‘Day of Infamy’ — Climate Change Calling Card
Filed Under Cloud gazing, Environment, history | Leave a Comment
Today 70 years ago one of the landmark events of world history — the Japanese attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor — a horror-hole episode leading to a massive worldwide war which killed 2.5 percent of the planet’s inhabitants or about 60 million people.
Europe had been at war for a couple of years, but after Pearl Harbor, the shit really hit the fan.
If one is interested, the best read on the attack is John Toland’s old masterpiece, The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945, although told from the Japanese perspective.
Pearl Harbor also displayed an astonishing blowback (to the Japanese): How the US way-quickly booted itself up to wage war, from sitting on our ass to full-blown, break-neck-running in a matter of seconds to tackle the problem.
A similar situation nowadays required for a foe that will make all of WWII look like a walk in a springtime park — climate change, which if not acted upon, the world’s causalities won’t be just 2.5, but 100 percent.
(Illustration found here).
The approaching climate calamity is so humongous, so overwhelming and so quickly-coming that pussy-footing around won’t work anymore — no more small talk at chaotic conferences.
David Roberts at Grist:
This cannot work.
At least it cannot work if we hope to avoid terrible consequences.
Why not?
It’s simple: If there is to be any hope of avoiding civilization-threatening climate disruption, the U.S. and other nations must act immediately and aggressively on an unprecedented scale.
That means moving to emergency footing.
War footing.
“Hitler is on the march and our survival is at stake” footing.
That simply won’t be possible unless a critical mass of people are on board. It’s not the kind of thing you can sneak in incrementally.
It is unpleasant to talk like this.
People don’t want to hear it.
They don’t want to believe it.
They bring to bear an enormous range of psychological and behavioral defense mechanisms to avoid it.
It sounds “extreme” and our instinctive heuristics conflate “extreme” with “wrong.”
People display the same kind of avoidance when they find out that they or a loved one are seriously ill.
But no doctor would counsel withholding a diagnosis from a patient because it might upset them.
If we’re in this much trouble, surely we must begin by telling the truth about it.
The awful truth is it might be too late already, but maybe not.
Five years — the amount of time reportedly left to take hard-core action before all the bad shit locks in and there will be no escape, leading to irreversible climate change.
Last month, the most thorough analysis yet of world energy infrastructure revealed the clock is indeed ticking down.
Via The Guardian:
“The door is closing,” Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency, said.
“I am very worried — if we don’t change direction now on how we use energy, we will end up beyond what scientists tell us is the minimum [for safety].
The door will be closed forever.”
And there ain’t getting out of that windowless room except through that door.
And we’re not joking — if we were joking, it’d go something like this: ‘Horse walks into a bar, bartender asks, Why the long face?‘
Monday Mourning
Filed Under Cloud gazing, history, Orwellian, Politics | Leave a Comment
Another thin-skinned GOP asshole caught being an asshole — Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback got his panties in a bind when a high school student Tweeted that the good governor, “#heblowsalot:”
Emma Sullivan, 18, was hauled into her principal’s office and ordered to write letters of apology after one of Governor Sam Brownback’s office contacted the tour organizer to complain about the offending note on the social networking site Twitter.
Ms Sullivan, however, will not backtrack, saying she isn’t sorry and doesn’t think such a letter would be sincere.
And her mother agrees: I raised my kids to be independent, to be strong, to be free thinkers. If she wants to tweet her opinion about Gov. Brownback, I say for her to go for it and I stand totally behind her.”
(Illustration found here).
Reportedly, young Emma had disagreed with Brownback’s veto of the Kansas Arts Commission’s entire budget, making it the only state in the nation to eliminate arts funding — join the crowd, Emma.
“I think it would be interesting to have a dialogue with him,” she said.
“I don’t know if he would do it or not though.
And I don’t know that he would listen to what I have to say.”
And Emma is most-perceptive about the two-faced GOP — Think Progress reports Brownback’s baby-like over-reaction caused Emma’s high school to violate her First Amendment rights: Moreover, because the school district violated Sullivan’s clearly established federal constitutional rights, she is likely entitled to have the district or the principal pay her attorney’s fees if she decides to bring a lawsuit challenging this unconstitutional disciplinary action. In other words, the district could be wise to settle this case immediately if Sullivan decides to bring them to court.
Republicans don’t seem to care about the US Constitution, the rule of law or even for the general welfare of US peoples — the GOP is most-likely the most anti-American group in existence today.
