Amazon Burning? – well maybe not so much
Statistics indicate this is an average year for wildfires, so why the above-average hysteria?
Catte Black
One of many misattributed photos doing the rounds. This is from another fire entirely.
Today on Twitter OffG stepped into the current panic-inferno and thick forest of screaming hashtags that is the “Amazon Forest Fire Crisis.” The results were thought-provoking.
The mainstream media message is very simple. There are “record” numbers of forest fires currently in the Amazon basin. It’s mostly Bolsonaro’s fault. The G7 – soon to be assembling – needs to act. (Business Insider and The Guardian are also both very keen we send money to some rainforest charities)
Now, I’m not a fan of Bolsonaro personally, and that goes for all of us at OffG. I’m equally very supportive of preserving the rain forests and wild spaces of the earth. So, the broad sweep of the message is something I’m inclined to be sympathetic toward.
But something isn’t sitting right. This is the mainstream media in full and united chorus, flooding the news space with this one single message. This means there’s a fairly major agenda, and it’s unlikely to be saving the Amazon for all the little future babies.
So, we thought we’d take a deeper look and tweeted this:
How unusual/unnatural are these fires? What percentage burns naturally every year? Be nice to have data rather than hysteria. https://t.co/BDi95EXCiu
— OffGuardian (@OffGuardian0) August 23, 2019
Three people immediately unfollowed us. A couple of others responded. Here’s one:
"Hysteria?" You are being irresponsible and lazy. "Fires in the Amazon have surged 83% so far this year compared with the same period a year earlier, environmentalists blamed the sharp rise on farmers setting the forest alight to clear land for pasture" https://t.co/USit1oOL8p pic.twitter.com/pLPibygyp0
— Representative Press (@RepPress) August 23, 2019
We replied to RP with the following:
Yes, hysteria. What's the annual variation? How do these fires compare with a 10 year average? A 50 year average? Asking for data is NEVER irresponsible. Demonising it as 'lazy' may well be however. Please note we aren't claiming this isn't a problem, just asking for context
— OffGuardian (@OffGuardian0) August 23, 2019
RP’s hostility only increased, and they retweeted the same basic claim again, apparently in the belief it was new and revelatory and an answer to our questions:
Are you incapable of doing research and of applying basic logic? You think the sharp rise in farmers setting fires is "made up?" I found this info in seconds: https://t.co/e11v2RH84r pic.twitter.com/o6RP5K83mL
— Representative Press (@RepPress) August 23, 2019
In fairness, we also got some positive response, most notably from the always rational Robin Monotti Graziadei. We recommend taking time to read the whole thread.
During the Medieval Climate Anomaly, the period most similar to recent decades, warm & dry climatic conditions resulted in peak forest burning, but severe fires favored less-flammable deciduous vegetation, such that fire frequency remained stationary:https://t.co/wTkIgCQm5h
— Robin Monotti Graziadei (@robinmonotti) August 23, 2019
Someone else then sent us a link to this article at Science20.com
In this article you can find a quote from the Earth Observatory , which up until August 22 read as follows:
As of August 16, 2019, satellite observations indicated that total fire activity in the Amazon basin was slightly below average in comparison to the past 15 years. Though activity has been above average in Amazonas and to a lesser extent in Rondônia, it has been below average in Mato Grosso and Pará, according to the Global Fire Emissions Database”
(SIDEBAR: this text was changed on Aug 22 and now reads, significantly “As of August 16, 2019, an analysis of NASA satellite data indicated that total fire activity across the Amazon basin this year has been close to the average in comparison to the past 15 years.”, although the data on which this conclusion is based has not apparently changed. You can check the archived version for proof of the edit.)
On the same site (science20.com) you can also find this graph of “cumulative monthly fire data” for the Amazon basin (the original is at from GlobalFireData.org):
This clearly indicates that the current amount of burning in the Amazon basin in 2019 (the green line) is, as NASA originally said,somewhat below the average, and well below the previous extremes for the region.
This will be why, when you look close, the media articles are artfully talking about the number of fires, rather than the area of burning. There may well be more fires (or maybe that’s just been made up like so much else), but that’s a statistic without meaning if the total area covered is actually less than a fifteen-year average.
Now, we’re not about to take NASA as a final authority on this any more than any other single source. But given the amount of emphasis being put by the screaming media on how “unprecedented” the current burning is, and how deceptive this might turn out to be, it seemed important to us that this data was at least discussed. So we tweeted a ref to it.
Given the fact NASA has said the current total burning in the Amazon basin is slightly BELOW a 15 year average, we need to ask what the current media hysteria is aimed at achieving. https://t.co/BDi95EG1qW
— OffGuardian (@OffGuardian0) August 23, 2019
This was one response:
you can breath stats if you wish, I prefer oxygen!
Most stats are manipulated or self serving anyway!https://t.co/ZtH5IEXi2x— 💧truth-seeker (@very_grem) August 23, 2019
Here is another. Visit our timeline for more.
NASA = America = Trump = The far-right.
— Roy Underwood (@TannersCross) August 23, 2019
It turns out the messy truth behind the blaring headlines is – yes, the Amazon is burning but not as much as in many recent times, and while Bolsonaro is not a nice man accusing him of burning the world down is probably a bit premature.
To be fair a few people shared or retweeted this information. But they were very few. Most simply ignored it, intent, like Greenwald and Media Lens, Naomi Klein et al in joining chorus with the shrieking mainstream doom-sirens.
Bolsonaro is simultaneously denying the severity of the Amazon crisis and, worse, recklessly claiming environmental groups started them, because he knows the world recognizes he's to blame. He can't escape that responsibility, as @davidmirandario said today in Congress [English]: pic.twitter.com/CAiWKsUCEp
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) August 23, 2019
'The French and German leaders say the record number of fires in Brazil's Amazon rainforest is an international crisis which must be discussed at this weekend's G7 summit.'https://t.co/aiwzg8lJST
— Media Lens (@medialens) August 23, 2019
The world is on fire and in country after country the arsonists are ascending to the highest office. This is utter madness. We need a global #GreenNewDeal. We all need to ask ourselves: who do we trust to lead that and how will we help them? https://t.co/6gYXI1cwUG
— Naomi Klein (@NaomiAKlein) August 22, 2019
Make a note of that #GreenNewDeal hashtag. We’ll be seeing a lot of that in the next week or so.
Before the inevitable “oh so you don’t care if all the possums DIE” type comments BTL, let’s make it ultra-clear, this isn’t about disparaging environmentalism or claiming it’s fine for the Amazon to burn (though actually it is, up to a point, and is an important part of the forest’s life cycle).
It’s about the fact so many of us – even many who think of themselves as sophisticated analysts – are still as much in the grip of authoritarian story-telling as our ancestors were when they heard tales of heaven and hell and believed them.
Thank goodness for a few lone voices of sanity, like Robin again:
Media are ignoring data in order to sell the Green New Deal scam https://t.co/KJX767XS2C
— Robin Monotti Graziadei (@robinmonotti) August 23, 2019
Hmmm…is that Green New Deal the reason why this apparently fairly average year of burning has been morphed by the power of lies into the latest doomsday meme? Why exactly would so many corporate news outlets be so keen to sell us that?
Oh who cares, right? It’s hard. Memes are easy. Did you know Amazon produces 20% of our Oxygen? No, because it doesn’t. But that’s not stopping everyone repeating it.
A few cyberwarfare-generated hashtags, a few (sometimes misattributed) images and there is a mass belief-system unfolding before our eyes. Uncritical, rabid, rancid with fear, demanding solutions.
Just in time for the G7 summit – where I’m sure a Green New Deal “solution” will emerge right on cue, to universal cheers and a few more hashtags handed down to the proles to be spread about in the name of “standing up to the 1%”.
We have to do better, guys, or it’s over. We’re done.
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I see the flak around this article continues. Off G are 100% right on this. Amazing that some in the more informed media can’t see the main point made here and seek to misrepresent it. Funny, previously when observing online debates the two most divisive subjects and where many leave their brains behind are religion and global warming etc. So, I half expected a reaction. It just shows you how a lack of critical thinking, ideology and not reading properly happens in the usually enlightening circles such as Medialens. As for this article, for me it was crystal clear.
I think it’s an absolute given that wherever the media is in a frenzy about something the facts will be distorted or the narrative, completely false and as Catte bravely points out in her article, the raging Amazon bushfires is yet another example. It’s good to know about the Amazon’s mythical level of contribution to our oxygen supply and other myths. Not a situation though, unfortunately, which can result in you feeling a massive sigh of relief because of all the other obvious problems related to the Amazon and eco-destruction in general. That’s the thing – even when you know the fear-mongering narrative is false, it doesn’t make you feel any better really.
The Global Warming Hoax is just a device to transfer unimaginable amounts of money from ordinary people in western countries to those folks at Goldman Sachs.
If you don’t accept that massive amounts of CO2 and other greenhouse gases being pumped into the atmosphere are causing global warming and the climate change associated with it, mark, OK, but to call it a hoax makes no sense. I simply don’t understand it. The power elite are so dragging their heels on action on climate change and only give lip service to it. It’s the scientists who are calling it out, not the power elite. They just pretend – and often not even – the Heartland Institute, for example. Even if we hypothesise that scientists are wrong why would they try to hoax us? The moment I heard of global warming I had no hesitation in accepting it – at least as a likelihood – as I remembered from school learning that as a trace gas in the atmosphere, CO2 kept the earth from being a frozen ball. Thus learning that we’re pumping 9 gigatonnes of the stuff annually into the atmosphere and that CO2 stays in the atmosphere for a very long time, meaning a massive cumulative effect, it would seem likely that we are causing global warming. The “trace” phenomenon is very prevalent on earth in all biological systems. We need absolutely tiny amounts of iron to keep us alive but lots of iron will kill us. It’s the same with CO2 in the atmosphere. When we recognise the “trace” phenomenon, arguments such as “CO2 is plant food” are exposed as ridiculous. No one says mammals need iron so lets pump gallons of the stuff into them.
There is no one on this site who recognises more events and things as hoaxes than I do – often to great hostility from others – but two things I recognise as real are the moon landings and anthropogenic global warming and climate change.
“Even if we hypothesise that scientists are wrong why would they try to hoax us?”
You don’t actually believe scientists are honest and not above lying to receive funding?
Google “Climate Gate” and “Hide the Decline” should make you think twice.
https://notrickszone.com/2017/08/31/scientists-expose-data-manipulation-hide-the-decline-and-the-post-1940s-hockey-stick-temperature-myth/
The science is not settled full stop!
If you want to believe CO2 is evil then its up to you, Patrick Moore co founder of Green peace explains here but i doubt you will listen;
https://youtu.be/RkdbSxyXftc?t=83
No Net Warming – Its a scam full stop.
I don’t believe CO2 is evil anymore than I believe iron is. It’s essential as is iron – but in the right place at the right amount. I know about “hide the decline” but this is an isolated instance of relatively minor fraudulence and cannot possibly in any shape or form undermine the whole body of work that shows we are affecting the climate.
I would listen but I’ve listened enough and I have no reason to doubt AGW any more than I have reason to doubt that the three buildings at the WTC came down by controlled demolition. I’ve done sufficient research to make up my mind and unless you can tell me in your own words in a paragraph or so why I should doubt it I’m not looking further.
