Doom, Sweet Doom

Submitted by WoodsDweller on Wed, 10/31/2018 - 1:28pm

I freaking love this article, so I thought I would share. The author is Peter Watts, I haven't run across his work before. This post is mostly excerpts, I don't really have a lot to add. Go read the original. Come for the style, stay for the substance.

The Adorable Optimism of the IPCC

It’s been a couple of weeks now since the IPCC report came out. You know what it says. If the whole damn species pulls together in a concerted effort “without historical precedent”— if we start right now, and never let up on the throttle— we just might be able to swing the needle back from Catastrophe to mere Disaster. If we cut carbon emissions by half over the next decade, eliminate them entirely by 2050; if the species cuts its meat and dairy consumption by 90%; if we invent new unicorn technologies for sucking carbon back out of the atmosphere (or scale up extant prototype tech by a factor of two million in two years) — if we commit to these and other equally Herculean tasks, then we might just barely be able to keep global temperature from rising more than 1.5°C.[1] We’ll only lose 70-90% of the word’s remaining coral reefs (which are already down by about 50%, let’s not forget). Only 350 million more urban dwellers will be exposed to severe drought and “deadly heat” events. Only 130-140 million will be inundated. Global fire frequency will only increase by 38%. Fish stocks in low latitudes will be irreparably hammered, but it might be possible to save the higher-latitude populations. We’ll only lose a third of the permafrost.

I'm astounded (not really) at the YouTube talking heads who, if they mentioned the report at all, seemed to interpret it as there being only 12 more years to kick the can down the road before we have to, no kidding this time, get started.

If we don’t pull all these things off— if, for example, we only succeed in meeting the flaccid 2°C aspirations of the Paris Accords— then we lose all the coral. We lose the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and the Greenland Ice Shelf (not that it isn’t already circling the bowl, of course). Twice as many people suffer “aggravated water scarcity” than at 1.5°C; 170% more of the population deals with fluvial flooding. The increase in global wildfire frequency passes 60% and keeps going. Marine fisheries crash pole to pole. The number of species that loses at least half their traditional habitat is 2-3 times higher than would have been the case at 1.5°C.

And yet, none of this factors in Global Dimming. That's the "damned if you do" half of this that doesn't get talked about.

Remember last year’s New York Magazine article by David Wallace-Wells? It came pretty close to outlining the fate we’ve made for ourselves, closer than any bureaucrat or politician has ever dared. Remember the pile-on that happened in its wake? Activists and allies all decryig the story as hyperbolic and defeatist? Remember the Hope Police insisting that we had to inspire, not doomsay?

Where are they now?

One of them is Michael Mann, Climate Science superstar. Back in 2017 he shat on Wallace-Wells with everyone else: “There is no need to overstate the evidence, especially when it feeds a paralyzing narrative of doom and hopelessness.” And now here he is, just a few days ago: admitting that even this stark doomsday report is “overly conservative“, that it understates the amount of warming that’s already occurred. And Mann is still an optimist compared to, say, Prof. Jem Bendell, who argues that society is bound for inevitable collapse just a decade down the road and that we might as well start grieving now and avoid the rush. (He even wrote up a paper to that effect, but the policy journal he sent it to wouldn’t publish it until he rewrote it to be less “disheartening”.)

The Hope Police. Gotta love it.

The hope police, they live inside of my head
The hope police, they come to me in my bed
The hope police, they're coming to arrest me, oh, no

Optimistic or not, this latest report is unprecedented by IPCC standards. It effectively offers, as The Tyee points out, a simple choice between Catastrophe and Disaster. It does, as a thoroughly-vindicated Wallace-Wells proclaims, give us “permission to freak out“.

How have the World’s Leaders responded ... accomplished exactly fuck-all beyond one side of the aisle yelling Think of the Children! while the other yelled Think of The Economy! ... Individual actions can’t fix things: the very scale of the problem guarantees that institutional responses have always been necessary. ... Sure, the Neolibs conned you. Because you wanted to be conned.

