As a member of Extinction Rebellion, writes Zion Lights, I watched people brainwashed into pulling outrageous stunts in the name of ‘saving the planet.’
One thing that really stood out to me was the fact that they chose to shut down the Tube at a low-income neighborhood, which likely disrupted the lives of many poor people and did nothing to fight climate change. It’s the path of least resistance. Spoiled trust fund brats that want to “change the world” via meaningless protest are actively harming poor and working class people. I’ve noticed that this describes most young protesters in general.
A non-activist driven personal experience just like this was my white pill epiphany.
I was in Santa Clara in 2012 for work. As I sat in gridlock (every morning on the 101) I watched as brand new Teslas zoomed by me in the “car pool” lane that had recently been expanded to include “energy efficient vehicles” in the name of “climate change.”
I looked over and saw a Hispanic day laborer in a work truck next to me at 7:30 in the morning, sitting in gridlock trying to make his way to an hourly job. You know, a person for whom access to that lane may have made a 15% difference to their days pay, and my head almost exploded.
My undergraduate and graduate degree are in applied statistics. I'm supposed to know better than to rely on anecdote. But that moment destroyed the progressive myth for me forever. It wasn't Obama bombing kids in ‘08 (though that certainly changed my vote in '11), I could blame that on one bad apple. I always believed the middle of the Democratic Party was the only hope we had - but that moment forcefully disproved that hypothesis. CA was supposed to be THE center of the modern left, and this is what the modern left had become. It was wealth worship masquerading as something probably more pathetic and embarrassing that I couldn't even grasp.
Anyone ever wants to ACTUALLY make a difference, create a car pool lane you can only use if the Kelly blue book of your car is below 15k. Yes, scammers while buy cheap cars just to use it (every system can and will be cheated by horrible people), but most common folks are way too vain to purposefully buy down, so the majority of the benefit will go to those who actually need it.
As I’ve said a million times, the reason we’ll never have a flat consumption tax is because it would actually tax the wealthy, and no politician, and CERTAINLY not the modern left, could stand for that.
I live in Sunnyvale CA, am politically moderate, and I feel sick whenever I have to go to Palo Alto or deal with people from Palo Alto, Los Altos, Atherton and their phony concern for "the poor" and "the environment", etc.
Yet they say climate change disproportionately affects the poor, when in fact, net zero will crush the poor, in the wealthy west and third world countries.
Climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the radical left (communists).
I am not the only one to equate climate change fanatics to Marxism:
"Lord Christopher Monckton, a special adviser to UK’s Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, narrated in an interview, “The environmentalists are merely watermelons: green on the outside, red on the inside, or I call them the traffic light tendency: yellow (afraid) to admit they are really red. You may think this is just rhetoric but I used to know one of the founders of Greenpeace, the late Eric Ellington, then whom nobody less political could be found. He was genuinely concerned that nobody should mess up the planet, and so he and his fellow founders all had rather idealistic notions about what they would like to achieve. Within a year or two, he said, they all had to leave because they weren’t political. When the Marxists moved in, and in his words, ‘took the movement over,’ they were unable to stop it because they were politically outmaneuvered by the hard left.”
Since man walked out of caves and formed social groups, tribes, there has been nut cases in sandwich boards wandering around proclaiming, "The end is near."
I live in Los Altos. We have two cars for three drivers (my parents live with me), a 2005 and a 2001 volvo. We are the only one in the pool of Teslas in our school. Good thing my kids don’t ask that many questions about our weird car situation , I must have done something right..
At one point British Columbia’s ‘socialist’ NDP government was subsidizing electric vehicles by $10,000 when the only ones available were $120,000 or more. That is modern progressivism in a nutshell. Woke politics are simply a smokescreen for screwing over working people to further enrich the global elite and their university educated lackeys.
Agreed. I’ve noticed that too many concerns of progressives are of a classist nature, and not a climate change issue, or racism, or sexism, or transphobia or homophobia.
It’s mostly about the haves and the have-nots! Even our immigration issue at the border is about that. It’s evident to me that those who espouse open borders care very little for the cry of the poor. The immigrants who are coming here risk life and limb to get here. They spend meager life savings or worse to travel from all over to arrive here. But our government doesn’t care about the risks they take or the dire situations they find themselves in once they arrive. It’s a humanitarian crisis but those who live comfortably and own multiple homes in swanky locales don’t care about that. They would have us believe that they are the compassionate ones. All of it brings me to tears of sadness and frustration. The cache’ of progressive concerns is troubling to me? Why are they the “cool kids?” Because the media in most forms cater to them. It’s ruining the US.
"cool" is what you make it. I've lived in some of the most liberal enclaves in America and small classical liberal midwestern towns and worked with the definition of anti-liberal (lefty) elites and anti-liberal (conservative) small town mechanics. Trust me when I tell you all those people have VERY different definitions of cool.
Regarding the class issue, I actually think its two sides of the same coin, but two very different sides. It all begins with a search for ego. The biggest issue most of the wealthy progressive left (and right, frankly) face today is they have never overcome real difficulty in their life. They may have "faced" difficulty, but VERY few of them have felt any real hardship and had to overcome it and thus build real, and sustainable, ego. Our fathers who could build a car didn't need likes on Facebook - he can kill his own food, prep it & cook it. He literally built the house I grew up in. He fixed motorcycles in our garage when he wasn't literally fighting fires. Those people knew stuff that actually mattered.
Today, I can pontificate about almost anything. I've read more in the last two years than my dad has in his life. I've literally traveled from corner of the globe to corner of the globe for work. I can barely change a tire (but I can, thank goodness). I, of course, don't think I have a fragile ego, but deep down I know feeding myself would be a REAL challenge, and that means there is a hole there whether I want it to be or not.
You wrap that all up and you get two things - HUGE ego fragility for a massive amount of the country - which means almost every decision they make is in protection of their own ego, and guilt about the fact that, deep down, they know every decision they actually make is about their own ego.
No one cares about the border because they know it isn't THEIR issue. Every political decision they make is about making things as easy for them as possible. They offset this selfishness by voting for everything that makes life as "easy" for everyone else as possible as well (on-paper - no way they're actually going to figure out if BLM actually makes life better for black people, then they may be called to face the reality of their own selfishness as well). The easiest way to assuage one's guilt over their own selfishness is to pretend they also want what's best for everyone else also - as long as someone else is paying for the work and actually doing the work.
And just to be clear - the ultra-individualistic voter - the "everyone must do everything for themselves" voter isn't much better (but they are better). We could live just fine with ALL ultra-individualistic voters - quality of life would just be way worse because we wouldn't be leveraging the best of each of us, but it would work. This faux-collectivism in the name of selfishness can never have a positive ending. Soon or later you always run out of someone else's money and someone else's time - or you end up with slavery and euthanasia (hi China and Canada).
And ironically, it all begins with a simple hierarchy of needs analysis - when you move beyond the simplest needs without earning ANY of it, it becomes VERY hard indeed to assuage your own conscious. Lefty progressivism is, unfortunately, often the outcome. Just as the Romans.
Fair enough. Bottom line is no one is perfect. But there are ways to work on issues in our Constitutional, and yes capitalist, society to help others even as we help ourselves. Decent laws passed by decent legislators would be a start. It’s such a complicated situation. But certainly our easy, Western life, especially for the more affluent, leaves us with lots of time on our hands and that, more often than not, gets us into mischief.
Good for you BTDS. I am pretty much anti-stats because they can be so readily manipulated by people with malicious intent. But in my heart of hearts I know that the truth is that a a good argument relies on both anecdote to make it human in the sense of worthwhile to humanity or some subset thereof,and statistical data to make it practical.
I've run marketing programs for huge companies and small companies and stats are like most things - they can be used for good or used for bad. Marketing is the same. Nudge Theory can be used to help people lose weight, improve mental health, or become more productive by using our own cognitive biases towards a positive end, or Nudge Theory can be implemented through Twitter to make common people believe, by manipulating their media and "nudging them along," that there's a majority of people out there who actually believe men can get pregnant (it's less than 1% of the population - and they don't believe it either).
We are ALL left brained and right brained, we are all extroverted and introverted, and we are all both heart and mind. A strong mind and a tender heart by Martin Luther King Jr. is perhaps the greatest sermon ever given. It is the personification of the argument that we must both be moved by stories (tender hearted) and grounded in fact (strong minded). I'd like to pretend I get the mix right - I don't - but I do actively try. Admittedly, I probably fall too hard on the stats side and lack a certain degree of empathy that would serve me well. Luckily I married a woman that has enough empathy for both of us - and reminds me often, whether I want her to or not :)
Admittedly, I’m taking huge liberty with “white pill” in this context. Modern lexicon “white pill” essentially means “reasons to be optimistic.” Blue pill/red pill are pretty straight forward (political parties - God help us), “black pill” is pessimism. I claim white pill because realizing what a joke our pretend political parties are was a very eye opening moment for me. Changed how I viewed a lot of things, and I think for the better. So some may call deciding all politicians are corrupt megalomaniacs ultimately in it entirely for themselves, and the people voting for ego reasons and likes are just, as bad a black pill moment, but for me it felt the opposite for some reason. So white pill I shall.
On the data point - if you’ve ever done the Bay Area commute you know the traffic is so bad you can literally hold hands with the person next to you if you so choose. But I also did landscaping for three years in high school/college summers and you know a landscaping truck when you see it… backpack leaf blowers, shovels and rakes as far as the eye can see, and tree base dirt everywhere is pretty indicative of the day to come. LOVED that job and the feeling of accomplishment you felt as you literally transformed a landscape. Amazing how important being able to see the results of your labor can be for self esteem.
I have two young sons who have purchased their own homes. They have both discovered gardening - the shock of physical exertion followed by satisfaction with the fruits of one’s labours.
Thanks for the reply, DataMan. Self esteem comes from accomplishments not participation trophy's.
We made the move east out of San Diego Cnty in the early 90s. I ran a hydraulics field repair service. I understand traffic. Big reason why we went to Kansas/OK.
Yes, well. That's always been my problem with environmental activism since I continue to believe, as I believed in my 20s, that the most serious problem facing humanity is the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a plutocracy.
Most of the remedies suggested by climate activists disproportionately affect the poor.
Putting on my best Hayek, that individual wealth accumulation is just one manifestation of the overall magnificent economic growth that has raised the world out of abject poverty and allowed us to flourish. Resentment of others wealth accumulation will poison your soul. Hell, that’s what inspired Marx. To paraphrase Churchill: capitalism is the worst system, except for all the others...
I have read Hayek and agree. Douglas Murray in The War on the West speaks of gratitude for the amazing time we live in. Gratitude is contrasted with resentment. It seems so many of the ideologies we are subjected to, including climate activism are motivated by resentment. Not so good.
I'm fine with capitalism. It's the only economic system that incentivizes individual creativity.
I'm not fine with privilege when it manifests solely because somebody's great-grandfather was smart enough to assemble a fortune.
And I totally get that this is an unpopular view, but I'm not going to defend it further because today, all I want to do is laugh and say mean things about wacky climate activists.
Like so many people, you don't realize that, except for tiny pockets here and there, capitalism has been dead for most of our lifetimes. This system where government picks winners and losers, and benefits from both, is nothing like capitalism. The second government gets involved, the whole supporting structure of true capitalism is destroyed. The reason we are surrounded by so many substandard products today is because the system is no longer designed to weed out the products and services that don't cut the mustard, but keep everything on life support so that government may collect revenue, plain and simple.
It is not dead--capitalism has brought the world poverty rate from over 50% in the 1980's to under 10% via the microchip in just 40 years. That's in every living person's lifetime.
But it's NOT capitalism... Capitalism is not state sponsored, does not include a confiscatory tax system, does not include government regulation. Capitalism is the financial equivalent of libertarianism, which you probably don't understand either.
Michael: Capitalism is dead - really? I couldn't disagree more. And what "system" is it that's "designed to weed out the products and services that don't cut the mustard"? I thought that was the job of the marketplace....if your product sucks, people stop buying it...if your product is great, you can't make it fast enough. Please help me understand.
If you think capitalism isn't dead, then you just don't understand the true definition of capitalism. This is why I said it has been dead as long as we all have been alive. What has taken it's place is NOT capitalism. Think outside of your own head space for two seconds. In this world, if a product sucks it isn't pushed from the marketplace, it is either subsidized by government, or put in to a market that has no choice but to accept it. If capitalism still existed, Tesla, for example, would not. They would have been out of business before most of us ever knew who they were. The difference between you and I is that I'm not programmed by the world around me to believe that this is all there is. I know how it should be and what REALITY is, and I'm not afraid to recognize it.
Could you explain how one might solve the privilege "problem" while keeping capitalism? And are you sure that the benefits would outweigh the costs (or do you believe the costs would be minimal)? Once the government can decide how much of the wealth you accumulate you can keep and pass onto your family (or whomever you choose), is it still a free system?
I’ve never been able to understand the obsession with the handful of people who are fabulously wealthy. Why do I care how much money they have? How does it affect my life? While their works have very much affected my life and everyone else’s in a positive way (yes of course there are negative sides to any new technology etc].
You could take every penny the super rich have away (while alive or after they’re gone) and give to the government with all its good intentions, and the poor kid stuck in the ghetto in a failed, violent school would be in exactly the same situation.
But it's rooted in frustration... If you look at the relationship between the people and the government, the advantage given to the most wealthy by the people that they finance elections for has created a belief in many people that the system is rigged, and the American dream is now only accessible to a select few. The last time this happened, the British didn't like the outcome. The cycle will repeat again.
Privilege seems to be the modern face of “luck of the draw”. Did Pharaoh’s son feel guilty about his birthplace? Doubt it. How about the royals? (At least until Harry). Human existence has always been the story of the haves and the have nots. What is new is the empowerment of the culture of resentment, of those who have a lot against those who have more. Glenn Loury points out that African Americans are the richest black people on the planet - by a lot. But instead of gratitude we hear about resentment. I will feel humble and blessed and lucky to be an American, but I will not feel bad about my privilege.
The way to reconcile this is to look at the wild, where human beings started. You just have to be able to translate the semantics. There will always be a pecking order, it's just that the human condition of today dictates that we don't live in small, tribal groups and it's much more difficult to work out the pecking order. But if you compare it to the wild, unless the parent of any particular species is equipped to effectively teach their young, the young are usually doomed to not make adulthood. The ones that survive are usually better equipped to continue the species. Yes, natural selection. Since we no longer have predators as a species, we have become our own predators, and the hunting dynamic is incredibly complicated.
In the case of the most wealthy, there is an additional dynamic in that they ultimately have to make a certain contribution back to the society or, as is examples past, society hunts and destroys them, disseminates their wealth back in to the group, and the cycle begins again. It is only because modern society created central government (at the behest of the most wealthy), that there is now a mediator between the classes. The problems with that arise when the elected officials in government stop being the median, and allow themselves to be corrupted by the wealthy to do their bidding. It is at that stage that all societies invariably begin to seek to reset the cycle... We need a reset very soon.
I don't think it's the money that's the problem, it's the methods they invariably use to accumulate more of it once they have some. Like passing "progressive" tax structures but then building ever more complex exceptions which require lots of money to exploit.
It's a rigged game. And it's not new. An endless supply of subsistence labor and the unfettered exploitation of natural resources without consequence or restraint. People defending the right's of the rich should consider the 2008 grift that destroyed the saving's and wiped out the pension funds of millions of American's while hurling lives into chaos across the globe. The perp's walked. And there was no hesitation when it came to gutting and turning American industrial cities into war zones. T.Piketty won the Nobel Prize in economics for outlining the ongoing ascent of the new feudalism.
You’re mixing up the "they"s. The rich accumulating money don’t pass the "progressive" tax structures. The government does that to "help" people and, by coincidence, increase its own power. The rent-seeking is inevitably created by government as it puts itself in the middle of everything with a hundred thousand regulations and so on. As government power over business and industry grows, the rich wealth creators pour money into the political process to try and control the decisions the government is making over their livelihoods as well as come up with complex exceptions to the tax code.
Government creates all these problems and then tries to solve them by more of the same, in an endless vicious cycle.
Midwits in Congress who have not the slightest idea of unintended consequences nor any interest in same nor capability of learning. In recent decades, as Congress has ceased to do its own work, it's been unelected midwits inside the Federal bureaucracy. Same but worse.
I can guarantee you "plutocrats" would write a very different tax structure (presumably more to their own advantage). Do big companies and the super rich spend a crap ton of money lobbying the govt to adjust those structures and create carve outs for themselves? Of course they do. Like everyone they are responding to the incentives that govt creates.