“If you want to believe CO2 is evil then its up to you, Patrick Moore co founder of Green peace explains here [link to ‘Praeger University’]”
You clicks your click and you takes your lick.
CO2 is not a problem. It is essential to all life. You could double the amount of CO2 and it wouldn’t make the slightest difference.
There is a more general issue of the growth in population, and the pressure on land, water and resources.
Population of Ethiopia 47 million in 1994, 100 million today.
Pakistan now with a population 5 times larger than at independence.
Wartime population of Egypt 10 million, Now 85 million, and another 10 million Egyptians living abroad.
And all those people have a standard of living and consumer goods that simply weren’t available before.
The same applies in Europe. The “car population” of the Hamburg area was 10,000 in 1938, 500,000 in 1988. I don’t know what it is now.
This is the real issue.
400 million Chinese during the war. 1.4 billion now, with an incomparably higher standard of living.
The “power elite” are pushing this global warming garbage. They are the ones who are bankrolling Little Greta and her chums. Why would Soros do that? Really? They are licking their lips at the prospect of making trillions out of Global Warming Hot Air Certificates. Al Gore trousered a cool $500 million out of the Chicago Climate Exchange, and that’s just chicken feed. Plus the chance to extract trillions more in Macron Style Green Taxes from the Deplorables and the Green Taliban revelling in the chance to push people around.
A few years ago “all the scientists” were saying a new Ice Age was imminent. We needed to dump millions of tons of soot in the Arctic to absorb sunlight and warm things up a bit. Now we need to put giant mirrors in space to reflect sunlight and cool things down a bit.
If people say 2 diametrically opposed things on different occasions, that means one of 2 things. (1) They didn’t know what they were talking about on the first occasion. (2) They didn’t know what they were talking about on the 2nd occasion. Or (3) they didn’t know what they were talking about before and they still don’t know what they’re talking about.
And tens of thousands of distinguished scientists and engineers have called out the Global Warming Hoax for what it is. They have done so at great cost to themselves, loss of tenure and loss of funding and personal attacks. This is a political concensus, NOT a scientific consensus. Many scientists now know that they have to bend the knee at the altar of the Global Warming Hoax to avoid trouble.
Just to say, mark, the power elite are not pushing global warming. They are behind the Heartland Institute. “CO2 is essential to all life,” is a strawman argument. Everyone agrees it is just as iron is – but in the right place and right amount. I’ve argued enough about climate change – I’ve said my piece.
“A few years ago “all the scientists” were saying a new Ice Age was imminent. We needed to dump millions of tons of soot in the Arctic to absorb sunlight and warm things up a bit. Now we need to put giant mirrors in space to reflect sunlight and cool things down a bit.”
Why don’t we put up Sooty Mirrors and hand the whole thing off to a hedge fund?
Don’t want no dirty polar bears…
“The Global Warming Hoax is just a device to transfer unimaginable amounts of money from ordinary people in western countries to those folks at Goldman Sachs.”
It’s not clear if you are conflating the currently apparent Global Warming phenomenon with a Global Warming Hoax, the nature of which you do not specify, being perpetrated by or to the pecuniary advantage of Goldman Sack$ at the expense of ordinary people. Care to elucidate?
The purport of your comment is itself a hoax.
Informative background stuff from The Intercept’s Ryan Grim:
” After the devastation that began under the military dictatorship and accelerated through the 1970s and ’80s, the rate of deforestation slowed, as a coalition of Indigenous communities and other advocates of sustaining the forest fought back against the encroachment. The progress began turning back in 2014, as political tides shifted right and global commodity prices climbed. Deforestation began to truly spike again after the soft coup that ousted President Dilma Rousseff of the Workers’ Party in 2016. The right-wing government that seized power named soy mogul Blairo Maggi, a former governor of Mato Grosso, as minister of agriculture…”
It turns out that the CEO of Blackstone is deeply involved
https://theintercept.com/2019/08/27/amazon-rainforest-fire-blackstone/
Classic book on AZC in Amazonia. Recommended BTL p’rallel thread in Saker:
Thy Will Be Done: The Conquest of the Amazon : Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil.
This is from Pepe Escobar’s current Asia Times piece. Escobar recently interviewed Lula in gaol.
“…The real story confirms what Lula said in the interview. On August 10, a group of 70 wealthy farmers, all Bolsonaro voters, organized on WhatsApp a “Day of Fire” in the Altamira region in the vast state of Pará.
“This happens to be the region with the highest number of wildfires in Brazil – infested with aggressive rural developers who are devoted to massive, hardcore deforestation; they’re invested in land occupation and a no-quarter war against landless peasants and small agricultural producers. “Day of Fire” was supposed to support Bolsonaro’s drive to finish off with official monitoring and erase fines over one of the “Bs” of the BBB lobby that elected him (Beef, Bullet, Bible)….”
This is interesting. I do agree that any orchestrated western media hysteria is *always* and *without exception* part of an evil Amerikastani Empire agenda. But I fail to see what would be achieved by demonising Amerikastani lapdog and puppet Jair Bolsonaro. If it were say Lula in power, you’d know immediately why the media campaign is on. But Bolsonaro is owned by the *same* Wall Street that owns Reuters et al, so why the shrieking? Even *if* Bolsonaro is actually deliberately burning down the Amazon, it’s after all Wall Street that will benefit from that.
The only answer I have is that it’s a deflection of attention from somewhere else. I can only speculate on what that might be.
You make good points. I think that the answer is that even among some of the most strident critics of the powers that be there is a widespread sense that nothing can be done because, in their imaginations, capitalism is not the real problem.
They pay lip service to the idea of class rule and class society but they sense that behind it all-behind the curtain in- that enemy of bankers- Frank Baum’s Oz is another conspiracy, composed perhaps of Jews, or Communists or the Royal Family or the Skull and Crossbones club (which, in its leisure time, choreographed Mao’s rise to power) or…(fill in).
And so, what is important is not political organisation (because in the end all opposition is controlled opposition) but individual independent critical thinking-“The strongest man” said Ibsen’s Dr Stockman “is he who stands alone.”
In essence many critics of The Establishment agree with its assessment of the idiocy and ineffectiveness of the “sheeple”, as they rather charmingly call the likes of us. They cannot get their heads around the idea that man makes his own history . They are convinced that, as their criticisms demonstrate, they are, like Ugly Dave, ‘above the common run’, superior to the average punter. And, given their inability to effect change, how on earth can they bring themselves to accept the ludicrous idea that the mere masses, the hoi poloi, the TV watching, beer swilling, uneducated people are capable of doing so?
In short the problem is a failure of imagination and a reminder that Pope was right to say that “A little learning is a dangerous thing, drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again…”
Maybe to fill the pockets of wwf and others. Lots of ads on fb n’ shit.
Hi:
The issue is not that the fire is average and that other years were more or less. There are a few facts that needs to be taken into consideration, before all of you get into a knot:
1 – Bolsonaro has promised the people that cut the timber for sale and the gold diggers (who use arsenic), that they could go ahead and just cut and cut, and dig and dig. Well he also told the farmers of agri business that they could invade the rain forest and cut. What is burning is the brushes and left overs from the big trees that were cut to be sold on the north america and european and japan’s market.
Now before the agri business that use the land to produce the meat, eaten in the north america, europe, Japan, etc, were going to put the whole place on fire, they sent a message to bolsonare stating: Tomorrow is Fire day!
Bolsonaro did nothing about it. He also cut the money for fire fighting and containment. He stopped IBAMA (the agency responsible for monitoring the forest and illegal cutting. The Minister for the Environment decreed that IBAMA and all the people (volunteers) involved in monitoring for illegal logs that they were not to destroy all the equipment used for the illegal deforestation.
The normal average fire, is always contained. This time, it went beyond the areas of containment because of clear cutting and fire been set for cattle ranch.
The whole set up of fines, destruction of equipment used for illegal logging, was not dane. Taking agri businesses to court was forbidden and the gold diggers were allowed to go in and kill Indigenous people.
I pray you all get to understand that your hamburger and your meat is costing more than just hormones and GMO soja, it is costing our common good: the forest and the planet is being destroyed.
On another issues, 600 canadian mining companies are just waiting for open pit mining as I said above…
We are all in this together. I am here in Brazil right now and I am appalled with the situation on the ground.
In good faith and hoping that my post clarifies a little.
Perhaps the misplaced over-emphasis on the Amazon burning down (do you really believe these are the lungs of the planet — there are millions of trees all over the place?) — has to do in large part with the leaders realizing a major recession is coming and they need to change the channel.
the science20 article has been updated to state basically the opposite of your point. while i do normally like this site, it’s a bit naff to downplay events like these simply because the idiots of the MSM are talking about them (and let’s all remember the CBC and their “this guy in brazil will be great for business so what’s a few million acres of amazon burned and some gays shot dead in the streets” sociopathy after bolsonaro was elected). you can disagree with their supposed agendas without pretending giant fires in an important ecosystem caused by subhuman meat merchants is much ado about nothing.
the gist of this piece seems to be “that giant cancerous tumor growing on your pancreas is growing at the same rate it did last year so what’s all the fuss about?” as opposed to lamenting the presence of the tumor in the first place. if you lose one finger a year it will be steady but you’ll eventually have stumps. i’m assuming that’s enough anatomical metaphors to make the point.
It’s entirely ‘naff’ to appear here from nowhere misrepresenting both this article AND the science20 piece.
1. No. The graphs on that page you link to (without apparently reading) illustrate that 2019 is still an average year, so far at any rate.
2. This article which you comment on (again without apparently reading) at no point makes the claim the fires are unimportant. Since when does ‘importance’ justify exaggeration and lies? The more important a thing is the more important accurate reporting of that thing becomes.
3. Oh…forget it. No 3rd thing. You’re a troll. You’ll just keep trolling crap about tumours and stuff. Carry on.
i. mass media splurges article about fires in the Amazon being at “record” levels.
ii. Offg: “NASA data refutes these claims, burning is at average or slightly lower, this looks like it could be a G7 scam using a media panic as cover”
iii. commenters (often unknown to post here previously): “how dare you minimize this huge problem, the Amazon is burning at a record rate!”
iv. OffG: “it is not burning at a record rate according to NASA”
v. commenters: “what does the rate matter, it’s burning, and that’s bad, why do you want the Amazon to burn!!!!!!????”
Gimme a frickin break
I thought this piece on Voltaire Network is worth adding to the discussion:
https://www.voltairenet.org/article207430.html
And this POV: “Brazil’s Bolsinaro is a World Criminal”.
https://thesaker.is/amazonia-in-flames-brazils-bolsonaro-is-a-world-criminal-encouraging-jungle-burning-for-private-exploitation-of-freed-land/
Here’s the opening paras of the Voltaire piece:
https://theconversation.com/amazon-fires-explained-what-are-they-why-are-they-so-damaging-and-how-can-we-stop-them-122340
Thanks for this link. It’s a much better article than most of the mainstream stuff and does attempt to do some of the finer point analysis (or as some may say “quibbling”) that’s necessary for a proper understanding of this complex subject.
My privilege to read your articles, a breath of fresh air.
Bolsonarian fresh air clogged with smoke?
It’s illogical to debate an average annual rate of destruction of the finite forest? It makes no difference overall whether this year is below or above an average deforestation rate or not. The simple fact remains that the finite forest is disappearing.
This invaluable forest must not shrink any further, regardless of the rate of shrinkage. Zero destruction from now on. And that’s completely irrelevant to the G7 and global warming lobbyists, it’s basic common-sense science.