Reap the whirlwind, you miserable fuckers. May your children choke on it.

There's more. I've already quoted to excess. Check it out and enjoy.

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#ClimateCrisis
#Doom
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Submitted by divineorder on Wed, 10/31/2018 - 2:01pm
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just don't want to let go .

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

Submitted by Hawkfish on Wed, 10/31/2018 - 8:35pm
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@divineorder

But I’m not happy about how regressive it is. The previous attempt (I-732) at least made the redistribution automatic by reducing the sales tax. I-1631 does it via a panel of community advocates, and I hope that works out.

Still I’m voting for it and telling everyone else to vote for it too for one simple reason: unless we can assert our sovereignty over these bloodsuckers, we are doomed.

I’m also telling people that no matter what their #1 issue is, climate is more important. Women’s rights? Think about what pre industrial (or pre agricultural) life was like for women. Ditto any other marginalized group. Environment? Humans have been hell on ecosystems for 50,000 years and are as hardy as cockroaches, so collapse won’t save anything.

Climate is not an “environmental” issue - it is an agricultural issue. It is about human survival, not saving some fuzzy photogenic critters. We will hopefully get that too if we manage to solve the problem, but if we don’t solve it, don’t imagine that life will be sweetness and light for the surviving wildlife.

So please vote for climate. The only chance anything has is to take the power back from these greedy bastards. The alternative is millennia of misery for both our descendants and the other creatures who will be stuck with us.

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We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg

Submitted by Cassiodorus on Thu, 11/01/2018 - 3:50am
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@Hawkfish Is there some initiative out there that we can be reasonably certain will result in physical climate change mitigation?

No, there isn't.

The real questions are: what kind of society will be able to produce physical climate change mitigation? And how do we get that kind of society?

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Submitted by janis b on Thu, 11/01/2018 - 4:18am
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@Cassiodorus

physical climate change mitigation?" Germany comes to mind.

"And how do we get that kind of society?"

I think we threw the baby out with the bathwater when we immigrated to America, and might need longer than is possible to restore the balance. I know that's no answer, or of any help on a profound level, so somehow we have to find it in the mundane, which at this point is looking quite profound.

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Submitted by Hawkfish on Thu, 11/01/2018 - 9:56am
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@Cassiodorus

And I certainly don’t know how to get there in the next two weeks! So for now I’m pushing voting.

These initiatives are not enough (and there are at least three others I’m aware of) but taking a moment to vote for them will at least slow the damage a bit.

More to your question (and part of my point), asserting the sovereignty of the people over these financial powers is a step towards changing the economic order to one more compatible with survival.

I didn’t mention jobs as an issue voters get distracted by, but ask these same people what sort of job they would have if we crash our agriculturally based civilization? How would they put food on the table? This is the conversation I’m trying to encourage. It leads naturally to the kind of society we need to combat the crisis. Or at least it’s the only path I see right now.

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We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg

Submitted by Pricknick on Wed, 10/31/2018 - 2:04pm
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would be one that caused the sterilization of all humans.
There would be billions less left to suffer the inevitable fate that mother nature is gearing up for.
We all bought it. We all own it.

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Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

Submitted by lotlizard on Wed, 10/31/2018 - 9:47pm
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@Pricknick  

That was the second year of the Third World War,
The one between Us and Them.

Well, we’ve gotten used.
We don’t talk much about it, queerly enough.
There was all sorts of talk the first years after the Peace,
A million theories, a million wild suppositions,
A million hopeful explanations and plans,
But we don’t talk about it, now. We don’t even ask.

We might do the wrong thing. I don’t guess you’d understand that.

But you’re eighteen, now. You can take it. You’d better know.

You see, you were born just before the war broke out.

Who started it? Oh, they said it was Us or Them
And it looked like it at the time. You don’t know what that’s like.