Unlike in Europe (where the middle class pays for its own benefits), here "the rich" pay the vast majority of taxes. Our code is more progressive than that of EU countries. The plebes here do have to pay payroll taxes, for which they will get a rude surprise when it turns out there is no money for them to get benefits back out in the future. More govt brilliance.
“Most of the remedies suggested by climate activists disproportionately affect the poor”
Words adequate to describe the malcontents being led by the self-styled messiahs described in the article elude me so I’ll settle for ignorant fools. Anyone doubting the description need look no further than the picture of the Waterloo Bridge blockade. Most of the clothes they're wearing, the roller skates on their children's feet, the geotextile sign warning us of imminent extinction, and even the fertilizers used to facilitate growth of the wilted flowers rely on petrochemicals (substances obtained by the refining and processing of petroleum or natural gas) to be produced. If killing off the fossil fuel industry is their ultimate goal, perhaps they should consider the old adage, "be careful what you wish for". A little deeper research reveals many other life sustaining products that are reliant upon the availability of petrochemicals. The following are a few listed in Medicine After Oil by Daniel Bednarz:
“manufacturing of analgesics, antihistamines, antibiotics, antibacterials, rectal suppositories, cough syrups, lubricants, creams, ointments, salves, and many gels. Processed plastics made with oil are used in heart valves and other esoteric medical equipment. Petrochemicals are used in radiological dyes and films, intravenous tubing, syringes, and oxygen masks...”.
Perhaps more pertinent to the perpetually anxiety ridden cultists is that almost 99% of pharmaceuticals contain petrochemicals. One wonders how the gloom and doom crowd will be able to cope with the current “climate crisis” or the next, inevitable Armageddon without being able to pop a few valiums. I have to admit though, it would be entertaining to watch a Greta Thunberg whirling dervish performance at the next UN Climate Summit if she were deprived of her Asperger’s meds.
Thank goodness we live in a free country where people can keep the fruits of their labor. You aren’t much different than the “gangs” that Roger warns us about. Steve Jobs and many other “plutocrats” created so much value for the world-why can’t they keep some of it and give what they kept to whomever they wish? Communists are such pathetic people.
I think I get you. When I was a child I saw wealthy people’s children “piss away” pretty good fortunes with profligate lifestyles. But nowadays the fortunes are so vast and the levers of control so accessible to the irresponsible receivers of these fortunes, that they can eat away at the pillars of our society. The exes of two bazillonaires come immediately to mind. Billions of dollars being misspent can wreak existential havoc.
Bow wow wow wow wow. America is a Constitutional Republic and we are citizens in it. The totalitarian bitch slap good cop/bad cop capitalist/communist grift is the reason American's live from crisis to manufactured psyop crisis every day of their lives. Nobody wants your $$$$$ or the theft of your labor more than the surveillance state bureaucracy now serving totalitarian criminal finance. (Davos is in session.) Trillions in missing and unaccounted for tax dollars, American city's in ruin's, mounting debt , inflation and chaos no solution's forthcoming. The DNC has Bill's on the House floor right now pushing for the criminalization of American free speech and thought. The only thing you've got is the Constitution and the Bill of Right's it contains. When that's gone so are you.
I'm anything but a communist, but I think the fairest taxes around are "death taxes". Let people earn what they want when they're alive, but after death, give the government who provided the platform for you to work a cut, say 50%.
If you feel comfortable pretending that totalitarian finance isn't pissing down your shirt collar and that it isn't allied with the CCP fine. Go back to sleep.
In which case, why would he have bothered to accumulate more wealth at all? We allow people to get wealthy because the rest of us benefit more from their industry than they do themselves.
Yes, but in part, it’s not their fault. The climate nihilists have strategically weaponized the creation of a generation of mentally ill kids to promote their climate agenda.
A few months ago, there was an op-Ed on The Hill entitled: Climate Anxiety isn’t the Enemy: Embracing it can Speed Change, which basically said the quiet part out loud.
The author explicitly calls for driving kids into a depression around the climate change, then using that condition to their benefit in their war against modernity.
A friend of mine has a daughter two years removed from four years in college. Spent four years in her indoctrination and what was produced was a scared sniveling young woman who was frightened every day with anxiety that the world was coming to an end. Btw she works as a waitress.
The daughter of the pastors at our Lutheran church is a climate fanatic. I'm not sure if it's the cliche of the pastor's daughter rebelling or what but her parents are supportive of her zeal, and it's coming through in the Sunday sermons more often now. I'm seeing this a lot lately: the commercials with the message: "Jesus was a refugee." That's shameless political advertising, and I promise the people behind those commercials would not also say "Jesus is my Lord and personal savior." Not that religion has not been abused since the beginning of civilization, but the blending of Democrat policy rhetoric into legacy conservative alcoves is a bold new frontier and demonstrates, more than anything, just how much money is going into gaslighting the masses. The most revealing thing about this article is that the only message is fear; solutions are unimportant.
That commercial grates on me as well. It is erroneous as Jesus remained in his place of birth and worked tirelessly to improve it before finally making the ultimate sacrifice.
More egregious to me is the latest one that ends with the execution of the criminal… as if that would be Christ. I can’t believe that commercial. Unreal!😡
"One thing that really stood out to me was the fact that they chose to shut down the Tube at a low-income neighborhood, which likely disrupted the lives of many poor people and did nothing to fight climate change. "
And for this they got exactly what was coming to them. When climate "activists" pointlessly destroy priceless artworks, they do so at venues patronized by spineless liberals who won't fight back. Come to America, Extinction Rebellion, and glue yourselves to a subway station in the Bronx.
Walter’s “The Preachy Misery of the Enlightened Class” in today’s Unbound posting seems to echo this theme; I love visiting the Cascades up near Winthrop, but you will definitely find this entrenched, Trust funded class, all around and preaching their expectations upon you.
The current delusion regarding EVs being the salvation of the Earth clearly demonstrates the contempt for the poor. Most people cannot afford to buy a new $70.000 vehicle that needs to be replaced (or at least, the battery pack does) every 10 years. Hydrogen fuel can be used in a combustion engine with minimal modification and an exhaust of water and cool air. Porsche is in collaboration with a company at the southern tip of South America using wind power to extract carbon from the atmosphere to create a methane based liquid fuel which is carbon net zero and requires no modification to run internal combustion engines. These alternatives to EVs which serve only to overload the power grid which then consumes more fossil fuels to charge their filthy, polluting battery packs are NEVER part of the conversation. Don't forget the occasional battery pack combustion while charging or after getting wet that burns down homes. We saw it first hand after Hurricane Ian floods, and the Teslas were spontaneously combusting where they were parked, and sometimes on the tow trucks. They also don't charge effectively much below 40 fahrenheit.
Sheluyang, your 'change the world' quote brings to mind the lyric from Ten Years After:
'… I'd love to change the world
But I don't know what to do
So I'll leave it up to you'
It appears these misguided intellectually underfed kids don't know what to do either, so they leave it to a controlling 'cult' guru they are supplicants to, to think it through for them - so that they merely become soldiers in a self defeating asinine display of blind belief, initiating stunts they surely one day will want to disown. Much like the writer of this article.
Multiply a spoiled trust fund brat a thousandfold and you get the Special People preening at Davos and instruct us to eat insects as they dine on caviar and foie gras before flying home in their Gulfstreams and Globals.
Yup. Smacks of good ole contemporary Woke Gen Z/Millennial narcissism, as usual. Spoiled. Coddled. Attention-whores. It’s all for social media. Woke prestige. Very sad. This is what we’ve done to our kids. We did this. ‘We’ meaning western wealthy democracies. Maybe it’s a sign that, ironically, we’ve done TOO well.
My favorite story is the one where Jordan Peterson explains how he eliminated the problem of campus protestors by holding his talks at 8am. None of them wanted to get up early. Still makes me laugh.
You have to see the posts on the Reddit politics section talking about the guy as if he's stupid, who listens to this guy, how his degrees mean nothing, they are going to remove his license, etc. All coming from internet warriors under the age of 25 who received participant trophies all their adolescent lives, I doubt ever worked, nor have any grasp on what the real world entails.
"They" don't need to; much of rare-earths are processed in China. We just buy them and no harm to our precious conscience. Just like anything else perceived as harming the planet, as long as America doesn't do it, we greedily support others that do.
I think it was early last year, the United States sent a delegation to Africa to scold them for their lack of environmental considerations, while promising a few million dollars in aid to work toward climate targets. At the exact same time, China has been in Africa investing tens of billions in infrastructure and forgiving debt. Where is most of the world's cobalt mined?
The world has been so badly outmaneuvered by China in the past three decades that we have already lost World War 3. I hope everyone feels really good about themselves for the Pyrrhic victory that is Ukraine, because in the greater scheme it means nothing.
We aren't talking about the moderate left. The UN push for this is definitely Marxist. The corporations don't care about this issue. They are global. It's business as usual for them. I agree with your two party system statement though it's a separate issue.
The climate change fanatics are the rainbows and unicorn left wing nut cases. History, facts and figures mean nothing to them. Feeling good means everything.
It is the "Oh, look at me. I am altruistic and saving the planet. Aren't I wonderful?"
If the author had bothered to carefully look at the “data” prior to starting this crazy journey, she would realize that the planet will warm about 1.5 Celsius in the next century, and we will adapt and be fine. See Lomborg, Shellenberger, Koonin, etc. Climate activism doesn’t have a “cult” problem, it is a problem all by itself.
“Will warm”? LOL! It has “warmed” 1 Celsius over the last 150 years, most of which had no emission controls whatsoever, even for particulates and noxious gases. Please don’t spread such baseless projections even though you’re right about adapting.
Hi Naomi, During the time Europe was experiencing low temps, the western half of North America was experiencing a period of warming temperatures and long term drought. This caused the abandonment of the Chaco canyon complexes in 1100 AD, and the abandonment of the Mesa Verde complexes in the 1300’s, although a complete loss of that civilization’s organization. Sorry I don’t have specific references- the tracking of moisture and temperature I read about in a PNAS survey of temperature changes in the South west over the last 1500 years- I just Googled it, so you could find it too. The concern really isn’t the variability of broad climate patterns, as is the rate of change of climate patterns and the ability of biological and social systems to adapt successfully to the changes as they happen. Currently the drought in the Western United States is bad, again, but the pressure point is not going to be local agricultural impacts. The pressure point is going to be the loss of the water from the Colorado River which has been diverted to California. Los Angeles will not be sustainable at it’s current population when the Colorado River doesn’t have enough water flow to provide Los Angeles with water.
The problem with California (well, the one relevant here; CA seems now to be one infinite set of problems) is they have for decades refused to build any water infrastructure despite the obvious problem of water supply vs demand. No reservoirs, no aqueducts, no desalination, no pipes, no nothing. Nada. So almost all that rushing water they just endured just flowed on out to sea. Oops.
The "environmentalists" - the same brilliant people pushing to cover the entire surface of the earth with solar panels and wind turbines - have completely captured CA policy, so any proposal for any of the above is a dead end.
The public/voters, as the saying goes, know exactly what they want and deserve to get it - good and hard.
The drought in the west is over, water flows into the southwest reservoirs was not greatly reduced, only outpaced by demand. More a fault of man, than a change in climate.
Even the recent flooding here in California has more to do with developing flood plains than climate change. Flood plains will flood. If you notice, the flooding always seems to occur on streets with names such as Creek Side, and River View.
The real environmental problem is that 1/3rd of all energy used in California is used to pump water to the Las Angeles area.
Once the water dries up maybe Los Angeles and Southern California will finally get serious about nuclear powered desalination and leave the Colorado River for Colorado, Arizona and Nevada. With nuclear energy anywhere is sustainable although it helps to be near an ocean.
Thank you for adding to my knowledge. The climate has been in flux since the beginning of time. The continents drift, weather and temperature are affected by sun activity such as sun spots and flares.
Considering the climate fluctuations that caused drought in the Northern American hemisphere and at the same time extremely cold weather in Europe, there is no way humans can be blamed for any of it. Would you say the total human population of the Earth in 1100 AD was possibly 5 million or fewer? Certainly the internal combustion engine didn't exist. Wood and peat were the primary fuel sources for cooking and heat but couldn't have had much impact on global climate.
The North American continent did, in 1100 AD, have vast herds of buffalo. Maybe it buffalo flatulence that caused all that climate change. Hmmm?
I agree with the water situation in the Western US. California is like a cancer on the country, and particularly the western part. It sucks and sucks and sucks up resources. Check out Idaho. The rural areas there are being subjected to huge wind turbines which are killing their birds and destroying the land. The electricity will be going to California. (Tucker Carlson did a segment on this last week). Then there is the upper East coast of the US. They are putting these hideous turbines out in the ocean off New England. The blasting surveys in the ocean are decimating the whales. Whales are washing up on New England beaches in droves.
You need to understand it’s not about knowing - it’s about using climate change as the premise to attack our energy industry on the way to transforming our society.
Yes, it's been warming since the last ice age. Where the Empire State Building lay under the ice. So warming isn't a bad thing and who can say what is the ideal temperature, until this latest inter-glacial period begins to wane.
This is what happens at the end of coming out of an ice age. It's been much hotter than now in the past. And there has been a lot more CO2 in the past. Plants love these conditions. An other ice age would be the real existential threat. I read the other day that even now, many more people die of cold every year than heat. An order of magnitude more.
I'm not sure about the "alternating." There have been at least 4 ice ages for North America. However, the continents drift so they haven't been in their current locations from the beginning. Depending on where they are on the Earth's surface has a vast effect on the climate affecting them. I have enjoyed Voyage of the Continents which I watched on Prime Video. I highly recommend it. The documentary on Australia was also instructive. Australia has had varying climate situations acting on it. Its coastline, as an example, has extended and receded several times due to climate changes. It's not static and there is no way any human population could prevent, or cause, the changes.
Yes. I haven't seen that video but I've been following this topic since the seventies. It does seem like the frequency of ice ages suddenly increased after the South American tectonic plate moved up and rear-ended North America, there by cutting off flow of water from the Pacific to Atlantic oceans. A number of ocean currents now operate as a result and their complex interactions very likely control the macro climate to an extent the global warming cult can't begin to imagine.
Yes. The Gulf Stream is a prime example. It is a major weather maker as well as moving heat from the Equator to the the northern latitudes.
These environmental morons have no clue as to complex systems. One large volcanic eruption would have a massive impact on global climate. Ask any of these morons how exactly Man has any influence on that or how they would deal with the aftermath of a major volcanic event.
There have been a number of ice ages; the most recent one ended about 11 thousand years ago. The first five waves of immigrants to the Americas seem now to have started coming across the land bridge from Siberia to Alaska more than han 18 thousand years ago, while the seas were still much lower but the ice was opening up in places. There was another "mini ice age" that only lasted a few hundred years between the 12th and 16th centuries. Froze out the Viking colony in Greenland so that they pulled back to Iceland; otherwise they would probably been the next wave to enter the Americas, and the first with steel technology, rather than the Europeans that did.
It started warming after the end of a mini ice age in the early to mid 1800’s. The mini ice age lasted about 50 years and for most of the period the winters were so severe that the Thames froze over and winter fairs were held on the ice. We are about to enter another solar minimum which will last until 2053, so we may well be in for another mini ice age.
The earth's climate has warmed and cooled repeatedly since it was created.
The earth has had FIVE major ice ages. We are currently coming out of the last one and into the next warming period which STARTED about 11k years ago. During this time, we have had multiple micro ice ages. The earth will very very likely see ANOTHER ice age at some point.
This is never, ever, going to stop unless the earth's core goes cold. In the meantime, we can worry about super volcanoes and comets that have both at various times thrown the climate into chaos. Whether it is these or another ice age, you can be sure that the climate and the various environments, land and ocean, will be dramatically impacted and we are not powerful enough to change that.
All we can do is hope to adapt well enough to survive as a species.
We are not powerful enough to change anything. Much of this climate nonsense is misplaced ego and guilt. Earth is gonna earth. We’re along for the ride. Lucky we’re adaptable!
The 1.5 number is based on the recent IPCC projection, which is verified by the authors I cited. They also confirm a similar 1.5 rise over the last 100 years, as you note. You may disagree with the assessment, but calling it “baseless” imposes the same nonsense which you thrust on the other side.
There are issues with their methods, for example temp sensors placement near large cities that cause urbanization-induced bias (heat islands). Basically most of the climate change hysteria is a lie (in my opinion).
Yes, a "projection." Based on models. That use many assumptions. As the old saying goes about models - garbage in, garbage out. A particularly egregious modeler was Michael Mann of Penn State. Who has been unmasked as a fraud whenever his "proof" is put to the test.