Frank, why have you returned here to post the same off topic remarks you already repeat-posted (with insults directed at the author)two days ago on this thread? You clearly miss the point of this article, and this has been pointed out to you several times. It’s borderline trolling to persist in pretending this article is defending deforestation when it isn’t!
Off topic?! No, I referred to the rate of forest destruction and which is core to Catte’s article.
I am NOT saying this article is DEFENDING deforestation, I’m questioning the value of debating how many fires, the rate of deforestation, etc.
Two days ago I provided my opinion on the quality and motives of the article. Apologies if that was insulting, happy for you to remove it.
Hey, get with the programme, dude, cos your constant adversarial, off topic comments are boring the s**t out of me, for one. The article is not dealing with this. You are off topic! Why do you even comment here? You seem to hate everything that’s published here. You mainly seem interested in poisoning the well BTL and being perpetually obnoxious. Why don’t you give it a darned rest? Pretty please.
“Get with programme”? Which one? Agreeing with you?
Try common courtesy. Try constructive criticism, rather than endless sniping and sneering. Try reading and understanding the article you’re commenting on.
Look, I’m not trying to launch into a personal slinging match, but I do fear that you’re trying to deliberately poison the well here. And that makes me feel very protective of this site.
There aren’t many places like this and I don’t think you show this place the respect it deserves.
Why do you post here? Is it just to blow smoke up the arse of BigB and other perennial know-alls who lurk BTL, dressing themselves up as authorities, risking nothing while gainsaying everything?
Maybe you can’t help it, like some form of Tourrettes, but you’re definitely crossing the line into crass unpleasantness. I honestly think you hate this site. I really get the impression you do. That’s such a shame.
You are totally wrong, I love this site, I’ve been here 3 years. However, I don’t agree with all OffG PoV and articles that it puts out. I’m an independent thinker and not one who blindly follows a particular political line. Let me give you a few examples, of Off G topics, if you are interested:
I’ve posted numerous comments in support of the above subjects. Perhaps you have not been here that long and not seen them?
Your attack on BigB is unwarranted too. You should realise that just because people diasgree with your PoV or a specific article, it does not mean they are against the overall aim and directtion of this site.
When are we getting the Edit function OffG? It was promised ages ago?
Let me try and re-post the above correctly…
You are totally wrong, I love this site, I’ve been here 3 years. However, I don’t agree with all OffG PoV and articles that it puts out. I’m an independent thinker and not one who blindly follows a particular political line. Let me give you a few examples, of Off G topics, if you are interested:
I’ve posted numerous comments in support of the above subjects. Perhaps you have not been here that long and not seen them?
Your attack on BigB is unwarranted too. You should realise that just because people diasgree with your PoV or a specific article, it does not mean they are against the overall aim and directtion of this site.
Format still messed up.
Don’t worry, I understood your comment just fine. I think I disagree with the truculent, stand-offish attitude of certain people BTL, which fast becomes little more than an adolescent railing against a fictionalised authority figure, and is easily smudged together with genuine trollers who seek to sabotage this site. It’s a real shame if your input is being overshadowed by this. I completely respect your POV and encourage you to create a less truculent niche to express yourself. It would serve you and OffG well.
All the very best.
The edit function was introduced when we launched the new site, but stopped working when we installed Cloudflare. We are intending to try and fix this as soon as one of us has the time.
“Why do you post here? Is it just to blow smoke up the arse of BigB and other perennial know-alls who lurk BTL, dressing themselves up as authorities, risking nothing while gainsaying everything?
“Maybe you can’t help it, like some form of Tourrettes, but you’re definitely crossing the line into crass unpleasantness.”
And you accuse others of being unpleasant? After urging Frank to “Try common courtesy. Try constructive criticism, rather than endless sniping and sneering.”
Without wishing to be unkind, aren’t you being a little hypocritical? Or do you not have to abide by the rules that you set for others?
In fairness the BBC reported in their original reports, that overall throughout the Amazon basin NASA figures showed that it was not above average, but that there were above average numbers of fires in certain regions of Brazil, and further this was attributed to deliberate action. Media hysteria or not this should rightly be a matter of concern. It seems unlikely that the Brazilian population will benefit from this; indeed they are chocking in the smoke. It will be the cattle ranchers who benefit; not small scale farmers.
That Bolsonaro has given the green light to such activity should surely be of concern
Once again we do need to point out that nowhere does the article suggest, claim or imply that deforestation is of no concern 🙂
Nice cherry-picking, but if one simply clicks on your link to global fire data you can read this (for some strange reason not quoted by you, I wonder why not): “Cumulative active fire detections through 8/22/2019 from MODIS and VIIRS confirm that 2019 is the highest fire year since 2012 (the start of the VIIRS record) across the seven states that comprise the Brazilian Amazon. In addition, fires in 2019 are more intense than previous years, measured in terms of fire radiative power, consistent with the observed increase in deforestation.” https://www.globalfiredata.org/forecast.html
There have been updates about that. Some stuff below. Read on, lest you walk away with a closed mind.
I just wasted 10 minutes scrolling to find updates that deal with the quote I cite, not finding anything mentioning it. Maybe I missed it, but maybe you are just choosing to avoid dealing with the quote as it contradicts directly and explicitly the thrust of the blog. Show me your mind is not closed by addressing the facts cited in the quotation: 2019 is the highest fire year since records started in the Amazon, and fires are more intense. Those are facts as is the fact mentioned by several others that firesetting has spiked very recently after Bolsonaro’s incitement.
Good. May that serve you right for jumping to nasty conclusions.
I was referring to the comment thread directly below this one (sorted by date order, newest first)
It appears the site has literally been updated today, and at one point there were two concurrent versions on the go (presumably some CDN-cached pages were showing up for some people). Those four graphs turned up with scary black lines on, and the text you quoted.
http://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.globalfiredata.org/forecast.html
That’s a relevant thing to discuss, of course, but poisoning the well and accusing the author of quote mining is neither true nor helpful. Quite lazy of you.
Excuse me, ‘cherry picking’
I’m relieved to learn that the page was updated after you wrote your post. Now we can turn to the real issue, which is whether your argument is refuted by factual claims stated in the quotation. Are the facts wrong?
When it updated has no bearing on anything I’ve said, which was simply to correct your error.
There is an update:
So that’s the explanation, the fires were at average levels through to mid August, and then there was a huge uptick.
Why was that? Seems that it started when the farmers in the state of Para declared a “‘dia do fogo,'” or “day of fire” on August 10th. They said they did this in order to show to Bolsonaro that they want to work and that the only way to clear pastures for them to work was with fire (report in Portuguese here), This was spectacularly “successful” and there was an immediate increase in fires which continued through the following weeks.
As Aljazeerah reports it:
According to the Brazilian newspaper Folha do Progresso, the fires started on August 10 when an association of farmers in the state of Para announced a so-called “day of fire”. The idea, according to the publication, was to coordinate a number of simultaneous fires to show Bolsonaro “they are ready to work”. On that day, 124 new fires were registered by INPE and the next day 203 more were flagged.
https://www.science20.com/robert_walker/nasa_say_the_amazon_is_burning_at_below_average_rates_yet_many_news_stories_say_record_rates-240959
well this is getting murky. Why are there two different NASA pages on the same subject running simultaneously? One was updated around Aug 20 saying fires were about average (cited in article), another was updated Aug 19, allegedly, saying the fires are at the top end!
But this post-dates the scare! The scare happened before the NASA data was updated to support it.
I like also how 2019 now has an unmistakable thick black line whereas before it was an unassuming little green line.
Plus the cause of the alleged sudden leap in burning started aug 10, six days before NASA report stating burning was below average.
Al Jazeerah – gimme a break! That story sounds very questionable. Maybe Bolsonaro’s claim about arson isn’t so far fetched.
I dunno this feels a little strange. Like this gap in the narrative is being plugged after attention got drawn to it. Guess we’ll never know, and it’s kinda oblique to the main point of the article.
well this is getting murky.
You are right:
https://www.globalfiredata.org/forecast.html#amazonas
According to this chart the 2019 season is still at an average and well below the 2003 – 2010 seasons. So – what gives?
The monthly totals still show August 2019 to be below average-ish, well below a decade ago, and below 2016. De-forestation has dropped massively since the high point in the 1980s-90s. An up-tick is reason to be watchful but it doesn’t explain or justify the current media hysteria.
from the “corrected” webpage:
But no, it is not.
I am getting the impression of attempts, maybe sincere in this case, to massage the stats into line with the headlines
edited by Admin to fix image link
even if the increase is steep relative to itself it is still way below previous extremes. It’s risen from being notably low to being about average. Only in Crazy Land is this an unprecedented rise, right? It’s like some kind of bait and switch being pulled to eliminate the gap between the truth and the scary headlines.
Dear Off-Guardian Team
Thanks a lot for this valuable article, and for providing a unique service to alert readers to issues that could be overlooked despite to the above average vigilence we have to exercise nowadays.
I see some comments that look partly negative. It seems the aim in those comments is friendly teasing rather than disagreeing with the premise of the article.
Off-Guardian deserves the recognition for being one of the rapidly dwindling outlets to look at things objectively. Perhaps more objectively than 95% of news websites.
I hope we will always see eye-opener articles and wish this nice website will continue to grow strong.
🙂
Who downvotes that? Why are you here in that case? It can’t be for any good purpose. I wish I knew who you were – that would be interesting information.
I downvoted that comment. Why?
It’s completely nonsensical to debate an average annual rate of destruction of the finite forest. It’s irrelevant whether this year is below or above an average deforestation rate or not.
The simple fact remains that the finite forest is disappearing, destroyed by a neoliberal / fascist Governor of Brazil and his henchmen. I never imagined that Marxists would condone his actions, enjoy your quibbling about the rate of destruction of this irreplacable resource.
Nah, I’m not surprised. You are clearly not all there.
That is a fairly unpleasant comment. Would you not agree?
I gave into frustration and was overly dismissive. No one is a paragon of etiquette all the time, I understand that. Nor need they be to make a valid point. It’s a willingness to communicate that’s key, and this is what frustrated me, above.
I’m the last person to be a snowflake about these things, and I understand that people get passionate. But there also needs to be support for one another, and for this site. Certain subjects are becoming out of bounds BTL, it becomes a boiling sea of righteous indignation, any refinement of expression is lost amongst the clamour, people can’t hear each other.
I didn’t come here to have my debate shut down, and I’m sure you didn’t either.
Thanks for your comment.
Since I received down votes by the criminal trools = (troll+troops), because I stated that I can see the smoke from Brazil hovering over the North (from my position), here is a link that shows the haze cover. It is sad that there is of course only legislation passed that punishes ‘the people’ from speaking the truth. There is no legislation that protects the people from the armies of regime criminals, trolling the message boards on all relevant and still truthfully reporting websites.
In earlier, less manipulated stages of society, traitors like these criminals were taken care of immediately.
Here is the link in Spanish (the images are multilingual): Incendios in Sudameríca
As any professional analyst will confirm, ‘Time Out’ is quintessential to proper preparation, preventing piss poor performance & prolonged painful pointers prove purely petulance & postulation, as prime mover after extreme over-exposure to data, with due cause for pause essential; to compute & remain objective, in the jungle sometimes, where it makes me wonder, how I keep from going under … the levels of pathetic journalism & societal brainwash, that play on human emotions, with ZERO Scientific Goals, other than the absurd control & possession of Science, by elites >>> as if that were insanely possible !