But anyhow, it started and there it was,
Just a little worse, of course, than the one before,
But mankind was used to that. We didn’t take notice.

They bombed our capital and we bombed theirs.

You’ve been to the Broken Towns? Yes, they take you there.

They show you the look of the tormented earth.

But they can’t show the smell or the gas or the death
Or how it felt to be there, and a part of it.

But we didn’t know. I swear that we didn’t know.

I remember the first faint hint there was something wrong,
Something beyond all wars and bigger and strange,
Something you couldn’t explain.

I was back on leave—
Strange, as you felt on leave, as you always felt—
But I went to see the Chief at the hospital
And there he was, in the same old laboratory,
A little older, with some white in his hair
But the same eyes that went through you and the same tongue.
They hadn’t been able to touch him—not the bombs
Nor the ruin of his life’s work nor anything.
He blinked at me from behind his spectacles
And said, “Huh. It’s you. They won’t let me have guinea pigs
Except for the war work, but I steal a few.
And they’ve made me a colonel, expect me to salute.
Damn fools. A damn-fool business. I don’t know how.
Have you heard what Erickson’s done with the ductless glands?
The journals are four months late. Sit down and smoke.”
And I did and it was like home.

He was a great man.

You might remember that and I’d worked with him.
Well, finally he said to me, “How’s your boy?”
“Oh—healthy,” I said. “We’re lucky.”

“Yes,” he said,
And a frown went over his face. “He might even grow up,
Though the intervals between wars are getting shorter.
I wonder if it wouldn’t simplify things
To declare mankind in a permanent state of siege.
It might knock some sense in their heads.”

“You’re cheerful,” I said.

“Oh, I’m always cheerful,” he said. “Seen these, by the way?”
He tapped some charts on a table.

“Seen what?” I said.

“Oh,” he said, with that devilish, sidelong grin of his,
“Just the normal city statistics, death and birth.
You’re a soldier now. You wouldn’t be interested.
But the birth rate’s dropping.”

“Well, really, sir,” I said,
“We know that it’s always dropped, in every war.”

“Not like this,” he said. “I can show you the curve.
It looks like the side of a mountain, going down.
And faster, the last three months—yes, a good deal faster.
I showed it to Lobenheim and he was puzzled.
It makes a neat problem, yes?” He looked at me.

“They’d better make peace,” he said. “They’d better make peace.”
“Well, sir,” I said, “if we break through, in the spring—”

“Break through?” he said. “What’s that? They’d better make peace.
The stars may be tired of us. No, I’m not a mystic.
I leave that to the big scientists in bad novels.
But I never saw such a queer maternity curve.
I wish I could get to Ehrens, on their side.
He’d tell me the truth. But the fools won’t let me do it.”

His eyes looked tired as he stared at the careful charts.
“Suppose there are no more babies?” he said. “What then?
It’s one way of solving the problem.”

“But, sir—” I said.

“But, sir!” he said. “Will you tell me, please, what is life?
Why it’s given, why it’s taken away?
Oh, I know we make a jelly inside a test tube,
We keep a cock’s heart living inside a jar.
We know a great many things and what do we know?

We think we know what finished the dinosaurs,
But do we? Maybe they were given a chance
And then it was taken back. There are other beasts
That only kill for their food. No, I’m not a mystic,
But there’s a certain pattern in nature, you know,
And we’re upsetting it daily. Eat and mate
And go back to the earth after that, and that’s all right.

But now we’re blasting and sickening earth itself.
She’s been very patient with us. I wonder how long.”

Well, I thought the Chief had gone crazy, just at first,
And then I remembered the look of no man’s land,
That bitter landscape, pockmarked like the moon,
Lifeless as the moon’s face and horrible,
The thing we’d made with the guns.

If it were earth,
It looked as though it hated.

“Well?” I said,
And my voice was a little thin. He looked hard at me.
“Oh, ask the women,” he grunted. “Don’t ask me.
Ask them what they think about it.”