I find it interesting that the threshold was suddenly lowered from 2 degrees to 1.5 degrees. I think we’re at about 1.3 degrees now so lowering the threshold makes doom look that much more imminent.
The Little Ice Age ended at about the time of the American Revolution and we have experienced warming ever since. However the most accurate land based system, established by NOAA ins 2005, otherwise known by the acronym USCRN, has reflected no warming trend in the continental USA since that time. Longer time series in Japan show no warming at all.
Being in my mid-50s I'm barely old enough to remember the climate alarmism of the 1970s. Except back then we were headed for the next ice age and we were all going to freeze to death. Then it became global warming and when that didn't pan out they just changed it to the generic climate change. It's all just a scam to get power and money for those pushing this non-scientific garbage. And to make people with some privilege feel better about themselves.
The problem really isn’t the rate of global warming, or the cause of this instance of global warming compared to the causes of prior instances of global warming. The problem, for any species at any moment, is how to adapt successfully to deal with whatever is coming at you. Current examples of more or less maladaptive responses to the current episode of global warming which has been happening for a few hundred years now, but is accelerating in the last 10 or 20 or 50 years, depending on which set of data you look at-
1. more or less Islamic nomadic herders at the Southern edge of the Sahara are seeking grazing for their herds further and further south, as the traditional pastures at the Northern edge of their ranges fail. The results in conflict with the more or less sedentary, more or less Christian farming groups in areas that still get adequate rainfall. One seldom sees these clashes of culture and religion interpreted as one result of climate change, but that is what it is, isn’t’t it? 2. the escalating competition for African hearts, minds and resources between the the Chinese state and multinational corporations with close ties to Russian, and more belatedly, the Biden administration, playing catch after Trump ceded the playing field there to his friends, is also driven by shifting consumer needs as technology attempts to figure out how to profit from the changing conditions. 3. The war for the rich wheat fields and always open ports of Ukraine, couched in terms of Putin seeking to return to the old and better times, or questions of political ideas like Ukraine’s right to self determination, and self- governance, obscures the fact that Russian has been exporting a greater percentage of it’s wheat crop ever since the early 70’s. As oil revenues continue to fall, Russia needs some other major exports as a source of revenue. But wheat and other agricultural products are more susceptible to the vagaries of the weather, hence the perceived need to control a greater share of production.
The founder of Greenpeace, Patrick Moore, turned on the organization once he realized it wasn’t about saving the environment, it was about power. It always comes down to power.
These environmental cults fill the void left by the abandonment of religion. Funny how they have all the same elements--original sin, guilt, penance through sacrifice. But there’s never forgiveness. In Christianity there is forgiveness and reconciliation. But in cults, there can’t be. The cult leaders must keep their followers wallowing in guilt. That’s how they get more power. I saw Al Gore has made hundreds of millions of dollars these past several years. Doing what other than scaring kids? Meanwhile we are having bake sales at my church to raise enough money to repair the roof.
Everyone in an environmental cult needs to read Unsettled by Koonin. He uses IPCC’s own data to show that climate change is not the big scare it is made out to be. And the cultists need to visit countries of the third world and understand the devastating impact of their intentions on poor people.
I haven't read Unsettled, but did listen to his interview with Joe Rogan (episode #1776) and it was worthwhile. There is something so satisfying about reading/hearing reasonable discussions! I really want the rational people to be right about this stuff
Gore is just one of many. Which explains how those trillions devoted to infrastructure in the last two years have not resulted in the improvement of much infrastructure.
“In my country, we passed the ‘Inflation Reduction Act,’ which is primarily a climate act, $369 billion, which will actually be much larger than that.” — Al Gore at the WEF last week
I have young kids. I believe climate change is real and requires thoughtful and prompt action, and like Zion, I also believe that the solutions have to take us towards a future of human flourishing. I am deeply troubled that due to rhetoric like that espoused by XR, it’s become commonplace for mainstream publications to refer casually to a “dying world,” and to toss around the possibility of complete societal collapse. There’s a deeply anti-human, nihilistic strain in all of this. But if you want a better future - if you want solutions - you have to inculcate hope, not despair. If you think you won’t see thirty, you won’t lay the groundwork for a better world. You won’t have children or pursue education or try to build deep community. Because why should you, in the face of this apocalyptic future?
You really think people can make a dent? Seriously? I recommend you listen to Konstantin Kisin's 8 minute speech before the Oxford Union.
Explain exactly how the spoiled upper middle class Westerner is going to convince the poor in India, China and other developing countries to choose starvation and a scrabbling existence so the planet can be saved? You really believe this will work?
Human flourishing and society is inextricably linked with energy availability and use. If the greens hadn't fucked up the nuclear transition 50 years ago we would be in a tremendously good place right now. Barring some sort of technological miracle, there is no reasonable future that does not include nuclear as our main source of energy. We need fossil fuels to bridge the gap. Asking (or impotently demanding) people to voluntarily make their lives worse is pointless and won't ever work
What prompt and thoughtful actions would you take? More renewables which degrade the grid by delivering electricity sporadically? Wind turbines that are buried where they fall and solar panels to landfills because neither are recyclable? Ruining American’s way of life so China and India can continue to use fossil fuels? Requiring electric cars so foreign lands can be environmentally pillaged for lithium?
Someday your children will wonder what was used before candles. It was electricity.
I’m a hunting, fishing, libertarian-leaning former oil and gas lawyer, for what it’s worth, so maybe take a breath before assuming that saying climate change is real and should be addressed means I’m no different than the very people this article is about. In general, I’m pro-nuclear, but mostly I’m pro-adaptation.
And I am pro-human civilization and anti-hysteria. Most of the climate change message is propaganda not based on facts. Let’s start with establishing basic truth before we make any drastic changes.
But until we get serious about next gen nukes, all we have is natural gas as a viable fuel source for generation. You know as well as I do that the "renewables" are not being installed on the grid, nor do they have the necessary reliability to balance a modern grid if they were. This is all a massive con.
Next gen nuclear. Unmeltable cores. Modular reactors. But the current political environment in DC will not allow anything to be built. They'd attempted it in Georgia, after 10 years they stopped trying, halfway through construction. Regulators just would not let it happen. It is ridiculous. The politics have become what Russia was when they created the disaster at Chernobyl; paralyzed by bureaucracy and bureaucrats whose only goal is to cover their asses and protect their cushy jobs.
This is verifiably false. The plants in Georgia are being built with one to come online this year. I worked there. The project is the epitome of waste and mismanagement.!
Nuclear in the US is not held up by regulation, its the cost and lack of skilled labor, and extreme mismanagent by the leaders who are/were in charge. Why so costly? Brcause its nuclear and you don’t just go to Lowes for bolts when you run out. Stuff needs to last 60 years. And the lack of skilled labor and poor management means many expensive installations are redone because supervisors and managers literally don’t know what they are doing and don’t care. Why lack of skilled labor? Because the younger population were conned into going to college and few want to get their hands dirty.
The average age of tradesmen is 50.
Nucs arent being built because no CEO is going to bet the farm on a reactor that costs almost as much as his company’s market cap.
Mini nucs don’t put out enough megawatts to justify the capital cost.
In short - renewables are easy to build, are subsidized by investment and production tax credits and thats what utilities will build.
Perhaps renewables are easy to build but people may not want them because of the immense land use needs and impacts. The fact that there are tax credits are just a function of political choice by some. Probably not those whose backyards they are planned for. From an article by Fred Stanford via the Breakthrough Institute.
“Particularly important for the nationwide politics of decarbonization is nuclear energy’s minimal land use. According to recent research, the land-use intensity of nuclear generation is 100 times lower than that of ground-mounted solar, and more than 1,000 times lower than that of wind turbines, when counting the land between turbines, but without even considering all the transmission lines needed to connect turbines to cities. Critics of nuclear highlight long, difficult fights for plant permits, but the task of acquiring 1,000 times the land area for wind turbines—plus property rights and environmental permits, as well as winning over local opposition—sounds more like a game of SimCity than a democratic political program.
Finally, nuclear infrastructure is long-lasting and demands large, permanent workforces of highly-skilled labor ripe for unionization. Anywhere from 500 to 1,000 people work at a conventional nuclear plant, not to mention all the additional “induced” jobs that pop up in the towns around a nuclear plant to support its workforce, and that plant can last more than half a century. Attracting local support for nuclear projects with these good jobs might prove easier than it is for wind and solar projects that offer essentially none for the local working class once built.”
I was working on a project in Alaska. The camp contractor came in to expand the camp. I asked the owner if I was old enough to work for him (I was 60) all the construction crew was older than I.
AFAIK the change in design for 3rd and 4th gen builds require tighter tolerances and much more precise engineering, and its true that many plants have actually gone beyond what the regulatory bodies required just as a matter of necessity. I think nuclear still is required and we will find a way to make it work. Lessening the regulatory burden is still probably necessary. SMRs also have their place, NuScale is a company to watch for sure.
Until Fukujima, one of my favorite retorts when talking to nukular energy deniers was that more people died at Chappaquiddick than at Three Mile Island.
Don’t get me started on the preventable issues at Fukujima
Personally I favor localized production, less consumption of unnecessary shipped goods, more incentives for decentralized electricity production (including home use of gas power grids), requirements for city buildings to have green spaces, and vastly more investment in nuclear fusion research. Among other solutions.
But I rarely, if ever, hear such solutions discussed by politicians. Apocalyptic rhetoric and blaming the "others" is nearly all they do.
I agree, Anthony. Less waste, localized production, and new technologies that actually have advantage. A big problem with cult-thinking is it fixates on social re-engineering. This is an actual engineering problem with real solutions. Serious effort could make an impact - although it wouldn't likely satisfy the pols who want to make it about something else.
Try on this essay and maybe we can start some serious conversations...
My favorite thing about battery powered cars is that they are renewable…..until the battery goes bad after 5-7 years and you have to literally throw the entire car away because replacing the battery is $26,000.
So actually the precise polar opposite of ‘renewable’.
"Anti-human" is spot on. At the center of the environmental movement is the belief that everything humans do is bad. Their solution is to have a lot fewer humans.
Pollution is bad, no doubt about it … but is carbon released by burning fossil fuels really changing anything?
Carbon dioxide makes up .04% of our atmosphere. Humans are responsible for 3% of that. This is the accepted science.
The theory is that even a slight change in carbon has a big impact, but I’m not convinced. The climate change theory has too many holes — the above stat is just one of them.
I used to be so worried about
Climate change until I really looked into the theory and began reading opposing views.
I still ride my bike everywhere and don’t buy a lot of junk from Chinese factories. Air pollution sucks. That’s a fact. Human induced Climate change …. I’m not convinced.
We certainly don't face dystopia. Go read the actual IPCC report, and see how it's littered with 'unlikely' and 'low confidence', look that sea level is rising, but has been rising since before CO2 started rising. Know that sea level will rise between eight and twelve inches in your child's lifetime of perhaps 100 years, and ask yourself if that's dangerous.
Consider that the temperatures shown to us are heavily manipulated, and that manipulation has a goal. Perhaps this goal is simply to keep you in a heightened state of alarm, and looking to be led to safety ... but be sure to contribute to my reelection fund & get out and vote.
15 years ago I had done this debate--that of global warming, which I will remind all is the ACTUAL conjecture not being debated--so many times, I CREATED my blog to do a systematic treatment of the topic. Even though many of the links are long since defunct, the basic logic holds even today: https://moderatesunitedblog.com/2008/01/
Here is the core problem with the science: there is no non-trivial measurable prediction being made which can be validated or falsified within anything CLOSE to the time intervals in which they want us to make ENORMOUS, extremely destructive decisions that IN THEMSELVES will cause famine and death if implemented with anything approaching seriousness. The Dutch destroying their farms is not serious; many provinces in China and India alone generate vastly more CO2 than the whole nation.
The Earth has been without ice and covered in ice; everything in between is within normal climatic variation. And we need to understand that there is ZERO scientific basis for claiming that the warming that is supposedly happening is "without precedent". The resolution of the ice cores they are using for historic temperature reconstruction is perhaps a 1,000 years or more.
Formally, Anthropogenic Global Warming exists as a conjecture scientifically. It was relabelled "Climate Change"--which amounts to "weather"--for this reason.
But if anyone wanted to take the idea seriously from a truly SCIENTIFIC perspective, it requires differential warming in the upper Troposphere, which is about one mile up. Most heat retention lower than that comes from water vapor, which absorbs about 70-90% of the Earth's radiant heat on any given day. CO2 can only absorb about 12% of the frequencies in play, and for this reason its effect is inversely logarithmic. Each doubling only matters half as much, because at some point it will be absorbing 100% of the heat in the frequencies where is matters, and then an infinite amount will do nothing but help plants.
But to claim that CO2 produced by humans is causing warming REQUIRES differential warming in the upper Troposphere. As it happens, we have very reliable readings from satellites, and we are able to avoid the problems of fluid dynamics up there since it is a relatively uniform mass, at least compared to the surface level.
A TRULY scientific hypothesis would be that "Atmospheric CO2 is excess of what would normally be expected caused by the combustion of fossil fuels will produce differential warming at the altitude where CO2 has most of its effect. Such warming will be local, such that that zone is warming relative both to the layer above and the layer below." That is what a TRUE scientific hypothesis would look like.
But they don't do that. Why would scientists not want to validate as well as possible their own predictions? Why? Seriously? Are you even asking that? THIS IS A METHOD FOR POLITICAL CONTROL OF THE PLANET. None of this is defined by honest science.
I have to get going, but I can debate this all day long. The whole thing is a ridiculous farce, and the worst thing about it is people are being hurt for no reason--like Dutch farmers--AND WE COULD BE SPENDING ALL THIS MONEY ON BETTER THINGS, LIKE GETTING PLASTICS OUT OF OUR OCEANS AND KEEPING THEM OUT. That is a real problem. Global warming is not. It's a big freaking joke.
So no? No, you didn't go to college, or no, nobody would want to admit having granted you a diploma in anything?
There is a part of me that understands that when lunatics bark like dogs there is little sense in responding, but another part of me that views lunatics as bullies who need to be confronted. Those parts are in conflict. If I respond it is the latter, and if not the former. Both parts smoke and have tattoos, but I think one drinks a lot less.
It's very similar to radical Islam. If you are not with them, you are an infidel and must be destroyed.
A relative of mine share a mutual interest in the space program. She gushed often about having been seated next to him on a commercial flight long ago. Today, he is one of her demons to be destroyed.
That is the brilliance of the educated elite. The exemptions and the non-profits. Get working people to pay for their projects. If I were tyrant I would outlaw all nonprofits, period. The whole concept is essentially forcing non contributors to contribute through taxes.
I do think this fills the same hole for some people that religion did in prior years. There’s very much something of the early Christian martyr (or the Dominican inquisitioner) about Greta Thunberg, isn’t there?
She wasn't brain washed, she's a handicapped child. Suffering from Asperger's, ADHD, and likely fetal alcohol (see it in her face). Couldn't continue high school, she's a puppet of her father who is a producer.
Even the German Police got in with staging a violent arrest this past weekend. Everyone is smiling and shaking hands, in the next scene, Greta is being carried away by the police.
'There’s very much something of the early Christian martyr (or the Dominican inquisitioner) about Greta Thunberg, isn’t there?"
No, there's very much nothing attractive about a snarling, unattractive and unpleasant young fool. Or the equally foolish and comical adults who fete her.
Indeed Bruce, her public persona is decidedly unattractive. But I believe that she has been manipulated by adults in her life and suffers from mental health issues. I hope she gets help and finds her way to a happy, normal life.
Then they aren't really atheists, they're just followers of their climate cult religion. But you're right. We evolved such that religions arise within our social networks - probably because they are effective organizing structures that allow much larger groups to be controlled which resist breakdown into warring factions (which they still do). But a significant percentage of people who believe this climate apocalypse nonsense are Christians. I run into them all the time.
It's not. If you were an atheist you would understand why it's not. But theist can never seem to understand the different perspective on reality that is atheism.
That is like saying if you were Catholic/Jewish/Protestant/Coptic/Buddhist/insert any organized religion you would understand. "[T]he reality that is atheism[.]" You don't even see the similarity, but then again "there is none so blind . . ..
You nailed it. That difference seems to be subtle for some people.
