by Shepard Fairey
I am unintersted in “hope.”
Or as we called it in the Obama bullshit years, Hopium.
Hope is not a plan. Hope is bullshit.
Luck is real, but you don’t count on luck other than in the sense that the harder you work, and the more things you do, the more likely you are to “get lucky.” But luck is usually the odds coming in, and bad luck is as real as good.
In term of climate change, there is no reason for hope. It’s going to be bad and, in almost all cases, signature events are happening sooner than expected: We’re losing Greenlandian, Arctic, and Antarctic ice sooner than expected. We’re getting artic methane releases 70 years ahead of schedule. Every time an event comes in, it’s sooner or worse than the models predicted.
This is because of how systems work when they leave bounds–because they tend to accelerate, we can expect this sort of thing to continue. It’s going to get worse, sooner.
That’s the “luck” we’ve made. We’ve put half the greenhouse gases in human history into the atmosphere in the past 30 years, which is to say, after the time when we knew for a fact we were cutting our own throats.
Obama ran on hope in another sense, and created an economy which did nothing (and worse than nothing) for African Americans and which was shit for somewhere between 80 percent to 95 percent of the population. His signature health care plan was garbage, and in his period the price of various drugs rose to historical heights. He tripled the rate of drone murders over Bush (Trump has ramped them up even further), and so on.
He was human garbage, a man who bailed out bankers and then helped them steal people’s houses with fraudulent paperwork, then had his attorney-general immunize them with fines worth less than what they stole.
But this man is worshiped by many Democrats, because, hey, he was only human garbage, and Trump is a shambling mound of garbage (but has yet, note, to start any new wars, though he’s been happy to keep Obama and Bush’s wars going).
Oh, and because he was black, and that mattered more, to many people, than the fact he was human garbage.
Obama’s done very well since he left office, making lots of speeches and millions of dollars. Bankers have been very grateful and have shown their gratitude–just as they did for Bill Clinton (another mound of garbage, who cut welfare to hurt the weakest in the US, killed Iraqis with his sanctions that included medicines, and instituted judicial “reforms” which swelled America’s prison population while ending financial regulations intended to avoid financial collapses).
None of these people ever intended to do the right thing, and if you listened carefully you knew that. The best you could hope is that they were the lesser evil: a smaller mound of garbage than their opponents.
In the Democratic primaries, there was always a better option and that option was never chosen, because most Democrats are bad people who want Reaganism with a side of “but we don’t really mean it.”
Nothing is going to get better until we, whichever we we belong to, start choosing better leaders, whether presidential, or more local. Those leaders must want to actually do “good.” Yes, good. You know, taking care of the hungry and the sick, and not burying single payer and the public option like Obama did. (Yes, yes he did, and he wound up passing the OCA without Republicans anyways. He made a choice, and his choice was evil.)
Or perhaps taking care of poor people, including blacks. Or not allowing pirates in suits to gouge people on drug prices, or perhaps *gasp* not vastly expanding fracking, which is what Obama did and bragged about, even as he signed the Paris Accords, knowing he had no intention of honoring them.
Nor did virtually anyone else who signed them, of course, and anyone who thought otherwise is either a fool or on the payroll.
Mounds of garbage. Merkel, Blair, Cameron, Trudeau, Harper, your country’s leader, odds are. People who have always wanted to do as much evil as they could, and as little good as they could get away with. (Remember nothing happened to Greece Angela Merkel was not okay with–and all so German banks could be bailed out indirectly. It would have been embarrassing to just blatantly bail them out. So a lot of Greeks died and suffered.)
There is no “hope” as long as our leaders are people like this. None.
Don’t get hooked on hopium.
We need to elect leaders who want to do as much good as they can, and as little evil as possible. Sanders in the US, Corbyn in Britain.
But we don’t want those leaders, not as a whole, do we?
We’ve been offered them, we have a chance to elect them.
But will we?
Because they have plans, and those plans are to do good.
That’s the only hope you’ve got.
The results of the work I do, like this article, are free, but food isn’t, so if you value my work, please DONATE or SUBSCRIBE.
bruce wilder
“but we don’t really mean it” is the motto of most Democrats and it applies to what they say they want.
Herman
I agree with what Antonio Gramsci said: “Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.” I am very pessimistic about the state of the world but I don’t believe in doing nothing or trying to flee from the world since there will be no escape from our coming disasters. At the very least people should vote for the best possible candidates in order to mitigate human suffering.
That being said, I do think some degree of hope is useful. Whether it is faith in the human spirit or God (if you are religious) or even some ideology (as much as I often dislike ideological thought), belief in something can help sustain you through bad times. In fact, I would say the greatest danger today is defeatism and nihilism which seem to be very widespread.
The very fact that Sanders and Corbyn are major political figures is a reason to be at least cautiously hopeful. From the 1980s until 2008 there was little critique of neoliberalism in the Western mainstream but now you even have some Democrats critiquing neoliberalism. What caused the change is that the pain has spread from the poor and working class to middle-class people.
It was easy to ignore the negative impact of bad policy when it was seen as a problem limited to the inner city or the post-industrial periphery. Now, however, college graduates and even people with advances degrees are feeling the pinch.
Major change will become more likely when things get worse and people are taken out of their comfort zone. In the meantime, people should build a strong movement to be ready to take advantage of any crisis scenario. When the 2007-2008 recession hit there was no real left-wing movement to take advantage of the crisis so we got Obama and because of his failures, Trump.
Ten Bears
At my house… Old Man’s War.
I had the pleasure recently of reading John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War quintology. It’s quite good, notably in the all to rare these days packaging of something actually different into the re-packaging of Cowboys – altruistic mercenaries as it were – In Space. I recommend it, though that’s not what this post is about.