I didn’t ask them,
Not even your mother—she was strange, those days
But, two weeks later, I was back in the lines
And somebody sent me a paper—
Encouragement for the troops and all of that—
All about the fall of Their birth rate on Their side.

I guess you know, now. There was still a day when we fought
And the next day, the women knew. I don’t know how they knew,
But they smashed every government in the world
Like a heap of broken china, within two days,
And we’d stopped firing by then. And we looked at each other.

We didn’t talk much, those first weeks. You couldn’t talk.

We started in rebuilding and that was all,
And at first, nobody would even touch the guns,
Not even to melt them up. They just stood there, silent,
Pointing the way they had and nobody there.

And there was a kind of madness in the air,
A quiet, bewildered madness, strange and shy.

You’d pass a man who was muttering to himself
And you’d know what he was muttering, and why.

I remember coming home and your mother there.

She looked at me, at first didn’t speak at all,
And then she said, “Burn those clothes. Take them off and burn them
Or I’ll never touch you or speak to you again.”
And then I knew I was still in my uniform.

Well, I’ve told you, now. They tell you now at eighteen.
There’s no use telling before.

Do you understand?

That’s why we have the Ritual of the Earth,
The Day of Sorrow, the other ceremonies.
Oh yes, at first people hated the animals
Because they still bred, but we’ve gotten over that.
Perhaps they can work it better, when it’s their turn,
If it’s their turn I don’t know. I don’t know at all.
You can call it a virus, of course, if you like the word,
But we haven’t been able to find it. Not yet. No.
It isn’t as if it had happened all at once.
There were a few children born in the last six months
Before the end of the war, so there’s still some hope.
But they’re almost grown. That’s the trouble. They’re almost grown.

Well, we had a long run. That’s something. At first they thought
There might be a nation somewhere, a savage tribe.
But we were all in it, even the Eskimos,
And we keep the toys in the stores, and the colored books,
And people marry and plan and the rest of it,
But, you see, there aren’t any children. They aren’t born.

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Submitted by dervish on Wed, 10/31/2018 - 2:29pm
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None show collective restraint, and neither will we.

This can't end well.

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Submitted by ovals49 on Wed, 10/31/2018 - 5:24pm

@dervish

but collectively it’s virtually inconceivable. Humans are (collectively) no more forward thinking than the yeast that gives its life to make our beer; drowning in the byproducts of its own consumption.

We’ll, that’s enough of this Debbie Downer negativity. We’ll all feel better with a full belly and lots of new stuff. Let’s go shopping at the mall!

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“What the herd hates most is the one who thinks differently; it is not so much the opinion itself, but the audacity of wanting to think for themselves, something that they do not know how to do.”
-Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

Submitted by mhagle on Wed, 10/31/2018 - 2:35pm
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Great article. Considered adding it to my climate/voting facebook post but it would be too much for potential readers. Did link to the Prof. Jem Bendell report though.

And that is the weird thing. Right now it is beautiful outside. We are having those climate change induced rain bombs today, but it is still a lovely day.

I am sitting here in my shipping container music studio with the very naughty weiner dog, Toby. Four big windows to watch the storm show. Very pleasant.

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Marilyn

"Make dirt, not war." eyo

Submitted by The Wizard on Wed, 10/31/2018 - 2:56pm

I'm working on scoping it out. Basically all of the carbon released since industrialization has to be sequestered, plus a bit more to start re-forming ice. And we need zero CO2 energy sources. The only reason that I am doing this exercise is that I want something to say when everyone realizes that we are truly doomed.