Great article Catte, drawing & defining the requisite parameters for intelligent discussion: which all serves to prove just how necessary a constructive solution might be considered, for example …
Leveson 2:0 >>> Media Wars, Legally Addressed for public consumption & Scientific awareness …
Rake’D’News Trade Marked @OffG’s Temporal Media of Get Wild Reality, is where we are ‘at’ , presently, but it is tiring, having to constantly rake through so much Fake’D’ News & Societal Brainwash, in the name of . . .
Science, Humanity & Beauty
The Psychopathic Murderous Mad Mullah Murdoch & Company of Media Moguls must be metaphorically murdered, & HUNG UP, as pin ups,
in a court of LAW, extremely publicly & Scientifically, by fully qualified Academics & Scientists:
somewhere, very soon, or we are destined to endless wars & total mind control, on behalf of
SICK MINDED ELITES, with the loss of all & any basic freedom to think objectively,
& analyse Science ! Including the Science of Mind Control. !
The direct relationship between Physiology & Psychology is wholly proven with Pavlov’s Dog well over a ‘Century’ ago and yet frankly,
NO educational body teaches this to our young kids >>> ask yourself why ? !
The state, every state, reckons with owning you & your kids … Fact.
Time for Change ? ! Start Evolving Human Consciousness, in Schooling !
Edward Curtin, my offer still stands, ‘Analysts are Canaries’ or are you just some lazy pseudo-self professed intellectual, resting on your Laurels from Laurel Canyon Origins, satirising life & hopelessly ending with a silly song title that sucks ‘That’s just the Way it is …” ?
What happened to ‘Don’t give up’, your pride, principles & moral grounding from ‘Babushka’ (Gran) ?
(Tim laughs loudly, as a junk email notification arrives, from ‘We Move.EU’… “How we can save the Amazon”, another begging propaganda notice enters the top right hand corner, for screening this massive internet ‘Psyop’) 🙂 Sign of the Times !
Critical Reasoning & Thinking was my point to Edward Curtin and all the other lazy Academics & Scientists, resting on their LAURELS, lost in their own wee world of disinformation, in University Life !
All in all, A Damning Indictment, whereby the only rational conclusion & solution can be,
Home Educate & Fuck the System, coz’ I don’t want my kids thinking hopeless thoughts, regarding …
Science & Beauty ! and science would not last one minute, without Beauty & Wonder …
With Critical Reasoning, we may satirise the world leaders in Imprisoned Populations,
like Pavlov’s DOG >>> Donate some bones, any ole’ bones will do, guys, even Ed. Curtin’s 😉
Lmao, your silence is deafening Edward and most revealing … “That’s just the way it is…”
For professional ‘Analysts’, (altruistic true Canaries), in ‘Mindvalley’ circles, with critical thinking far, far in advance & ahead of the hopeless satire of Ed. Curtin . . .
WE ALL ENGINEERED this Climate Change, by being distracted & seceding control of our entire collection of wide ranging forms of our NATIONAL SECURITY STATE and the History of same, as Julian Assange has already perfectly highlighted for y’all to WITNESS . . . the question we should be asking ourselves, is not just about these FIRES: but, who controls the history of the various national security states >>> could it just be Capitalist Corporations, who own also the very media that prompted Catte to write wisely and question all, with CRITICAL REASONING ? !
Well done, Catte … work in progress 🙂
https://off-guardian.org/2019/08/11/the-canaries-that-sang-things-suck/
Just to be sure there is zero further confusion, both Corporate & Military Intelligence have been engineering OUR WEATHER, for more decades than most readers have been alive and this is what is causing CLIMATE CHANGE, which the aforementioned are trying desperately to hide & cover up and blame any BODY, but themselves >>> Logic, & as a trained Analyst of Data, Media Research & Analysis, also trained as child, electronically to the highest possible levels in both corporate & military worlds thriving on possession & control, let me assure you that all the evidence for what this ‘Canary’ says,
IS OUT THERE !
Start connecting dots, in the matrix …
I have problems with this Twitter shit, primarily do do with the inordinate amount of noise that, more often than not, almost always–or even more often–obscures the signal, so I always give it a miss, except where it is directly referenced elsewhere, as in
from Robin Monotti Graziadei @robinmonotti.
I presume the always rational Robin is somewhat hampered by the Twitter character limit, of which I have heard, because the patagraph he quotes from, in the 2013 paper “Recent burning of boreal forests exceeds fire regime limits of the past 10,000 years” continues:
At least the always reliable Robin cites the paper, which is worth consulting directly, although it is as complex, nuanced and uncertain as its subject (so may it take more than one careful reading to gain a preliminary, sketchy understanding of it) provided that the very significant ways in which a boreal forest and a tropical rainforest differ–particularly the fact that although tropical rainforests such as the Amazon, unlike boreal forests, are not fire ecology systems and in them fires do not serve a regenerative function–is always kept fully in mind. With regard to ‘reliable’ citations for the latter claim, I do believe that it would be no bad thing if the authors and readers of the Off-Guardian, with a few exceptions such as Colin Todhunter, learned how to find them for themselves in things like library catalogues or, in the case of the Information Superlibrary at least learned, all by themselves if necessary, how to Google them.
For intance, Catte’s claim that “There may well be more fires […] but that’s a statistic without meaning if the total area covered is actually less than a fifteen-year average” is, in the case of tropical rainforests in general, not necessarily the case and, in the case of the Amazon tropical rainforest in particular, not at all the case. Now why would that be? Clearly a reliable citation is needed, so there is a golden opportunity for some self-taught Reliable Citing 101: don’t ask me, do some more homework.
At least the article has a potentially exculpatory “maybe” in the title.
dude, what are you trying to say? You have this droll tone as if you think you’re being incredibly witty and skewering people, but it’s impossible to know what you’re talking about because there’s absolutely no content. I get the impression you read that paper, didn’t understand it or find what you hoped to find in it and are kinda just blowing smoke to hide that fact. But even so, I don’t even discern through your laboring allusiveness, what it is you’re wanting us to think was in that paper, even though it wasn’t! The final effect is just baffling, weird and a little annoying. I think you want to act and look superior but have no grounds on which to do either so you do this as the next best thing.
This:
In other words you make this claim that the size of the burn doesn’t matter in the Amazon, and don’t offer a source for it, and have the frickin nerve to turn your fail into a smug demand that less smart people than you go find your citations for you.
No, you tell us, with a citation why, in the Amazon, small fires are worse than big fires.
Can’t wait.
I don’t have a reference for this but I believe the primary uses of rain forest land that has been “reclaimed” is for large-scale cattle grazing and biofuel production, both enterprises which cause increased GHG emissions and require large land areas.
Here’s a well-thought article at wrongkindofgreen.org. That site has a lot of articles that dig beneath the surface of greenwashing to expose the profit motives of the elite players that are well connected.
Questioning the Green New Deal and those who are promoting it, is warranted even though such a policy impetus could have a number of positive outcomes. One argument is, if you can’t get the capitalists on board, no change and nothing good will ever happen.
Don’t you find the red glow in some of the pictures sexually arousing?
It puts the red light district to shame.
[with no pun intended] this is like fear-porn!
So maybe the current concern over fires in the Amazon is a PR stunt for the G7, but still, numbers of fires have increased, probably as a result of Bolsinaro policies, and it’s good to see environment top of the agenda.
Thanks Catte. Logical as always. I personally dropped the story when I saw Extinction Rebellion was involved.
Don’t Worry, ’bout a thing, coz’ every lil’ thing gonna’ be …Get ready, (chuckle) GretaT. is on her way, by boat 🙂 next stop the Amazon, with autistic adulation for emotional ‘pull’, in micro-radio-wave energieS of ‘adorable purpose’ & precision in grand designs, including weather engineering her safe passage, for a neo-liberal fascist system & doctrines, controlled by empirical sovereign corporations & their ‘ capitalist culture’, That has monumentally failed , just as Christine Legarde admitted “Capitalism HAS FAILED” , alles Klar, darlings, 27/5/2014, MANSION HOUSE, with ground zero respect for any, i mean any nation, or future culture, for our kids & our vision for the true science of same… 🙂 just pure fuckin’ socialism for the rich, who need a shit load of brand & bandAids, to plaster over HOLLYWOOD & BBC FACTORY FASCISM in legal, scientific & academic circles …
‘D’ NOTICE THIS !
A.i. knows this … ;), Richard, just turn the scales and first rules of simple geometry & dynamics, with amplified energy, very often wasted: scary for some … 🙂 but,
humanity shall prevail,
Regards, Richard,
Tim 🙂
Canthama #300092 BTL SyrianPerspective, who is a Brazilian, says there are fewer fires than usual this year, the panic is part of a global plot to take over the Amazon by the usual suspects. Canthama has been right in his analysis and predictions during 8 years of the FUKU$ war against Syria so I believe he is right about Micron’s war against those American countries which share the Amazon.
PS, a spontaneous tribute to analyst Canthama BTL truther site SyrPer. I feel the same about the editors of truther site OffG. “Friends few but trusted”:
“Daniel Rich Offline #300139
@ Canthama,
I [and the entire SyrPers audience] owe/s you so much for your consistent and diligent delivery of battlefield updates that allows me/us to make well informed decisions on how to move forward, they’ve become legendary and priceless over time.
Your name will forever be connected to words like ‘truth’ and ‘accuracy.’
We’ve never met [and most likely never will], but I consider you a true and trusted friend”.
PPS more from Brazilian analyst Canthama BTL SyrPer:
“Canthama Offline #300115
The following article is a good and fair assessment what is happening in the Amazon, fact based, zero politics, from World Resources Institutes.
https://www.wri.org/blog/2019/08/what-can-global-forest-watch-tell-us-about-fires-brazil
What we can conclude is that [Rothschild agent] Micron is using bad faith regarding the Amazon, is on an election campaign to divert attention, buy out French Agricultures, remove the bad image [arising from his thuggish treatment] of the Yellow Vests and unite France and the EU toward the [City of London based] Greenies.
Just heard today that Brazil’s Government considers Micron’s accusations and over reaction as the worst diplomatic issue Brazil has faced in 50 years with France, and that will not be left unanswered, meaning there will be payback somehow, somewhere toward Macron’s regime.
Few people know that Brazil and France were close to open war back in the 60s due to illegal French lobster fishing boats in the Brazilian coast, France did not accept Brazil’s complaints and its apprehension of some [illegal French] fishing boats, and sent some war vessels to the Brazilian coast to intimidate the country. In response Brazil sent its own Naval force, the two countries were very close to war, incident known as Lobster War. Brazil did not back down at that time as it won’t backdown to Micron’s lies this time.”
PPPS re “City of London based Greenies”, from an Australian BTL SyrPer:
“the Thylacine Online #300096
I’ve spotted ”space” photos of the Amazon with ‘red flame’ spread over more than 1500 km. But I doubt these are the real deal. In fact they make you wonder if the City of London’s new Green Deal, similar to Ilhan’s but run by Carney of the BoE, is running this take-over bid.”
Guess who wrote this (it is professor Chomsky)
‘Suppose it was discovered tomorrow that the greenhouse effects has been way understimated, and that the catastrophic effects are actually going to set in 10 years from now, and not 100 years from now or something.
