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Published on Friday, December 31, 2010 by The Oregonian
A Snowy Glimpse of America's Future
"Welcome to the New Normal."
Those words should be displayed at New York's airports as a welcome to bedraggled travelers during the Northeast's latest "snowpocalypse." Why? Because the Big Apple's much-lamented paralysis this week is a critical cautionary tale for everyone. The episode warns us about the kind of thing that's likely coming to the rest of America as we now willfully mix three toxic problems.
The first of those is global climate change. Though no single mega-storm is the fault of climate change, scientists agree that weather – including snow patterns – will become more intense as the planet's ecosystem is transformed by human-produced pollution. So while New York's near-record snowstorm may not be the direct result of unbridled carbon emissions, powerful storms like it will undoubtedly be more frequent thanks to our head-in-the-sand attitude toward the environment.
This might be slightly less alarming if our country were making investments to mitigate climate change's worst effects. But that gets to the second problem that the New York snowstorm epitomizes: America is still being eviscerated by conservatives' anti-tax, budget-cutting religion – a religion whose high priest is New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Like so many wealth-worshiping politicians across the land, Bloomberg spent the last few years focused on two priorities: He campaigned against proposals to replenish depleted public coffers via slightly higher taxes on Wall Streeters, all while citing those depleted coffers as a rationale for massive municipal layoffs. Those job cuts, which were particularly acute at New York's snow-removing sanitation department, have now predictably translated into an immobilized metropolis.
Bloomberg and other politicians who champion this pervasive tax-cut/budget-cut ideology will certainly employ rhetorical spin to distract from this cause-and-effect story. But with New York still resembling the ice planet Hoth, it's clear Mother Nature can't be spun, and even more clear that conservative economic ideology will probably deliver similar results all over America during future weather-related catastrophes.
But, then, how can such a bankrupt ideology persist in the face of such terrible consequences? Welcome to the third problem highlighted by the New York snowstorm: plutocracy.
We all know that American politics is dominated by money. The U.S. Senate is a millionaires' club, and the politicians who aren't personally rich are typically bankrolled by corporate interests. Billionaire Mayor Bloomberg personifies this plutocratic order – and his declaration that "the city is going fine" during the blizzard because "Broadway shows were full" demonstrates what plutocracy means in practice. It means that when an emergency does not hurt the Bloombergs of the world, our government does not see any emergency at all.
Yes, as long as the Bloombergs' streets are plowed (as the mayor's was), as long as the all-important rich are enjoying their theater engagements, the plutocrats think everything is A-OK. They don't care that, say, an outer-borough newborn died because EMTs couldn't get to the baby's home for nine hours. They don't care that another outer-borough woman had to wait 30 hours for an ambulance after breaking her ankle. And those plutocrats certainly aren't about to change the conservative economic policies that help make these crises so horrific for the non-rich.
Again, this triple threat of climate change, economic conservatism and plutocracy is not limited to New York. It's the new ubiquitous normal in America, which is why the Big Apple's blizzard experience is so significant.
A real-time counter to demagogues' more sensational predictions of our doomsday, New York's winter trouble presents the nation's gloomy future in more banal – but equally troubling – terms. The blizzard suggests that America's decline will not look like an Armageddon-ish explosion in Washington. It will look like a traffic-snarling snowdrift in Queens.
Those words should be displayed at New York's airports as a welcome to bedraggled travelers during the Northeast's latest "snowpocalypse." Why? Because the Big Apple's much-lamented paralysis this week is a critical cautionary tale for everyone. The episode warns us about the kind of thing that's likely coming to the rest of America as we now willfully mix three toxic problems.
The first of those is global climate change. Though no single mega-storm is the fault of climate change, scientists agree that weather – including snow patterns – will become more intense as the planet's ecosystem is transformed by human-produced pollution. So while New York's near-record snowstorm may not be the direct result of unbridled carbon emissions, powerful storms like it will undoubtedly be more frequent thanks to our head-in-the-sand attitude toward the environment.