In the last four ice ages the CO2 varied from 180 ppm at the coldest point to 280 ppm at the warmest inter-glacial periods. That produced average surface temperatures that were about 10 degrees C warmer from ice age minimum to inter-glacial maximum. We are now at 410 ppm CO2 and increasing by 30 ppm per decade. Eventually the CO2 will cause a total climate catastrophe and a complete failure of human civilization. The only good news is that the Earth has so much thermal mass, especially in the oceans that the final temperature increase will take a few centuries. But we are so aggressively increasing CO2 and causing significant and irreversible state changes that we will be extremely screwed somewhere along the way. Most of the IPCC models assume negative carbon emissions, sequestration. Large scale crop decreases are predicted at over 2 degrees C, but this is only based on projected temperature increases. The bigger problem along the way will be climate chaos, that is, there will be no consistent, predictable weather to support large scale agricultural planting, growth and harvest. We are already seeing this.

I suspect that part of the problem in getting this message across is that people experience large temperature changes as part of normal weather patterns. So therefore small average temperature increases are not a problem. This is scientifically inaccurate. Average temperatures play a very big part in climate and climate state. This is a physical phenomena that people cannot intuitively appreciate. Weather is already being significantly changed due to a state change in the Arctic, that is large open areas of ocean changing the albedo. This is altering the jet streams and causing longer and more intense weather cycling. One statement that I heard about seal level rise that really stuck home to me is that this is a continuous, unstoppable process. Look at the climate crisis as one big unstoppable process and you should feel a proper internal panic.
Stop fooling people ---- we must put back all of the carbon dioxide released since industrialization. Right now that is about 844 gigatons in the atmosphere. We are currently burning about 100 million barrels of oil per day, and trillions of cubic meters of CH4 every year. My point is that the problem is massive and if you are serous about solving the problem then these are the numbers that you must work with, otherwise your just fooling around.

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Capitalism has always been the rule of the people by the oligarchs. You only have two choices, eliminate them or restrict their power.

Submitted by mhagle on Wed, 10/31/2018 - 3:19pm
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@The Wizard

Great comment.

The bigger problem along the way will be climate chaos, that is, there will be no consistent, predictable weather to support large-scale agricultural planting, growth, and harvest. We are already seeing this.

I already feel the climate chaos, because not only do we have hotter summers, but colder winters in this part of Texas. Gardeners need to be ready to replant often and maybe eat differently every year. And I still think that a good sized underground greenhouse would be good. I don't have the financial means for such a thing, however. It will be "hail mary" gardening because you will never know what might work.

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Marilyn

"Make dirt, not war." eyo

Submitted by WaterLily on Wed, 10/31/2018 - 3:19pm
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my mother -- who has only one child and always hoped I'd have some of my own (I haven't, and won't, much to her historical discontent) -- said: "I am actually glad that I don't have grandchildren."

So sad where we're headed. After many years of seriously taking "personal responsibility" for the planet -- diligently reducing, reusing and recycling -- I'm giving myself permission to stop feeling guilty. It's not my use of a rare plastic straw that's the problem. And telling people to cut those straws from their consumption is a calculated redirection from the actual causes of the Earth's imminent demise.

In a different scenario, I'd be panicked about not having enough savings to retire (I don't). Now, I figure I should embrace each day as an opportunity to connect with loved ones, experience every adventure that I can, and appreciate the gifts of having been alive at a time when we at least had optimism for the future. If I spend all my (meager) money in the meantime, so be it. Where will it even get me otherwise?

My mom likely won't be here in 12 years (though, all this doom-and-gloom aside, I truly hope I'm wrong for my own selfish reasons). As for me: I and my partner will still be of an age where another 20 or 25 years of life wouldn't be out of the question. And we're active and healthy enough that in an ideal world, we could look forward to those years.

If I'm being honest, however, I'm not at all looking forward to living through post-2030 times. How fucking depressing.

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Submitted by snoopydawg on Wed, 10/31/2018 - 5:01pm
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@WaterLily

And telling people to cut those straws from their consumption is a calculated redirection from the actual causes of the Earth's imminent demise.

Exxon knew about climate change in the 70's and instead of spending money for finding ways to stop it they spent money on finding ways to hide it from becoming known.