Well, given the state of the popular movements we have today, we’d probably have a fascist takeover-with everybody agreeing to it, because that would be the only method for survival that anyone could think of. I’d even agree to it, because there’s just no other alternatives right now.”
You know, no alternative, similar to our economy, with which everyone agrees.
But there is always an alternative and I don’t think that facism is the answer for acute crises, even though Chomsky thinks otherwise.
But then if Chomsky thinks it is a good idea to let facism takeover at acute crisis, then you only have to invent an acute crisis: like Amazon burning and you will have the consent of Chomsky et al.
Funny that is, from Chomsky, since inventing fear and crisis is one of the filters of the propaganda model that he and Herman describe in manufacturing consent…
This is a rather stunning example of cherry picking to completely invert the authors meaning. The full quote and the question goes this way;
M AN : I just get the sense that we’re waiting for some ecological disaster be- fore people eally start to get active in these movements on a massive scale.
Well, if we wait for an ecological disaster, it’ll be too late—in fact, we
might not even have such a long wait. Look, it’s certainly true that as the threats mount, it may energize peo-ple—but you don’t wait for that to happen: first you have to prepare the
ground. For example, suppose it was discovered tomorrow that the green- house effect has been way underestimated, and that the catastrophic effects are actually going to set in 10 years from now, and not 100 years from now or something. Well, given the state of the popular movements we have today, we’d probably have a fascist takeover—with everybody agreeing to it, because that would be the only method for survival that anyone could think of. I’d even agree to it, because there just are no other alternatives around right now. So you don’t wait for the disasters to happen, first you have to create the groundwork. You need to plant the seeds of something right now, so that whatever opportunities happen to arise—whether it’s workers being fired in Mexico, or an ecological catastrophe, or anything else—people are in a position that they can do something constructive about it.
The meaning of the Chomsky quote provided does not really change substantially by putting in context, so what is your point?
In the previous context, Chomsky comes out to be saying that Fascist take over is a “good idea,” and inevitable in the face of acute crises. What he is actually saying is absent any attempt to address problems before they turn into crises, you will predictably be left with Fascism, even if it is a terrible idea, since there are no real alternatives.
This is not about possums being killed. It is about human beings. Bolsonaro is encouraging ranchers, miners, and timber companies to go full speed ahead in “development” even if indigenous peoples get killed. That is why the real issue is the number of fires, which is unprecedented.
Jair Bolsonaro: “It’s a shame that the Brazilian cavalry hasn’t been as efficient as the Americans, who exterminated the Indians.”
Correio Braziliense newspaper, April 12, 1998
So 10 small fires are worse than 1 large one covering twice the area?
Or are the fires worse because Bolsonaro is behind them?
There has to be something quantifiable behind this wall of words we are presented with, but where is it?
Is the bottom line zero burning?
What about the small indigenous farmers who exist by burning off their fields before spring planting?
Can we limit the burning but not eliminate it?
How and how much?
Who gets to police it? Macron? The G7? Trump? Bolsonaro?
Do we just not interrogate why this perennial problem is suddenly getting the full attention of the world’s utterly corrupt political and media class?
For huge swaths of the population, the latter, methinks.
“So 10 small fires are worse than 1 large one covering twice the area?
Or are the fires worse because Bolsonaro is behind them?”
Ecologically, in a tropical rainforest, most often yes, and–ironically–that is particularly so in Bolsonarian Amazonia. However, in boreal forests it depends on the specific local ecology–does it have significant regenerative value?–while in places like the eucalypt-dominant regions of Australia, an ecology in which fire is essential for regeration, it’s the total area that’s the most significant factor.
“There has to be something quantifiable behind this wall of words we are presented with, but where is it?”
Problematical times for compact, definitive statements of opionated polemicism?
“Is the bottom line zero burning?”
See above.
“What about the small indigenous farmers who exist by burning off their fields before spring planting?”
Specify. Such as many Australian aboriginal tribes with a longtime dreamtimes, or such as what many might regard as upstart “new indigenous” tribes of rapacious predatorx (c.f. Israelis in Palestine) diasporing themselves to the remoteness of South America with a shortorder agenda of fucku.2 capitalism? What’s the difference between boreal burnoffs and rainforest destruction as sustainable agricultural activity?
“Can we limit the burning but not eliminate it?
How and how much?”
Sometimes it seems as though the problems of the polemically opinionated proliferate like out-of-control summer wildfires in the Amazon rainforest.
“Do we just not interrogate why this perennial problem is suddenly getting the full attention of the world’s utterly corrupt political and media class?”
It seems like millennia since a world-class communist told me that the dawning era of universal Socialism would easily see off Capitalist Consumerism and I asked him, more or less, “From where? From inside Consumerism’s capacious stomach?” and he looked at me with some sort of incredulity. Well, I have to assume that’s how he looked at me, because he was sitting in the back seat at the time and I was sitting next to the driver, not daring to look around for fear of glimping the line of heavy trivial goods lorries all bearing down on our little Toyota at breakneck speed and ruining a perfectly good summer outing. But his silence spoke volumes of disbelief at and disdain for such naïveté. My, how time passes quickly when you’re having so much fun. Come to think of it, it was only about four decades ago.
I always buy ‘gluten free’ maize cornflour, just like it says on the newer packets. What sort of maize cornflour do you buy? The ordinary, gluten-packed stuff like what’s in the plain, old non-specific packets?
The Amazon is burning: we all agree on that. Then we quibble and argue incessantly about how much?
This reminds me of the Buddha’s ‘parable of the arrow’.
If we were shot by a poison arrow up the Amazon: would we quibble about what wood the shaft was made of? Would we refuse treatment until we knew exactly what feathers were used: and which exact species of bird they came from? Or even the exact nature of the poison; who made it; or its exact chemical formula? Or would we seek the antidote straight away?
The Amazon is burning: what the M$M agenda is in bringing this to our attention is completely irrelevant …compared to finding an antidote to the convergent crisis we all face. That we cannot even see that there is a Human Impact crisis is what should be alarming us …not the M$M hidden agenda.
I think it might be important to draw a distinction between “quibbling” and acquiring enough facts to understand events in a holistic and nuanced fashion. Particularly when so much of our ‘fact’ is siphoned through a ferociously biased and propagandised media.
“How much” is crucial information as is “where, when, how and why”. The denigration of basic data as “quibbling” seems antithetical to a rational approach
Guys, I do nothing but gather data. I’ve tried to introduce data based analysis – science – from bio-physical science, economics, neuroscience, neuro-linguistics: etc to try and facilitate a shift in focus TO empirical science. It is the current objective rational science-fiction Cartesian Error Protocol that ceased to be scientific about 100 years ago. Since then: it has turned into a coercive truth and knowledge regime …one I have always resisted.
There are limitations …unless you have academic tenure. I can only look at so much by skipping over the exact millimetric details. I’m already on to Whitney’s Part 4 on Epstein (one you may consider featuring). If I’m not working: I’m reading scientific papers. I can’t take it all in.
It’s the fact the Amazon is burning at all. How does that relate to the neoliberal economy? You may or may not have noticed Argentina crashed the other week. How might this affect Bolsonaro’s rash economic decisions? What about the IMF? Or the Epic Recession we are crossing into? How is this connected to entropy?
You don’t need to think like me: but are we ever going to reach any sort of consensus on just how bad things look for us. An Epic Recession transfers more power and wealth to those who cause the recession. All growth for the “lost decade” has been largely debt, derivatives, and deflationary destruction of the real economy. That has every bit as much to bear on the burning Amazon, the burning Arctic, the burning Greenland ice shelf …and the burning psychopathology of Modernity. It’s all linked: but not by the millimetric size of the fires, their number and location, the colour of the smoke and flames …
It shouldn’t take two secs to see we need radical solutions to counter the ones neoliberalism will impose. I don’t see much energy or emotional intelligence focusing on the ultimate antidote beyond the econometric of neoliberal globalisation that is stripping, burning, extracting and otherwise despoiling more than just the Amazon.
BB, I’ve long thought and maybe even replied to you that one day we will dance.
So. You say
“I’ve tried to introduce data based analysis – science…”
Lets dance. My first move.
No. Not really. What you have do is not science.
You do not use scientific method. You use data. Which is an empirical endeavour to predict through analysis of that data.
That is not science.
Your move.
DG: we did this before. Movin’ on …Let’s dance!
First random science definition pulled from the net; to kick things off. I would say I fit that definition. The thing about canonical Cartesian scientific Method is – they forgot one thing: us. That is: we built a scientific paradigmatic cosmogony without consciousness in it. Until very recently (circa 1980s): science excluded any first person experiential data as unscientific and naturally flawed. A consequence of Plato’s, I think you will find. To understand us: we have to look beyond science – to meditation, bodywork, and that which can be usefully included under the generic term ‘yoga’. Yoga and meditation are the ‘science of the mind’ we lacked.
Well, whattyaknow. When science – second gen neuroscience; cognitive science; cognitive linguistics – finally got round the first person experiential study …the science and the meditation where not so different. There are whole gootube channels dedicated to the comparisons. Many of them are spurious though.
But it bothers me not about validating spirituality ‘scientifically’. What bothers me, in contrast, is the absolute ascientific nihilism of the political narrative construction. Of all we have learned in the last century or so: politics is contra science. As George Lakoff says: we do politics with 18th century minds …and get 18th century results.
You know my big bugbear. Political economy is based on exponential negentropic growth: contra the Laws of Physics. I actually studied philosophy decades ago. I remember enough about the philosophy of science to state that if the methodology is wrong – or your premises are wrong – the results and conclusions are wrong. Not just wrong: but voided. Which seems to bother a lot less people than it should …the fact we have an imaginary political sphere based on fictional negentropy.
Compared to the common perception: I would say that including entropy into economics, and EROI into account for bio-physical flows – is far more scientific than not. Yes, I interpolate from other peoples data sets …but at least I am using a data set. What the fuck data does John McDonnell use? Some glossy mathematics booklet? As soon as you apply entropy to economy: you get a totally different view of the economy than all the top economists, central banks and politicians use. How can this be? Entropy is a fundamental phenomena, not one you could easily miss …unless you actually wanted to distort reality.
I agree. I apply data and not Method. I think the Method is flawed in the areas I outlined – namely in understanding consciousness from the first person POV. Science is always going to be lousy there, where it matters most. We need meditation to access the scientifically unkowable. I apply that too. And draw comparisons with what cognitive science is finding. Which, I propose, is an awful lot more scientific than leaving out the fundaments of nature …to create an imaginary political ‘science’. If it don’t account for, or is not compatible with, real world conditions – it ain’t science. It’s politics. Which is why the Amazon is burning; and Greenland; and the Arctic …etc.
Not sure what the next move is: over to you.
(Y)ou -(M)e
Y:”First random science definition pulled from the net;”
M: NOT SCIENTIFIC
Y: “To understand us: we have to look beyond science”
M: NOT SCIENCE!
Y: “Yoga and meditation are the ‘science of the mind’ ”
M: NO NOT SCIENCE.
Y: “the science and the meditation where (sic) not so different.”
M: your usual sleight of hand to introduce PSEUDO SCIENCE. Definitely NOT SCIENCE.
Y: ” it bothers me not about validating spirituality ‘scientifically'”
M: Having introduced pseudo science YOU ADMIT you are NOT SCIENTIFIC!