This might be slightly less alarming if our country were making investments to mitigate climate change's worst effects. But that gets to the second problem that the New York snowstorm epitomizes: America is still being eviscerated by conservatives' anti-tax, budget-cutting religion – a religion whose high priest is New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Like so many wealth-worshiping politicians across the land, Bloomberg spent the last few years focused on two priorities: He campaigned against proposals to replenish depleted public coffers via slightly higher taxes on Wall Streeters, all while citing those depleted coffers as a rationale for massive municipal layoffs. Those job cuts, which were particularly acute at New York's snow-removing sanitation department, have now predictably translated into an immobilized metropolis.
Bloomberg and other politicians who champion this pervasive tax-cut/budget-cut ideology will certainly employ rhetorical spin to distract from this cause-and-effect story. But with New York still resembling the ice planet Hoth, it's clear Mother Nature can't be spun, and even more clear that conservative economic ideology will probably deliver similar results all over America during future weather-related catastrophes.
But, then, how can such a bankrupt ideology persist in the face of such terrible consequences? Welcome to the third problem highlighted by the New York snowstorm: plutocracy.
We all know that American politics is dominated by money. The U.S. Senate is a millionaires' club, and the politicians who aren't personally rich are typically bankrolled by corporate interests. Billionaire Mayor Bloomberg personifies this plutocratic order – and his declaration that "the city is going fine" during the blizzard because "Broadway shows were full" demonstrates what plutocracy means in practice. It means that when an emergency does not hurt the Bloombergs of the world, our government does not see any emergency at all.
Yes, as long as the Bloombergs' streets are plowed (as the mayor's was), as long as the all-important rich are enjoying their theater engagements, the plutocrats think everything is A-OK. They don't care that, say, an outer-borough newborn died because EMTs couldn't get to the baby's home for nine hours. They don't care that another outer-borough woman had to wait 30 hours for an ambulance after breaking her ankle. And those plutocrats certainly aren't about to change the conservative economic policies that help make these crises so horrific for the non-rich.
Again, this triple threat of climate change, economic conservatism and plutocracy is not limited to New York. It's the new ubiquitous normal in America, which is why the Big Apple's blizzard experience is so significant.
A real-time counter to demagogues' more sensational predictions of our doomsday, New York's winter trouble presents the nation's gloomy future in more banal – but equally troubling – terms. The blizzard suggests that America's decline will not look like an Armageddon-ish explosion in Washington. It will look like a traffic-snarling snowdrift in Queens.
© 2010 Creators.com
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166 Comments so far
Show All"Yes, as long as the Bloombergs' streets are plowed (as the mayor's was), as long as the all-important rich are enjoying their theater engagements, the plutocrats think everything is A-OK."
And *THAT*, my friends, is the entire problem.
As long as the rich are not inconvenienced, nothing is going to change. It is only when they are pried out of their protected cocoons and subjected to the reality that the other 98% have to live with on a day-to-day basis that they will have even a momentary glimpse of what their policies have done to the rest of the world.
You think I'm joking?
Then remember the shocked look on Prince Charles and his wife's faces when then encountered the public rage over suddenly being unable to afford higher education in the UK. Remember what the Metropolitan Police commander said, about how next time they would probably use lethal force.
This is a class war. Plain and simple.
And so far, the Elite are winning because *we* are doing *NOTHING*.
Non Serviam - I will not serve.
Good comparison to Bloomberg's "Let them eat cake" attitude--bonny Prince Charles getting blindsided by college kids protesting tuition hikes that make education unaffordable. And now we have the prospect of a new brigade of global warming deniers seizing office in a few weeks, making certain that we do less than nothing about climate change, since it's all a liberal hoax anyway. Just a commie plot to deny ever higher profits to our courageous corporations who provide for us the highest standard of living in the world and safety from terrorists.
In other words, we're doomed. Climate chaos will soon be out of control and the AGW-denying creationists in Washington and the state houses of most states will be eagerly awaiting Jesus's return as millions die thanks to their negligence, greed and irresponsibility. As you say, meanwhile we are doing nothing. So who's to blame?
Climate or "climate chaos" was never really under control, we only thought we could control nature. Normal weather patterns? not if we continue to screw up the atmosphere and planet.
Let them eat cake is indeed their attitude, but those with money can buy their way out of suffering at least for awhile. Their children and grand children, along with everyone else---?