I put the blame for it on the Exxons of the world and on the PTB that have spent centuries trying to conquer the world. The destruction from the bombings, the incredible use of fossil fuels while trying to conquer lands full of it and all of the other destructive things they have done without our consent!

But I will still pat myself on my back when I put recyclable items in the blue bin. Hey. At least I'm not adding to the problem..

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Submitted by The Liberal Moonbat on Wed, 10/31/2018 - 3:29pm
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If 9/11's any indication, terrorism works great if you're halfway trying.

The people who are to blame for this have names, addresses, and families.
I don't understand why NOBODY's made a single attempt on the Koch brothers
- let alone go full-Romanov on the whole family.

I'm at an age where the future still matters to me (to say nothing of my
far grander ambitions and hopes), but so does the past. As one is being nixed
ahead of me, the other is being erased and denied behind me. Everyone and everything
feels like it's conspiring to deny I ever even existed. I feel BEYOND BEYOND cheated.

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In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

Submitted by Daenerys on Wed, 10/31/2018 - 4:31pm
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@The Liberal Moonbat Rich people are sacred in Capitalist 'Murica.

I relate to your last paragraph. We were lied to our whole lives about how our future would be and are now being denied any future. I feel like I've been spinning my wheels for years. Older generations don't take us seriously about wanting to fix things, even though we're well into our 30s now and I'm sick of it. Diablo

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This shit is bananas.

Submitted by mhagle on Wed, 10/31/2018 - 4:53pm
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@Daenerys

But I guess we are not connecting with each other very well.

What should be a framework for the fixing? Even though everything looks pretty fucked up, I think we should be full force embracing and enjoying fixing, even if it is to the end. And that is the hope of emerging.

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Marilyn

"Make dirt, not war." eyo

Submitted by The Liberal Moonbat on Wed, 10/31/2018 - 5:15pm
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@mhagle Restoring the New Deal/postwar liberal consensus, actually. We had a working social contract, and it didn't collapse or fail - au contraire, it was a miracle unprecedented in world history, and it was just the beginning. The "Age of Aquarius" was no joke...but it was all brutally betrayed. We need a new wave of Nuremberg Trials, and we need to wring those final hundred documents out of the JFK assassination files by hook or by crook.

It's kind of a matter of time travel and fixing sabotaged history. 9/11 changed nothing, and neither did 11/9...those are bullshit covers for erasing the 20th Century. IT changed everything.

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In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

Submitted by mhagle on Wed, 10/31/2018 - 6:04pm
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@The Liberal Moonbat

Let us transcend that bullshit and build frameworks for the future.

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Marilyn

"Make dirt, not war." eyo

Submitted by Pluto's Republic on Wed, 10/31/2018 - 7:08pm
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@The Liberal Moonbat

As most know, the New Deal held firm until the 1980s. It was the defeating of the important system of regulations that FDR put into place to curb predatory capitalism that killed the New Deal. But so much sabotage was working in so many areas. National education standards that excluded economics plus other downgrades was a start. Then making higher education prohibitively expensive. Then the tax cut frenzy that began under Reagan, who was mentally defective in any event. That's how the Neocons saboteurs found their way into the permanent government, where they remain to this day. Union busting and asset stripping began in earnest in the 1990s, to cripple both the government and the people.

The New Deal was a complex system, but it could not hold against the sophisticated brainwashing and propaganda the Nazis brought to America after WWII. FDR died before he saw the Declaration of Human Rights established at the UN (under the guidance of his wife, Eleanor). He was the inspiration for the declaration, yet those rights never came to the US and the American people never realized they were withheld from them.

It's hard to claw back things that are abstract to the people.

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The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Submitted by QMS on Wed, 10/31/2018 - 7:56pm

@mhagle ~
Only hopes here are for people working together. Community collectives. Open up and share with those around. Giving gifts of time, shared skills, potential needs and resources. We can build a better intra structure by working for a better neighborhood. Just saying.