Old Man’s War distilled something that has haunted the edges of my wont for some time now: numerous times over the past dozen years I’ve posted here and elsewhere We Dropped the Ball, my generation did… we stopped The War!
But that’s not my generation. I was a runaway, a street kid, twelve-thirteen years old the Summer of Love. San Francisco Eugene Seattle. LA. Altamont. Kent State is my birthday. The product of mid-fifties promiscuous pregnancies and sixties serial Southern California divorce, my parents didn’t do me any favors. I got to grow up with the War and the civil rights movement, with riots and assassinations not just on TV but all around me; with all that groovy Peace Love n’ Dope stuff: the music, the flowers in her hair, we can change the world … it become my worldview, it became who I still am. But that’s not my generation.
That generation were the twenty-two, twenty-three year olds – not just the Donald Trumps and Dick Cheneys, but Joe Biden, the Clintons, Elizabeth Warren – who when Nixon quit, who when that wave Thompson wrote about broke promptly cut their hair and became Wall Street brokers, CEOs of international corporations, high dollar lawyers, bought BMWs and million dollar houses. They dropped the ball, they didn’t change the world. And it’s dying.
So it falls to my generation – we who still have a chance to save the world, because our kids are too busy just trying to survive and there isn’t enough time for the grandkids to grow up and figure out how. And if the past fifty years are any indication the “hippies” aren’t going to anything at all. I don’t necessarily see myself as old, in many ways the eyes I look out of are today the same as those I looked out of when I last hitch-hiked out of LA fifty years ago: still scared and lonely, homeless, abandoned, angry. The Bastard No One Wants. I have time.
We’re the ones that need to storm the barricades, put ourselves between the NAZIs and The People, throw a monkey wrench in the works, throw down the existing order … to stop as we must doing what we’re doing, it isn’t working … because our kids are to busy trying to survive and the grandkids don’t have time. If we don’t do it, no one will. Fin, The End. That, is the Old Man’s War.
You’re either with us, or against us. It’s not a question.
Alan Coovert
I’m an old Vietnam veteran who learned a long time ago that hope is a useless emotion. I never got married or had children because I never had hope that my children would have a better life than me. I worked most of my life because I could and now I’m retired on Social Security and a VA disability. It’s not much but I can pay my bills. I don’t own a car or a TV and I live in a small house that the bank owns. I walk, ride a bike or take the bus to get around. I know I’m a functionally obsolete person now but I don’t blame anyone. So now I just live simply so that others my simply live. My life sounds trite but this is the best I can do. Hope never had anything to with it.
450.org
I agree completely with this blog post. I will also add that the leaders we elect per your criteria for electing them be held to proper account. An unaccountable leader os no leader at all, it’s a tyrant.
<blockquote<Elect leaders who want to do as much good as they can, and as little evil as possible. Sanders in the US, Corbyn in Britain.
And further, under no circumstances should we elect leaders who fall short of this. If the only choice is evil & evil, or evil and a perceived lesser evil, then it’s not a choice at all and we shouldn’t lend legitimacy to an electoral system that gives us no viable choices. The answer to the Dems f*cking over Sanders in 2016 or again in 2020 isn’t to vote Trump instead. The answer is to not vote at all. Withholding your vote is a statement. It’s a matter of conscience and principle. It says “I will not be complicit in this charade masquerading as an election.” To settle for Warren once the Dems lock Bernie out is to capitulate and lend legitimacy to the charade. As Mallam exhorted on another thread, we all knew Obama was a scam and a sham before he was ever elected. Warren is also a sham and a scam every bit as much as Obama was and still is.
Ché Pasa
The continued belief that elections will solve our problems is misguided to say the least, cynical manipulation of the hope of the masses that one day Truth and Justice will reign in Glory — if only we voted for the right candidate.
That’s not what elections are for. If they were able to produce that result, they’d be illegal (to paraphrase Emma Goldman.) If anything, elections are meant to postpone that day as long as possible and prevent positive change whenever possible. We’ve been down this road too many times not to understand that.
Even if Trump is removed by Congress, it won’t make things better for most people, and arguably it could make things worse. Even if Trump and Pence were removed together, you’d get Nancy, and oh, dear…
The system is not self-correcting. It has built in flaws and impediments that simply can’t be fixed in the voting booth or by impeachment. Sorry.
Ragging on the Dems for their many failures and betrayals while giving the Rs a pass — because it’s “just how they are” — has been a feature of the interwebs from its inception (pre-dates it, actually). Truth is, the Dems are “just how they are,” too, and they both serve pretty much the same interests, and those interests don’t particularly align with those of the Lower Orders. Oh. Who’d a thunk? And we’re not going to change that by electing one team or the other. No, they’re not the same, and one is arguably worse than the other (which one depends on your perspective, doesn’t it?) but the upshot is that the People in their multitudes are not the primary concern of either major party — and they won’t be any time soon if ever.
What then are we to do? Pretend that everything’s OK or would be OK if only the right team were in office? No. Become cynics and nihilists and blow the whole thing up? No. Resign ourselves to our horrible fate and be done with it? Hardly.
I think Alan in comments above has a positive approach: the system has screwed him, but he hasn’t given up exactly. No, instead it reads as if he’s been consciously modeling an alternative to the screwed up mess we’ve got now, reducing his own footprint as it were, living simply, being honest, and at least to some extent — maybe a major extent — decoupling from the frenzy of retail politics.
Tens of millions of us are in a similar position.