"In other words, we're doomed" Ha doomed is for the weenies that will not stand up and hit back. The time has come to hit back.
I can see it's the weenies to blame again.
What is it with this website? :)
Happy New Year.
I hope it's better than the last, but I have a sinking feeling that it won't be.
To paraphrase the immortal words of Jim Leahy:
"The shitbuzzards are circling and a shiticane is headed this way."
The rudder's splt in two and well armed right wing thugs are commandeering the life boats.
The bankers helicoptered away with the ship's treasury,three years back.
Captain Obama's not on board. He's on vacation. He's earned a rest; larceny, lying and war mongering are hard work, you know. Yet he still finds the time to sell the out the crew's pension and insurance funds.
The Captain's a real paragon of Christian Worship. I hear he's even attending bi-partisan prayer meetings with the Family, or his family or something like that.
Well we can still dream peace, visualize revolution and raise some hell against the Empire!
Peace Now!
End the Bi-partisan Nat'l Security Police State.
And Hey, TSA
Leave Those Kids Alone!
"And so far, the Elite are winning because *we* are doing *NOTHING*."
And the very, VERY sad thing is that they would not be able to be "winning" if it weren't for the hourly workers who are unwittingly supporting them. The same can be said for the illegal invasions that are being sustained by the unwitting service people who "serve" just to secure an income.
Until "Patriots" are willing to stand up to and refuse to serve the cause of the elites--unwitting or not--the working class of Amerika will continue to be demeaned and, hence, suffer by suicidal choices.
Until a strong Democratic Socialist party arises (See Bernie Sanders), we have no hope for "CHANGE". The programming is too well-ingrained in mainstream America.
The problem is worse than just having workers sustaining the elites. Why did workers vote in large numbers for Reagan, who went out of his way to break the Air Traffic Controllers' union?
And why do so many union members vote for Republicans? Regardless of what people posting to this site think about the Democrats, the middle class has done better when Democrats run the country than when Republicans do.
Again, why do workers vote for Republicans?
The workers have often voted for Republicans despite the fact that they're put in such a precarious position by the GOP's politics, because the Democrats haven't provided a real, genuine vision for more than 40 years, and aren't any good at addressing the workers' problems. I believe that a very good example of this is occurred during the time when Boston's schools were going through the cataclysms of being desegregated for the first time, when many, if not most Democrats and liberals conveniently ignored the issue of class while sounding the call for Boston's schools to integrate.
Because of most liberal Democrats' inability and/or unwillingness to address the issue of class and the role that it, too played in Boston's school crisis, corrupt school officials such as the late Louise Day Hicks, John Kerrigan and Pixie Palladino rode on the coattails of white workingclass fears, frustrations and resentments in Boston and coached and bent Boston's white workingclass population into a position of belligerence and resistence, by addressing an issue that wasn't addressed by most liberals; the issue of class. It was addressed in a nasty way, and many white workingclass people in Boston responded to that.
NAFTA, repeal of Glass Segall, under Clintons pen did workers great harm. It is no longer true the Dimo's are better for workers, who is hurt by 10 years of Dimo funded wars?
And how is the Dimo congress enacted police state working for you?
Both Parties are worse than worthless and it takes serious denial and acceptance of multiple horrific crimes against the peace and livelyhood not to comprehend such an obvious fact.
But their so much more educated and competant than we are. We should just trust they know what their doing.
Their f***ing doing us and our children that's what their doing!
>^^<
One big reason workers vote for Republicans is that they have always played the manhood card. They drive manly hummers, not gas saving cars, they are always willing to go war and fight, they love guns, hate gays want to keep women in "their place".
So over and over again workers fall for this stupidity and think being a man is following these idiots. They will follow them into pure serfdom where I don't think they are going to feel very manly. But I am saying it is workers own predjudice re: macho men
and racism that the Repubs have fostered and used in their campaigns. So workers who like feeling superior rather than joining together in solidarity have brought about their own demise with much pushing and help from the ruling class and their wholly owned politicians.
One word' BULLSHIT! I know I have voted repug a few times, because the dims seem disorginized and not to well grounded in reality. Spouting things like Pepole have a Right to Education, and Ilegals are good for americica.
