Connecting the Dots
John Steppling
“Capitalists are no more capable of self-sacrifice than a man is capable of lifting himself up by his own bootstraps.”
Lenin – Letters from Afar
Many on the left seem to have forgotten that capitalism is actually bad. That the reason the planet sinks under the weight of pollution and militarism is because of capitalism.
Nothing that works within the capitalist system is going to save anyone and will only reinforce the existing problems and further the suffering of the poor and disenfranchised.
Now allow me to first start with a few observations on writers published by leftist sites…in this case Counterpunch actually. Louis Proyect titles his piece as a question, If Time Magazine Celebrates Greta Thunberg, Why Should We?
The answer is, if TIME celebrates something, if corporate media celebrate someone or thing, the response should logically be INVESTIGATE and be suspicious. Which is what Cory Morningstar has done.
But Proyect spends his the entirety of his pointless article attacking Morningstar….go figure. He also lies. Morningstar does not attack Greta, she investigates the forces behind Greta. For a guy who wears his marxism like placard around his neck, you would think Proyect might grasp the distinction. Cory Morningstar is almost certainly the most important living journalist in the world (next to Assange perhaps).
And just by way of cursory correction…when Proyect writes:
Just two months ago, (Jamie) Margolin joined other young people in suing Democratic Governor Jay Inslee and the State of Washington over greenhouse-gas emissions. Inslee depicts himself as a liberal, environmentalist governor. If Margolin is a Trojan Horse like Thunberg, her choice of a target hardly sounds like she is trying to make it in corporate, Democratic Party, environmentalist circles.”
…what he fails to recognize is that Margolin is already in the Democratic Party inner circles and served as an intern for Hillary Clinton.
But the bigger problem is that Proyect seems on board with all the activities of Thunberg, and her cohorts. Proyect quotes Morningstar…
Today’s climate emergency mobilization must be recognized for what it is: a strategically orchestrated campaign financed and managed by the world’s most powerful institutions – for the preservation of capitalism and global economic growth. This is the launch of a new growth industry in the Global South coupled with the creation of new and untapped markets.”
And then writes…
Yeah, who cares about icebergs melting and the Great Coral Reef disappearing? The real problem is capitalism—as if the two phenomena were not related.”
The entire point of Morningstar’s work is to bring attention to the fact that Capitalism IS related, not just related but the primary cause of planetary destruction. How does massive PR and billions of marketing stop the death of coral reefs?
But again, class analysis is the issue (and perhaps an inability to read carefully). Thunberg has enlisted corporate billionaire backers (well, they enlisted her). That was the goal.
If Proyect thinks the capitalists behind Thunberg are about to bring radical change and challenge the status quo, he is for a rude awakening. But then Proyect calls Off Guardian a conspiracy-minded site. Such provincial disdain is all too representative. But more on conspiracy theory below.
Allow me to link to Morningstar’s investigation of We Mean Business, a project that gets the Proyect stamp of approval (We Mean Business, not Morningstar)…
I ask the reader to consider the facts. (hint: class analysis, the rich are not there to help anyone but themselves).
Then we have Kirkpatrick Sale and an article (Political Collapse: The Center Cannot Hold) that might well have been written by the state department.In this hideously distorted piece Mr Sale also lies. The biggest of his falsehoods is that Venezuela is a failed state. Uh….maybe he has a different definition. But what Sale is really doing is excusing and providing cover for the Imperialist west.
Yemen is listed as failed but the reasons for its failures are not really made clear. Global Warming? The correct answer is a vicious several year-long attack by the Saudi monarchy and the US and UK military. A genocidal assault that has resulted in mass death and pestilence (180,000 NEW cases of cholera were just reported by WHO). But Mr Sale never mentions that.
Not a peep about western militarism. Not a single word. Nor about the orchestrated illegal covert CIA assault against Venezuela, and more recently and successfully, Bolivia. Imperialism is not touched upon, even once.
Mr Sale writes:
At the moment, there are no less than 65 countries are now fighting wars—there are only 193 countries recognized by the United Nations, so that’s a third of the world. These are wars with modern weapons, organized troops, and serious casualties—five of them, like Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Somalia, and Yemen, with 10,000 or more deaths a year, another 15 with more than 1,000 a year—all of them causing disruptions and disintegrations of all normal political and economic systems, leaving no attacked nation in a condition to protect and provide for its citizens.”
But he never explains the role of the US in any of this.
Who made the weapons used in these wars? Well, the answer is largely the US, but also Russia, China, Israel and Brazil. But the vast majority are from the US. Also Syria was targeted by the US for a coup (referred to in polite company as regime change..a term created by the marketing arm of the Pentagon).
Assad has openly been a target of the U.S. Who created and funded ISIS in fact? Answer is the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. Not a word about that fact either.
Here is another quote from Sale…
“These include seven completely failed states—Congo-Brazzaville, Central African Republic, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, South Sudan, and Venezuela—and another seven that are on the edge—Guinea, Haiti, Iraq, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, Chad, and the Sudan—plus 19 that are in an “alert” category, meaning that some but not all government functions have failed, 15 in Africa and 4 in Asia.”
What do these nations have in common?
