself and yet he is the leader of the so-called free world. No, Donald Trump and most of us for that matter, was not naturally selected per Darwin’s theory. He, most of us, were unnaturally selected to serve the burgeoning borg and to exemplify what it means to be human in the precarious remaining moments of civilization before civilization is no more.

At this point, I don’t want human to survive this. Human should go extinct. Human has proven, via civilization and unnatural selection, that it cannot socially and psychically evolve and nothing proves this more that human despoiling the nature that spawned it. Human failed the test. Now it’s time to accept the consequences and go peacefully with as much dignity as can mustered all things considered.

@450.org

“At this point, I don’t want human to survive this. Human should go extinct.”

I was saddened to read this, though not surprised.

I normally dedicate the end of my meditations to “holding in the light” a few people, typically including my sick brother. Today, I held only you in the light. (I had a lousy meditation, so you probably felt nothing. 🙁 . What can I say? Learn to meditate, yourself! You certainly won’t be worse at it than I am. 🙂 )

I believe you recently referred to a wife. If that is correct, may I suggest that you discuss this with her? It’s quite possible to have a pessimistic view of humanity’s prospects, yet still cultivate a life-affirming purpose and attitude.

E.g., ten bears states that “Billions are going to die rude, mean and generally unpleasant deaths”, yet still respects some survivalist forces.

metamars,

First you lied about Thunberg saying she can see CO2. Bad move if you’re trying to build credibility. The projective shaming doesn’t help either, on top of all the other faux pas done around here with regularity. Best leave that to cult conservatives.

But lets ignore all that for now.

Trifkovic speaks of a “troubled”, “lonely girl”, otherwise not worthy of any attention who suddenly becomes a Soros-funded darling because of the machinations of people who want to raid pension funds. Without concrete proof, I’d say we’re heading deep into Alex Jones territory. I don’t have time for that shit.

The idea that pension funds will most certainly be raided to build carbon fighting mechanisms, seems about as plausible as corporations employing Dr. Goldfinger to raid Fort Knox because Pussy Galore has a moneymaking idea. Anybody can say anything, but as always, concrete proof is needed.

But should shit hit the climate fan, I wouldn’t discount that possibility. But then, such a thing would discredit every denier who ever denied that climate change was happening, wouldn’t it?

A good smoking gun for this well-planned nefarious plutocratic plot might be Exxon raiding its pensioners funds to finance the building of their proposed carbon capture machines. Has anything like that happened yet? The best I can find is a few pension funds and insurers promising they’ll rebalance their portfolios to ensure their investments are more carbon neutral. That’s hardly a raid. But of course, we’ll keep these things in mind in case anything develops along nefarious lines.

As I’ve said many times before, since humanity has never been down this road before I’d have to rely on proven experts to address the amount of “climate panic” we should be experiencing. Alex Jones will have to wait.

Isn’t Alex Jones one of Trump’s many illegitimate children? I wonder what Alex has to say about his dear old dad collaborating with the so-called deep state? The shame, boss, the shame.

https://imgur.com/a/PSf1aJi

I used to refer to our ‘cousins’ of a couple million years ago, some of whom were large, pastoral creatures that looked a lot like Klingons though vegetarian, grazers that didn’t make it; and another branch of the family tree: not quite more than rodents just down out of the trees, quite possibly with still a bit of a prehensile tail but none-the-less looked a lot like we do. Omnivores, pack animals hunting the periphery, they were, would eat anything, and they made it. They became us.

@willy

“First you lied about Thunberg saying she can see CO2.”

First, you lied about me lying. I did not lie, even if it’s true that Greta Thunberg didn’t say what her mother said of her, and we can lay the blame for attribution 100% at the feet of her imaginative mother. Feel free to engage your superior intellect to explain how this could be.

“Trifkovic speaks of a “troubled”, “lonely girl”, otherwise not worthy of any attention who suddenly becomes a Soros-funded darling because of the machinations of people who want to raid pension funds. Without concrete proof,” blah blah

Trifkovic speaks of an “evidently troubled” and “apparently lonely” girl. Both of which are fair characterizations, assuming you apply sufficient common sense to realize “lonely” is unlikely to CURRENTLY apply, now that she is a celebrity.

“otherwise not worthy of any attention who suddenly becomes a Soros-funded darling…”

The word “Soros” appears 3 times in the Trifkovic article. Trifkovic points out that a Greta advisor named Luisa-Marie Neubauer is a member of a Soros funded group, and implicitly calls her a Greta “handler”. AFAIK, there is no reason to doubt the Soros connection. “handler” vs “advisor” may be more a matter of opinion, but hardly the crux of the article. However large such a distinction may loom in your mind……

” because of the machinations of people who want to raid pension funds. Without concrete proof”

A-h-h-h-h, I’ve already mentioned that I haven’t read Trifkovic’s 5 part source article. The proof – concrete or otherwise – should be in those articles. (Actually, it’s now up to 6 parts.)

You’ve now annoyed me enough to skim/read parts of 2 of the articles. You are not going to waste your precious time and stellar intellect on delving into the details of the $100 trillion dollar unlocking claim, but for anybody else who might be interested, you should probably start with “THE MANUFACTURING OF GRETA THUNBERG – A DECADE OF SOCIAL MANIPULATION FOR THE CORPORATE CAPTURE OF NATURE [ACT VI – CRESCENDO]”

Search for the text: “In the article “Philanthropy Teams Up With Institutional Investors to Fight Climate Change,” published on September 7, 2017, the need for a new approach that will unlock capital for new climate infrastructure at scale is highlighted:”

(I’m loathe to provide links, since that seems to trigger the “place in moderatio”n function).

You’ve unsurpassed even yourself! Please don’t tell Morningstar of your devastating critique. It may hurt, too much.

Why are you so threatened by a teen-aged girl?

As I am understanding Morningstar, she claims that the climate crisis is even worse than we are being told in many ways, but the solutions being pushed to fix it will do no such thing and will only make things worse, while further enriching plutocratic “green capitalists” racing for new riches.

Well, fucking yeah. Conservatives have ensured that sociopaths who have the very best noses for money and power, will ‘get there first’ unimpeded and screw things up the way they always do. First get rich creating the problem, then get rich coming up with solutions which are worse than the problems they’ve created.

Does this mean that metamars is now in league with the climate scientists?

@ Ten Bears:

no, she’s not a hippy dippy; she’s elle provocateur on Twitter, part of the Wrong Kin of Green collective.

https://twitter.com/elleprovocateur

i’ve followed her since the days that counterpunch had carried her comments, then later i’d posted a lot about her/their compromised NGOs and human rights organizations, the non-profit industrial complex, including bill gates, of course. she follows the money in many respects, including gates, funding sources of naomi klein, bill mcKibben, et.al.

with my current eye/brain configuration, it’s been all but impossible for me to read her series on greta thornburg: so many different sized and colors of fonts, so many mages…but back in the day i was glad to feature diaries about them, including the images.