I've moved around a fair bit in the last few decades. The last few times I would land someplace new I would try to find people to socialize with using organizations like MeetUp. Most of them were dating scene stuff I had no use for. But there would invariably be a "Free Thinkers" group that would sound promising. But every time I would go to one of their meetings - no matter what part of the country that might be in, they were almost entirely composed of or dominated by anti-theists. And - curiously - nearly all of them had once been highly religious. They would go around the room doing these brief testimonials to introduce themselves: "Hi. I'm Bret" (Hi Bret) "I used to be religious - in the [some fundamentalist] church. I've been an atheist now for two years." It sounded like one of those trope AA meetings you see in movies. "I'm Allison and I am an alcoholic. I've been sober for six months." (yay! Allison!). It's ALL they would talk about.
I don't have a problem with religious people who aren't attacking me. Many of my friends are religious. I don't attack them for it.
I know a guy who used to be a pretty chill atheist. Then he got involved with a group that dresses up as monks and goes around to fairs to preach anti-theism. Not chill anymore.
I have friends who are pagans, and I have seen them, too, get attacked by anti-theists. Atheists who can't BEAR the idea that ANYONE believes in any sort of god are engaging in authoritarian cult-like thinking.
Every time I have a prolonged conversation with a self-described “atheist” it becomes clear at some point that many of the things they believe are also taken on faith. I’m sure there are some “actual” atheists out there somewhere, but I’ve yet to see one. Most recently it was related one who was up in arms with the, as he called it, “don’t say gay” bill. It certainly wasn’t any form of evidence that led him to call it that
Too many conversations I have with anti-theists (and the reason why I try not to have conversations with them anymore) involve the anti-theist asking "How can you believe in a god who does X, Y, and Z?" When I point out that the God I believe in doesn't do X, Y, or Z, they're left baffled and floundering.
The bill you refer to had nothing to do with saying or not saying “gay” and the person who called it that knew it when he/she made it up in typical manipulative -politics fashion.
Unless you can prove matter exists—never mind God—then it is a belief system, and “belief system” is not a bad summation of “religion” generally.
Robert Anton Wilson used to love mocking both Christian Fundamentalists AND what he in effect called dogmatic materialists. And his considered opinion was that the latter were less rational, because even though they aupposedly based their ideas on science, they refused to consider any scientific evidence that conflicted with their assumptions.
It is curious that some of the religious have such a burning need to insist that all are religious. It's not an argument that can be won - or lost. Following Karl Popper's formula, it's not falsifiable. Another way to look at it is that if _everyone_ is religious, then what does it even mean? It is essentially nonsense.
What? Religion? It's not synonymous with faith, although it seems to require it. I have faith that the earth will keep turning so that the sun will "rise" tomorrow. That doesn't make me religious. Just pragmatic. I'm not being disrespectful to the religious here, incidentally.
It’s close enough to make minor distinctions not matter. It is faith-based, incorporates the concept of original sin, and specifies steps to redemption. Whether one is atheist or not doesn’t change the definition of religion.
“One 24-year-old girl, Louise, climbed atop a crane on the highway. “I’m here because I don’t have a future,” she exclaimed between sobs.”
————————————————————
I know we are supposed to have sympathy for her because the reason she believes all of this is because she has been subjected to intense psychological manipulation and an unrelenting propaganda campaign from modern day Nazis like Al Gore and Rachel Maddow.
Regardless, I still kinda just think that Louise is an idiot.
Yah. Well. Refer to Bari-published article of a week or so back about the expanding boundaries of cultural adolescence: That time is not now.
Also, remember the quote wrongly attributed to Winston Churchill: "If you aren't a liberal at 25, you have no heart. If you aren't a conservative at 50, you have no brains." 😀
You have misunderstood "average lifespan." Humans, in general, live to be about 70 if they don't die at a young age. Child mortality is what made "average lifespan" shorter in the past. If you lived past 5 years old, you had a fair chance of reaching 70. But surviving to the age of 5 was the tricky part.
I'm aware of that. Infant mortality plays a part. But the conditional probability of reaching ages such as 70 given 5 was reached has only increased dramatically in the last couple hundred years. Most people who survived childbirth died of infections and accidents up until very recently - or OF childbirth in the case of women. Here's a way to get at an upper-bound: Look at Wikipedia pages for British royalty. They're all cross-linked. Look at their lifespans, that of their wives and their children who reached five or older. Now these are people who had the best food and living conditions available for their times. I would add "best medicine" except that this was a joke until recently. How many can you find that reached 70? I've looked. They are really scarce. How many that even reach 50? Not very many. Pre-nineteenth century Harry being - what? fourth in line? Would still have a good chance of eventually ending up with a crown on his head. And this is an upper-bound. The vast majority of people were malnourished, living with polluted water and air and exposed to unimaginable infectious diseases and parasites to us moderns in most parts of the world. Here's a good link with some data:
Read the story of Sacagawea. She was 15 and had a baby on her back when she led Louis and Clark through the West. She is credited with saving the expedition. Western thought and overly restrictive child labor laws have turned kids into permanent infants. So sad.
Slavery was common among just about every group ever until (relatively) yesterday.
I don't know whether there was an objection to "slave," the standard term for a human being who is owned by another, or "concubine," a female sex partner, often one without the right to be anything else.
Correct! Too much history swirling in the brain before coffee! My point was to her abilities, not her social status. Please try not to place modern cultural ideas on historical realities. You have no idea how she felt about her situation. And I am sure "helpless" was not among them.
It is realistic to describe Sacagawea as a slave concubine. It's a fact of history. Even the children's biography from the 1960s was straightforward in explaining how she was captured by an enemy tribe and later sold to Charbonneau.
12 is very young. At 24, one has supposedly graduated from a university or trade school and is into their career. I'm with Kevin who deems her Just an idiot.
The “Catholic Charities” do not help poor people. They harm poor people. They work for MS-13. They do not do the same things operationally as MS-13 but they are just as evil. They will go to the same hell.
Replacing fossil fuels is fine - IF you have a realistic replacement. But here's the rub, if you ban oil and natural gas for home heating, anytime soon, you hate poor and working class people. Why? Because the alternative of electric heat pumps is unaffordable to them. Tear out a perfectly good furnace, spend $20,000 to install ductwork and then pay four times or more as much to heat your home? With electricity production we do not have and will not have with solar and wind. Unless we begin a massive investment in next gen nukes. And don't get me started on electric vehicles.
These people are crazy and they hate you. They think nothing of destroying our most cherished and mutually shared and loved art treasures. They want you to die in the cold and dark. They sow chaos and ruin. They are not your friends. They are your enemy because they are stealing your children's future. Treat them accordingly.
It would be helpful to provide an article on all the everyday products we use made from fossil fuel. If we focus entirely on the automobile and electric grid we miss out on much of the issue. We all want clean air and water, but we also need heat in the winter, food, shelter clothing and so much more that none of the climate activists offer solutions in place of fossil fuels. How about accounting for the sun’s impact on warming and climate change? At the end of the day it seems this is all a manipulation by a few to gain riches at the expense of the masses. Al Gore being the ring leader with John Kerry and other politicians.
First comment that acknowledges we all want clean air & water.
It might be helpful to mention to our children as they grow up, that everyone will die someday. It is also fundamental that we are bound to hold something as the most important thing in our life. It is easy to make a bad choice in that something.
Fact: without fossil fuels, civilization collapses. There are no viable alternatives for thousands of every day necessities at present, even if you take away transportation and heat. The list is astounding. I love that she focuses on solutions; truly, necessity IS the mother of invention.
It makes me furious to see morons attempt to harm or destroy priceless works of art. These fools don't have any skills, can't create or build anything but they sure are quick to destroy.
The only thing they seem to have in abundance is arrogant moral virtue preening.
If they had any education at all they would know the Earth has been changing since the very beginning. There are quite a few excellent documentaries that show this vividly so these fools wouldn't even have to be able to read. Two I particularly liked are "Australia," and "Voyage of the Continents."
would you settle for gorilla glue?? it expands and gets all foamy before it becomes indestructible. like krypton. glue your little whining hands with that. then we can turn out the light and listen to you cry like a little girl
Peace Corps requires real work. And it's hot and yucky in tropical jungles ... ewww .... plus it's so hard to find a good latte in some of those places.
My personal take on all the destruction: as a Christian, it makes perfect sense. The Ruler of this World, Satan, has had free rein to destroy every single thing God created, established in the natural order and pronounced "good", right down to His creation of Man and Woman. Those opposed to God, ("You are of your father, the devil") emulate him in every way. A quick perusal of 2 Timothy, 3 seems to indicate that at this point, he is close to done. Look to heaven, from whence your salvation comes.
Fascinating perspective coming from the inside of one of these organizations. I can only really see the outside of that. Online I can see the push of the fear porn and the shouting and the protests. But I've never seen or read what kind of manipulation does go on behind the scenes. Thank you for the great piece!
I couldn’t help but think of Jim Jones as I read this. All the earmarks of a manipulative central figure conning the naive and vulnerable into following a path of insanity.
Is the climate changing? Uh, yes. And has been for millions of years. There’s a reason they’re called “fossil fuels.” But the solutions are not all or nothing. Think Buffalo, NY. How many people have to be sacrificed on the altar of climate alarmism before people realize we can adapt, and even thrive in new and different ways. For anyone who hasn’t already figured this out, there is a class of hucksters going back to Al Gore who have figured out how to instill fear and profit from it.
I wouldn’t want them to drink koolaid,, just experience the discomfort of their own illogical policies. I’m going to go out on a limb, here, and suggest that people willing to disfigure their own bodies with bizarre tattoos may not have the judgment to decide energy policy for the entire world.
People are misguided to believe we have the ability to impact the earth climate to the degree politicians and activist suggest. Even if the west stopped all fossil fuels today the impact will be negligible. Energy is necessary for prosperity, fossil fuels will one day be exhausted or diminished to the point that the material will have more value for things other than fuel and use as fuel will be priced out of the market. Prosperity is necessary for people to care, for people to thrive and for the extreme poverty that still impacts significant numbers of people to be diminished. Prosperity is necessary to allow us to adapt and innovate as climate changes. People forget that there was once ice sheets from the Pole to the central USA and they retreated long before fossil fuels existed. Human activity did not cause the ices sheets or the retraction. The plains used to be roamed by mammoths, saber toothed cats, Pterodactyls, and were lush green places that we read about in books that seem unreal. The continents shift and move, huge volcanic eruptions can cause decades of cooling. All of this is beyond human control. Our experiences is but a blink in geologic time. Even from the birth of Christ until now is miniscule on a geologic scale. I won't even start on how an society dependent only on electricity cannot be free and cannot have national security. One bomb on the power grid and all economic activity and transportation stops. The Afghan and Syrians wars show how much power there is in Toyota trucks fossil fuels and AR rifles. The afghans held off the Russians and the USA. If they only had EV's and no guns they would now be enslaved. The Energy sector needs to educate and tell the honest story of the success and wonders of the world that was only enabled by fossil fuels. And currently most of the electricity come form fossil fuels. Those nuts like John Kerry selling fear with lies do nothing to help us move forward with the sound diversified energy policy needed. Glad this lady at least party woke up to reality she still has a bit to go.
“All these stories feature young members of a movement that claims to fight climate change by demanding their governments stop using and producing fossil fuels immediately.”
——————————————————-
The number one emitter of carbon on earth is the US military. All of these people also have “Glory to Ukraine” in their bio.
It's good to see that one person has abandoned the most extreme foolishness and anti-science of the global warming cult. However, she has a long way to go to learn that the entire AGW 'science' is bogus, based on failing models and outrageous projections.
One thing that really stood out to me was the fact that they chose to shut down the Tube at a low-income neighborhood, which likely disrupted the lives of many poor people and did nothing to fight climate change. It’s the path of least resistance. Spoiled trust fund brats that want to “change the world” via meaningless protest are actively harming poor and working class people. I’ve noticed that this describes most young protesters in general.
A non-activist driven personal experience just like this was my white pill epiphany.
I was in Santa Clara in 2012 for work. As I sat in gridlock (every morning on the 101) I watched as brand new Teslas zoomed by me in the “car pool” lane that had recently been expanded to include “energy efficient vehicles” in the name of “climate change.”
I looked over and saw a Hispanic day laborer in a work truck next to me at 7:30 in the morning, sitting in gridlock trying to make his way to an hourly job. You know, a person for whom access to that lane may have made a 15% difference to their days pay, and my head almost exploded.
My undergraduate and graduate degree are in applied statistics. I'm supposed to know better than to rely on anecdote. But that moment destroyed the progressive myth for me forever. It wasn't Obama bombing kids in ‘08 (though that certainly changed my vote in '11), I could blame that on one bad apple. I always believed the middle of the Democratic Party was the only hope we had - but that moment forcefully disproved that hypothesis. CA was supposed to be THE center of the modern left, and this is what the modern left had become. It was wealth worship masquerading as something probably more pathetic and embarrassing that I couldn't even grasp.
Anyone ever wants to ACTUALLY make a difference, create a car pool lane you can only use if the Kelly blue book of your car is below 15k. Yes, scammers while buy cheap cars just to use it (every system can and will be cheated by horrible people), but most common folks are way too vain to purposefully buy down, so the majority of the benefit will go to those who actually need it.
As I’ve said a million times, the reason we’ll never have a flat consumption tax is because it would actually tax the wealthy, and no politician, and CERTAINLY not the modern left, could stand for that.
I live in Sunnyvale CA, am politically moderate, and I feel sick whenever I have to go to Palo Alto or deal with people from Palo Alto, Los Altos, Atherton and their phony concern for "the poor" and "the environment", etc.
The same people saving the world with their $120,000 cars in the carpool lane have low-income housing in Palo Alto--but only for "schoolteachers"! Yes "poor" people are OK, as long as they have masters degrees. (See: https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/making-it-in-the-bay/palo-alto-los-gatos-affordable-housing-for-teachers/3035338/ ). This strikes me as the most racist thing ever.
Yet they say climate change disproportionately affects the poor, when in fact, net zero will crush the poor, in the wealthy west and third world countries.
Climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the radical left (communists).
I am not the only one to equate climate change fanatics to Marxism:
"Lord Christopher Monckton, a special adviser to UK’s Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, narrated in an interview, “The environmentalists are merely watermelons: green on the outside, red on the inside, or I call them the traffic light tendency: yellow (afraid) to admit they are really red. You may think this is just rhetoric but I used to know one of the founders of Greenpeace, the late Eric Ellington, then whom nobody less political could be found. He was genuinely concerned that nobody should mess up the planet, and so he and his fellow founders all had rather idealistic notions about what they would like to achieve. Within a year or two, he said, they all had to leave because they weren’t political. When the Marxists moved in, and in his words, ‘took the movement over,’ they were unable to stop it because they were politically outmaneuvered by the hard left.”
Since man walked out of caves and formed social groups, tribes, there has been nut cases in sandwich boards wandering around proclaiming, "The end is near."
Today we call the nuts, Democrats.
Excellent post!
Thanks.
I live in Los Altos. We have two cars for three drivers (my parents live with me), a 2005 and a 2001 volvo. We are the only one in the pool of Teslas in our school. Good thing my kids don’t ask that many questions about our weird car situation , I must have done something right..
Yes. Marc Andreessen's defense of property values recently when the city council was considering multifamily housing in Atherton after lecturing others on affordable housing - pathetic! https://nypost.com/2022/08/08/marc-andreessen-opposed-affordable-housing-in-his-town-report/
At one point British Columbia’s ‘socialist’ NDP government was subsidizing electric vehicles by $10,000 when the only ones available were $120,000 or more. That is modern progressivism in a nutshell. Woke politics are simply a smokescreen for screwing over working people to further enrich the global elite and their university educated lackeys.
Agreed. I’ve noticed that too many concerns of progressives are of a classist nature, and not a climate change issue, or racism, or sexism, or transphobia or homophobia.
It’s mostly about the haves and the have-nots! Even our immigration issue at the border is about that. It’s evident to me that those who espouse open borders care very little for the cry of the poor. The immigrants who are coming here risk life and limb to get here. They spend meager life savings or worse to travel from all over to arrive here. But our government doesn’t care about the risks they take or the dire situations they find themselves in once they arrive. It’s a humanitarian crisis but those who live comfortably and own multiple homes in swanky locales don’t care about that. They would have us believe that they are the compassionate ones. All of it brings me to tears of sadness and frustration. The cache’ of progressive concerns is troubling to me? Why are they the “cool kids?” Because the media in most forms cater to them. It’s ruining the US.
"cool" is what you make it. I've lived in some of the most liberal enclaves in America and small classical liberal midwestern towns and worked with the definition of anti-liberal (lefty) elites and anti-liberal (conservative) small town mechanics. Trust me when I tell you all those people have VERY different definitions of cool.