And to a one they all come off as acting smarter that they are, or can be! Rethugs usually go for the populist angle, and pretend their just like us, and only want to keep the streets clean and the trains running on time.
Lies of course on both sides!, but until you have your face pressed in it a few times, your not likely to see it, maybe it's getting older and learing to see the truth from the lies.
>^^<
oh dear...
See below from independentminded. The past is no longer prologue. To say the middle class has done better under Dems is irrelevant to what is going on now. The Dems have never challenged the basic assumptions of R's--such as trickle down nonsense, war is good for the economy, poisons in air and water are OK if stopping those practices "hurts our economy".
In the face of total abdication of basic principles, DADT does not rev up workers or most of the middle class; fear does, and the R's use it to the max.
sheepherder: I can't answer why the populous, in general, vote for those issues and people who are TOTALLY detrimental to them. All I can assume is that "the program" is heavily in place and that people are too damned lazy to research and, hence, slit their own throats (and ours!) at the voting polls and in other ways.
My very best friends are Limbaughed and Foxed beyond their intelligence, which I KNOW they have. I try and explain the "Truth" to them and they just smugly shake their heads and smile like I just arrived on the planet. If I didn't love them so much and for so many years, I'd....
sheepherder: I can't answer why the populous, in general, vote for those issues and people who are TOTALLY detrimental to them. All I can assume is that "the program" is heavily in place and that people are too damned lazy to research and, hence, slit their own throats (and ours!) at the voting polls and in other ways.
My very best friends are Limbaughed and Foxed beyond their intelligence, which I KNOW they have. I try and explain the "Truth" to them and they just smugly shake their heads and smile like I just arrived on the planet. If I didn't love them so much and for so many years, I'd....
--Kucinich2012
~ ~ ~
a couple of years ago i read a poll indicating that some 80% of us believe in the supernatural. although i take the results of public polls with a grain of salt, i bet this one hits close to the mark. we can, for example, talk ourselves blue in the face searching out scientific data which shows cause and effect relationships between human industrial activity and global warming. we can then present knowledge of thermodynamics to explain how global warming contributes to climate change and irratic weather patterns and watch in utter amazement as some op-ed writer, limbaugh, glenn beck or scripture-based "word of god" flies in the face of reason and observation. it's not that these are "too damn lazy to research," but as a result of accepting (though early pavlovian-type indoctrination) a premise that unseen, mysterious supernatural powers rule our world, there can be no rhyme nor reason to figure out. why bother with seeking reason-based logic that's just an intellectual delusion?
Thw working class blamed Carter for the economic hardship of the Carter years. So they voted for Reagan.
Go figure. But Carter was a trilateralist sellout Democrat anyway, for all his solar panels and human rights policies, he was a creature of the Rockefellers and his economic policies served oligarchic interests.
The Republican orchestrated Iranian Hostage drama, sealed his fate.
By the end of his first term, Carter was judged a failure. It was the failure of the Democratic Party that he was re-nominated. Ted Kennedy would have beat Ronnie and spared US some of the worst of it.
At this point Obama has moved the Dems so far to the right as to make partisan politics essentially meaningless. The working class will be voting Republican or staying home in a big way in 2012.
You can cry about that too.
But cryin won't help ya. Cryin won't do ya no good.
By the time of Ron, Ted Keneddy was already a broken down drunk, and a disgrace to the family. Better he be kept in the basement.
After Clinton and NAFTA I'd never vote for a Dim again, no matter what he claimed. Then Reagan fired the ATC workers and I knew that Rethugs were off the table too. But 3rd parties are dead before they get started it seems, the sheeple can be conned to flip left or right, but not to research and vote for their own good!
So sad
>^^<
"By the time of Ron, Ted Keneddy was already a broken down drunk, and a disgrace to the family" Richard Catz
And you offer no proof for your smear of Kennedy.
A victory for Ted in 1980 would have been vastly preferable to the Reagan onslaught.
Do you dispute that Rich?
Or, maybe the two chosen parties of the Duopoly work together like "good cop, bad cop" to make sure that TPTB always get their way. As long as we lose ourselves in the delusion of the "two party system" and pretend that voters really have a choice, we'll be puzzling over the mystery of working class people voting against their own interests. In the end, by 2012 we'll be agonizing over which of the two millionaires (or billionaires) we should choose to represent us.