QED
———-
That’s all before my first cup of tea and breakfast, and not even halfway through your further pseudo babble confection.
(If you do want me to tear the rest of it to pieces it will be later in the day as I am busy enjoying the end of summer, outdoors)
(Sigh), BigB, itsan’ Uphill Struggle against ‘D’ US’ T & death 😉 , but we’ll get there, once one learns & knowS ‘Upaya’ & how to programme a ‘Canoe’, what to do, why how & what? you cannot unlearn the scientific patterns of any analysis, nor our self-proclaimed elitist idolatry 4soveriegn 5eyed corporations, presently Pavolov’s Dog gone Rabid, whereby, on a positive note of perma-culture, & circular economics, as local as possible, works for me & entropy & reducing the Thermodynamics of my incendiary conscience & consciousness needed to drive the devil’s advocate …
in the direction & name of science: to hell with laurels & Laurel Canyon, our kids can make better music than that, if they understood true harmonic frequency …
Chuckle & regards,
Tim
Hey BigB, I think that’s the point of this story: yes, it’s great to see environment is top of the agenda at G7, but we do need to know the facts behind it… and MSM leaves those out. Or we end up blindly following good causes… thats why people thought it was good to invade Iraq in 2003. At the time.
The media landscape today is completely fucked up. There were was a study done last year (sorry don’t have a link) that looked at where different mainstream newspapers and news sites in Western Europe get their “international news” stories from. It found that a vast majority follow the lead set by the New York Times and Washington Post and run the same stories as these two American papers.
Not only that, but many of the wire services like AP, Reuters, AFP etc. watch the NYT and build their “world events” stories around whatever the “newspaper of record” [sic] is talking about.
Add to that “independent” rags like the Guardian that already march in lockstep with other establishment organs (like…the NYT) and you have almost every MSM affiliated outlet running the same stories. So when an article that touches on one of the endlessly hyped hot button issues of the day, like racism or climate change, gets reprinted by every half-baked news regurgitating outfit in the western world it doesn’t take much for a contrived panic to take hold.
Last week it was “eco-fascism” that everybody was shitting themselves over…this week they’ve already forgotten about the green Nazi hordes because the Amazon rainforest is burning to the ground…and next week it will be forgotten because a “new report” says Antarctica “may be” completely melted in only two years time…but a week and a half after that nobody will remember it because scientists “may have” found a racist flu virus….and two weeks later…
Large numbers of hypnotized westerners are glued to their media feeds and panic weekly about “unprecedented” apocalyptic wildfires, genocide by young white eco-males and other supposedly “serious issues” that they nonetheless do nothing about (and quickly discard when the next hysterical NYT and friends supplied panic piece hits their Twatter feed, once again spiking their dopamine and cortisol levels).
And sites like this one offer commentary, often in highly emotional, sometimes even panicked, language about the MSM induced hysteria. Meanwhile, as its brave citizens panic and hurl abuse at each other via mind enslaving tech devices, western civilization really IS falling apart.
You really cannot make this stuff up.
I think there is a deep understanding within us all of what is fundamentally real and what is fake. I think you can tell when shit is truly hitting the fan when the people who usually lead the vanguard of manufactured, single-use hysteria go strangely quiet. Like animals before the storm hits.
I find the shrillness reassuring. But that’s about all I like about it.
Ahem, gardenfriendly so fuk’D’up the media, we need to make ‘PIN-UPS’ & hang ’em HIGH, sober or not, who cares their bent, in the name of humanity, they may render their drug of choice, before, …
“WE CUT THEIR GOOLIES OFF, KLAR ! ? ” Once and for all, publicly, ‘Remove their testicles’ & tits (RTT&T) if absolutefirkin’lutelyessential and that would still be nothing compared to Guantanamo and 5Eyes existing programmes, reigning, raining, reining psychological terror, on its’ citizens … and getting us to pay for the luxury of incoming micro-radio-waves of disgust at scientists & academics, in Uni.-bomber life, sponsored by B>P> or some other, hand of ‘God’ …
Grab Greta Thunberg, kidnap her and wake her up, to the fact that life goes on anon&anon into scientific ignominy presently; and her next stop must be a sailing her boat up the Amazon, , sponsored by AMAZON, featuring the Amazing GRACE1, in Farsi >>> Man O To , me and you :), we’ll write her script … 😉
The study you look for is the propaganda multiplier also carried on this site.
I used to muster sheep using dogs. One man whistles and 5 dogs move in concert to shift 1000 sheep. Modern mainstream media operates in the same fashion.
Who is the man with the whistle, and what does he intend for the sheep?
That is what should occupy our minds.
in your unrelenting quest to be contrarian, you’ve found a few people who have given you confirmation bias, but to so arrogantly disregard a problem and chalk it up to ‘green new deal’ propoganda is a also misinformation. We know that there has been an increase in fires being set by ranchers, miners and other groups emboldened by bolsonaro. I’m pretty sure the verdict is still out on the fires and very possible there are some irregularities in the spread of these in particular. You should include however, that many of the pictures are being used from fires in 2018, and others from places that are not the Amazon. I have to go so can’t finish this comment
I’m starting to think OffG is employing a bunch of people to make stupid, bogus or irrelevant criticisms on this article just to make it look better!
That’s a joke before any of BigB’s humor-free little gang come after me!
Elementary Watson, but yer’ well wrong on the humour, we just laugh like the Chinese, who always understood that in the Opium & Gunpowder Wars, there can be only one winner … 🙂
Makes you appreciate just how much easier that is for people on bandwagons.
…or rather, how much more dangerous it is for people on bandwagons!
Russia launched the sea-launched ballistic missile Sineva from the strategic submarine Tula .“Sineva” and “Bulava”: Russia tested ballistic missiles
“Sineva” and “Bulava”: Russia tested ballistic missiles
So? The US tested a cruise. What the fuck has that to do with the Amazon bs?
They could both bomb the Amazon with missiles carrying a payload of fire retardant chemicals.
Yeah fuck the fauna!
Never fear, Agent Orange is near … with Colonel Mustard, in the study,
some quick Sessions on societal dissemination & Bayer’d’way, strategy …
fuck yeah, legally … just like it’s legal to spray yer’ own weather & whatever …
This excellent article reflects the degree to which the majority of the population has been conditioned to accept the ‘Green New Deal’ as part of a social control mechanism for establishing a ‘ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT’. ONG is an objective that has been assiduously pursued by a Master Elite for centuries which is now coming close to realisation.
I consider we are now past the point of no return given their control of the narrative (what we believe and think). Their incoming ‘technocratic’ social management control systems (physical control of our movements and associations) via such things as ‘Social Credit Score’ fed by ‘real time’ big data analytic algorithms will close the circle to any meaningful resistance.
If everybody’s mind could be purged of the false reality that has been, in many instances, inculcated from birth, to reveal the true danger of what is about to emasculate us – we could readily caste them asunder by virtue of our 99% majority presence.
Aware of their minority status they have long focused on tempering social unity and playing upon our psychological weaknesses and fears (global warming) to ensure mass obedience and our ultimate acquiescence. Control of the herd has always been a prerequisite to gaining the total subjugation of the world’s population via the institution of a OWG. It is therefore not surprising given the critical importance of ‘herd control’ that they established, in 1946, the Tavistock Institute to fully develop the means to control and direct ‘mass consciousness’ aka Goebbels and Bernay. Tavistock controls a global propaganda machine employing 50.000 mind subversion specialists at a cost of $10 billion p.a. This was in 1991, their budget and staffing levels are now probably far higher given their objective is in clear sight. (your negative twitter response provides an example of how they have virtually all counter-reaction bases covered).
Refer to following link for complete details (p 151)
https://www.cia.gov/library/abbottabad-compound/4A/4A92FD2FB4DAE3F773DB0B7742CF0F65_Coleman.-.CONSPIRATORS.HIERARCHY.-.THE.STORY.OF.THE.COMMITTEE.OF.300.R.pdf
I do not rely on this document’s insights, some of which I find hard to believe, to determine my overall assessment of the situation. The fact they evidently hold control over the global economic situation, the MSM and that many of the old conspiracies have become reality, e.g. de-industrialisation and social destabilisation of the USA, suffice to augment the above assessment.
Sorry to be so gloomy.
This , This is what we need. Not mid-20thC eco-rants that totally fail to even grasp the way power is working on us or how our deepest fears and most important values are being weaponized to work against us
That’s ‘you’ and ‘me’ in – only another 7.7 billion to go!
Can any of this “Committee of 300” stuff be verified though? I don’t think it ever has been
It seems that this has hit the nerve and a instant PR ‘rapid rebuttal spin’ is being deployed here below the line.
“we need to ask what the current media hysteria is aimed at achieving”
There is a lot to hide. It fills the space that ought be used to raise awareness of the steady disappearance of free press, and the exponential increase in mass surveillence we’re already living under.
With so much fake news they have to spout at us, those pictures (at least most of them) are real.
“we need to ask what the current media hysteria is aimed at achieving”
You have to run much faster in order to stay in the same place.
(However, Bolsonaro does share many traits with neocon terrorists in Washington/London/Canberra)
Catte Black does have a point when she asks whether there may be something behind the MSM’s obsession with the number of fires in the Amazon rather than focusing on the area being burned or on the intensity of the fires.
Of the number of fires in the Amazon, what proportion might actually be small, temporary fires set off by poor slash-and-burn farmers trying to eke a living from otherwise infertile soils? Rainforest soils are not all that fertile – constant heavy rains leach minerals out of them – and for small farmers trying to make a living on them after their original lands might have been stolen or expropriated from them by mining companies, agribusiness corporations or government agencies, burning forest to create ash to fertilise the thin soils is necessary.
By focusing on the number of fires, and an 83% increase in their number from 2018 to 2019 (and who knows if the 2018 base is small rather than large?), the MSM is lumping together small landholdings of poor farmers and indigenous communities trying to do the best they can to support themselves and perhaps being forced to retreat farther into whatever virgin forest remains, with the holdings of large commercial owners. But I suppose the MSM does not particularly care about the needs of small farmers and indigenous farming communities.
The sudden appearance of the Brazil rain forest fires story and its clear misrepresentation suggest an ulterior motive. Bolsanaro was clearly supposed to replace the socialists and be friendly to the interests of the corporate elite. This story seems designed to justify sanctions and even direct intervention in the Brazil. It seems the corporate elite have discovered that Bolsanaro is not the puppet they were expecting.
Maybe.We will have to wait and see.
John Thatcher. Wait to see what? There already are threats of sanctions on Brazil. CNN, for example, is reporting that sanctions on Brazil are on the agenda at the G7 summit. The European Union has threatened to block a trade deal. The US has offered to send assistance.
Because ,as had been made clear above and by comments below the line,we have conflicting evidence and interpretation of that evidence.Bolsonaro is a fascist shit,so please excuse me if I don’t jump to his defence.
And on cue as predicted…
“Greta Thunberg
@GretaThunberg
Even out here in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean I hear about the record amount of devastating fires in the Amazon. My thoughts are with those affected. Our war against nature must end.”
I also just found that she is also named TINTIN!
Seriously the created multi identity, multi sexual, multi psychological, multi appealing TOTEM of the $4trillion GND con game the bankers are surely inaugurating in Biarritz, is going to land with fires blazing like some elfin goddess to deliver us into that new subjucation.
‘Efin TINTIN !!!
Lols.