Regarding the class issue, I actually think its two sides of the same coin, but two very different sides. It all begins with a search for ego. The biggest issue most of the wealthy progressive left (and right, frankly) face today is they have never overcome real difficulty in their life. They may have "faced" difficulty, but VERY few of them have felt any real hardship and had to overcome it and thus build real, and sustainable, ego. Our fathers who could build a car didn't need likes on Facebook - he can kill his own food, prep it & cook it. He literally built the house I grew up in. He fixed motorcycles in our garage when he wasn't literally fighting fires. Those people knew stuff that actually mattered.
Today, I can pontificate about almost anything. I've read more in the last two years than my dad has in his life. I've literally traveled from corner of the globe to corner of the globe for work. I can barely change a tire (but I can, thank goodness). I, of course, don't think I have a fragile ego, but deep down I know feeding myself would be a REAL challenge, and that means there is a hole there whether I want it to be or not.
You wrap that all up and you get two things - HUGE ego fragility for a massive amount of the country - which means almost every decision they make is in protection of their own ego, and guilt about the fact that, deep down, they know every decision they actually make is about their own ego.
No one cares about the border because they know it isn't THEIR issue. Every political decision they make is about making things as easy for them as possible. They offset this selfishness by voting for everything that makes life as "easy" for everyone else as possible as well (on-paper - no way they're actually going to figure out if BLM actually makes life better for black people, then they may be called to face the reality of their own selfishness as well). The easiest way to assuage one's guilt over their own selfishness is to pretend they also want what's best for everyone else also - as long as someone else is paying for the work and actually doing the work.
And just to be clear - the ultra-individualistic voter - the "everyone must do everything for themselves" voter isn't much better (but they are better). We could live just fine with ALL ultra-individualistic voters - quality of life would just be way worse because we wouldn't be leveraging the best of each of us, but it would work. This faux-collectivism in the name of selfishness can never have a positive ending. Soon or later you always run out of someone else's money and someone else's time - or you end up with slavery and euthanasia (hi China and Canada).
And ironically, it all begins with a simple hierarchy of needs analysis - when you move beyond the simplest needs without earning ANY of it, it becomes VERY hard indeed to assuage your own conscious. Lefty progressivism is, unfortunately, often the outcome. Just as the Romans.
Fair enough. Bottom line is no one is perfect. But there are ways to work on issues in our Constitutional, and yes capitalist, society to help others even as we help ourselves. Decent laws passed by decent legislators would be a start. It’s such a complicated situation. But certainly our easy, Western life, especially for the more affluent, leaves us with lots of time on our hands and that, more often than not, gets us into mischief.
Good for you BTDS. I am pretty much anti-stats because they can be so readily manipulated by people with malicious intent. But in my heart of hearts I know that the truth is that a a good argument relies on both anecdote to make it human in the sense of worthwhile to humanity or some subset thereof,and statistical data to make it practical.
I've run marketing programs for huge companies and small companies and stats are like most things - they can be used for good or used for bad. Marketing is the same. Nudge Theory can be used to help people lose weight, improve mental health, or become more productive by using our own cognitive biases towards a positive end, or Nudge Theory can be implemented through Twitter to make common people believe, by manipulating their media and "nudging them along," that there's a majority of people out there who actually believe men can get pregnant (it's less than 1% of the population - and they don't believe it either).
We are ALL left brained and right brained, we are all extroverted and introverted, and we are all both heart and mind. A strong mind and a tender heart by Martin Luther King Jr. is perhaps the greatest sermon ever given. It is the personification of the argument that we must both be moved by stories (tender hearted) and grounded in fact (strong minded). I'd like to pretend I get the mix right - I don't - but I do actively try. Admittedly, I probably fall too hard on the stats side and lack a certain degree of empathy that would serve me well. Luckily I married a woman that has enough empathy for both of us - and reminds me often, whether I want her to or not :)
If all the statistical data were set forth by ethical humans such as yourself the world would be a better place.
Great take. BTW, "white pill"? What data point do you use to identify the "migrant day worker"?
Imma fan!
Admittedly, I’m taking huge liberty with “white pill” in this context. Modern lexicon “white pill” essentially means “reasons to be optimistic.” Blue pill/red pill are pretty straight forward (political parties - God help us), “black pill” is pessimism. I claim white pill because realizing what a joke our pretend political parties are was a very eye opening moment for me. Changed how I viewed a lot of things, and I think for the better. So some may call deciding all politicians are corrupt megalomaniacs ultimately in it entirely for themselves, and the people voting for ego reasons and likes are just, as bad a black pill moment, but for me it felt the opposite for some reason. So white pill I shall.
On the data point - if you’ve ever done the Bay Area commute you know the traffic is so bad you can literally hold hands with the person next to you if you so choose. But I also did landscaping for three years in high school/college summers and you know a landscaping truck when you see it… backpack leaf blowers, shovels and rakes as far as the eye can see, and tree base dirt everywhere is pretty indicative of the day to come. LOVED that job and the feeling of accomplishment you felt as you literally transformed a landscape. Amazing how important being able to see the results of your labor can be for self esteem.
Hope that helps!
I have two young sons who have purchased their own homes. They have both discovered gardening - the shock of physical exertion followed by satisfaction with the fruits of one’s labours.
Welcome to adulthood, I told them.
Proud Mumma.
Thanks for the reply, DataMan. Self esteem comes from accomplishments not participation trophy's.
We made the move east out of San Diego Cnty in the early 90s. I ran a hydraulics field repair service. I understand traffic. Big reason why we went to Kansas/OK.
Good to know you,
Daniel
Yes, well. That's always been my problem with environmental activism since I continue to believe, as I believed in my 20s, that the most serious problem facing humanity is the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a plutocracy.
Most of the remedies suggested by climate activists disproportionately affect the poor.
Putting on my best Hayek, that individual wealth accumulation is just one manifestation of the overall magnificent economic growth that has raised the world out of abject poverty and allowed us to flourish. Resentment of others wealth accumulation will poison your soul. Hell, that’s what inspired Marx. To paraphrase Churchill: capitalism is the worst system, except for all the others...
I have read Hayek and agree. Douglas Murray in The War on the West speaks of gratitude for the amazing time we live in. Gratitude is contrasted with resentment. It seems so many of the ideologies we are subjected to, including climate activism are motivated by resentment. Not so good.
I'm fine with capitalism. It's the only economic system that incentivizes individual creativity.
I'm not fine with privilege when it manifests solely because somebody's great-grandfather was smart enough to assemble a fortune.
And I totally get that this is an unpopular view, but I'm not going to defend it further because today, all I want to do is laugh and say mean things about wacky climate activists.
Like so many people, you don't realize that, except for tiny pockets here and there, capitalism has been dead for most of our lifetimes. This system where government picks winners and losers, and benefits from both, is nothing like capitalism. The second government gets involved, the whole supporting structure of true capitalism is destroyed. The reason we are surrounded by so many substandard products today is because the system is no longer designed to weed out the products and services that don't cut the mustard, but keep everything on life support so that government may collect revenue, plain and simple.
It is not dead--capitalism has brought the world poverty rate from over 50% in the 1980's to under 10% via the microchip in just 40 years. That's in every living person's lifetime.
But it's NOT capitalism... Capitalism is not state sponsored, does not include a confiscatory tax system, does not include government regulation. Capitalism is the financial equivalent of libertarianism, which you probably don't understand either.
Michael: Capitalism is dead - really? I couldn't disagree more. And what "system" is it that's "designed to weed out the products and services that don't cut the mustard"? I thought that was the job of the marketplace....if your product sucks, people stop buying it...if your product is great, you can't make it fast enough. Please help me understand.
If you think capitalism isn't dead, then you just don't understand the true definition of capitalism. This is why I said it has been dead as long as we all have been alive. What has taken it's place is NOT capitalism. Think outside of your own head space for two seconds. In this world, if a product sucks it isn't pushed from the marketplace, it is either subsidized by government, or put in to a market that has no choice but to accept it. If capitalism still existed, Tesla, for example, would not. They would have been out of business before most of us ever knew who they were. The difference between you and I is that I'm not programmed by the world around me to believe that this is all there is. I know how it should be and what REALITY is, and I'm not afraid to recognize it.
Exactly right. That's why I call it "crony capitalism."
Could you explain how one might solve the privilege "problem" while keeping capitalism? And are you sure that the benefits would outweigh the costs (or do you believe the costs would be minimal)? Once the government can decide how much of the wealth you accumulate you can keep and pass onto your family (or whomever you choose), is it still a free system?
I’ve never been able to understand the obsession with the handful of people who are fabulously wealthy. Why do I care how much money they have? How does it affect my life? While their works have very much affected my life and everyone else’s in a positive way (yes of course there are negative sides to any new technology etc].
You could take every penny the super rich have away (while alive or after they’re gone) and give to the government with all its good intentions, and the poor kid stuck in the ghetto in a failed, violent school would be in exactly the same situation.
A lot of the anger I’ve seen towards wealthy people (of whose acquaintance I am definitely not) is rooted in envy.
Not a good way to live IMO.
But it's rooted in frustration... If you look at the relationship between the people and the government, the advantage given to the most wealthy by the people that they finance elections for has created a belief in many people that the system is rigged, and the American dream is now only accessible to a select few. The last time this happened, the British didn't like the outcome. The cycle will repeat again.
It is rooted in disgust of asshole trolls like you that makes excuses for the rich assholes.
Privilege seems to be the modern face of “luck of the draw”. Did Pharaoh’s son feel guilty about his birthplace? Doubt it. How about the royals? (At least until Harry). Human existence has always been the story of the haves and the have nots. What is new is the empowerment of the culture of resentment, of those who have a lot against those who have more. Glenn Loury points out that African Americans are the richest black people on the planet - by a lot. But instead of gratitude we hear about resentment. I will feel humble and blessed and lucky to be an American, but I will not feel bad about my privilege.
The way to reconcile this is to look at the wild, where human beings started. You just have to be able to translate the semantics. There will always be a pecking order, it's just that the human condition of today dictates that we don't live in small, tribal groups and it's much more difficult to work out the pecking order. But if you compare it to the wild, unless the parent of any particular species is equipped to effectively teach their young, the young are usually doomed to not make adulthood. The ones that survive are usually better equipped to continue the species. Yes, natural selection. Since we no longer have predators as a species, we have become our own predators, and the hunting dynamic is incredibly complicated.
In the case of the most wealthy, there is an additional dynamic in that they ultimately have to make a certain contribution back to the society or, as is examples past, society hunts and destroys them, disseminates their wealth back in to the group, and the cycle begins again. It is only because modern society created central government (at the behest of the most wealthy), that there is now a mediator between the classes. The problems with that arise when the elected officials in government stop being the median, and allow themselves to be corrupted by the wealthy to do their bidding. It is at that stage that all societies invariably begin to seek to reset the cycle... We need a reset very soon.
Okay let’s bash the crazies..
You very likely have a grossly inaccurate view of wealth and power in our world.
Can you elaborate? Hard to judge the accuracy of either of our views of wealth and power given they are unstated here.
I don't think it's the money that's the problem, it's the methods they invariably use to accumulate more of it once they have some. Like passing "progressive" tax structures but then building ever more complex exceptions which require lots of money to exploit.
Right.
When the accumulation of wealth turns from _work_ to _rent_ (in the economic sense of the word), you have a problem, in my never humble opinion.
But this has little to do with the issue we're supposed to froth over today, which is Baaaad Climate Activism. 😀
It's a rigged game. And it's not new. An endless supply of subsistence labor and the unfettered exploitation of natural resources without consequence or restraint. People defending the right's of the rich should consider the 2008 grift that destroyed the saving's and wiped out the pension funds of millions of American's while hurling lives into chaos across the globe. The perp's walked. And there was no hesitation when it came to gutting and turning American industrial cities into war zones. T.Piketty won the Nobel Prize in economics for outlining the ongoing ascent of the new feudalism.
You’re mixing up the "they"s. The rich accumulating money don’t pass the "progressive" tax structures. The government does that to "help" people and, by coincidence, increase its own power. The rent-seeking is inevitably created by government as it puts itself in the middle of everything with a hundred thousand regulations and so on. As government power over business and industry grows, the rich wealth creators pour money into the political process to try and control the decisions the government is making over their livelihoods as well as come up with complex exceptions to the tax code.
Government creates all these problems and then tries to solve them by more of the same, in an endless vicious cycle.
Who do you think writes those progressive tax structures?
Midwits in Congress who have not the slightest idea of unintended consequences nor any interest in same nor capability of learning. In recent decades, as Congress has ceased to do its own work, it's been unelected midwits inside the Federal bureaucracy. Same but worse.
I can guarantee you "plutocrats" would write a very different tax structure (presumably more to their own advantage). Do big companies and the super rich spend a crap ton of money lobbying the govt to adjust those structures and create carve outs for themselves? Of course they do. Like everyone they are responding to the incentives that govt creates.
Unlike in Europe (where the middle class pays for its own benefits), here "the rich" pay the vast majority of taxes. Our code is more progressive than that of EU countries. The plebes here do have to pay payroll taxes, for which they will get a rude surprise when it turns out there is no money for them to get benefits back out in the future. More govt brilliance.
“Most of the remedies suggested by climate activists disproportionately affect the poor”
Words adequate to describe the malcontents being led by the self-styled messiahs described in the article elude me so I’ll settle for ignorant fools. Anyone doubting the description need look no further than the picture of the Waterloo Bridge blockade. Most of the clothes they're wearing, the roller skates on their children's feet, the geotextile sign warning us of imminent extinction, and even the fertilizers used to facilitate growth of the wilted flowers rely on petrochemicals (substances obtained by the refining and processing of petroleum or natural gas) to be produced. If killing off the fossil fuel industry is their ultimate goal, perhaps they should consider the old adage, "be careful what you wish for". A little deeper research reveals many other life sustaining products that are reliant upon the availability of petrochemicals. The following are a few listed in Medicine After Oil by Daniel Bednarz:
“manufacturing of analgesics, antihistamines, antibiotics, antibacterials, rectal suppositories, cough syrups, lubricants, creams, ointments, salves, and many gels. Processed plastics made with oil are used in heart valves and other esoteric medical equipment. Petrochemicals are used in radiological dyes and films, intravenous tubing, syringes, and oxygen masks...”.
Perhaps more pertinent to the perpetually anxiety ridden cultists is that almost 99% of pharmaceuticals contain petrochemicals. One wonders how the gloom and doom crowd will be able to cope with the current “climate crisis” or the next, inevitable Armageddon without being able to pop a few valiums. I have to admit though, it would be entertaining to watch a Greta Thunberg whirling dervish performance at the next UN Climate Summit if she were deprived of her Asperger’s meds.
"... accumulation of wealth in the hands of a plutocracy..."
So if given the chance, you would have taken away Steve Jobs' money?
No.
But I would have prevented him from bequeathing the majority of his fortune to his wife and progeny.
Thank goodness we live in a free country where people can keep the fruits of their labor. You aren’t much different than the “gangs” that Roger warns us about. Steve Jobs and many other “plutocrats” created so much value for the world-why can’t they keep some of it and give what they kept to whomever they wish? Communists are such pathetic people.
Whatevs, dude.
Fascist alert!
I think I get you. When I was a child I saw wealthy people’s children “piss away” pretty good fortunes with profligate lifestyles. But nowadays the fortunes are so vast and the levers of control so accessible to the irresponsible receivers of these fortunes, that they can eat away at the pillars of our society. The exes of two bazillonaires come immediately to mind. Billions of dollars being misspent can wreak existential havoc.
Bow wow wow wow wow. America is a Constitutional Republic and we are citizens in it. The totalitarian bitch slap good cop/bad cop capitalist/communist grift is the reason American's live from crisis to manufactured psyop crisis every day of their lives. Nobody wants your $$$$$ or the theft of your labor more than the surveillance state bureaucracy now serving totalitarian criminal finance. (Davos is in session.) Trillions in missing and unaccounted for tax dollars, American city's in ruin's, mounting debt , inflation and chaos no solution's forthcoming. The DNC has Bill's on the House floor right now pushing for the criminalization of American free speech and thought. The only thing you've got is the Constitution and the Bill of Right's it contains. When that's gone so are you.
I'm anything but a communist, but I think the fairest taxes around are "death taxes". Let people earn what they want when they're alive, but after death, give the government who provided the platform for you to work a cut, say 50%.
Government provided a platform? Seriously? This may be the most ignorant comment today.
"...to his wife and progeny...."
But Patrizia, men work and takes risks precisely so they can take care of the wives and progeny. That is what motivate them.
You must single not to understand this.