Many years ago now, I advocated rewriting the US constitution because I believed it was a big part of the problem and it ensured that difficulties that could be addressed positively wouldn’t be — at least not for decades or generations — and when they were finally looked at by electeds, either the problem would have already solved itself, or there would be trade-offs that made the problem worse. That’s how our system works. It’s designed that way. And it is designed to serve the well-off first and foremost.
Now I’m not so sure even a new constitution would work. The Enlightenment ideals that some of us still hold onto (out of wan hope?) aren’t enough anymore. We can’t fix the problems with the tool kit we’ve got. It’s as if we have to start all over again from first principles.
Eric Anderson
Bravo, Ian.
That was fucking powerful.
Z
Cue the Bernie’s gonna fold like a cheap suit crowd, even though the dude came off the canvas after a heart attack to continue to lead the bravest, in-your-face-elites campaign in this country since FDR and maybe even ever.
If you can’t see the movement he’s led then maybe it’s because you’re anchored into the cynical notion that there can never be one.
Z
Z
By the way, here’s the Head PR Man for the One Percent doing his thang: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/15/us/politics/barack-obama-2020-dems.html
Former President Barack Obama offered an unusual warning to the Democratic primary field on Friday evening, cautioning the candidates not to move too far to the left in their policy proposals, even as he sought to reassure a party establishment worried about the electoral strength of their historically large primary field.
—–
“Even as we push the envelope and we are bold in our vision we also have to be rooted in reality,” Mr. Obama said. “The average American doesn’t think we have to completely tear down the system and remake it.”
The comments marked an extraordinary entrance into the primary contest by the former president, who has been careful to avoid even the appearance of influencing the direction of the race.
His remarks offered an implicit critique of Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who have urged voters to embrace “political revolution” and “big, structural change,” as well as proposals once widely considered to be left to the liberal fringes of the party, including court packing and decriminalizing illegal border crossings.
—–
Acknowledging that candidates must “push past” his achievements, Mr. Obama urged his party’s candidates not to push too far, as he urged them to adopt a message that would allow them to compete in all corners of the country.
“I don’t think we should be deluded into thinking that the resistance to certain approaches to things is simply because voters haven’t heard a bold enough proposal and if they hear something as bold as possible then immediately that’s going to activate them,” he said.
The fact that Mr. Obama offered his reassurances at the annual meeting of the Democracy Alliance, a club of wealthy liberals who donate hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to recommended political organizations, only underscored the intended audience of his message. In recent weeks, establishment-aligned Democrats, top donors and some strategists have expressed fears that the party lacks a strong enough candidate to defeat President Trump.
Z
KT Chong
Today on The Hill: Rising with Krystal & Saagar:
“Matt Stoller: Pete Buttigieg, Obama are con artists”
Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBLae8reoUE
And in case you are wondering why Buttigieg is a con artist:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pNQZnuyOBU
ricardo2000
I was relieved when Obama was elected, and not shot dead the same night. It quickly became clear with his picks of flatulent, main stream operatives that he was merely the Bush families favourite lawn jockey. His was the last chance for mainstream Democrats to be relevant to the 99%. Instead of backing ‘Occupy Wall Street’ he had the activists jailed in a paramilitary operation coordinated across the US. This was the reason that Trump was elected: no one with brains and a heart would ever trust, or vote for, a mainstream Demo again.
Obama’s concern was for the 1% and their money. After all, if the banks that caused the 2008 ‘Financial crisis’ had been allowed to go bankrupt it would have taken the corrupt money of the rich and politicians with the first flush. If he had convicted those responsible and seized their assets he would have had no one to talk to during the next election, and no hope of re-election.
H.L. Mencken: ‘Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.’
Voltaire: “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
450.org
Buttigieg is a con for many reasons but one way you know for sure is he worked for McKinsey & Company. Enough said.
450.org
Guess who else is a McKinsey & Company alum?
This Piece Of Shit
450.org
For example, as a result of the impeachment proceedings, Biden should be dead in the water as a democratic candidate. His name is now mud. He exploited his influence with Ukraine and got a cushy job for his son on the board of the corrupt company Burisma which was under investigation and still is I believe. As I’ve indicated, this should be investigated by Congress and that investigation should be transparent and not protected under the faux aegis of national security. Instead, Biden is still leading in the polls. He’s still the democratic frontrunner when he shouldn’t be a candidate at all.
Z, thanks for that article about Obama. Obama is locking Bernie out with those comments. He is such a scumbag. He’s a large part of the reason Trump was foistered on us. He squandered a Democratic mandate on gay marriage because although you may be homeless, at least you can marry another fellow homeless person of the same sex.
different clue
I don’t do social media so I don’t really know how they work. ( Unless you want to call blogs a social medium).
I have seen a couple of interesting twitter hashtags proposed for blowing up with millions of tweets or re-twitters or whatever those things are called whenever Obama says something like this.
1: #BlowMeObama
2: #WhoPaidObamaToSayThat
If anyone thinks either ( or both) of those two hashables could be useful . . . or wants to craft others based on those, feel free.
different clue
As to what DemParty Primary voters want and why . . . a lot of them have spent the last few cycles living in various kinds of political fear. They are afraid of “not winning” and they are afraid of electing a nominee who they fear that others fear would ” not be electable”.
Bitter Berners and Sanderbackers have lost that particular fear. Also, I have read of various frauds and primary voter suppression tactics that the Clintonite Forces used in various primaries and caucuses ahead of the last election. I have no reason to believe that Clinton ever even non-fraudulently won the nomination to begin with.
I plan to vote for the Presidential wannabe that I WANT to be President this primary cycle. I don’t care if others think that dream-nominee would be “electable” or not. If the Clintonite filth hate my choice, so much the better. We are approaching the point where the true nature of Clinton and all its supporters as moral and ethical Jeffrey Epsteins is becoming clear to people. When enough people realize that voting for a Clintonite is the moral equivalent of voting for Jeffrey Epstein itself, then we can begin to exterminate the Clintonites and the Obamazoids from public life.