I believe there is a short, simple answer to the questions as to why workers, specifically union members, vote against the interests of the working class. First a postulate: any voter who votes for a Republican in the US votes against the interests of the working class.
Except in the few cases of steel workers, auto workers, taxi drivers, or teachers unions that can pass as real unions, there are no labor unions in the US. Most that pass themselves off as labor unions (including some of the above) are in fact trade unions. These trade unions include electricians, plumbers, pilots, air traffic controllers, building workers, medical professionals to name a few. They exist strictly to protect the interests of their immediate members. And all unions - labor and trade unions - only represent a single digit percentage minority of US workers. Whereas it is not uncommon for nations of Europe to experience general strikes or nation wide worker protests, such a phenomenon has not occurred in recent time in the US, at least not in the last 40 or 50 years in my knowledge.
Workers' identity with organized labor in the US does not exist. This is the land of rugged individualism, of a self-interested population, of the "Protestant Ethic". Until the culture changes and the myths are dispelled, nothing much else will change. I consider myself a "social democrat". Bernie Sanders, Social Democratic Party, a party of one. If there were hundreds of thousands, or millions of Bernies out there things might be different.
I totally agree with the last para, I know it is a policy in SEIU not to get involved, when other CA State Workers. Prison Guards, Teachers, were in trouble I was pleading to get them help, and was brushed off everytime. Most of my coworkers certinally have no identity as workers, or union members!
I always belived SEIU didn't do worker action, till this year when I saw a few WildCat aactions that I was very proud of.
In fact my SEIU policy faile states clearly; NO STRIKES! even though they do keep a so-called strike fund. Puzzling
>^^<
Saying that workers are voting against their own interest suggests that they could vote in their own interest. I am not convinced of that at all.
Saying that the middle class has done better when Democrats run the country is misleading. It suggests that the middle class and the workers are one and the same. This has never been true. "Done better" for workers has been thanks to Unions and to militant and powerful left wing political organizations, not to any political party or politicians. That has then led to many of the children of workers striving to become middle class - professional educated technocrats in service to the ruling class. "Middle class" means, and has always meant, striving and climbing small business owners hoping to become large business owners, and those in the service professions catering to that group. "Middle" means between the feudal lords and the peasants. That "middle" has produced the corporate CEO's, and they have replaced the feudal lords as the ruling class. The peasants have not done so well, although many middle class people will say "they all have TVs and are a lot better off than the poor in other countries!"
Yes, the "middle class" - the striving and upwardly mobile 10% of the population, the minor aristocracy - does better under Democrats, while those middle class people who have already ascended to the top do better under Republicans. But neither party does a thing for the working class - except in those rare instances when they were forced to do so by militant left wing organizations operating outside of partisan electoral politics.
Therefore, the everyday people are not voting against their own interests, and there is no way for us to vote for our own interests. Those of us voting Republican are voting against the interests of the gentrified liberals and progressives, the educated white collar professional people.
Why do people support either corporate party...there is no difference in outcome,only rhetoric.
Tab...sooooo true. How do people figure this out? Oh ya, stop watching mainstream news and switch over to Amy Goodman and Laura Flanders.
This is the first time I hear anyone else coming out in favor of an American Social Democratic Party.
As far as I know, even Bernie Sanders isn't trying to organize one.
I think the various progressive caucuses in the congress - blacks, Hispanics, women, gays, greens, have to
get together and do this - before it's too late.
The Republican Party has what is effectively a third party in the Tea Party. The Democrats remain wedded
to Clintonian liberalism.
See Chris Hedges "Death of the Liberal Class". It points the way.
Sorry, a duplicate.
highkarate, I'm a regular CD commenter who has constantly been on the lookout for comments such as the one you posted here. As is obvious and perhaps inevitable in a public forum like this, most comments are silly and superficial and don't really even attempt to grapple with the issues that authors like David Sirota present. In order to elevate the debate we must go behind the "plutocracy" analysis which Sirota presents, as do many other CD articles. Certainly, I agree that plutocracy is the major issue, but saying that is not sufficient for a real political analysis of our current situation. Yet many posters are capable of contributing to intelligent debate and long to do so. I agree with you that CD has one of the best comment sections on "left" end of the spectrum, but it also has the potential to become a truly engaged analysis of current issues.