And maybe, too, anti-life-as-we-know-it.
The biggest catch for action on climate change comes from the right-sided GOP, even as COP17 starts today in South Africa.
From Agence France-Presse via Raw Story:
When lawmakers cannot agree that climate change is a problem for which solutions must be sought, gridlock ensues, according to Democratic lawmaker Henry Waxman.
“During this Congress, the Republican-controlled House has voted 21 times to block actions to address climate change,” he said at a hearing this month.
“History will look back on this science denial with profound regret.”
Henry, it’s a profound regret right this freakin’ now.
And even right-wingers know it — Norm Ornstein, a congressional scholar with the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank, says the GOP needs to get a good beating: “The best way to reach a deal for Obama is to pull out the partisan cudgel and slam them between the eyes repeatedly,” says Ornstein. “They’ll only come to the table if their political brand is damaged. They’re not coming for the good of the country.”
The dollar, they’re coming for the dollar.
One must also keep in mind the kind of country the US is today, thanks to Republicans with aid from spineless, chickenshit Democrats.
From Peter Van Buren at Tomdispatch yesterday:
As the occupiers of Zuccotti Park, like those pepper-sprayed at UC Davis or the Marine veteran shot in Oakland, recently found out, the government’s ability to limit free speech, to stopper the First Amendment, to undercut the right to peaceably assemble and petition for redress of grievances, is perhaps the most critical issue our republic can face.
If you were to write the history of the last decade in Washington, it might well be a story of how, issue by issue, the government freed itself from legal and constitutional bounds when it came to torture, the assassination of U.S. citizens, the holding of prisoners without trial or access to a court of law, the illegal surveillance of American citizens, and so on.
In the process, it has entrenched itself in a comfortable shadowland of ever more impenetrable secrecy, while going after any whistleblower who might shine a light in.
Read the whole post, it gets even more shitty.
Anything the GOP does should be scorned and pushed way-aside, or else the mourning will be in earnest.
History, Duh!
Filed Under Bullshit, history | Leave a Comment
“Thanksgiving Day, a function which originated in New England two or three centuries ago when those people recognized that they really had something to be thankful for — annually, not oftener — if they had succeeded in exterminating their neighbors, the Indians, during the previous twelve months instead of getting exterminated by their neighbors, the Indians.
Thanksgiving Day became a habit, for the reason that in the course of time, as the years drifted on, it was perceived that the exterminating had ceased to be mutual and was all on the white man’s side, consequently on the Lord’s side; hence it was proper to thank the Lord for it and extend the usual annual compliments.”
– Mark Twain
Mr. Twain’s little tweet is my standard Thanksgiving Day dictum in appreciation for one of the US’ most false-fronted celebrations — a homage to excess, an American tradition.
Thanksgiving, however, takes way-second place to Christmas, the biggest Santa Claus-lie of all — but that’s another day.
President Obama let it be known yesterday as he pardoned an honorary Thanksgiving bird: “The turkey’s name is Liberty, and along with his understudy named Peace he has the distinction of being the luckiest bird on the face of the earth. Right now, he’s probably one of the most confused.”
(Illustration found here).
Confused is an understatement — talk about one f*cked-up illegal-immigration policy.
Most US schoolchildren haven’t a clue to the horror those early English settlers hammered onto the native peoples of North America — quoting from the Bible while savagely slaughtering with gun and sword.
And it wasn’t just fighting and defeating Native Americans — the numerous campaigns called for the use of “massacre” to defeat them.
William Bradford, Governor of Plymouth, wrote: “Those that escaped the fire were slain with the sword; some hewed to pieces, others run through with their rapiers, so that they were quickly dispatched and very few escaped.
It was conceived they thus destroyed about 400 at this time.
It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire…horrible was the stink and scent thereof, but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave the prayers thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them.”
Some Thanksgiving — ‘victory seemed a sweet sacrifice‘ and now we can eat.
And nowadays it’s really ‘thanksgiving’ with a much-much-smaller ‘t.’
From CBS News: Nearly 15 percent of Americans are now receiving food stamps, a record level, and a jump of about two-thirds since 2007. One in SIX Americans – 49 million people – say they have trouble putting food on the table.
Welcome to the celebration of the ‘new poor:’
“The new poor could be you, me, your neighbor, your church member, somebody who has been affected by the economy,” she said.
“Many of our people who have come for assistance used to be our donors.
And they’ll say, ‘I never thought I’d have to do this, never in my wildest dreams.’”