How would you have prevented someone from doing with what’s rightly theirs. Sounds like you codify with the CCP. The world needs less fascism.
If you feel comfortable pretending that totalitarian finance isn't pissing down your shirt collar and that it isn't allied with the CCP fine. Go back to sleep.
In which case, why would he have bothered to accumulate more wealth at all? We allow people to get wealthy because the rest of us benefit more from their industry than they do themselves.
You”allow people to get wealthy”? Wow, thank you so much comrade.
I wouldn’t conflate all power with wealth , outside of that I agree to few making decisions without accountability is a defining issue .
Yes, but in part, it’s not their fault. The climate nihilists have strategically weaponized the creation of a generation of mentally ill kids to promote their climate agenda.
A few months ago, there was an op-Ed on The Hill entitled: Climate Anxiety isn’t the Enemy: Embracing it can Speed Change, which basically said the quiet part out loud.
The author explicitly calls for driving kids into a depression around the climate change, then using that condition to their benefit in their war against modernity.
I wrote about it here:
https://www.gordoncomstock.com/p/our-children-are-not-tools-of-your
A friend of mine has a daughter two years removed from four years in college. Spent four years in her indoctrination and what was produced was a scared sniveling young woman who was frightened every day with anxiety that the world was coming to an end. Btw she works as a waitress.
It’s a crime what we’ve allowed to be done to our children and they will never forget it. Nor should they.
This we is.not responsible for that. I blame the it-takes-a-village set.
She's probably a crappy waitress too.
So sorry to hear that! Fear is crippling. It leads to hopelessness and a “why bother?” attitude. I hope she feels better.
The daughter of the pastors at our Lutheran church is a climate fanatic. I'm not sure if it's the cliche of the pastor's daughter rebelling or what but her parents are supportive of her zeal, and it's coming through in the Sunday sermons more often now. I'm seeing this a lot lately: the commercials with the message: "Jesus was a refugee." That's shameless political advertising, and I promise the people behind those commercials would not also say "Jesus is my Lord and personal savior." Not that religion has not been abused since the beginning of civilization, but the blending of Democrat policy rhetoric into legacy conservative alcoves is a bold new frontier and demonstrates, more than anything, just how much money is going into gaslighting the masses. The most revealing thing about this article is that the only message is fear; solutions are unimportant.
That commercial grates on me as well. It is erroneous as Jesus remained in his place of birth and worked tirelessly to improve it before finally making the ultimate sacrifice.
They’re talking about Joseph taking Mary and Jesus into Egypt but no, not the same and a definite mile too far.
More egregious to me is the latest one that ends with the execution of the criminal… as if that would be Christ. I can’t believe that commercial. Unreal!😡
"One thing that really stood out to me was the fact that they chose to shut down the Tube at a low-income neighborhood, which likely disrupted the lives of many poor people and did nothing to fight climate change. "
And for this they got exactly what was coming to them. When climate "activists" pointlessly destroy priceless artworks, they do so at venues patronized by spineless liberals who won't fight back. Come to America, Extinction Rebellion, and glue yourselves to a subway station in the Bronx.
LMAO
I would pay to see that.
Walter’s “The Preachy Misery of the Enlightened Class” in today’s Unbound posting seems to echo this theme; I love visiting the Cascades up near Winthrop, but you will definitely find this entrenched, Trust funded class, all around and preaching their expectations upon you.
@RKO could you post a link?
https://walterkirn.substack.com/p/revolutionary-rut
Thank you!
I find most left causes hurt the poor and most vunerable.
The current delusion regarding EVs being the salvation of the Earth clearly demonstrates the contempt for the poor. Most people cannot afford to buy a new $70.000 vehicle that needs to be replaced (or at least, the battery pack does) every 10 years. Hydrogen fuel can be used in a combustion engine with minimal modification and an exhaust of water and cool air. Porsche is in collaboration with a company at the southern tip of South America using wind power to extract carbon from the atmosphere to create a methane based liquid fuel which is carbon net zero and requires no modification to run internal combustion engines. These alternatives to EVs which serve only to overload the power grid which then consumes more fossil fuels to charge their filthy, polluting battery packs are NEVER part of the conversation. Don't forget the occasional battery pack combustion while charging or after getting wet that burns down homes. We saw it first hand after Hurricane Ian floods, and the Teslas were spontaneously combusting where they were parked, and sometimes on the tow trucks. They also don't charge effectively much below 40 fahrenheit.
Sheluyang, your 'change the world' quote brings to mind the lyric from Ten Years After:
'… I'd love to change the world
But I don't know what to do
So I'll leave it up to you'
It appears these misguided intellectually underfed kids don't know what to do either, so they leave it to a controlling 'cult' guru they are supplicants to, to think it through for them - so that they merely become soldiers in a self defeating asinine display of blind belief, initiating stunts they surely one day will want to disown. Much like the writer of this article.
Multiply a spoiled trust fund brat a thousandfold and you get the Special People preening at Davos and instruct us to eat insects as they dine on caviar and foie gras before flying home in their Gulfstreams and Globals.
Yup. Smacks of good ole contemporary Woke Gen Z/Millennial narcissism, as usual. Spoiled. Coddled. Attention-whores. It’s all for social media. Woke prestige. Very sad. This is what we’ve done to our kids. We did this. ‘We’ meaning western wealthy democracies. Maybe it’s a sign that, ironically, we’ve done TOO well.
Michael Mohr
‘Sincere American Writing’
https://michaelmohr.substack.com/
My favorite story is the one where Jordan Peterson explains how he eliminated the problem of campus protestors by holding his talks at 8am. None of them wanted to get up early. Still makes me laugh.
Hilarious. I remember that too. A little insight there.
That's priceless LOL
You have to see the posts on the Reddit politics section talking about the guy as if he's stupid, who listens to this guy, how his degrees mean nothing, they are going to remove his license, etc. All coming from internet warriors under the age of 25 who received participant trophies all their adolescent lives, I doubt ever worked, nor have any grasp on what the real world entails.
Yes, I'm hoping to retire in about 15 years, so hopefully there is some Soc Sec left for me.
Great point, if they only knew what it takes to mine rare earths.
"They" don't need to; much of rare-earths are processed in China. We just buy them and no harm to our precious conscience. Just like anything else perceived as harming the planet, as long as America doesn't do it, we greedily support others that do.
I think it was early last year, the United States sent a delegation to Africa to scold them for their lack of environmental considerations, while promising a few million dollars in aid to work toward climate targets. At the exact same time, China has been in Africa investing tens of billions in infrastructure and forgiving debt. Where is most of the world's cobalt mined?
The world has been so badly outmaneuvered by China in the past three decades that we have already lost World War 3. I hope everyone feels really good about themselves for the Pyrrhic victory that is Ukraine, because in the greater scheme it means nothing.
They are on board. it's a giant wealth transfer program lol.
We aren't talking about the moderate left. The UN push for this is definitely Marxist. The corporations don't care about this issue. They are global. It's business as usual for them. I agree with your two party system statement though it's a separate issue.
Go hang out for a while at Watts Up With That, where they debate gridding, homogenization, and such.
Should fit right in with your aeronautical studies
The climate change fanatics are the rainbows and unicorn left wing nut cases. History, facts and figures mean nothing to them. Feeling good means everything.
It is the "Oh, look at me. I am altruistic and saving the planet. Aren't I wonderful?"
If the author had bothered to carefully look at the “data” prior to starting this crazy journey, she would realize that the planet will warm about 1.5 Celsius in the next century, and we will adapt and be fine. See Lomborg, Shellenberger, Koonin, etc. Climate activism doesn’t have a “cult” problem, it is a problem all by itself.
“Will warm”? LOL! It has “warmed” 1 Celsius over the last 150 years, most of which had no emission controls whatsoever, even for particulates and noxious gases. Please don’t spread such baseless projections even though you’re right about adapting.
🤦♂️ Sheesh it’s been warming for centuries. It’s what happens It warms. It cools. It warms. It cools
No one seems to have learned about the Little Ice Age that hit Europe particularly hard around 1250 and lasted about 150 years.
And what about the series of Ice Ages across the northern hemisphere? The last one ended about 10,000 years ago and it's been warming ever since.
The climate cultists are nothing but arrogant preening fools.
Facts to “climate change” is as water to the Wicked Witch of the West.
An ice age is whenever there is presistent ice at the poles. Technically, we are still in an ice age and are very slowly emerging.
Hi Naomi, During the time Europe was experiencing low temps, the western half of North America was experiencing a period of warming temperatures and long term drought. This caused the abandonment of the Chaco canyon complexes in 1100 AD, and the abandonment of the Mesa Verde complexes in the 1300’s, although a complete loss of that civilization’s organization. Sorry I don’t have specific references- the tracking of moisture and temperature I read about in a PNAS survey of temperature changes in the South west over the last 1500 years- I just Googled it, so you could find it too. The concern really isn’t the variability of broad climate patterns, as is the rate of change of climate patterns and the ability of biological and social systems to adapt successfully to the changes as they happen. Currently the drought in the Western United States is bad, again, but the pressure point is not going to be local agricultural impacts. The pressure point is going to be the loss of the water from the Colorado River which has been diverted to California. Los Angeles will not be sustainable at it’s current population when the Colorado River doesn’t have enough water flow to provide Los Angeles with water.
The problem with California (well, the one relevant here; CA seems now to be one infinite set of problems) is they have for decades refused to build any water infrastructure despite the obvious problem of water supply vs demand. No reservoirs, no aqueducts, no desalination, no pipes, no nothing. Nada. So almost all that rushing water they just endured just flowed on out to sea. Oops.
The "environmentalists" - the same brilliant people pushing to cover the entire surface of the earth with solar panels and wind turbines - have completely captured CA policy, so any proposal for any of the above is a dead end.
The public/voters, as the saying goes, know exactly what they want and deserve to get it - good and hard.
Forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown.
The reality is California is alike a parasite to the surrounding states.
The drought in the west is over, water flows into the southwest reservoirs was not greatly reduced, only outpaced by demand. More a fault of man, than a change in climate.
Even the recent flooding here in California has more to do with developing flood plains than climate change. Flood plains will flood. If you notice, the flooding always seems to occur on streets with names such as Creek Side, and River View.
The real environmental problem is that 1/3rd of all energy used in California is used to pump water to the Las Angeles area.
Once the water dries up maybe Los Angeles and Southern California will finally get serious about nuclear powered desalination and leave the Colorado River for Colorado, Arizona and Nevada. With nuclear energy anywhere is sustainable although it helps to be near an ocean.
And Southern Utah.
We can dream, at least.
Thank you for adding to my knowledge. The climate has been in flux since the beginning of time. The continents drift, weather and temperature are affected by sun activity such as sun spots and flares.
Considering the climate fluctuations that caused drought in the Northern American hemisphere and at the same time extremely cold weather in Europe, there is no way humans can be blamed for any of it. Would you say the total human population of the Earth in 1100 AD was possibly 5 million or fewer? Certainly the internal combustion engine didn't exist. Wood and peat were the primary fuel sources for cooking and heat but couldn't have had much impact on global climate.
The North American continent did, in 1100 AD, have vast herds of buffalo. Maybe it buffalo flatulence that caused all that climate change. Hmmm?
I agree with the water situation in the Western US. California is like a cancer on the country, and particularly the western part. It sucks and sucks and sucks up resources. Check out Idaho. The rural areas there are being subjected to huge wind turbines which are killing their birds and destroying the land. The electricity will be going to California. (Tucker Carlson did a segment on this last week). Then there is the upper East coast of the US. They are putting these hideous turbines out in the ocean off New England. The blasting surveys in the ocean are decimating the whales. Whales are washing up on New England beaches in droves.
I lived in Durango. I took many people to Mesa Verde every group leader there said they have no idea why it was abandoned. but agree about the water
I am glad you raised this point. Is this not a reason why it is unwise to throw open the border to millions of newcomers?
It is not. False “sustainability” is the problem, along with rejection of natural gas, nuclear power and desalination not the number of people.
You need to understand it’s not about knowing - it’s about using climate change as the premise to attack our energy industry on the way to transforming our society.
Isn't that what precession is and does?
BTW “warm” is a LOT less destructive then “cold”. This area was buried under a mile of ice in the past. Try living in that.
BUT WE WILL BE ALL HOT AND SWEATY!!!
Thanks for the epiphany - am now taking my money out of ESG funds and investing in deodorant manufacturers…
✅
Greetings from Florida!
Like that's a bad thing.....
Yes, it's been warming since the last ice age. Where the Empire State Building lay under the ice. So warming isn't a bad thing and who can say what is the ideal temperature, until this latest inter-glacial period begins to wane.
That’s why the climate cult had to change their dogma from climate warming to climate change.
And then to climate disruption.
It goes globalwarmingclimatechangeclimatedisruption. Weather.
This is what happens at the end of coming out of an ice age. It's been much hotter than now in the past. And there has been a lot more CO2 in the past. Plants love these conditions. An other ice age would be the real existential threat. I read the other day that even now, many more people die of cold every year than heat. An order of magnitude more.
Doesn't the Earth alternate between glacial periods and warm periods?
(During the last glacial, East Asians came to North Americas....the people we call "indigenous")
I'm not sure about the "alternating." There have been at least 4 ice ages for North America. However, the continents drift so they haven't been in their current locations from the beginning. Depending on where they are on the Earth's surface has a vast effect on the climate affecting them. I have enjoyed Voyage of the Continents which I watched on Prime Video. I highly recommend it. The documentary on Australia was also instructive. Australia has had varying climate situations acting on it. Its coastline, as an example, has extended and receded several times due to climate changes. It's not static and there is no way any human population could prevent, or cause, the changes.
Yes. I haven't seen that video but I've been following this topic since the seventies. It does seem like the frequency of ice ages suddenly increased after the South American tectonic plate moved up and rear-ended North America, there by cutting off flow of water from the Pacific to Atlantic oceans. A number of ocean currents now operate as a result and their complex interactions very likely control the macro climate to an extent the global warming cult can't begin to imagine.
Yes. The Gulf Stream is a prime example. It is a major weather maker as well as moving heat from the Equator to the the northern latitudes.
These environmental morons have no clue as to complex systems. One large volcanic eruption would have a massive impact on global climate. Ask any of these morons how exactly Man has any influence on that or how they would deal with the aftermath of a major volcanic event.
There have been a number of ice ages; the most recent one ended about 11 thousand years ago. The first five waves of immigrants to the Americas seem now to have started coming across the land bridge from Siberia to Alaska more than han 18 thousand years ago, while the seas were still much lower but the ice was opening up in places. There was another "mini ice age" that only lasted a few hundred years between the 12th and 16th centuries. Froze out the Viking colony in Greenland so that they pulled back to Iceland; otherwise they would probably been the next wave to enter the Americas, and the first with steel technology, rather than the Europeans that did.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_glaciation
It started warming after the end of a mini ice age in the early to mid 1800’s. The mini ice age lasted about 50 years and for most of the period the winters were so severe that the Thames froze over and winter fairs were held on the ice. We are about to enter another solar minimum which will last until 2053, so we may well be in for another mini ice age.
The earth's climate has warmed and cooled repeatedly since it was created.
The earth has had FIVE major ice ages. We are currently coming out of the last one and into the next warming period which STARTED about 11k years ago. During this time, we have had multiple micro ice ages. The earth will very very likely see ANOTHER ice age at some point.
This is never, ever, going to stop unless the earth's core goes cold. In the meantime, we can worry about super volcanoes and comets that have both at various times thrown the climate into chaos. Whether it is these or another ice age, you can be sure that the climate and the various environments, land and ocean, will be dramatically impacted and we are not powerful enough to change that.
All we can do is hope to adapt well enough to survive as a species.
“we are not powerful enough to change that.”
We are not powerful enough to change anything. Much of this climate nonsense is misplaced ego and guilt. Earth is gonna earth. We’re along for the ride. Lucky we’re adaptable!
The 1.5 number is based on the recent IPCC projection, which is verified by the authors I cited. They also confirm a similar 1.5 rise over the last 100 years, as you note. You may disagree with the assessment, but calling it “baseless” imposes the same nonsense which you thrust on the other side.
There are issues with their methods, for example temp sensors placement near large cities that cause urbanization-induced bias (heat islands). Basically most of the climate change hysteria is a lie (in my opinion).
Yes, a "projection." Based on models. That use many assumptions. As the old saying goes about models - garbage in, garbage out. A particularly egregious modeler was Michael Mann of Penn State. Who has been unmasked as a fraud whenever his "proof" is put to the test.
"Let's use Mike's trick to hide the decline."