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Submitted by The Liberal Moonbat on Wed, 10/31/2018 - 5:06pm
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@Daenerys ...at least not universally.

It's more of a "wicked step-parents" problem - and of genuinely incompatible visions.

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In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

Submitted by Cant Stop the M... on Wed, 10/31/2018 - 8:19pm
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@The Liberal Moonbat I sure as hell was lied to. I was promised that humanity would have the future described in Epcot's big ball:

Technological advance will free mankind from the need to work and we will all head to the stars! How will we develop ourselves in our new leisure time?

Also: End World Hunger. End Poverty. Equality across the world. Get Off Oil.

Just a little tour of what I, perhaps along with others? thought was possible when I was a kid.

Don't get me wrong; by the time I was a teenager in the 80s, I knew bad shit was at work, and all those ideas were under assault...or being sabotaged. I just thought there would be somebody fighting for them. Somebody other than a handful of little guys.

Later it was more than a handful of little guys; it was, at various points, a whole lotta little guys. But the wealthy and well-connected, sadly, did not show up.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Submitted by QMS on Wed, 10/31/2018 - 8:49pm

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal ~
~

~
Feel your pain

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Submitted by Cant Stop the M... on Fri, 11/02/2018 - 4:11pm
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@QMS Sad

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Submitted by The Liberal Moonbat on Wed, 10/31/2018 - 11:14pm
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@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal Also, cross-purposes.

I sincerely don't believe it's a good idea to dismiss such
dreams as "lies" - this is an authentic war between Good and
Evil, and Good has been doing a lot of losing lately...but I've
seen the potential for Good in ways so few others really have.

Have faith in Chaos, is my advice on many levels. Pessimism isn't
a philosophy (unless you're Schopenhauer); it's a pathology.

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In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

Submitted by Daenerys on Thu, 11/01/2018 - 3:49pm
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@The Liberal Moonbat It feels more and more like we're living the worst parts of The Last Battle, from the Chronicles of Narnia: things keep getting worse and worse, then rocks fall, everyone dies. (I still say it's the most depressing book I've ever read. Even more than GoT; that is saying something!)

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This shit is bananas.

Submitted by Pluto's Republic on Thu, 11/01/2018 - 4:46pm
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@Daenerys

Head back to the lands where you are indigenous, where there are many countries, many neighbors, many borders, many languages, and where the streets and alleys are a thousand years old, paved with the bones of your ancestors. There is a huge network of Americans who are returning. You can find them in the expat forums. You will find a way to stay. If you have grandparents or great grandparents from a particular country, some will offer you citizenship. There are other paths, as well. Go to university. Some are free even to foreigners.

The US is isolated and dangerous. You have no protection from an out of control government. Your destiny is limited. Go, if you can, while you can.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Submitted by Daenerys on Thu, 11/01/2018 - 5:20pm
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@Pluto's Republic @Pluto's Republic @Pluto's Republic I don't have any money, no skills that those countries would be after, and don't know anyone who would be willing to take us in. I have distant relatives in Germany and Norway, but I don't know any of them. Then there's the issue of bringing our cats. And there's no one else to help my mom with the farm consistently. Believe me, I've thought about it at length. Nothing but dead ends.

ETA: I guess I should've done some genealogy research when I lived in Salt Lake. I doubt I'd find anything helpful; I once looked at ancestry.com, which is what the Mormons use I think, and there was nothing there. It wanted me to start filling in stuff that I knew, which is pretty much fuck-all.

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This shit is bananas.

Submitted by Cant Stop the M... on Fri, 11/02/2018 - 4:12pm
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@Daenerys Among the reasons I didn't flee twelve years ago--same as yours:

1)the cats
2)my mom

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Submitted by Cant Stop the M... on Fri, 11/02/2018 - 4:06pm
Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Daenerys Well, Lewis believes in a life after death. And he believes that the planet we love (whether it be Narnia's planet or Sol III) will be incorporated in heaven; that heaven is, in fact, the best selves of all the worlds, connected together. Sort of like the very best probable version of each. It's actually the most positive cosmology I've ever seen from him.

