Climate change could mean the extinction of our species

[Prospero]

Jamie is such a fine case of lunacy, guaranteeing to offer a quite brilliantly absurd perspective on anything and everything. How do the worms of conspiracy theories burrow into a clearly once fine mind so deeply to thus produce such a panoply of drivel.

[fivekatz]

Jamie is such a fine case of lunacy, guaranteeing to offer a quite brilliantly absurd perspective on anything and everything. How do the worms of conspiracy theories burrow into a clearly once fine mind so deeply to thus produce such a panoply of drivel.

In many ways a more to the point response than mine.

The idea that the government even begins to enjoy the discussion let alone the prospects of having to deal with climate change is absurd.

Whatever point of view politicians in most nations and states take of climate change it is a crappy topic they wish would just go away. Politicians whether their calling is to improve the fate of larger masses with the capital elite being part of that mass of people or simply serving the capital elite whilst adopting a marketing story that this does serve the greater interest, nobody in government would really prefer to have to deal with fact that the eco-system is so out of balance from the procreation and industrialization of the human species that significant and unpopular change needs to be made. That change is not only an uninvited disruption to their personal lifestyles, navigating it is a tremendous threat to their benefactors and their power.

What must concern these "leaders" more than anything is that the pace of climate change is actually exceeding what most climate scientists anticipated giving them less time to kick the can down the road. So even if many a jaded pol looks at the issue as JFK looked at his sexual escapades..."nobody will really know when I am alive and who cares what they think when I am dead" for all we know while death may not be in cards in the next 30 years for mankind, a constant barrage of super storms, drought, famine and flooding may beset the planet.

Now we can believe the 3% of scientists, many who have less than credible credentials on the subject matter or we may believe the 97% along with the coincidence of so many super storms and drought. But so long as 51% of the public believes that the issue is either questionable or not urgent we risk a march to destruction that at some point will have no u turn available to us.

Or we could take action. Even if we would be victims of a hoax the end result would a world with more sustainable sources of energy, cleaner air and seas. The elite would still be elite, some may fall, some may adapt, some may rise but the world order of capital distribution would still be centered on a few.

THe problem here IMHO is that some of the elite like the Koch Brothers fear they can adapt and believe they will be dead before the effects of climate change have made living a hell regardless of you ability to buy comfort.

Generations have their challenges. As distasteful as it was for the generations living in the 30's and 40's the human desire for empire had hit a tipping point where only world war could settle the issue. Today we are quickly approaching our tipping point and confronting it could be so much more profitable in the long run for mankind while ignoring it could mean mankind's undoing.

[Stavros]

Jamie is such a fine case of lunacy, guaranteeing to offer a quite brilliantly absurd perspective on anything and everything. How do the worms of conspiracy theories burrow into a clearly once fine mind so deeply to thus produce such a panoply of drivel.

Prospero, if you take the time to read Jamie's paper Jesus is an Anarchist, you will find that other than multiple references to the Bible, she lists in Appendix A, Articles Everyone Should be Familiar With -five to be be precise; one by Frank Tipler, who enjoys tenure at a US university (which means he is joined by the hip to the beast of Satanic Government, which is how Jamie defines tenured professors); the other four are by Hans-Hermann Hoppe and Murray Rothbard, both of whom were atheists. Indeed the ridicule and abuse that the anarcho-libertarians/Randians/Free Market Capitalists have for religion in general and Christianity in particular suggests that Jamie either cannot muster the courage to denounce Rothbard, Hoppe, Rand, von Mises et al, as godless pseudo-prophets, or she may just be confused.

In one remarkable passage, in which Jamie quotes the Biblical Jesus suggesting to a rich man Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; this does not apparently refer to the wealth the man acquired from his business acumen, but the profits of Satanic Government, because this was no ordinary entrepreneur, but a (Satanic) government lackey

when Jesus counseled this particular rich person to sell all that he had and distribute the proceeds to the poor, this was in fact an exceedingly libertarian thing for Jesus to advise this person. For this was not just any kind of rich person—this was a rich person of a particular type: a “ruler,” i.e., one who has some variety of command over an Earthly, mortal government. And thus, the riches that this particular rich person was in possession of had been obtained through extortion and theft, i.e., by the threat and force of arms and might.