I find it interesting that the threshold was suddenly lowered from 2 degrees to 1.5 degrees. I think we’re at about 1.3 degrees now so lowering the threshold makes doom look that much more imminent.
It used to be three degrees C.
It also cooled and warmed long before the Industrial age. Change happens. It’s not a catastrophe when it does.
The Little Ice Age ended at about the time of the American Revolution and we have experienced warming ever since. However the most accurate land based system, established by NOAA ins 2005, otherwise known by the acronym USCRN, has reflected no warming trend in the continental USA since that time. Longer time series in Japan show no warming at all.
Being in my mid-50s I'm barely old enough to remember the climate alarmism of the 1970s. Except back then we were headed for the next ice age and we were all going to freeze to death. Then it became global warming and when that didn't pan out they just changed it to the generic climate change. It's all just a scam to get power and money for those pushing this non-scientific garbage. And to make people with some privilege feel better about themselves.
Thank you for pointing out the basic problem in all of this. So called climate change is a myth
Climate change is normal and unstoppable, panic and the belief that it can be stopped from changing is the myth.
but it is a huge money making myth
Adaptation, yes.
For sure!! My thoughts as well.
And Patrick Moore.
The problem really isn’t the rate of global warming, or the cause of this instance of global warming compared to the causes of prior instances of global warming. The problem, for any species at any moment, is how to adapt successfully to deal with whatever is coming at you. Current examples of more or less maladaptive responses to the current episode of global warming which has been happening for a few hundred years now, but is accelerating in the last 10 or 20 or 50 years, depending on which set of data you look at-
1. more or less Islamic nomadic herders at the Southern edge of the Sahara are seeking grazing for their herds further and further south, as the traditional pastures at the Northern edge of their ranges fail. The results in conflict with the more or less sedentary, more or less Christian farming groups in areas that still get adequate rainfall. One seldom sees these clashes of culture and religion interpreted as one result of climate change, but that is what it is, isn’t’t it? 2. the escalating competition for African hearts, minds and resources between the the Chinese state and multinational corporations with close ties to Russian, and more belatedly, the Biden administration, playing catch after Trump ceded the playing field there to his friends, is also driven by shifting consumer needs as technology attempts to figure out how to profit from the changing conditions. 3. The war for the rich wheat fields and always open ports of Ukraine, couched in terms of Putin seeking to return to the old and better times, or questions of political ideas like Ukraine’s right to self determination, and self- governance, obscures the fact that Russian has been exporting a greater percentage of it’s wheat crop ever since the early 70’s. As oil revenues continue to fall, Russia needs some other major exports as a source of revenue. But wheat and other agricultural products are more susceptible to the vagaries of the weather, hence the perceived need to control a greater share of production.
The founder of Greenpeace, Patrick Moore, turned on the organization once he realized it wasn’t about saving the environment, it was about power. It always comes down to power.
These environmental cults fill the void left by the abandonment of religion. Funny how they have all the same elements--original sin, guilt, penance through sacrifice. But there’s never forgiveness. In Christianity there is forgiveness and reconciliation. But in cults, there can’t be. The cult leaders must keep their followers wallowing in guilt. That’s how they get more power. I saw Al Gore has made hundreds of millions of dollars these past several years. Doing what other than scaring kids? Meanwhile we are having bake sales at my church to raise enough money to repair the roof.
Everyone in an environmental cult needs to read Unsettled by Koonin. He uses IPCC’s own data to show that climate change is not the big scare it is made out to be. And the cultists need to visit countries of the third world and understand the devastating impact of their intentions on poor people.
I haven't read Unsettled, but did listen to his interview with Joe Rogan (episode #1776) and it was worthwhile. There is something so satisfying about reading/hearing reasonable discussions! I really want the rational people to be right about this stuff
Gore is just one of many. Which explains how those trillions devoted to infrastructure in the last two years have not resulted in the improvement of much infrastructure.
“In my country, we passed the ‘Inflation Reduction Act,’ which is primarily a climate act, $369 billion, which will actually be much larger than that.” — Al Gore at the WEF last week
Really??? Two years? That’s horrific... we can’t rebuild the grid tomorrow? Smh
10 years to the moon. Not to mention that as sold to the US citizen it was about existing infrastructure too. So shake away.
Excellent book. If you haven't read it, here is the best Climate fear porn take down I've found. https://www.sec.gov/comments/s7-10-22/s71022-20132171-302668.pdf
Add apocalyptic predictions to the list
I have young kids. I believe climate change is real and requires thoughtful and prompt action, and like Zion, I also believe that the solutions have to take us towards a future of human flourishing. I am deeply troubled that due to rhetoric like that espoused by XR, it’s become commonplace for mainstream publications to refer casually to a “dying world,” and to toss around the possibility of complete societal collapse. There’s a deeply anti-human, nihilistic strain in all of this. But if you want a better future - if you want solutions - you have to inculcate hope, not despair. If you think you won’t see thirty, you won’t lay the groundwork for a better world. You won’t have children or pursue education or try to build deep community. Because why should you, in the face of this apocalyptic future?
You really think people can make a dent? Seriously? I recommend you listen to Konstantin Kisin's 8 minute speech before the Oxford Union.
Explain exactly how the spoiled upper middle class Westerner is going to convince the poor in India, China and other developing countries to choose starvation and a scrabbling existence so the planet can be saved? You really believe this will work?
Yes, Konstantin Kisin’s speech is deluxe!
Human flourishing and society is inextricably linked with energy availability and use. If the greens hadn't fucked up the nuclear transition 50 years ago we would be in a tremendously good place right now. Barring some sort of technological miracle, there is no reasonable future that does not include nuclear as our main source of energy. We need fossil fuels to bridge the gap. Asking (or impotently demanding) people to voluntarily make their lives worse is pointless and won't ever work
I agree.
What prompt and thoughtful actions would you take? More renewables which degrade the grid by delivering electricity sporadically? Wind turbines that are buried where they fall and solar panels to landfills because neither are recyclable? Ruining American’s way of life so China and India can continue to use fossil fuels? Requiring electric cars so foreign lands can be environmentally pillaged for lithium?
Someday your children will wonder what was used before candles. It was electricity.
I’m a hunting, fishing, libertarian-leaning former oil and gas lawyer, for what it’s worth, so maybe take a breath before assuming that saying climate change is real and should be addressed means I’m no different than the very people this article is about. In general, I’m pro-nuclear, but mostly I’m pro-adaptation.
And I am pro-human civilization and anti-hysteria. Most of the climate change message is propaganda not based on facts. Let’s start with establishing basic truth before we make any drastic changes.
But until we get serious about next gen nukes, all we have is natural gas as a viable fuel source for generation. You know as well as I do that the "renewables" are not being installed on the grid, nor do they have the necessary reliability to balance a modern grid if they were. This is all a massive con.
So what prompt and thoughtful actions would you take?
Actually, what hubris to think man can change the climate in any way. Maybe sacrifice a virgin to the volcano?
Next gen nuclear. Unmeltable cores. Modular reactors. But the current political environment in DC will not allow anything to be built. They'd attempted it in Georgia, after 10 years they stopped trying, halfway through construction. Regulators just would not let it happen. It is ridiculous. The politics have become what Russia was when they created the disaster at Chernobyl; paralyzed by bureaucracy and bureaucrats whose only goal is to cover their asses and protect their cushy jobs.
This is verifiably false. The plants in Georgia are being built with one to come online this year. I worked there. The project is the epitome of waste and mismanagement.!
Nuclear in the US is not held up by regulation, its the cost and lack of skilled labor, and extreme mismanagent by the leaders who are/were in charge. Why so costly? Brcause its nuclear and you don’t just go to Lowes for bolts when you run out. Stuff needs to last 60 years. And the lack of skilled labor and poor management means many expensive installations are redone because supervisors and managers literally don’t know what they are doing and don’t care. Why lack of skilled labor? Because the younger population were conned into going to college and few want to get their hands dirty.
The average age of tradesmen is 50.
Nucs arent being built because no CEO is going to bet the farm on a reactor that costs almost as much as his company’s market cap.
Mini nucs don’t put out enough megawatts to justify the capital cost.
In short - renewables are easy to build, are subsidized by investment and production tax credits and thats what utilities will build.
Perhaps renewables are easy to build but people may not want them because of the immense land use needs and impacts. The fact that there are tax credits are just a function of political choice by some. Probably not those whose backyards they are planned for. From an article by Fred Stanford via the Breakthrough Institute.
“Particularly important for the nationwide politics of decarbonization is nuclear energy’s minimal land use. According to recent research, the land-use intensity of nuclear generation is 100 times lower than that of ground-mounted solar, and more than 1,000 times lower than that of wind turbines, when counting the land between turbines, but without even considering all the transmission lines needed to connect turbines to cities. Critics of nuclear highlight long, difficult fights for plant permits, but the task of acquiring 1,000 times the land area for wind turbines—plus property rights and environmental permits, as well as winning over local opposition—sounds more like a game of SimCity than a democratic political program.
Finally, nuclear infrastructure is long-lasting and demands large, permanent workforces of highly-skilled labor ripe for unionization. Anywhere from 500 to 1,000 people work at a conventional nuclear plant, not to mention all the additional “induced” jobs that pop up in the towns around a nuclear plant to support its workforce, and that plant can last more than half a century. Attracting local support for nuclear projects with these good jobs might prove easier than it is for wind and solar projects that offer essentially none for the local working class once built.”
I was working on a project in Alaska. The camp contractor came in to expand the camp. I asked the owner if I was old enough to work for him (I was 60) all the construction crew was older than I.
AFAIK the change in design for 3rd and 4th gen builds require tighter tolerances and much more precise engineering, and its true that many plants have actually gone beyond what the regulatory bodies required just as a matter of necessity. I think nuclear still is required and we will find a way to make it work. Lessening the regulatory burden is still probably necessary. SMRs also have their place, NuScale is a company to watch for sure.
Until Fukujima, one of my favorite retorts when talking to nukular energy deniers was that more people died at Chappaquiddick than at Three Mile Island.
Don’t get me started on the preventable issues at Fukujima
Gee, who knew that a tsunami would wash away the diesel generators?????? What, me worry?
Personally I favor localized production, less consumption of unnecessary shipped goods, more incentives for decentralized electricity production (including home use of gas power grids), requirements for city buildings to have green spaces, and vastly more investment in nuclear fusion research. Among other solutions.
But I rarely, if ever, hear such solutions discussed by politicians. Apocalyptic rhetoric and blaming the "others" is nearly all they do.
I agree, Anthony. Less waste, localized production, and new technologies that actually have advantage. A big problem with cult-thinking is it fixates on social re-engineering. This is an actual engineering problem with real solutions. Serious effort could make an impact - although it wouldn't likely satisfy the pols who want to make it about something else.
Try on this essay and maybe we can start some serious conversations...
https://joelelorentzen.substack.com/p/would-we-build-a-grid-today
My favorite thing about battery powered cars is that they are renewable…..until the battery goes bad after 5-7 years and you have to literally throw the entire car away because replacing the battery is $26,000.
So actually the precise polar opposite of ‘renewable’.
"Anti-human" is spot on. At the center of the environmental movement is the belief that everything humans do is bad. Their solution is to have a lot fewer humans.
And they never volunteer to leave do they.
Pollution is bad, no doubt about it … but is carbon released by burning fossil fuels really changing anything?
Carbon dioxide makes up .04% of our atmosphere. Humans are responsible for 3% of that. This is the accepted science.
The theory is that even a slight change in carbon has a big impact, but I’m not convinced. The climate change theory has too many holes — the above stat is just one of them.
I used to be so worried about
Climate change until I really looked into the theory and began reading opposing views.
I still ride my bike everywhere and don’t buy a lot of junk from Chinese factories. Air pollution sucks. That’s a fact. Human induced Climate change …. I’m not convinced.
We certainly don't face dystopia. Go read the actual IPCC report, and see how it's littered with 'unlikely' and 'low confidence', look that sea level is rising, but has been rising since before CO2 started rising. Know that sea level will rise between eight and twelve inches in your child's lifetime of perhaps 100 years, and ask yourself if that's dangerous.
Consider that the temperatures shown to us are heavily manipulated, and that manipulation has a goal. Perhaps this goal is simply to keep you in a heightened state of alarm, and looking to be led to safety ... but be sure to contribute to my reelection fund & get out and vote.
15 years ago I had done this debate--that of global warming, which I will remind all is the ACTUAL conjecture not being debated--so many times, I CREATED my blog to do a systematic treatment of the topic. Even though many of the links are long since defunct, the basic logic holds even today: https://moderatesunitedblog.com/2008/01/
Here is the core problem with the science: there is no non-trivial measurable prediction being made which can be validated or falsified within anything CLOSE to the time intervals in which they want us to make ENORMOUS, extremely destructive decisions that IN THEMSELVES will cause famine and death if implemented with anything approaching seriousness. The Dutch destroying their farms is not serious; many provinces in China and India alone generate vastly more CO2 than the whole nation.
The Earth has been without ice and covered in ice; everything in between is within normal climatic variation. And we need to understand that there is ZERO scientific basis for claiming that the warming that is supposedly happening is "without precedent". The resolution of the ice cores they are using for historic temperature reconstruction is perhaps a 1,000 years or more.
Formally, Anthropogenic Global Warming exists as a conjecture scientifically. It was relabelled "Climate Change"--which amounts to "weather"--for this reason.
But if anyone wanted to take the idea seriously from a truly SCIENTIFIC perspective, it requires differential warming in the upper Troposphere, which is about one mile up. Most heat retention lower than that comes from water vapor, which absorbs about 70-90% of the Earth's radiant heat on any given day. CO2 can only absorb about 12% of the frequencies in play, and for this reason its effect is inversely logarithmic. Each doubling only matters half as much, because at some point it will be absorbing 100% of the heat in the frequencies where is matters, and then an infinite amount will do nothing but help plants.
But to claim that CO2 produced by humans is causing warming REQUIRES differential warming in the upper Troposphere. As it happens, we have very reliable readings from satellites, and we are able to avoid the problems of fluid dynamics up there since it is a relatively uniform mass, at least compared to the surface level.
A TRULY scientific hypothesis would be that "Atmospheric CO2 is excess of what would normally be expected caused by the combustion of fossil fuels will produce differential warming at the altitude where CO2 has most of its effect. Such warming will be local, such that that zone is warming relative both to the layer above and the layer below." That is what a TRUE scientific hypothesis would look like.
But they don't do that. Why would scientists not want to validate as well as possible their own predictions? Why? Seriously? Are you even asking that? THIS IS A METHOD FOR POLITICAL CONTROL OF THE PLANET. None of this is defined by honest science.
I have to get going, but I can debate this all day long. The whole thing is a ridiculous farce, and the worst thing about it is people are being hurt for no reason--like Dutch farmers--AND WE COULD BE SPENDING ALL THIS MONEY ON BETTER THINGS, LIKE GETTING PLASTICS OUT OF OUR OCEANS AND KEEPING THEM OUT. That is a real problem. Global warming is not. It's a big freaking joke.
A joke brought to us by the ghouls at Davos.
Thanks for this important contribution to our discussion.
Right on. Thank you for your extended comment, and saving me the trouble of going into such depth.
All great points.
Thanks for the comment.
POOPER IS BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I’m curious: is there a university out there somewhere which can claim the distinct honor of having you as a graduate?
Elitist asshole
So no? No, you didn't go to college, or no, nobody would want to admit having granted you a diploma in anything?
There is a part of me that understands that when lunatics bark like dogs there is little sense in responding, but another part of me that views lunatics as bullies who need to be confronted. Those parts are in conflict. If I respond it is the latter, and if not the former. Both parts smoke and have tattoos, but I think one drinks a lot less.
POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOPER!!!!!!!!!!
Even Atheists need a religion, and they have turned to worshiping politicians.
They have angels, demons and saviors which they worship beyond all logic.
Yeah except they are tithing with my money.
Brilliant
It's very similar to radical Islam. If you are not with them, you are an infidel and must be destroyed.
A relative of mine share a mutual interest in the space program. She gushed often about having been seated next to him on a commercial flight long ago. Today, he is one of her demons to be destroyed.
Have you ever noticed that apostasy is treated by the believers of a group as a far worse sin than unbelief originally? I find this really curious.
That is the brilliance of the educated elite. The exemptions and the non-profits. Get working people to pay for their projects. If I were tyrant I would outlaw all nonprofits, period. The whole concept is essentially forcing non contributors to contribute through taxes.
I do think this fills the same hole for some people that religion did in prior years. There’s very much something of the early Christian martyr (or the Dominican inquisitioner) about Greta Thunberg, isn’t there?