Z
#TooFarLeft was created in response to The Head PR Man of the One Percent’s recent concerns about the radical majority in thia country misbehaving by not adhering slavishly enough to our rulers’ edicts.
Z
Peter
Historians won’t be kind to Obama now that the full extent of his subterfuge is being exposed. Weaponizing the IC and law enforcement to further one party statist rule and using it to try to crush political enemies is not a great legacy.
It’s ironic that the one thing Obama may get credit for was his quick action to save the financial system from total implosion and the probable collapse of the Capitalist system.
The Left will never forgive him for removing this opportunity to build their tyrannical utopia on the ashes of failed Capitalism. The fear and loathing of the wealthy that drives the Left seems to have short circuited their clever minds. They’ve forgotten or ignore the fact that Marx was clear about where the finances for his collectivist dream would come from, confiscating the wealth and infrastructure that only Capitalism could build and produce. There would not be much to confiscate from the ashes of capitalism and we have already seen that collectivists have great difficulty even producing toilet paper or the food that makes TP necessary.
Bernie and Liz know this reality but they lie about how far down the wealth ladder their confiscation schemes would reach. They should know that they will have at most one opportunity to confiscate this wealth , only a fool would create more for them to take. When that loot quickly disappears we will be on the road to dumpster diving for dinner or quing up at the Soylent Green dispensary.
KT Chong
#ObamaConnedMe
The problem is: Obama is the Black Jesus who, in the minds of the majority of Black voters, could do no wrong. Black constituents can make or break most any Democratic candidates or politicians on the national level. Any democratic candidates or politicians who dare to criticize the Black Jesus or his policies would face the wrath of Black constituents.
Hate to say it: but Blacks might have doomed the Democratic Party because they dictate the narrative of the party. Blacks would punish anyone who dare to criticize Obama or his policies – meaning anyone who dare to challenge the neoliberal, corporatist, centrist, pro-war policies of Obama that has become dogmas and status quo of the party.
KT Chong
i.e., due to Obama, Black constituents have become the biggest defenders of the neoliberalism establishment — and they have become an immovable obstacle to fundamental changes.
S Brenann
Z asked and I deliver the LATimes Headline:
“Sanders says he supports Clinton, and so should everyone who voted for him”
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/readersreact/la-ol-le-sanders-20160809-snap-story.html
I really hadn’t considered bringing up the subject but, I wanted Z’s predictions to be spot on today!
William Fry
I\’m not apathetic about hope, I\’m deeply concerned. I don\’t just dislike hope, I find it dangerous.
Hope as compulsion to strive for something predicated on a desired outcome–to do because of want– is an ethic based on self-interest. To manifest our pursuits in the world based on self, rather than out of selflessness, is the noose humanity has hung itself with.
I was 21 when Obama ran his \”HOPE: Change you can believe in\” campaign. Half of my Senior thesis was on why I thought a political campaign based around \”hope\” was fucking dangerous, and I hoped my fears would be proven baseless. Then the litany of despairs started to mount: drone bombs, Timothy Geitner, bank bail out, Reagan biography, golden parachutes, no public option, no prison reform, no election reform, whistle blower arrests, abandonment of the \”hopey-dreamer\” movement, the kill-list, military budget increases.
Obama used hope as a roofy and swirled it in a sweet concoction of aphorisms. We\’re three years post, splayed out in his mess. I don\’t know about you, but I feel fucked.
And the ramifications are both apparent, and dormant.
Apparent: Trump.
Dormant: How many people have abandoned the political process since 2008 because they were told to hope and instead lost their home due to medical bankruptcy, had their spouse get incarcerated for supplementing their despair with narcotics, and eventually died to an overdose on prescription opiates? We won\’t ever know. It\’s not quantifiable. We can analyze the turnout in 2016. But, the existential anguish of hope manifested as the opposite of your dreams. You can\’t poll test that.
Hope isn\’t bullshit, it\’s a weapon.
I believe in despair.
KT Chong
I did not like that Bernie Sanders’ decision to support Hillary after the 2016 primary as well. HOWEVER, he had a prior agreement with the DNC: if he did not win the democratic nomination, he would support the ultimate nominee, i.e., Hillary. He lost the primary, but he kept to his end of the bargain. That is what a man with honor and integrity would do: he kept to his words even if it pained him to do so. So I would not blame him for it.
nihil obstet
When the political parties quit being political parties and became brand managers instead, a lot of people quit being active citizens and became savvy analysts instead. So they read/listen to the glamorous pundits in the approved venues (NYT, for crying out loud!) and then pronounce their own analysis, which frequently depends on their knowing how people they have never met and whose lives they are totally ignorant of will vote. They then insist that everybody decent has to vote according to their analysis. I think it’s a reaction to the loss of any sense of power or worth within the society.
Hugh
Obama promised change. He won and he delivered. He’s been nickeling and diming us ever since. Supply rimshot here.
The IPCC was established in 1988. It was structured, funded, and run in a way that meant it would pull some of its punches and take years to review the data, develop a consensus, and publish a report. It has been outrun by events, and after 30 years and a lot of pressure from the public and inside the scientific community, it is moving to faster turnaround times in its activities.
On a lighter note to go all Old Testamenty, our days on earth are like a shadow, without hope.
Eric Anderson
1959:
https://cleantechnica.com/2018/01/03/edward-teller-warned-oil-industry-carbon-dioxide-climate-change-6-decades-ago/
We need to roll the tape back even further to when the oil industry decided to recklessly proceed in the face of warning by one of the pre-eminent scientists of his time.