For instance, a quick search of CD indicates that the word "eco-socialism" is almost never mentioned in any CD article, though it comes up slightly more frequently in the comments section. Eco-socialism is a large, influential and growing movement. According to Wikipedia, "Eco-socialists generally believe that the expansion of the capitalist system is the cause of social exclusion, poverty, war and environmental degradation through globalization and imperialism, under the supervision of repressive states and transnational structures." Its viewpoint can be summarized broadly in this paragraph, "There is no meaningful response to climate change without massive social change. A cap on this and a quota on the other won’t do it. Tinker at the edges as we may, we cannot sustain earth’s life-support systems within the present economic system." - Robert Newman, The Guardian, Feb. 2, 2006.
Why can't we find "eco-socialist" articles in CD? Writers such as Joel Kovel, Michael Lowy, and Ian Angus are well known and highly respected on the left, but rarely grace the pages of CD. These writers have in-depth analyses of the real causes of the climate crisis. Nor are they too "intellectual" or "academic" for popular consumption. What seems to make them inconsistent with the CD narrative is that they don't see a solution to the crisis within the current capitalist system and that makes their views "unrealistic" or "too purist" from the CD viewpoint.
However, many CD commenters and contributers are not so limited and I believe they could form a basis for engaging discussion as you suggest.
You cannot engage in dialogue if it is presented as settled by one side and that if you do not agree with them...you are a "denier", a demonization that is continuing to provide negative results.
You cannot discuss anything with anyone who will not admit the possibility they might be wrong, in fact insist that the science is settled and only rogue scientists in the pay of the right wing bigots do not see "the truth"
You cannot have a discussion with people that refuse to admit there is anything to discuss.
This is the real reason the AGW discussion is off the table and the public is rejecting the agenda. Like it or not, you can't be successful trying to dictate to a free people. You MUST persuade them. And you persuade no one by insulting them, claimingh your intellectual, social and moral superiority to them. Particularly when its a bunch of Horsefeathers.
Happy New Year to you and perhaps the New Year will bring some common sense to the "elite" that know it all and couldn't possibly be wrong nor need anyone to do anything except follow their dictates.
More latent heat in the ocean means more evaporation around November, which means more humidity, which means stronger storms around November. A stronger storm will pull polar air south into the storm more effectively, which lowers the air temperature at the earth's surface, which moves the rain-snow line south. Yes, we will also see occasional record high winter temperatures on the other sides of these more powerful storms, but the extra snow, wind and rain is what gets people's attention.
As of December 31, 2010, satellites see record low ice coverage of the Arctic Ocean. The ice-free ocean was too warm this fall, so new ice formation was delayed. All of this time the open ocean has been transferring more moisture back into the Arctic atmosphere. By the way, more moisture is a temporary greenhouse gas in itself.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png
"By the way, more moisture is a temporary greenhouse gas in itself."
In fact, water vapor is a more effective greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. The reason the climate guys do not harp on water vapor or methane (another potent greenhouse gas), is that we have no control over them, whereas we should be able to control carbon dioxide. Should, rather than can, because the Neanderthals are in charge now.
I wonder if a geneticist would find Neanderthal DNA in the genomes of Representative Issa and Senator Imhofe?
Dear Sheepherder --
Very, very unfair to our cousins the Neanderthals. There is no evidence that they destroyed their environment--unlike Homo Sapians sapians.
And they certainly should not get the blame for Inhofe & his ilk-- who after all was created in God's Image by the hand of Jesus... genes--Neanderthal or otherwise-- having nothing to do with it.
Here we go again, The Religious Left, gonna tell us all to stop everything, cause their profit (Al Gore) and some others are proclaiming the end is nigh! We have truly pissed god (mother nature)(Gaia) off! Change your ways or nature will smite you!
People ain't buying it! I'm looking for the Ice Age, if we're somehow holding it off with the co2 Great! I hate being too cold!