Greta is a phony. Witness her staged “arrest” at Davos. Criminal that someone who has some sort of mental condition is being used.
You mustn’t blame Greta--she was brainwashed from infancy.
She wasn't brain washed, she's a handicapped child. Suffering from Asperger's, ADHD, and likely fetal alcohol (see it in her face). Couldn't continue high school, she's a puppet of her father who is a producer.
Even the German Police got in with staging a violent arrest this past weekend. Everyone is smiling and shaking hands, in the next scene, Greta is being carried away by the police.
'There’s very much something of the early Christian martyr (or the Dominican inquisitioner) about Greta Thunberg, isn’t there?"
No, there's very much nothing attractive about a snarling, unattractive and unpleasant young fool. Or the equally foolish and comical adults who fete her.
Indeed Bruce, her public persona is decidedly unattractive. But I believe that she has been manipulated by adults in her life and suffers from mental health issues. I hope she gets help and finds her way to a happy, normal life.
How dare you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
“ The symbolism of the climate strike is that if you adults don't give a damn about my future, I won't either.”
>>There’s very much something of the early Christian martyr (or the Dominican inquisitioner) about Greta Thunberg, isn’t there?<<
FABULOUS comparison!!!!!! ❤️
And they were burned at the stake for their heresy
But then they got to have all those churches named after them. 😀
Joan of Arc comes to mind. She's lucky we're so civilized now.
Then they aren't really atheists, they're just followers of their climate cult religion. But you're right. We evolved such that religions arise within our social networks - probably because they are effective organizing structures that allow much larger groups to be controlled which resist breakdown into warring factions (which they still do). But a significant percentage of people who believe this climate apocalypse nonsense are Christians. I run into them all the time.
Yeah, thanks. I wouldn’t know the percentages as to which are more worried about climate.
Atheism is a religion.
It's not. If you were an atheist you would understand why it's not. But theist can never seem to understand the different perspective on reality that is atheism.
That is like saying if you were Catholic/Jewish/Protestant/Coptic/Buddhist/insert any organized religion you would understand. "[T]he reality that is atheism[.]" You don't even see the similarity, but then again "there is none so blind . . ..
Atheism is not a religion, but anti-theism is. And a fair percentage of atheists are anti-theists.
You nailed it. That difference seems to be subtle for some people.
I've moved around a fair bit in the last few decades. The last few times I would land someplace new I would try to find people to socialize with using organizations like MeetUp. Most of them were dating scene stuff I had no use for. But there would invariably be a "Free Thinkers" group that would sound promising. But every time I would go to one of their meetings - no matter what part of the country that might be in, they were almost entirely composed of or dominated by anti-theists. And - curiously - nearly all of them had once been highly religious. They would go around the room doing these brief testimonials to introduce themselves: "Hi. I'm Bret" (Hi Bret) "I used to be religious - in the [some fundamentalist] church. I've been an atheist now for two years." It sounded like one of those trope AA meetings you see in movies. "I'm Allison and I am an alcoholic. I've been sober for six months." (yay! Allison!). It's ALL they would talk about.
I don't have a problem with religious people who aren't attacking me. Many of my friends are religious. I don't attack them for it.
I know a guy who used to be a pretty chill atheist. Then he got involved with a group that dresses up as monks and goes around to fairs to preach anti-theism. Not chill anymore.
I have friends who are pagans, and I have seen them, too, get attacked by anti-theists. Atheists who can't BEAR the idea that ANYONE believes in any sort of god are engaging in authoritarian cult-like thinking.
Every time I have a prolonged conversation with a self-described “atheist” it becomes clear at some point that many of the things they believe are also taken on faith. I’m sure there are some “actual” atheists out there somewhere, but I’ve yet to see one. Most recently it was related one who was up in arms with the, as he called it, “don’t say gay” bill. It certainly wasn’t any form of evidence that led him to call it that
Too many conversations I have with anti-theists (and the reason why I try not to have conversations with them anymore) involve the anti-theist asking "How can you believe in a god who does X, Y, and Z?" When I point out that the God I believe in doesn't do X, Y, or Z, they're left baffled and floundering.
The bill you refer to had nothing to do with saying or not saying “gay” and the person who called it that knew it when he/she made it up in typical manipulative -politics fashion.
Unless you can prove matter exists—never mind God—then it is a belief system, and “belief system” is not a bad summation of “religion” generally.
Robert Anton Wilson used to love mocking both Christian Fundamentalists AND what he in effect called dogmatic materialists. And his considered opinion was that the latter were less rational, because even though they aupposedly based their ideas on science, they refused to consider any scientific evidence that conflicted with their assumptions.
It is curious that some of the religious have such a burning need to insist that all are religious. It's not an argument that can be won - or lost. Following Karl Popper's formula, it's not falsifiable. Another way to look at it is that if _everyone_ is religious, then what does it even mean? It is essentially nonsense.
Yeah, I probably should have not gone with the word “religion”. I used to stress over this stuff but have found it’s not what’s important.
That is why it is called faith. But that is not on point. This is a discussion about theism and atheism, not whether either are verifiable.
What? Religion? It's not synonymous with faith, although it seems to require it. I have faith that the earth will keep turning so that the sun will "rise" tomorrow. That doesn't make me religious. Just pragmatic. I'm not being disrespectful to the religious here, incidentally.
Well it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, looks like a duck ... but let's all agree its not a duck.
Semantics, to me, and not my hill, really. (just acknowledging Gandolf’s astute observations.)
But atheism most certainly involves a belief, by every definition from its conception.
Been there, done that. Now I’m old. I see it differently today.
So, just stating my take on it; I’m not asking anything of you, nor do I judge you--as you defensively do me--about whom you know nothing.
We each have to walk our own path in life. I wish us all well.
It’s close enough to make minor distinctions not matter. It is faith-based, incorporates the concept of original sin, and specifies steps to redemption. Whether one is atheist or not doesn’t change the definition of religion.
Athiesm incorporates the concept of original sin? How so?
Not atheism, climate zealotry. Apologies if I was unclear Jeff.
Oh, please.
“One 24-year-old girl, Louise, climbed atop a crane on the highway. “I’m here because I don’t have a future,” she exclaimed between sobs.”
————————————————————
I know we are supposed to have sympathy for her because the reason she believes all of this is because she has been subjected to intense psychological manipulation and an unrelenting propaganda campaign from modern day Nazis like Al Gore and Rachel Maddow.
Regardless, I still kinda just think that Louise is an idiot.
I think Louise is just _very_ young. 😀
There was a time when a 24-year-old was an adult.
Yah. Well. Refer to Bari-published article of a week or so back about the expanding boundaries of cultural adolescence: That time is not now.
Also, remember the quote wrongly attributed to Winston Churchill: "If you aren't a liberal at 25, you have no heart. If you aren't a conservative at 50, you have no brains." 😀
That was Disraeli, if memory serves. Churchill did change parties though, and then I think went back. He had an exceptionally long career.
There was a time when a 16 year old was an adult, maybe not legally, but actually.
Indeed. I was living on my own at 16.
Many boomers and Gen X quit school at 16 and went to work in factories.
Through most of human history the average lifespan was under thirty. Being a grandparent was not the norm.
You have misunderstood "average lifespan." Humans, in general, live to be about 70 if they don't die at a young age. Child mortality is what made "average lifespan" shorter in the past. If you lived past 5 years old, you had a fair chance of reaching 70. But surviving to the age of 5 was the tricky part.
I'm aware of that. Infant mortality plays a part. But the conditional probability of reaching ages such as 70 given 5 was reached has only increased dramatically in the last couple hundred years. Most people who survived childbirth died of infections and accidents up until very recently - or OF childbirth in the case of women. Here's a way to get at an upper-bound: Look at Wikipedia pages for British royalty. They're all cross-linked. Look at their lifespans, that of their wives and their children who reached five or older. Now these are people who had the best food and living conditions available for their times. I would add "best medicine" except that this was a joke until recently. How many can you find that reached 70? I've looked. They are really scarce. How many that even reach 50? Not very many. Pre-nineteenth century Harry being - what? fourth in line? Would still have a good chance of eventually ending up with a crown on his head. And this is an upper-bound. The vast majority of people were malnourished, living with polluted water and air and exposed to unimaginable infectious diseases and parasites to us moderns in most parts of the world. Here's a good link with some data:
https://ourworldindata.org/its-not-just-about-child-mortality-life-expectancy-improved-at-all-ages
Read the story of Sacagawea. She was 15 and had a baby on her back when she led Louis and Clark through the West. She is credited with saving the expedition. Western thought and overly restrictive child labor laws have turned kids into permanent infants. So sad.
That was Sacagawea. In my opinion, there's a happy medium between teenage slave concubines and mid-twenties hysterical infants.
Fair. Bought by a much older man, who purchased her from the tribe that captured her in a raid. Slavery was common even among American Indians.
Slavery was common among just about every group ever until (relatively) yesterday.
I don't know whether there was an objection to "slave," the standard term for a human being who is owned by another, or "concubine," a female sex partner, often one without the right to be anything else.
Correct! Too much history swirling in the brain before coffee! My point was to her abilities, not her social status. Please try not to place modern cultural ideas on historical realities. You have no idea how she felt about her situation. And I am sure "helpless" was not among them.
It is realistic to describe Sacagawea as a slave concubine. It's a fact of history. Even the children's biography from the 1960s was straightforward in explaining how she was captured by an enemy tribe and later sold to Charbonneau.
I did not claim to know how she felt about it.
I didn't know Liz Warren was that old?!
12 is very young. At 24, one has supposedly graduated from a university or trade school and is into their career. I'm with Kevin who deems her Just an idiot.
4:52 PM 1/21/2023
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ARCHIVED:
PSYCHOTIC, PARANOID DELUSION CONFIRMED BY THE LUNATIC HIMSELF:
https://www.thefp.com/p/americas-broken-immigration-system/comment/12105238
excerpt:
Kevin Durant?
Writes The $79.99/mo Newsletter
4 min ago
The “Catholic Charities” do not help poor people. They harm poor people. They work for MS-13. They do not do the same things operationally as MS-13 but they are just as evil. They will go to the same hell.
If they sound nuts, it's because they are.
Replacing fossil fuels is fine - IF you have a realistic replacement. But here's the rub, if you ban oil and natural gas for home heating, anytime soon, you hate poor and working class people. Why? Because the alternative of electric heat pumps is unaffordable to them. Tear out a perfectly good furnace, spend $20,000 to install ductwork and then pay four times or more as much to heat your home? With electricity production we do not have and will not have with solar and wind. Unless we begin a massive investment in next gen nukes. And don't get me started on electric vehicles.
These people are crazy and they hate you. They think nothing of destroying our most cherished and mutually shared and loved art treasures. They want you to die in the cold and dark. They sow chaos and ruin. They are not your friends. They are your enemy because they are stealing your children's future. Treat them accordingly.
It would be helpful to provide an article on all the everyday products we use made from fossil fuel. If we focus entirely on the automobile and electric grid we miss out on much of the issue. We all want clean air and water, but we also need heat in the winter, food, shelter clothing and so much more that none of the climate activists offer solutions in place of fossil fuels. How about accounting for the sun’s impact on warming and climate change? At the end of the day it seems this is all a manipulation by a few to gain riches at the expense of the masses. Al Gore being the ring leader with John Kerry and other politicians.
First comment that acknowledges we all want clean air & water.
It might be helpful to mention to our children as they grow up, that everyone will die someday. It is also fundamental that we are bound to hold something as the most important thing in our life. It is easy to make a bad choice in that something.
Fact: without fossil fuels, civilization collapses. There are no viable alternatives for thousands of every day necessities at present, even if you take away transportation and heat. The list is astounding. I love that she focuses on solutions; truly, necessity IS the mother of invention.
It makes me furious to see morons attempt to harm or destroy priceless works of art. These fools don't have any skills, can't create or build anything but they sure are quick to destroy.
The only thing they seem to have in abundance is arrogant moral virtue preening.
If they had any education at all they would know the Earth has been changing since the very beginning. There are quite a few excellent documentaries that show this vividly so these fools wouldn't even have to be able to read. Two I particularly liked are "Australia," and "Voyage of the Continents."
These are temper tantrums of the young who feel guilty over their privilege.
Whatever happened to channeling that privilege into something positive? Peace corps?
They want purpose and direction in their lives but they are so vapid and uneducated to think they go for quick, feel good fixes.
We should look at what we have forsaken paving the way for cults like this to supplant what we abandoned.
I share your contempt for them. And raise you. I wanted to immolate the two vandals who defaced the Van Gogh
would you settle for gorilla glue?? it expands and gets all foamy before it becomes indestructible. like krypton. glue your little whining hands with that. then we can turn out the light and listen to you cry like a little girl
Peace Corps requires real work. And it's hot and yucky in tropical jungles ... ewww .... plus it's so hard to find a good latte in some of those places.
My personal take on all the destruction: as a Christian, it makes perfect sense. The Ruler of this World, Satan, has had free rein to destroy every single thing God created, established in the natural order and pronounced "good", right down to His creation of Man and Woman. Those opposed to God, ("You are of your father, the devil") emulate him in every way. A quick perusal of 2 Timothy, 3 seems to indicate that at this point, he is close to done. Look to heaven, from whence your salvation comes.
The weirdness and insanity going on in our culture is the result, in my opinion, of supplanting God with false idols.
Fascinating perspective coming from the inside of one of these organizations. I can only really see the outside of that. Online I can see the push of the fear porn and the shouting and the protests. But I've never seen or read what kind of manipulation does go on behind the scenes. Thank you for the great piece!
I couldn’t help but think of Jim Jones as I read this. All the earmarks of a manipulative central figure conning the naive and vulnerable into following a path of insanity.
Is the climate changing? Uh, yes. And has been for millions of years. There’s a reason they’re called “fossil fuels.” But the solutions are not all or nothing. Think Buffalo, NY. How many people have to be sacrificed on the altar of climate alarmism before people realize we can adapt, and even thrive in new and different ways. For anyone who hasn’t already figured this out, there is a class of hucksters going back to Al Gore who have figured out how to instill fear and profit from it.
If we could only get them literally to drink Mr. Jones's kool-aid the problem would be solved.
These people are zealots of a destructive ideology. They are not benign nor should they be viewed as such.
I wouldn’t want them to drink koolaid,, just experience the discomfort of their own illogical policies. I’m going to go out on a limb, here, and suggest that people willing to disfigure their own bodies with bizarre tattoos may not have the judgment to decide energy policy for the entire world.
An understatement.........
People are misguided to believe we have the ability to impact the earth climate to the degree politicians and activist suggest. Even if the west stopped all fossil fuels today the impact will be negligible. Energy is necessary for prosperity, fossil fuels will one day be exhausted or diminished to the point that the material will have more value for things other than fuel and use as fuel will be priced out of the market. Prosperity is necessary for people to care, for people to thrive and for the extreme poverty that still impacts significant numbers of people to be diminished. Prosperity is necessary to allow us to adapt and innovate as climate changes. People forget that there was once ice sheets from the Pole to the central USA and they retreated long before fossil fuels existed. Human activity did not cause the ices sheets or the retraction. The plains used to be roamed by mammoths, saber toothed cats, Pterodactyls, and were lush green places that we read about in books that seem unreal. The continents shift and move, huge volcanic eruptions can cause decades of cooling. All of this is beyond human control. Our experiences is but a blink in geologic time. Even from the birth of Christ until now is miniscule on a geologic scale. I won't even start on how an society dependent only on electricity cannot be free and cannot have national security. One bomb on the power grid and all economic activity and transportation stops. The Afghan and Syrians wars show how much power there is in Toyota trucks fossil fuels and AR rifles. The afghans held off the Russians and the USA. If they only had EV's and no guns they would now be enslaved. The Energy sector needs to educate and tell the honest story of the success and wonders of the world that was only enabled by fossil fuels. And currently most of the electricity come form fossil fuels. Those nuts like John Kerry selling fear with lies do nothing to help us move forward with the sound diversified energy policy needed. Glad this lady at least party woke up to reality she still has a bit to go.
Energy is necessary for existence, even subsistence existence.
The Planet is not at risk. You are being manipulated for political control.
Exactly
“All these stories feature young members of a movement that claims to fight climate change by demanding their governments stop using and producing fossil fuels immediately.”
——————————————————-
The number one emitter of carbon on earth is the US military. All of these people also have “Glory to Ukraine” in their bio.
It's good to see that one person has abandoned the most extreme foolishness and anti-science of the global warming cult. However, she has a long way to go to learn that the entire AGW 'science' is bogus, based on failing models and outrageous projections.