The ‘she’ above is Sandy Beaver, who heads The Place, the biggest non-profit center for social services in Forsyth County, near Atlanta, Ga., where despite the ‘new poor‘ being inflicted, The average household here earns $88,000 – the highest in Georgia, 13th highest in America.
So now when one eats that turkey leg this afternoon, one should at least scream between bites, “I’m eating a lie!”
History, duh!
Party!
Filed Under Cloud gazing, Energy, history | Leave a Comment
One real scary moment for Halloween is the overcrowding mob on hand for the party — the UN claims the population of the earth will top 7 billion on Monday, embellishing a smorgasbord of dangerous problems already facing a beleaguered planet.
Despite a prognosis to the contrary:
Max Singer, founder of the Hudson Institute, warned in 1999 that the world would soon be downsizing.
“Fifty years from now,” he predicted, “the world’s population will be declining, with no end in sight.”
Throw that one on the dustbin floor of history.
(Illustration found here).
A population bomb is one with a long, long fuse (a baby born every 2.6 seconds) — the situation is not directly in your face like climate change or peak oil, both being garnished by way-too-many-folks, and this can of worms will become like the thief in the night, quiet, stealthy and dangerous.
Just as the news cycle cranks out all kinds of bullshit, the world is dying even as life comes alive, creating a most-strange take on the future.
In the next few years, some striking changes will be taking place — some you’ll be able to witness first hand, others will just be just things you need, but can’t get.
Earlier this month, Columbia University’s Earth Institute held a conference to explore and discuss the impacts of this human population explosion, and came away with at least five big examples of some real bad shit — shifting population, urbanization, water wars, energy, and, wait for it, mass extinctions.
Via LiveScience:
“In 1950, there were three times as many Europeans as sub-Saharan Africans, said Joel Cohen, a population biologist at Columbia University.
“By 2100, there will be five sub-Saharan Africans for every European.
That’s a 15-fold change in the ratio,” Cohen said.
“Could you imagine that that might have an impact, geopolitically and on international migration?”
…
Globally, the number of people living in urban areas matched and then overtook the number of rural people sometime in the past two years.
The trend will continue.
According to Cohen, the number of people living in cities will climb from 3.5 billion today to 6.3 billion by 2050.
This rate of urbanization is equivalent to “the construction of a city of a million people every five days from now for the next 40 years,” he said.
…
No resource is more precious and vital than water, and, according to economist Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia, there are already parts of the world that, because of the rapidly changing climate, are at a severe crisis point.
“Take the Horn of Africa for example: Somalia’s population has risen roughly fivefold since the middle of the 20th century,” Sachs said.
“Precipitation is down roughly 25 percent over the last quarter century.
“There’s a devastating famine under way right now after two years of complete failure of rains, and [there is] the potential that this is entering a period of long-term climate change.”
…
Currently, there isn’t enough energy being extracted from known sources of fossil fuels to sustain 10 billion people.
This means that humans will be forced to turn to a new energy source before the end of the century. However, it’s a mystery what that new source will be.
“Energy is the basic resource which underlies every other,” said Klaus Lackner, director of the Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy.
“And actually, technology is not quite ready to solve the [energy] problem.
We know there’s plenty of energy in solar, in nuclear, in carbon itself — in fossil carbon — for probably 100 or 200 years (if we are willing to clean up after ourselves and pay the extra to make that happen).
But none of these technologies are quite ready.
Solar has its problems and is still too expensive.”
…
As humans spread, we leave scant room or resources for other species.
“There is good evidence that we are in the sixth massive species extinction of the history of the planet, because of the incredible amount of primary production that we take as a species to maintain 7 billion of us,” Sachs said.
All that shit gives one a nice, rosy glow, huh?
And it’s already coming, and is now here.
From the UK’s The Guardian in March 2010:
The world’s mega-cities are merging to form vast “mega-regions” which may stretch hundreds of kilometres across countries and be home to more than 100 million people, according to a major new UN report.
The phenomenon of the so-called “endless city” could be one of the most significant developments — and problems — in the way people live and economies grow in the next 50 years, says UN-Habitat, the agency for human settlements, which identifies the trend of developing mega-regions in its biannual State of World Cities report.
And climate change is already causing problems, in this particular case, around the Mediterranean Sea region: “The magnitude and frequency of the drying that has occurred is too great to be explained by natural variability alone,” said Martin Hoerling, Ph.D. of NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo., lead author of a paper published online in the Journal of Climate this month. “This is not encouraging news for a region that already experiences water stress, because it implies natural variability alone is unlikely to return the region’s climate to normal.”