Z
Brennan,
Can you somehow find it in your heart to forgive him? You used to have a warm spot for Bill Clinton and he did a hell of a lot worse than that.
I was initially introduced to your spit spray per syllable written communication style on Lambert Strether’s old sorry Clinton apologist blog somewhere around 2009 or so when you were DEFENDING BILL CLINTON. In 2009! Your defense was marbled with all the usual bs that the Clinton apologists use to minimize what they have to defend with the “no, he wasn’t perfect” and “he did some things I wouldn’t do”, yeah, yeah, yeah. You aggressively defending his “legacy” when I said Obama was going the same direction as Clinton did, after so much damage from the Clinton pro-Wall Street deregulation was strewn all about us. But you still forgave him enough to stick up for him and now you can’t forgive Sanders for the Hillary Clinton endorsement? After how much he’s given and the positive effect that he’s had on the direction of the country? There’s no other person who is more responsible for the progress of the socialist movement in this country than him. He had a heart attack from working so hard campaigning and he’s continually been on the attack against our rulers.
Myself, I never cared that he backed Clinton in the primary after she already won the nomination. So what? Do you think I’d listen to anybody and vote for Hillary Clinton when I hate her, and for good reason?
If Bernie hurt your feelings by talking so bad about Trump, the man you voted for, remember this: he never said anything bad about Trump voters, just about Trump.
Z
Anonymous
I love it.
One thing though.
Fracking might be good for the environment, if, and I mean if, it prevents wars.
Yada, yada, yada I know it’s all bad.
This is all predicated on if it stops wars.
And complex math. And what’s really possible.
Peter
Eric, it’s too bad for you that Teller was proven wrong on both of those prediction otherwise we’d be running out of oil and NYC would already be Waterworld.
Teller was a Nuke power promoter who worked at General Atomics along with the even more pre-eminent scientist of his and our time Freeman Dyson an outspoken climate industrial complex skeptic.
My brother also worked at GA and when I toured the facility both of these great minds may have been in the building. I don’t recall meeting them and wouldn’t have known who they were but I did get to see directly into their reactor as it was pulsed and produced Cerenkov radiation.
someofparts
https://www.dropbox.com/s/4hf1bf78tf6q8wo/obama%20should%27ve%20could%27ve%20but%20didn%27t.docx?dl=0
Here’s the definitive list of all the things Obama should have, could have but didn’t do.
metamars
@eric anderson
Your reference article has 2 separate quotes of Teller. One claims that a 10% rise in CO2 concentration (from 1959 levels) will lead to massive flooding:
“It has been calculated that a temperature rise corresponding to a 10 per cent increase in carbon dioxide will be sufficient to melt the icecap and submerge New York. All the coastal cities would be covered, ”
The other says, ““At present the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen by 2 per cent over normal. By 1970, it will be perhaps 4 per cent, by 1980, 8 per cent, by 1990, 16 per cent [about 360 parts per million, by Teller’s accounting], if we keep on with our exponential rise in the use of purely conventional fuels.”.
So, sometime in the 1980’s, we had increased CO2 by more than the 10% figure that – some folks said – would cause massive flooding.
It didn’t happen. Teller was wrong. And if ExxonMobil knew these same “facts”, way back in 1959, then they’d have been wrong, also.
However, if you insist on convincing people of such climate change “facts”, it may be helpful to do it with humor: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/11/11/claim-making-fun-of-climate-doomsday-helps-reach-more-people/
450.org
Ha!! Thanks for providing that fact. It fits. It makes sense. What a cowardly bully he is and yes, Brennan, I’d be more than happy to say that to your face. Let’s make that meeting happen and get it recorded.
Hugh
3…2…1… Cue the climate change deniers. CO2 levels are rising. The ice caps are melting. Sea levels are rising. New York gets inundated by Hurricane Sandy, but Teller somehow got it wrong.
Ten Bears
I have long suggested a twenty-first century variation of Pascal’s Wager: If I am wrong, if the climate is not changing, the world not warming to in-habitability in my grand-childrens’ and sooner than I care to think great-grandchildren’s generation, I don’t lose a bloody damned thing. If you, the denier, are wrong, we all lose… our grand-children and great-grandchildren lose, the only atmosphere we know of we can live in.
End of the road, way of the dinosaurs… mass extinction.
Do you want to take that bet?
Perhaps I can make it a bit simpler for you, or perhaps former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Action Hero, Conan the Barbarian, Terminator, Predator Killer, Kindergarten Cop, at the climate conference in France last year, can make it simpler for your kindergarten minds:
There are two doors. Behind Door Number One is a completely sealed room, with a regular, gasoline-fueled car. Behind Door Number Two is an identical, completely sealed room, with an electric car. Both engines are running full blast.
Pick a door to open, and enter the room and shut the door behind you. You have to stay in the room you choose for one hour. You cannot turn off the engine. You do not get a gas mask.
Do you want to take that bet?
If I’m wrong, I lose something but I forget what it is. And don’t give a shit. If you’re wrong, we lose the planet and all of our grandkids die.
Do you want to take that bet?
You’re either with us, or against us.
It’s not a question.
Z
Brennan,
It only took you a couple of decades to figure out the Clintons were complete garbage, so I’d imagine you’ll eventually come around to my way of thinking about the Bern as well. Probably sometime around the early-2030s.
Z
metamars
@hugh
You’ve been snookered by the greenies. That’s because Edward Teller did what any reasonable physicist would do – change his beliefs based on accumulating evidence. Ah, but the VERY WELL FINANCED greenies that told you about Teller’s 1959 opinion didn’t tell you that, now, did they? Possibly, they didn’t know. More likely, I think, is that they lied by omission.