If we’ve got Captain Haddock, Snowy, and the Thompson Twins as well, then the problem is as good as solved already. That certainly puts my mind at rest.
Deluded? Or sarcastic? Hard to tell round here sometimes with tha AngloImperial PR carpet bombing?
Let’s stand back and forget the numbers / statistics, and forget the climate lobbyists, G7, etc…
Do you believe deep in your brains, or hearts, that it’s actually a healthy situation for our planet to be experiencing ongoing industrial scale deforestation?
If you do, then do you accept that there may be significant and possibly unknown consequences of removing vast tracts of original forestation?
Or rather, do you think deforestation is beneficial, and that both / either the capitalists in Brazil and / or communists in China (for example) have done fine work with their chainsaws, wood chippers and deliberate fires?
Certainly not positive. But what is the carbon footprint of the average Chinese compared to other parts of the world? Most of what China uses in resources is made for the rest of the globe.
We need to also stand back and look at our lifestyles. All this consumerism is like a drug trying to fill a hole.
Dude, read the article. It actually says the burning is bad. It actually says Bolsonaro is bad. It actually says wild areas need to be preserved. The point it makes is about how dog whistles work. How the media can activate fear responses and get people to climb on board with agendas without questioning them simply because they are associated with emotional cues, like the environment, and sorry to say you are very much illustrating that point.
You really need to quit emoting and try to get what is really being said. Yeah, we have to do better, we really feckin do.
Hysteria is precisely how it should be called. It is the result of psychological terrorism against the population.
Thank you as always Catte and Off-Guardian. With all of this fear, irrationality and groupthink it is soothing to see that there are still bastions for intelligent critical thinking
“bastions for intelligent critical thinking”
Moreover, the author enjoys a puff of smoke and you’re Catte’s mom!
Hello. The Earth Observatory article is dated August 16th. Its source is the GlobalFireData website, certainly consulted on of before August 16th. Your website, Off-Guardian, seems to postulate GlobalFireData is a reliable website.
I invite you to check GlobalFireData today. Its forecast page boldly states, and I quote “Cumulative active fire detections through 8/22/2019 from MODIS and VIIRS confirm that 2019 is the highest fire year since 2012 (the start of the VIIRS record) across the seven states that comprise the Brazilian Amazon. In addition, fires in 2019 are more intense than previous years, measured in terms of fire radiative power, consistent with the observed increase in deforestation.”
All your article hinges on the previous August 16th article, which has been rendered obsolete by the very source it mentionned back then (GlobalFireData). Are there any other source indicating this year’s fires are less numerous than other years’?
The updated data makes it clear the fires are still around to slightly below the fifteen year average. Way below several other years this century.
This isn’t what I see on the forecast page. The first figure on the forecast page (August 24th) shows us both fire count (the total number of fires in Brazil) and fire radiative power (the overall intensity of fires in Brazil). Both are way above what was registered on previous years up to 2012.
Other figures on the same page actually register previous years in their entirety and compare them with the current, unfinished year. Of course current year has “less fire” than other years since the current year isn’t finished.
Besides, the Earth Obervatory article reminds us that the peak in burnings usually happens in September, which means the worst is yet to come.
Simply stating “there are less fires” doesn’t mean much: there can be a lower number of fires, but those few fires can be stronger and more destructive than many smaller fires.
We still suppose GlobalFireData is a reliable database. Hence, one should account for all data available on this site. Either we try to make a coherent ensemble of all the available data, or we dismiss the site as unreliable. Cherry-picking data from a given database and dismissing the rest isn’t a sound investigating method.
The data shows this August’s burning to be around or slightly below the fifteen year AUGUST average. Your claims about incomplete years are intentional smoke-blowing. Stop.
Sorry Catte, but you are coming across as mathematically and scientifically challenged, and looking for conspiracy where non exists in this particular case.
As you seem to be aware, our planet needs the Amazonian forest and other similar tropical forests, not just for O2 production, but also for weather and climate regulation due to the water / rain cycle, and a myriad of other benefits.
Now to the numbers. Can you not see the illogic using and debating an average rate of annual destruction of the finite forest? It makes no difference if this year is average or not, the simple fact is that the finite forest is disappearing!
Let’s say just assume the following for the sake of mathematical illustration:
In this example, over the past 10 years, we have lost 1% of the Amazon forest per annum. If in one year 1.5% was lost, but the next year only 0.5% was lost, it’s completely irrelevant. Your argument is equivalent to saying that during that year “only” 0.5% was lost rather than 1.5%, or the average of 1%. Well, it’s bloody irrelevant since we’ve already lost half the forest and it continues to shrink and regardless of the rate of shrinkage, what we lost is irreplaceable.
The key point is, this invaluable forest must not shrink any further, regardless of the rate of shrinkage. Zero destruction from now on. And that’s completely irrelevant to the G7 and global warming lobbyists, it’s basic common sense science.
Yet again we are forced to say to a commenter – you seem to have completely failed to grasp what this article is about. This is about media manipulation of fear in order to promote an agenda. It’s not about it being ok to burn the Amazon to ash.
Not so. In fact, you are doing your own bit of manipulation I would suggest.
Your article is focused on the rate of burning, and getting into the very details of that burning and quibbling over those details. It’s bloody irrelevant Catte.
Whilst the forest burns, you are shifting attention away to a petty argument over the numbers and trends and political conspiracy; it’s completely irrelevant….unless you’ve got your own political point to make about global warming, and you’re in effect doing it at the expense of the burning forests.
Hypothetically speaking, if we are sliding into an imminent apocalypse, I want to know those petty details. Don’t you?
Whoever down-voted presumably doesn’t want to know the details of an imminent apocalypse.
You’ll insist on more and more details before doing anything about an imminent apocalypse warned about by many clear and convergent trends. In other words, you’ll concern-troll even when its too late.
Yeah to hell with these pesky details. Let’s surrender our rational minds to the establishment-erected, establishment-maintained culture of non-science and hysteria. If any attempt to move away from this is labelled ‘concern trolling’, and since this seems to be an argument which rather easily-led people such as yourself use an awful lot to deflect from their intellectual bankruptcy, then perhaps you need to be careful not to overplay this card! Since there’s an entire culture encouraging us to abandon reasoned and rational discussion in favour of high-level stupidity, and since this article and my response only just scratch the surface of all the non-scientific horse manure which genuinely concerned citizens misguidedly buy into, you’re soon going to run out of ways to justify your foolhardiness and gullibility. The IPCC is a corrupt organisation founded by big oil. CO2 is at a geologically historic low. We don’t need phoney carbon science to make the case for environmentalism. That’s simply playing into the hands of powerful interests who have zero interest in saving polar bears, and 100% interest in a technocratic global economy, in which poor countries are forced to do the world’s polluting while being forced further and further into debt, and rich countries get even richer trading carbon credits and making as little serious effort to create sustainable energy as they do now.
That’s my take on it, anyway.
It would be disingenuous to insist that the article is not intended to appeal to those who deny that climate change is a danger of increasing urgency. One only has to look at the comments to confirm that most readers see the connection.
It is certainly true that many, the ruling class and those eager to join it, including campaigners of all sorts, view this crisis as an opportunity. Some see it as an excuse to double surveillance and monitor lifestyles. Others as a chance to restructure the tax system. Others as a means to garnering public subsidies for ‘alternative’ or ‘sustainable’ energy production.
We cannot be too vigilant in ensuring that we are not manipulated to support our enemies.
And what seems to be happening here is an illustration of this: Catte’s narrowly focused analysis of a small set of news stories during the run-up to the G7 has been exploited to rehearse all manner of bogus argumentation and broken logic to trot out the Oligarchy’s “Nothing to see here! Move along, now!” denials of the established reality that the capitalist systems of production and government, having set environmental calamities in motion are now denying their existence in order to preserve the value of their investments
My goodness, bevin I find this comment of yours more disturbing than the many other disturbing comments on this thread. You are a man of some intelligence evidently yet you talk like a Witchfinder or a McCarthyite.
a) You condemn this article and its author, not for what it says, but for what you divine (how?) it intends to say!
b) you then invoke your divination – and that of unnamed others in the comments section – as proof of itself! “I know she’s a witch and so do all the brethren here assembled, this is proof enough”
Your logic is also entirely broken. On the one hand you admit the ruling elite is busy trying to exploit the climate crisis for its own ends through manipulation of the media. On the other you claim Catte is (intentionally!)serving their interests by drawing attention to this very truth!
Let’s recall that the author made no claim to any such opinions as you ascribe to her and that inferring such a discreditable motive on the basis of zero hard evidence is incredibly inappropriate. I think the open comment policy and non-partisan stance of this site is too often exploited by people without the grace to appreciate it. Would you presume to make an accusation of deceptive intent against the Saker or Moon of Alabama on their sites? What response would you expect? I think you might be banned, and would deserve it.
I hope someone says something on here soon to restore my faith in humanity which has been sorely tried. I have lived among religious fundamentalists so I’m familiar with the kind of mindset I’ve seen here – just never thought to encounter it to such an extent on OffGuardian!
Gosh darn I enjoyed reading this comment, thanks for that.
The special pleading, moralistic fallacies and circular reasoning which take place in otherwise intelligent people, as they struggle to assimilate the conflicting elements of the climate change saga, is a frightening insight.
A: “Amazon fires might be being exaggerated for political reasons, based on this source”
B: “No they aren’t. So you WANT the Amazon to burn?!”
A: “Amazon fires might be being exaggerated for political reasons, based on this source”
B: “That source is wrong!!”
A: “I don’t think the source is wrong”
B: “Pah! Sources, evidence, observable cause and effect…its all NITPICKING and irrelevance. Who CARES when we’re all going to burn!? Why do you want us all to burn?!”
A: “I don’t and that’s not the point I was making.”
B: “You’ve mentioned some facts which have dialled back my hysteria – the unmistakable trait of the climate denialist! I will NOT have my hysteria dialled back. By ANYONE!!!!!”
Bevin is essentially saying, or at least I see it this way, that there’s some sleight of hand at play by the author. Whatever the intention may be, the end result is visible in most of the comments on this thread, which he’s pointed out.
I actually suggested, if you care to read what I wrote, that Catte’s perfectly reasonable qualifications of reports of current fires in the Amazon, was being exploited by others to trot out the climate change denials manufactured, at great expense, by the fossil fuel industry and other leading capitalists.
Very succinct observation and way better expressed than this Aspergers’ sufferer can manage :o)
It isn’t an annual rate of destruction, it’s an annual amount of burn. Totally different. Burn does not = destruction. Burned forest will regenerate unless turned over to agriculture. To assess the amount of destruction you will need to know the amount of burn that results in agricultural assimilation. You will also have to offset that against any agriculture that has been returned to wilderness, if any.
Maybe there is something to be said for those pesky details after all?
Well said Ms Black. The media are nothing but a pack of hyenas with the morals of minks in heat. They have to keep up their barrage of bullshit, one fake crisis after another, lest we finally start to focus on them and what they have been up to. Global warming and fires in the Amazon is perfect, nobody knows Jack Shit about it, it’s far away, it has nothing to do with Epstein, and it’s a threat to life on Earth as we know it.
I don’t understand, why is the measure unit “a fire”? When forests burn in Russia, we measure it in “square kilometers”, which is actually meaningful. What exactly does the number of fires indicate when it’s the intencity that matters?