And that most precious of material things, even more precious than oil — water.
The US will have problems with water very soon, especially in the parched, drought of the southwest, and will we be able to get that precious liquid to people.
From Reuters:
“In 1985-1986 there were historical (water level) highs and now in less than 25 years we are at historical lows.
“Those sorts of swings are very scary,” said Robert Glennon, speaking at the State of the Lakes Ecosystem Conference in Erie, Pennsylvania.
Glennon, a professor at Arizona State University and the author of “Unquenchable: America’s Water Crisis and What To Do About It,” said that that according to climate experts, shorter, warmer winters mean less ice and greater exposure to the air, leading eventually to more water evaporation.
“We think about water like the air — infinite and inexhaustible but it is very finite and very exhaustible,” Glennon said.
“When you have a shorter ice season you have great exposure to the air and more evaporation. As temperatures go up it is very troubling,” Glennon said.
“The cycles are going to become more acute which is very troubling.”
…
The problem isn’t just getting water to obviously needy areas like the desert city of Las Vegas, Glennon said.
Areas with high rainfall and seemingly abundant freshwater sources also are increasingly exceeding capacity.
“The population of the U.S. is supposed to be 420 million by 2050,” said Glennon,
“Where are we going to get the water to support another 120 million Americans?”
The nasty economic situation right now has caused another population shift — US poor are becoming suburbanites.
In the past decade, the increase in the suburbs was 53 percent, compared with 26 percent in cities, but the recession accelerated the pace: two-thirds of the new suburban poor were added from 2007 to 2010.
Times shift the times: “The whole political class is just getting the memo that Ozzie and Harriet don’t live here anymore,” said Edward Hill, dean of the Levin College of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University.
Do Ozzie and Harriet types live anywhere nowadays?
Happy Halloween — Go trick-or-treating as Lady Gaga — shock ‘em.
Rage Against The Assholes
Filed Under Bullshit, Economy, Finance, history | Leave a Comment
Such a great graph — and a great h/t The Big Picture.
(Illustration found here).
I hope the graph is readable — if not, it originates from Spiegel Online at the link just above.
One can readily see George Jr. did more than his fair share, but to all those big-yapped GOPers, the real shit didn’t start until Saint Ronnie opened the floodgates — compared to the nowadays, the debt before Ronnie was pocket change.
Barry Ritholtz rightfully adds: Whatever your political or economic views are, it is not up to me to tell you what to believe. However, you need to be intellectually consistent and not merely grab whatever ideological bullet point that suits your purposes at the moment. If you do so, you best be prepared to be charged with being intellectually dishonest, and to be categorized as called a political hack. Or worse.
Maybe…you’d be a lying asshole.
And the mass-popular appeal of the Occupy Wall Street movement is reflected in all that debt that no one but the guys/gals marching in the streets will end up paying — US peoples live in a financial climate that’s worse than Ghana.
To make it worse, income in the last few years has become even more way-one-sided.
The bottom 99 percent income level registered a solid pace of 2.7 percent per year from 1993-2000, but then those incomes grew only 1.3 percent per year from 2002-2007.
However, in those same boom years, the top 1 percent captured two thirds of income growth.
Pissed off a lot of peoples, huh?
Not only that, the housing bubble bust struck the average American way-more than it did the wealthy: In 2007, the bottom 60 percent of Americans had 65 percent of their net worth tied up in their homes. The top 1 percent, in contrast, had just 10 percent.
And home ownership, the bedrock of the Great American Dream (Fantasy) is busted bad — home ownership rate fell to 65.1 percent last year, and measured by race, the homeownership gap between whites and blacks is now at its widest since 1960, wiping out more than 40 years of gains.
And this from War in Context and the last near-60 years:
Wall Street has cannibalized itself.
Still hungry, feeling the pangs of their greed, they’ve now come to the government for their daily meal.
And still, without a hint of irony, a spokesman for this ravenous tribe, mounts a soapbox and has the temerity to rail against the evils of socialism.
Turns out, the socialism is for them, the capitalism is for us.
Abbie Hoffman once baited these banksters by throwing cash onto the floor of the NYSE.
To no one’s astonishment, they demonstrated their insatiable greed.
The gluttons couldn’t help themselves, they stopped trading and got on their knees and swept up the free loot.
Title of the post?
“The Dirty Fucking Hippies…Were Right!”
Oh yeah!