>^^<
JASON: Perhaps you haven't noticed that the media is awash in a sea of deceptions. One key tactic is setting up false equivalencies. Jerry Fallwell tried to say 911 happened due to loose morality, and society's gays, feminists, liberals, etc.
JUST BECAUSE some people intend to make money from trade in carbon credits HARDLY disqualifies the peer research of more than 90% of climate scientists.
If you want people to read your blog, how about publishing some facts? Perhaps you have good intentions, but it's the pro-business think tanks that are pushing the meme that climate change is NOT based on human activity. That's like someone living among the Easter Islanders saying, "No problem. Go ahead and kill that last tree. Things will be fine. Keep on cutting 'em down."
There are a lot of imposters on CD. A few serve the nuclear industry, a few seem to think Monsanto is just groovy, as is GM technology. Some think Arizona's draconian anti-immigrant laws are perfectly lawful, and others have no problem with the US serving as arm's merchant to an increasingly destabilized world. Then there are the climate change deniers. Are you in that pack, Jason? Or just naive?
Don't feel bad. Misunderstanding happens to us all. One interesting point you made,
"I have to wonder about people on CD who spend more time attacking people on minor points, exaggerating or over-emphasizing negativity, than they do being kind to others."
It must be a compulsive hobby when boredom strikes.
I'll be back tomorrow evening after the New Year's Day party to respond. Happy New Year and great blog of yours. I could learn more.
Thanks Jason. I'll be turning 27 soon. The haters aren't hard to defeat. Before I go and head out the door, here's a hint. Think like Jake Newton but for the left and take them down on their logical fallacies. More on this tomorrow. As a soldier always knows, never flinch no matter how your opponent bullies you. Not even an "intelligence" bully is invulnerable. Glad we could make peace and I'll have more to say tomorrow evening. Sorry again I'll be late tomorrow.
I have read Siouxrose at this site for many years, but highkarate is a handle I have only recently noticed. Have you been silently attending Sioux all this time, or have you changed your name?
There are several pro-corporate "debunkers" of global warming who say it's all a hoax, put on by the liberal scientific elites, to make money out of carbon taxing or however, but they are in the thinnest of marginal minorities. Tarpley is largely considered a first-class crackpot, BTW. Whatever his motives, or your climatologist friend (Is he really a climatologist? or just a meteorologist? Because the latter are notorious for denying or minimizing climate change, knowing little or nothing about climatology), you're relying on some real corporate shills if you want to give credence to the deniers. Most of them are of the same scientific standing as the creationists.
Sun spots, a mini ice age 600 years ago, and related excuses have nothing to do with what's happening now. Unless you're OK with doubting over 99% of the scientific community worldwide that has had any input into the research and data collection concerning global warming. If Tarpley really believes that many scientists are perpetrating a hoax just so they can cash in on carbon trading, he's definitely whacked.
As ricardohead tells you, Tarpley thinks Julian Assange works for the CIA, and thinks nearly everyone else does, apparently. No, I haven't seen "Obama Deception" and would take a gander if I had the chance, but there are also videos claiming to debunk evolution, "proving" the earth is flat, and assorted unscientific certainties. But I've read and heard enough about global warming, for about 20 years, not to be misled by cranks who are probably in the pay of corporations to deny AGW. I don't know if Tarpley is or not, but I do know he likes to play the role of gadfly contrarian on every major issue, claiming expertise well outside his wheelhouse, whatever his wheelhouse may be. But anyone trying to smear Assange, by saying he's CIA, can't be trusted. That's just psycho talk. But I guess if you think the left is just as wrong as the right about these things, there's no persuading you. You'll take the safe centrist path, thinking you're a radical or something.
I have no idea what you're yammering about. Sounds like a lot of egocentric half-paranoid talk. It's clear you're very into yourself and nothing I say can slow that down, but if your only real interest in any of this is to be a performance artist, maybe you'd be better off elsewhere. I never said or implied you were "one of those," whoever they are, and the rest of your Look-At-Me-Strutting-and-talking- trash reply is too childish to comment on. Cenk Uyger you ain't.
Sorry. but you're dumber than swamp water without alligators.