Through this sophistry, Jamie, a born-again Christian, unites with atheist Murray Rothbard:

Thus, when Jesus offered this counsel to this particular rich person, He was merely telling this person what any good libertarian would have said in the same situation— particularly a natural-rights libertarian such as a Rothbardian.

(Quotes are from Jesus in an Anarchist, p45-46).

I was raised to believe that Jesus was a Socialist, but lets' not go there, for the time being...

[broncofan]

It would be interesting to see if Jamie has conventional views on anything even non-political. I know this isn't the section for it, but any conventional hobbies? Knitting? Exercise? Favorite foods? Or is food a tool of the illuminati? Does she sleep in a bed or hanging upside down from the ceiling? I would feel a lot better if she could just tell us anything mundane.

Jamie, is there anything the establishment is right about? Maybe that smoking causes cancer,that alcohol can get you drunk, that water hydrates you?

I'm sorry if this is inappropriate but I'm just curious. Not like bi-curious, but regular curious.

[Jamie Michelle]

The reason why anthropogenic global warming (AGW) theory has become such a virulent dogma is due to the political power that it's being used to justify. If government and its connected interests could find a way to get as much power out of which sock, the left or the right, a person puts on first in the morning then we would never hear the end of the alleged horrors brought about by putting socks on the wrong foot first, and that if the government doesn't step in to save humanity from itself then it could well mean our extinction. Anyone who doubted the sock-crisis and pointed out that it's disproved by the empirical evidence would be accused of being party to "denialism". Later on they would be charged under state edicts which threaten loss of their tenure (such as AGW heretic Prof. Bjørn Lomborg). And if the government's anti-sock-on-wrong-foot-first efforts managed to actually cause humanity's extinction, then this result would be cheered (before their own deaths) by those who consider humanity as a cancer, with the sock-crisis regarded by them as merely being one example of mankind's cancerous ways.

AGW theory attracts etatists of multifarious stripes. They see in it a means of empowering the government and micromanaging people's lives. The theory of AGW is a collectivist's wet dream, as not only do they have their misanthropy confirmed (to the effect that mankind is a cancer), but so also they have a pretext for social engineering.

It's very unfortunate that AGW isn't true, as life loves a warm, carbon dioxide-rich Earth. It would be quite a life-giving boon to humanity and the other critters if AGW had been true.

Jamie is such a fine case of lunacy, guaranteeing to offer a quite brilliantly absurd perspective on anything and everything. How do the worms of conspiracy theories burrow into a clearly once fine mind so deeply to thus produce such a panoply of drivel.

I'm not the one who is such a lunatic and inculcated follower of government as to think that a criminal organization of mass-murder is somehow going to save us from some imagined crisis.

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."—H. L. Mencken, "Women as Outlaws", A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949), p. 29. This essay was first published in The Smart Set, December 1921.

For much more concerning the above matters, see Sec. 8.2: "Ponerology Vis-à-Vis Politics", pp. 63-107 of my following article, being sure to read the footnotes, since much of the information on this is contained within said footnotes:

James Redford, "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything", Social Science Research Network (SSRN), Sept. 10, 2012 (orig. pub. Dec. 19, 2011), 186 pp., doi:10.2139/ssrn.1974708. http://ssrn.com/abstract=1974708 , http://archive.org/details/ThePhysic...ryOfEverything , http://theophysics.host56.com/Redfor...ics-of-God.pdf , http://www.scribd.com/doc/79273334

Like I said, it is truly unfortunate that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) isn't true, as life loves a warm, carbon dioxide-rich Earth. It would be quite a life-giving boon to humanity and the other critters if AGW had been true.