However, if one doesn't believe in a life after death, or heaven, or God, then it is quite depressing. He's unlike Tolkien in that way: there's a lot for unbelievers in Tolkien, as well as being a lot for believers. But that's what happens when you write the greatest work of moral fiction in a century.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Submitted by Cant Stop the M... on Fri, 11/02/2018 - 4:10pm
Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@The Liberal Moonbat Well, OK...maybe there were people (with power and money) who actually believed in those things back then. It's possible Disney himself (though he was a right-wing SOB) believed in it. It is the case, I know, that not every wealthy and powerful person is a psychopath OK with burning the world down. It's just that there aren't enough of the 1% who are sane...or perhaps, the ones who are sane don't have *enough* power to oppose organizations like the CIA.

But how did they let the psychopaths get in charge in the first place?

Out of curiosity, how old did you think I was?

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Submitted by The Liberal Moonbat on Sat, 11/03/2018 - 4:16pm
The Liberal Moonbat's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal ...so I figured 18-35ish. It sounds more like you were born/grew up in the 1950s.

Speaking of which, what is this "Macedonian Signal" you refer to? I am now picturing Alexander the Great conquering the world with the power of ham radio or something....

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In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

Submitted by Cant Stop the M... on Sat, 11/03/2018 - 2:17pm
Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@The Liberal Moonbat I clearly wasn't communicating well. I was a teenager in the 80s. Born in 68.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Submitted by snoopydawg on Wed, 10/31/2018 - 5:55pm
snoopydawg's picture

This is from the link to the NY mag article discussed in the linked article.

Unless you are a teenager, you probably read in your high-school textbooks that these extinctions were the result of asteroids. In fact, all but the one that killed the dinosaurs were caused by climate change produced by greenhouse gas. The most notorious was 252 million years ago; it began when carbon warmed the planet by five degrees, accelerated when that warming triggered the release of methane in the Arctic, and ended with 97 percent of all life on Earth dead.

Why was this carbon released? What was the event that made it happen? I've seen people referring to it when they say that climate change isn't man made.

I highly recommend reading that article too. The author writes about the different ways that climate change is going to make the planet unlivable. This is from the first one that discusses heat. The others don't look pleasant either. Especially the one on global pandemics.

At four degrees, the deadly European heat wave of 2003, which killed as many as 2,000 people a day, will be a normal summer. At six, according to an assessment focused only on effects within the U.S. from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, summer labor of any kind would become impossible in the lower Mississippi Valley, and everybody in the country east of the Rockies would be under more heat stress than anyone, anywhere, in the world today.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Submitted by Daenerys on Wed, 10/31/2018 - 5:38pm
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@snoopydawg Supervolcanoes?

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Submitted by QMS on Wed, 10/31/2018 - 9:02pm

@snoopydawg ~
~
between earth and sun. The atmosphere that has protected us from the solar radiation is sickened by excessive carbon. The sensitive balance is being lost. How that relates to conditions several million years ago is academic. What science tells about now and what needs to be done is anathema to the generation of wealth for the rulers. Don't blame it on the dinosaurs.

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Submitted by snoopydawg on Wed, 10/31/2018 - 9:09pm
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@QMS

Don't blame it on the dinosaurs

I'm not. I know what's causing this now. I don't know what caused it 252 million years ago hence my question. I thought maybe someone would know what did.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Submitted by QMS on Wed, 10/31/2018 - 9:19pm

@snoopydawg ~
Carbon dating techniques can verify conditions going back many millions of years ago. Try a science source. Hopefully without a religious bent. The dinosaur quip was meant to be funny.

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Submitted by magiamma on Thu, 11/01/2018 - 6:48pm
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and there's no where to hide. No where. Rant as you will, cry in your beer, have your last dinner as the ship goes down. buh bye. But wait, don't forget to be here now.

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