Hello again "high". Which is the dominant personality, "high" or "jason"? Do you realize you are being tolerated and at the same time mocked here by otherwise very gentle and civil commenters? Don't you feel lonely here with your unctuously deferential monologues?
Oh, also. With respect to an implication that highkarate might be a dunderkopf with Ephraim's comment that highkarate is "dumber than swamp water", I would apply Occam's razor. highkarate seems to be a dunderkopf because highkarate is a dunderkopf.
Even if some natural cycle were currently affecting weather patterns, Jason, similar cycles have never occurred, previously, in tandem with atmospheric damage at the current level, caused by humans. Isn't damage limitation the sensible course? Maybe both sides of the argument have points worth making, but out and out denial and refusal to address the issue - as our dippy Okie Senator James Inhofe is doing - is nothing short of reckless.
JASON: You used a LOT of incendiary language in your post, and specifically tied it to me as if YOUR opinions about me are themselves facts. That little game makes me think you are among a group of embeds on this site. Where was any hate directed at you by me? Oh, how you right-wing counterfeits love to say everyone with a different opinion is guilty of hate speech. Especially WOMEN with strong opinions! Then your comment that I go to extremes? Your intent is based on falsely conflating things here.
I am skeptical of anyone with an intellect/IQ over 100 who espouses a view aimed at putting holes in the near 100% consensus on the part of scientists regarding climate change. Call it global warming, Gaia's Revenge, whatever... the bottom line is, pro-business types, those whose god is manmade profit are the ONES standing in the way of responsible policy changes. They want to keep the water muddied when responsible changes should have begun in earnest 30 years ago. I find that profoundly DISHONEST and question anyone's motives for choosing THAT (pro status quo, it'll all be OK, just keep polluting, consuming, etc) stance.
A few people have lambasted me for supposedly pushing my website. You, on the other hand, are practically begging people to view it. Where's the outrage. Curious, that. You appear to be devoid of facts regarding your statement about global warming. It fits nicely with the dis-information campaign that suits the "business" community. In my view, you're dishonest. As was your purposefully false portrayal of me.
Instead of debating the issue (climate change), you deflected your posts into pretending that I am speaking against you. Then your projected blame at Ephraim in a way that's either deceitful or delusional.
And as for the "passion" of your posts... they come off as the human equivalent of a 23 year old saltine cracker. YOu make everything all about YOU... juvenile and quite reminiscent of 4 or 5 "other" posters who behave in a near-exact manner. Got some clones, do you?
Tarpley also thinks that Julian Assange is working for the CIA, as is just about everyone else. Maybe he's working for the CIA; with name like that, why not? Meanwhile, check out the Blizzard of 1888.People were pissed at New York's response, but they had more difficulty expressing their anger.There was a mini ice-age in Scandinavia in the fourteen hundreds. Among other things, it killed off the Greenland colony, where for a while, they had been able to grow (some) grain.In 1962, the Thames froze. Big deal.Next year, the ice-caps will continue melting. Why do you suppose that is?
Whenever I hear this sunspot thing, I want to ask, say, who do you think discovered the sunspot/weather connection in the first place? Scientists, maybe? And do you really think the sunspot scientists would sit still while their knowledge was ignored? Not likely.
Itsa red herring, sweetie, and part of the war on science that the rightwing is waging. Scientists HAVE looked at the sunspot thang, and it does not correlate with global warming.
I saw a poll, and I'll get this wrong but something like 20% of Americans think the sun revolves around the earth, and about 40% don't know what DNA is. Before we can talk about global warming, we need to talk about science. And then what will happen is not a debate, but a solemn consideration of the data.
I taught science for what seems like ages (environmental sciences in community colleges) and the pressures brought on teachers to just not teach evolution...and most teachers now are adjuncts, contract teachers, who stay in the classroom on a kind of popularity grant...is overwhelming. I had students bring bibles with them to class and either display them on their desks or stand up in class and start reading from them.
I have had students tell me: "Your facts will not trouble my faith." How do you problem solve with THAT?
Science is an extreme viewpoint? Is that what you are suggesting? Because...wow...just, wow.
Sounds just like the GW folks to me, I have my book don't bother me with facts!
>^^<
Ain't nothin wrong with the rich & powerful that a truckload of nooses won't fix ....