Yeah it’s clearly political. The number of fires means nothing without an indicator of size. The media avoids giving that – why|?
So, if the point of Catte’s article is to develop clear rational independent thought: where is it? Focusing on a single piece of information and extrapolating a universal set of conclusions is the Method …reductionism in extremis and unto rigor mortis. It is exactly the form of rational objective thinking that has precipitated the permanent everything crisis we face.
Here: the amazon burning at above; below; or on the median rate is irrelevant. So we are only destroying the planets life support systems at a median rate? We are still destroying them. To appreciate this we have to go beyond reductive Cartesian thinking to whole earth systems ecology. We cannot think of anything in isolation. The three main domains are psychology (Ego); economy; and environment. Instead of separate registers with their own language; methodologies; etc – which are incommensurable (prohibiting cross-disciplinary dialogue). In reality: the boundaries between them – and the separate bounded territories they form – are abstract and prohibitive of rational inderstanding. The ‘Three Es’ (ego; economy; and environment) form a single integrated ecology …as proposed by Felix Guattari.
All boundaries are illusions. This is not to make a metaphysical point: it is a simple statement of reality. Where we draw the lines and boundaries for systems is important. It is a perfectly reasonable thing to do: so long as we remember the fact that boundaries and bounded systems are inter-related and interactive. A part is not a mereological simple – that is constituent of something larger. The whole constitutes the part: the very opposite of what we have been enculturated to believe. The part (isolated piece of information) or sub-system is nested in the whole: in such a way as the ‘boundary’ (Markov Boundary or Blanket) is osmotic and totally bi-permeable. The inside and outside are arbritary constructions for the ease of conception only*. They do not exist. We conceptualise them because we cannot conceptualise the entire system (or entire universe) as a whole. Big things are ‘hyper-objects’ we cannot rationalise independently. So we look at smaller pieces of information and try to envisage this as how the whole works. Despite some historic successes: this way of looking at things has proved destructive in, and of, itself. Cartesian “independent thought and rational analysis” is proving wholly inadequate by creating a blind spot to our overall destructiveness.
[* There is an entropic potential difference between internal and external states. Especially living organisms: that live in states of disequilibrium from the environment. However: the states are homeostatic, inter-regulating and do not violate the 2nd law or Zeroth law overall.]
Ergo: whether the Amazon is burning at an above; below; or on trend rate of absolute destructiveness is an arbritary illusion. Ditto: the Greenland ice shelf; the burning Arctic; the dying pollinators (Bugpocalypse); the 6th mass extinction; waste and ‘novel entitity’ pollution; etc do not benefit from slight year-on-year variations in destructiveness. They are all subject to non-linear long-term dynamics – beyond and without the average human lifespan. That is: the difference is subliminal and not determined by individual observation.
Left of field: but not ‘left’ of reality is the concomitant psychological and socio-economic crises we face. They are all interlinked. We do not have X number of problems: we have an integrated everything problem. From which – using the magic of Cartesian metaphysics – we wrap ourselves in an impermeable Markov comfort Blanket. We are not immune. The boundary is an illusion. We really are in crisis if we integrate all information streams into an Earth System Ecology. The mental health crisis and the economic crisis and the environmental crisis are one. And they are not separate from any personally drawn boundaries.
And I know well enough that is exactly what Robin thinks: in the broader spectrum. Just because the Green New Deal is a new neoliberal Zeitgeist does not mean that the underlying problems are not real. That is a gross distortion of reality. Not least as we enter and Epic Recession caused by over speculative accumulation and debt deflation. Entropy is a real part of the Earth System: one we totally ignore. This is symptomatic of the absolutisation of an economy that functions only on capital (they even want to exclude labour) – with no underlying bio-physical reality. Money derived from money infinitely.
The GND is an exercise in Skinnerian applied behavioral psychology (operant conditioning) that we would do well to resist. If that means entering into denial that our long-term viability as a species is in question will precipitate a permanent state of crisis: one whose entailment is the collapse of our current civilisation …severely curtailing our viability as a species. The Amazon is burning exactly on trend toward that.
That’s an awful lot of words to do little beside miss the entire point of everything in the article. Try reading it again.
There is nothing about letting the Amazon burn being a good idea. Nothing about climate change being a fraud. Nothing about consumerism being fine. You’re just superimposing your own obsessions/ preconceptions on the piece.
Why not write your own article and submit it rather than post lengthy essays BTL only tangentially connected to anything you’re notionally replying to?
Please don’t try and insult his intelligence, it exposes your own lack of it and your petty political point scoring.
Thank goodness there are far better writers at OffG than Catte, and who are on-point too.
If you’re not open to environmental factors being manipulated to serve those in power, you are blind.
To say the least: you are being unfair …and somewhat disingenuous. There is an element of what you say I was only ‘notionally’ responding to in the article. Try reading it again yourself. This news cycle is so much more than natural regenerative cycles. And what is happening in the Amazon has nothing to do with regeneration either. Anyone can see that: whether it is on trend or not – we are collectively destroying the planet. You have to be living is cave not to see it.
If you check back far enough: I’ve been warning it would come to this long before XR or Greta. Since it did happen: I have done my best to expose the GND agenda. And the closely all #4IR agenda. I’ve gone on record as saying that they will foreclose the future. I’ve even explained why.
BUT: and it is a big but – without ever denying the magnitude of the crisis we face. Robin Monotti is one of the few who gets that the agenda is false: but the crisis is real. That could easily be made apparent: but was not (except in a passing reference below). If we do not come up with alternative solutions: it will not be alright. Technology cannot save us. Only we can save ourselves. (Which, by the looks of it, is a bit of a long shot).
But I wasn’t just referring to the article. I was referring to the comments BTL: where certain people can vent climate denialism freely …without, it seems, being told they did not understand the article. I have to point out: controlling what the text says or does not say to different people is a subtle form of control. As Barthes said: ‘the author is dead’. The meaning is deferred. The whole analytical control of objectified syntactical meaning belongs to that age when we believed in Heaven and Hell. As do many of the reactionary comments. If Catte wants to convey how completely fucked up things are: she needs to be more explicit. Rather than enforcing the subtext BTL on those who tried to contextualise the bigger picture. In plain English: we will not survive the reactionary rejection of everything as a top-down control mechanism. Deforestation is real: not a natural regenerative cycle.
[As for the linguistic part: I just addressed that on the recent HK forum. Language and its hidden mythology is physically embedded in us. You have to make an awful lot of unfounded assumptions to make out otherwise. The days of ‘Heaven and Hell’ are still here. They are indirectly being referenced now. When we stop compartmentalising knowledge: maybe we will see that more? Especially the bit about the “grip of authoritarian story-telling”. 😉 ]
I haven’t read anything BTL (or above) denying there is a climate, or that it is being affected by humans to some extent or other. Some of us think that the issue has been hijacked by powerful interests, and you appear to agree. However you choose to dismiss this as irrelevant, accuse the author of reductionism in extremis and ramble on for ages (and ages) in righteousness indignation that we’re “entering into denial”.
It’s clear you’re hijacking the discussion and turning it into a climate debate.
And implying that admin here are “authoritarian storytellers’ because they point this out is silly and childish.
Exactly this BigB:
Frank, you need to take a breath, calm down and go easy on the ad hom please.
well it ain’t to be found in your comment that’s for sure, which reads like you copied and pasted an undergraduate eco-essay circa 1975. FFS, the article author doesn’t even make any of the claims you proceed to expend paras and paras ‘refuting‘. We all agree the forests need saving and consumerism is bad, we just don’t get the need to say it in this avalanche of verbiage in reaction to an article about something else very important that needs to be freakin addressed!
Now that I think about it, it seems richly symbolic that while the real Amazon is burning, the fake Amazon is flourishing!
Thanks for showing another example that everything that the regular media tells us about earth warming up, man made climate change, etc is just story telling, that has nothing to do with science.
It has its function though
A. To scare people to believe that money (their stolen money) will save the planet
B. To enrage people (like me) that such non-sense is sold as science
C. To deconstruct science as something that is similar to conventional wisdom (if 97% of scientists say that man made climate change is real, it must be real right? – Where is the logic in that?
Anyway, all this reminds me of the story of Dutch boy Hansje Brinkers who saved the Netherlands from flooding by putting his finger in the dike. Which
A. Never happened
B. Was a story invented by an American
C. Would not have saved the Netherlands from flooding even if NL would be threathened by the breaking of dikes
But it is a nice story, right, and it saves you from thinking what the real issues are behind the idea that we should stop using fossil fuels: that we are running out of it and don’t want to pay the Russians for their oil and gas, as long as ‘we’ have coal to sell.
This article does NOTHING to dispute the reality of anthropogenic climate change, indeed it has little to do with the subject. And your own comment is inherently flawed, in that you claim ACC has nothing to do with science, and yet you also acknowledge that 97% of climatologists accept that it is happening and is real. They should know, you can be sure they’ve studied this subject a darn sight more than you every have.
By the way, I don’t accept that it is real simply because climatologists say so. I accept it’s real because they have explained WHY they say so, and I understand their explanations, including their clear reasons why the last fifty years of rapid warming cannot be caused by anything else. They’ve checked all causes of past periods of warming; none of them are present currently, and all of them took effect far, far more slowly than is presently happening.
Maybe you should try checking people’s reasons for endorsing something before you assume you already know what they are, eh?
Next the Guardian (of Mi6) publishes “Fox News is a dangerous state propaganda outlet.” (for Trump).
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/24/fox-news-is-a-dangerous-state-propaganda-outlet-sarah-sanders-job-confirms-that
Not a word about ex FBI McCabe just joining Baker, ex CIA Clapper etc. at CNN while MSNBC is populated with ex CIA Brennan and Bash apart from ex FBIers : https://dailycaller.com/2019/08/23/cnn-msnbc-15-spooks-mccabe/
We are done, so don’t worry…
Gaia will save herself, humans will disappear, and the cockroaches will be king!
It’s like supermarkets stopping plastic bags, when most of the food etc., comes in shrink wrap
and from half-way round the world by plane too!
Just live for today, que sera srea…
Allow me to add to Your statement about Plastic.
While it can only be seen as a means to distract from the real problem, any legislation about banning plastic bags in supermarkets, while leaving out endocrine disrupting plastic wrap that is in direct contact with the food we eat – remains not only in place, but is extended to articles that do not need plastic wrap in the first place.
The real one ton plastic gorilla in the room are plastic articles like children’s toys and household plastics that will end up on landfills, in garbage incinerators and the oceans. The last stroll through my town revealed once more that more than half of all stores sell plastic articles. There are even stores that sell exclusively plastic articles.
Like You said, banning plastic bags, while the avalanche of consumer plastic crap is suffocating the planet. Homo Sapiens has become one cognitively dissonant species.
Thanks.
Subscription based news channels need regular sensationalism to keep numbers up. The Guardianistas abhorred page 3 nudity but are now into Green porn themselves. Trump etc. bashing is popular too in some of their quarters.
Some government operatives also need well timed distractions in the headlines to hide inconvenient exposures. With the new field of “climate change” opened up there is ample opportunity for fake wolf crying. There is little quality of historical climate data while there is plenty today, so new records can be noted monthly. Pliable scientists can cherry pick data for the right amount of funding, mortgages or divorces can be hell.
thanks for being critical… no, i mean that, 🙂
Christ, a world of news and information and we still need to think.. who knew?