Teller signed the Global Warming Petition Project, which collected signatures between 1999 and 2009. Well after 1959, at least in my space time continuum. (Not sure about yours….) In fact, his signature is featured on the petitionproject.org website.
It says,
“We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.
There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.”
Coincidentally, I suppose, I just today viewed a youtube video on a physics exam that was given at MIT. This was on the PhysicsGirl youtube channel. I clicked around to view her guest’s youtube channel, called Tibees. I was drawn to her video “I quit my PhD”. Only listened to 5 minutes of it, but one of the comments is relevant:
“These days academia is a treadmill, life is dominated by grant applications, universities are businesses, marketing and image is everything, the suits have taken over…..”
I’m not aware of any good book on the subject (though I’d be surprised if there wasn’t any), but if you want to get more insights into how financial interests are at the root of the corruption of medical doctors, you can read “Don’t let your doctor kill you: How to Beat Physician Arrogance, Corporate Greed and a Broken System”.
There are good books, that I’ve often recommended, on distortion tied to tribalism, career, and egotism in physics, viz., “Not Even Wrong” and “The Trouble with Physics”. But these deal mostly with theoretical fundamental physics, so crass financial and/or political corruption doesn’t enter into it.
Not so with “climate science”, which is more like “pharmaceutical science”. You can read Tim Ball’s “The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science”, but even that doesn’t deal with the financial incentive/disincentive forces, on an individual basis. (AFAICR)
I suspect that particular book (of individuals learning how their “climate change” bread gets buttered) has not been written.
One way an aspiring author could gather material is to talk to a guy like I used to play basketball with, in the Princeton YMCA. He interviewed Ph.D. holders as part of his job. He had come across 6 candidates who had climate related “research” on their resumes, but when asked about what this research had to do with “climate science”, they all answered “nothing”.
THOSE are the guys you want to talk to, to start the research ball rolling most easily, I should think.
metamars
@Ten Bears
If Schwarzenegger lacks the intellectual capacity to differentiate two very different rungs of the abstraction ladder, viz., “climate change” and “catastrophic anthropogenic global warming”, the he may as well have a “kindergarten mind”, himself, because any sort of rational debate is impossible.
Perhaps Schwarzenegger can amuse himself by mixing things up. He can lecture us on how the earth is not flat; and, in fact, rotates about a (precessing) axis, as it orbits around the sun. Which is NOT – I repeat, NOT – the God Apollo pulling the sun across the sky, with the help of 4 very energetic horses.
Peter
Meta , was it you that was promoting the so called Justice democrats some time ago? If so what do you think now that AOC and other JD’s have taken over the Dem party.
metamars
@Peter
Yes, I wrote many posts in support of Justice Democrats, mostly because of the process and their philosophy towards cash, rather than because of their specific platform. I’ve also mentioned them quite a bit on breitbart, when I used to post there frequently, pointing out that there’s nothing analogous on the conservative side of the street, and sort of challenging that crowd to get off their butts and do so.
Here in the US, I support the hoi polloi taking over both the Democratic and Republican parties from below. If we had a parliamentary system, I think we’d have an easier task, and could look to Europe for a few examples of people moving in large numbers to new parties, in relatively short time. (e.g., 5 star movement in Italy; Brexit party in the uk) We should still draw some inspiration from Europe, but the process can’t be the same.
I’ve laid out many of the arguments in votersrevenge.info. The votersrevenge.org website is sort of a dead project, that I intend to resurrect, “someday”. But getting almost no support for it doesn’t inpire me to prioritize it. I also note with regret, that Ben Yee’s excellent idea, which he also implemented, as shiftspark.com (completely, unlike mine which went dormant in a beta state) went nowhere. I mentioned it here at ianwelsh.net , viz., https://www.ianwelsh.net/centrist-elites-please-save-democracy-from-demo.
It’s seems like no good idea goes unsupported….
I don’t agree that AOC and other JD’s have taken over the Democratic Party. Their numbers are still too small, though their energy and the media-commanding pronouncements of AOC allow them to punch above their weight.
BTW, this idea is sort of common Fox talking points, because they want to smear the Democrats as all fanatics. I partly agree, in terms of the impeachment nonsense, but I doubt that the Democratic Party, as a whole, is being led by the nose by AOC and company.
I haven’t followed the Justice Democrats, closely, but I believe they are still growing their efforts and candidates.
I’ve mentioned them a few times on my vanity reddit page: https://www.reddit.com/r/the_donald_goodandbad
As an aside, I saw a headline that JD cofounder Cenk Uygur is thinking of running for Congress.
Sid Finster
@bruce wilder: “But they don’t really mean it!” is the mantra of the Team D cultist defending the cult leaders and their decisions.
Anyway, even if Sanders were to win the election today, and even if Team D controlled both Houses of Congress on Inauguration Day, a President Sanders would quickly find himself railroaded into being another Obama. Another Jimmy Carter would be the best case scenario.
Learn well The Iron Law of Oligarchy and The Iron Law of Institutions.
S Brenann
To Z’s often repeated* fake news;
Who I supported in the Democratic presidential primaries…over the years:
Jimmy Carter 1976, Jimmy Carter 1980, John Glenn 1984 Gary Hart 1988 Bob Kerry 1992, Bill Bradley 2000, Wesley Clark 2004, John Edwards 2008, Jim Webb 2016.
These are the people have actually “supported”. Trying to stop Obama from taking office was my primary goal in 2008 when John Edwards was stopped by the “permanent state”.