Even though we unfortunately can't raise the global temperature by a significant amount by releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, we can still greatly benefit the biosphere by raising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. For details regarding the immense benefits of higher levels of carbon dioxide to the biosphere, see the following article:

Frank J. Tipler, "Humans and Their CO2 Save the Planet!: Why opposition to the cap-and-trade bill is not 'treason against the planet.'", PJ Media, Aug. 5, 2009 http://pjmedia.com/blog/humans-and-t...inglepage=true , http://www.webcitation.org/6EDNtY9Pn

[fivekatz]

The beautiful thing about the 3% of the scientific world saying there is no global warming was once perfectly summed up by John Fitzgerald Kennedy was being told by his military leaders to invade Cuba. His comment was that "those Brass Hats have one advantage, if we do as they say, none of us will be around to say they are wrong." So it will be with global warming, for those either invested in the current paradigm or so distrustful of everything or just plain in denial, since the mounting data isn't making a dent in their thinking it appears that they will benefit from nobody being around to tell them they are wrong.

[Ben]

The beautiful thing about the 3% of the scientific world saying there is no global warming was once perfectly summed up by John Fitzgerald Kennedy was being told by his military leaders to invade Cuba. His comment was that "those Brass Hats have one advantage, if we do as they say, none of us will be around to say they are wrong." So it will be with global warming, for those either invested in the current paradigm or so distrustful of everything or just plain in denial, since the mounting data isn't making a dent in their thinking it appears that they will benefit from nobody being around to tell them they are wrong.

Noam Chomsky sums it up nicely.... He points out: say the scientists are wrong, well, we've invested a bit of money on things we should've done anyway. But suppose they're right... then we can flush the species down the toilet.... Again, if we do nothing and the science is correct, well, we're in deep trouble.
I mean, even Rex Tillerson, CEO of Exxon, has come out and said that it's real... but that it's an engineering problem....
Tillerson isn't an idiot. But his company, of course, is heavily invested in oil. So has to say it... to protect the interests of his shareholders. And thus neglecting something crucial: future generations:

[trish]

Tipler, doesn’t dispute the physical mechanisms underlying global warming. He doesn’t say it isn’t happening or that if it is it’s due to Solar activity or volcanism etc. He does not deny that there is some warming due to the power imbalances caused by anthropocentric releases of greenhouse gasses. What he disputes is 1) the rate and future extent of the warming and 2) that warming is bad for life on Earth.

1) There are reputable climate scientists, who are not climate change deniers, who dispute the upper range of warming temperatures (approx. 4 degrees C above the anomaly) that some models predict. See ( http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/20...?smid=pl-share ).

What makes Tipler an outlier (besides the fact that he never constructed nor ran a climate model in his life and has no expertise in climate science) is that he disputes the whole range of upon which there is nearly universal consensus. Tipler agrees with the basic principles of climate science, but he disagrees with the mathematical conclusions drawn from models based on those principles without doing any number crunching. Amazing!

2) Tipler indeed takes some pleasure in being right while everyone else is wrong (for that is the nature of his illness) but he doesn’t cheer for Earth herself. According to Tipler it’s actually unfortunate that we haven’t terraformed the Earth with our greenhouse gases. He thinks we should pump more into the atmosphere! Yes a hot planet with lots of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere might be conducive to futuristic jungle ecologies (take a look at all that life on Venus), but it’s not so good for the high rain forest and other species whose ecologic zones have been pushed by global warming higher up the mountain side and off the peak. It is not so good for the farmers who depend the melt waters from the no longer existent snow caps to irrigate their crops. Perhaps life after warming will be lush and abundant. Perhaps it won’t. But one thing is certain, warming will wreak havoc with the world’s economic infrastructures. If we can adjust, the adjustment will be expensive.

Tipler is not only an outlier among cosmologists and general relativists (fields in which he was once active) but he is an outlier among biblical scholars, historians, theologians and now climate scientists (all fields in which Tipler has no expertise). His writings reveal more about Tipler himself (and his acolytes like Jamie) than their supposed subject matter.

[Prospero]

Thanks for that post Trish.

[Stavros]

Tipler is not only an outlier among cosmologists and general relativists (fields in which he was once active) but he is an outlier among biblical scholars, historians, theologians and now climate scientists (all fields in which Tipler has no expertise). His writings reveal more about Tipler himself (and his acolytes like Jamie) than their supposed subject matter.

An outstanding post, Trish. Thanks.