Go dig up my EZ-Rah Klien posts in the time frame you claim and there you will find who I “supported” the 2008 primary. My “support” for Hillary was post-Edwards, not a-prior and was predicated on the idea, well supported by history, that anybody would be better than Obama.
However, Z I must commend you for contributing FAKE NEWS to column on FAKE NEWS, even if off topic it is a contribution to the subject.
*this Z’s umpteenth time, making the same point, each time with more and more exaggeration.
Z
Brennan,
This is hilarious: you the obfuscation artist himself who builds straw men so he can burn them down accusing me of fake news …
I never wrote that you supported Bill or Hillary Clinton in the primaries, only that you angrily defended Bill Clinton’s record when replying to a post of mine that said that Obama was pulling the same garbage as Bill Clinton did on Lambert Strether’s sorry old Clinton apologist blog back in 2009-2010.
My point is that you excused … and “obfuscused” … a ton of the valid points that I made about the tremendous damage that Bill Clinton did to this country, and this was in 2009 or 2010 after so much carnage from the Clinton Wall Street deregulation frenzy was recognizable at that time. And yet you can’t forgive Bernie Sanders for endorsing the same candidate that you admit that at one point you conditionally supported? After Sanders made a deal prior to the primary to do just that?
Bernie Sanders endorsement of Hillary Clinton obviously did not effect your vote … it sure the hell didn’t mine … and Trump won the election so why are still holding onto that reason to not trust Bernie?
Note: there is no history that Obama was a worse president that Hillary Clinton would have been. I believe that is true, but it is just a belief, we have no proof of it.
Have a great day. I mean it. I do not hate you, of course. I don’t even know you. I think you are more intelligent than most people, but that your ego effects your objectivity, which is not an uncommon affliction.
Z
S Brennan
Z,
You’ve spent YEARS attacking me for doing what Bernie did in 2016, AFTER Hillary, as Secretary of State, engaged in war crimes…the shame, if you had any, is yours. That is why I posted a reply to earlier post, I knew you’d be dumb enough to bite. Enjoy your own poison my friend.
Z
Brennan,
I spent years attacking you for endorsing Hillary Clinton?
Z
Z
Brennan,
I don’t mind spending a little time discrediting you, it doesn’t take much.
Z
Peter
Meta, You don’t need Fox News to see that the Marxist Squad is waging the dog, much of congress is terrified by them, most of the candidates are in lockstep with them and the TDS crazed base adores them. Pelosi knew impeachment was a useful talking point and threat but that this sham impeachment would be political suicide yet she buckled. The only economic plan the dems have is the green new deal which isn’t about getting off of petro and cow farts but about getting off civilization and eating bugs. Chakrabarti AOC’s mentor seems to be an admirer of Chandra Bose the Indian leader who collaborated with the Nazis in WW2. His ideal government was a combined Communist/Fascist regime and Chak may share that nightmare dream.
Cenk thinks he is very clever but he isn’t very bright or he wouldn’t have named his little cabal the Young Turks. Americans aren’t as dumb as he thinks and you don’t have to be an Armenian to know who and what the Young Turks were.
Conservatives and Libertarians don’t need to take political tactics lessons from Marxists. Trump and his supporters are doing a good if slow job of identifying and marginalizing the Globalists in his party and a number are already gone. The Republicans are showing some backbone finally and what’s left of the Koch brothers wont be advising policy in Trump’s White House.
After reading your mostly excellent comments on the Climate Industrial Complex I don’t understand how you could have anything positive to say about these extremist Marxists.
Joe
When where political leaders ever not piles of garbage? Ghandi?
rattlemullet
Obviously you can\’t get past the black thing. By the way your screed is bullshit. Both Trump and Bush would have to stand on their mommas shoulders to kiss Obamas ass. Obama bookend by the two most ignorant lying president to have ever been elected by ignorant republican voters in history. Bush the ultimate war criminal along with his entire cabal should be in prison for life. Can you spell Iraq you fool. Bush who literally ran the country into the poor house and then had to pull the ultimate act of socialism and take all the tax payers money to bail the rich out. The other bookend is DT the man who is beyond the pale of being ignorant. He cannot ever tell the truth. The quad married man with three immigrant wives and three anchor babies is the poster child of the republican Christian right. He has never been faithful to whom he was married. The ignorant sluts seem to believe he has installed in the White House by God. The man has exploded the debt and the deficit. He think the purpose of foreign policy is to benefit his personal political gain and republican voters are ignorant enough to believe anything this adderall huffing maniac vomits from his mouth.
metamars
@peter
From “NANCY PELOSI VS ‘THE SQUAD’: INSIDE THE CIVIL WAR THREATENING TO FRACTURE THE DEMOCRATS’ HOUSE MAJORITY” @ https://www.newsweek.com/pelosi-squad-ocasio-cortez-omar-democrat-civil-war-1448652
“According to The Times, Pelosi felt the bill was as strong as they could achieve, and chided The Squad for voting against it. “All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world,” Pelosi told The Times. “But they didn’t have any following. They’re four people and that’s how many votes they got.””
Not exactly quaking in her boots, now, is she?
Pelosi buckling on impeachment is a bit of a mystery. I don’t know why, but I find it plausible that it’s because her own son is threatened that she resorted to a sort of desperate move, which appears to be unraveling.
(Could this be related to the recent report of an assassination attempt on Trump, via food poisoning? It’s not just corrupt Democrats that are threatened, but Deep State jerks, as well.)
The first couple of comments, by “frances”, in “Impeachment Circus – Today’s Bombshell Is Another Dud” @ https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/11/impeachment-circus-the-bombshell-is-a-dud.html#comments , are as follows
“b- I suspect the reason the Dems have thrown themselves into this impeachment circus is because they knew this investigation was in the works and possibly others as well:www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/ukrainian
I shortened the link, if anyone has a problem with it please refer to zerohedge.com
This Ukraine investigation will take down Biden, Hunter, Kerry, Kerry’s stepson and probably Pelosi and her son. Although their scam is via a different Ukraine energy company. The link mentions several other people from the Obama admin, Obama himself may be at the bottom of this well.”
and
“”The CEO of Burisma in Ukraine was arrested. He started talking. As it turns out, Biden’s kid, Hunter, was not getting paid $50, 000 a month, his base salary was closer to $200, 000 a month, and now that someone is talking, Hunter received several payments “in the millions” totaling $16.5million OUTSIDE of his regular pay.
Here is a quote from the original source at CD media
“In our extensive discussions with Onyshchenko, CD Media can report that he confirmed Hunter Biden took ‘off the books’ payments totally millions from Burisma.
“There were ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’ payments to the Biden family, ” Onyshchenko stated.
Onyshchenko also confirmed that former FBI agent Karen Greenaway, who oversaw the Obama administration’s anti-corruption efforts in Eastern Europe, directed the coverup of the Biden scandal at the time, in concert with the U.S. embassy in Kyiv, and other Deep State American government assets ‘in-country’.
In Onyshchenko’s former oversight role over Ukrainian energy security, he was in a unique position to acquire information on Burisma and their dealings with the Biden family.
My comment: The impeachment hearing is not going well. They keep chugging along with absolute blowouts that should end their trip down the road to lunacy, but keep on going like criminal nut cases that have nothing to lose, hoping the cops never catch up despite all the flat tires, among which this report was a serious one. It is shocking that this report relates directly to one of their guys they have in the race against Trump. It does not seem to matter to them at all if they get revealed time after time after time for what they are, it is becoming evident that the only thing that will stop them in their impeachment efforts is a long overdue arrest.”
And recall Guliani said that Romania and China pay to play deals are far worse than what happened in Ukraine”
==================
Although Barr SAYS some wonderful things, showing a respect for the rule of law, original intent in the Constitution, yadda, yadda, I don’t trust him. I welcome him to surprise me. So, even if criminality on the part of Pelosi’s son is a real thing, I’m skeptical that Barr would drag it into the light of day. There’s a relevant piece of writing by Michael Ruppert on the bipartisan corruption dynamic, using a card game analogy, but I’m not going to look for it. copvcia.com is archived in the wayback machine, so maybe it is there.
“The only economic plan the dems have is the green new deal which isn’t about getting off of petro and cow farts but about getting off civilization and eating bugs.”
I doubt this is true at all of Gabbard or Yang, but haven’t paid much attention to the Dem debates.
We can’t forget that Dems “tack left” during primaries, while Republicans “tack right”. While “you just pay for it” AOC may be a sincere believer in her “Green New Deal”, I’m doubtful that anybody other than Sanders and Warren would similarly believe.
I’m 100% Greek blood, and your complaints about the “young Turks” name seem completely off. The name doesn’t phase me at all. The #2 and #3 definitions of “young turks” at dictionary.com are:
an insurgent in a political party, especially one belonging to a group or faction that supports liberal or progressive policies:
The leadership of the party passed from the cautious old-line conservatives to the zealous Young Turks.
Also young Turk, young turk. any person aggressively or impatiently advocating reform within an organization.
“Trump and his supporters are doing a good if slow job of identifying and marginalizing the Globalists in his party and a number are already gone. ”
Well, we really part company, here. While Trump’s position, of being surrounded by enemies and backstabbers, is unenviable, I can’t respect either his ability to reform the system, or even to engage in necessary, if distasteful, political and propaganda efforts against the Democrats, globalists, and Deep State traitors to the Constitution.
Trump is a shoot-from-the-hip, dilettante-in-chief, and his adoring fans are generally useless to push him into a direction of creating systemic reform, much less create a SYSTEMIC approach to politics, like the Justice Democrats are attempting to do. I don’t mind his narcissism, per se, but it seems to blind him to his gross inadequacies. Apparently, the rear-end kissers he hires don’t challenge him to aspire for greatness, or even mastery, either.
Trump has already “made America great, again”, and now wants to “keep America great”. Laughable propositions, that nevertheless enthuse his clueless fans at his never-ended campaign rallies.
Peter
Joe, politicians are just human, flawed like the rest of us. Some of them rise to the occasion at critical times in history and despite their flaws advance freedom and help improve the human condition. Ghandi rose to the occasion and many Indians lived because of his firm nonviolent action. Bose devolved and chose a bloody path to more suffering.
Trump is no Ghandi but he has risen to the occasion in our time rejected the bloody forever wars and furthered the cause of improving the human condition.
different clue
As distasteful as it seems, the slow-rolling investigation into Deep State Subversion and Collusion with the seditious Clintonites and the seditious Obamazoids may be a serious reason to vote for Trump again.
If a Catfood Democrat is elected President, these investigations will be quashed and everything discovered will be erased, including by giving the Seth Rich treatment to those who “know too much”. Paranoid? Really? Who believes that Jeffrey Epstein killed himself in that Regime Prison? Who suspects Jeffrey Epstein was given the Seth Rich treatment?
Whereas if Trump is re-elected, there is a chance that these investigations may discover so much that it will become both necessary and possible to burn certain seditious agencies all the way into their own basements, starting with the FBI and the CIA but not necessarily ending there.
Peter
DC, an excellent unequivocal statement of fact. People have the opportunity and responsibility to set aside their differences to stand up and be counted to save our endangered,nearly lost Democratic Republic.
There won’t be another opportunity if the Marxist/Globalist forces regain power.