They were targets of the Imperialist West (directly in the cases of Syria, Yemen, Somalia and South Sudan, and Iraq…not to mention the non-failed Venezuela, or indirectly in the neo-colonial plunder of Congo, AFR, Guinea, and Haiti). And, as I pointed out, Venezuela is not failed, nor even close to failed. Its a perfectly functioning country under sanctions by the US. Another fact Sale omits.
Why is Libya not on that list? You know, Libya, where the U.S. destroyed the African nation with the highest standard of living on the continent and reduced it to a slave market run by traffickers.
All in all, Sale is either about room temperature IQ or just a liar or politically aligned with the State Department and Pentagon.
I have no idea which but I do wonder why his tripe is appearing in a leftist site like Counterpunch.
Proyect I understand, because he wears that placard announcing he is a leftist, and because he sort of is an editor at CP. Sale doesn’t and isn’t, so I really do wonder at why this reactionary non-article is published by anyone this side of the CATO Institute?
But that brings me to the next point, which is the narcotic-like effect that the entire Greta story has had on, mostly middle-aged white men. If you cannot but see the obvious stage-managed aspect of the Greta story, the marketing and image control involved, then you are blind or possibly caught up in the cult-like thinking of much new green activism yourself.
For one example, just look at the photo TIME used for its cover.
Greta in an oversized sweater, sans make-up —how old does she look? 13, or 14 I’d say. Well, she is in fact 16. Her sister is 15 and looks much older and certainly clearly into puberty or even past it. Greta is being presented as the virgin symbol of purity.
Now this will be called an attack on Greta…by Proyect anyway. But I am sure many others. It’s not. She is simply the actor in all this (though actors are responsible for their choices, too). For her troubles she gets yacht rides and great dining with world leaders. Why wouldn’t she sign on.
But the rest of the phenomenon is in fact global capital usurping the green movements and activists globally. And the coup in Bolivia is against the indigenous of that nation, many of whom are environmental activists as was President Morales. Which is why the smear campaign (by the same people who help manage Greta) was designed to undermine his environmental work. The biggest thing environmentally that Morales did was to throw out the U.S. military.
But the white men of the West are channelling their disappointments (because capitalism disappoints, at the very least, nearly everyone but the top 3%) into something that resembles a fairy tale narrative of a guardian flock protector (the white guy narrator) defending the honour of blond pre pubescent teenager (in volkisch pigtails and large sweater). Greta is the virgin queen of the environment.
What happens when she gets a boyfriend? I’ll be curious to see. Will the white middle-aged flock protectors feel betrayed? Seems possible. As my friend Hiroyuki Hamada noted, the white male defense of Greta is a reflection of patriarchy and that disappointments today are felt more acutely because they are more flagrant and there are fewer mitigating salves than in the past.
The point here is that why would any socialist or communist sign on to anything supported by the Royal Families of Europe, by global billionaires, and why cant they see that photo ops with Obama and the Pope are not just accidental.
Nobody ever granted Berta Cacerces a photo shoot in Vogue. A genuine activist today is at risk of death by the rising tide (rising fast) of fascism. Look at the heroic defense of Bolivia by the indigenous people of that nation. So many of whom have fought off western mining interests. And the same in Brazil where today there is a wholesale war on the indigenous. Or the vast western mining interests in Africa, and the forced displacement of entire villages to accommodate those interests. Enforced by western security forces.
Much of the climate consensus seems aligned with the ruling class in a fear of a black and Asian planet, and one that is fuelled by the spectre of eugenics (making the world safe for white people). And lest you think that at all hyperbole, just spend some time investigating the activities of the Gates Foundation. Its curious to me why so many liberals froth in admiration of Gates.
Jimmy Wu writes (Capitalism is Dangerous for Your Mental Health, Medium 2019):
Yet capitalism’s reach extends much further than its economic effects; it also shapes our ideology and how we perceive our place in the world. Modern-day capitalism, with its unshakable faith in deregulated markets, privatization of the public sphere, and austerity budgets, has of course contributed to our financial misery, leading to mass hopelessness and anxiety.
But far from being confined to economic policy, contemporary capitalism (often called “neoliberalism”) also embodies a philosophical belief that self-interest and competition, not cooperation, should pervade every aspect of our lives.
In short, our world is shaped in the image of the market. For those in distress, Margaret Thatcher’s oft-cited mantra, “There is no such thing as society,” sends the most disturbing possible message: “You’re on your own.”
This is the psychology of advanced capitalism. And Hollywood and mass media drive home in obsessively repetitious fashion that message of individualism. Of a ruthless individualism. In the recent V Wars (vampire wars) on Netflix, a doctor struggles valiantly throughout the first season looking for a cure. He fails. His only son abducted.
In the last scene we see him, presumably months later, doing chin ups…his rock hard abs and bulging biceps glistening with sweat. He turns to face the came and slings an AK 47 over his shoulder. He stares at camera…he is ready for season two. And the message is, don’t be a pantywaist doctor, they get nothing done. Be a violent sociopathic vigilante.
That’s the message of America in a nutshell.
Richard Slotkin in Gunfighter Nation wrote…
1890, the moment when the landed frontier of the United States was officially declared ‘closed’, the moment when ‘frontier’ became primarily a term of ideological rather than geographical location.”
That remains the principle shaper of consciousness in the U.S. today.
Now one might ask why so many on the left view the Climate discourse without any class analysis. Do you not think that if Prince Charles is supporting a cause that one might be suspicious? I mean would he betray HIS class? Not fucking likely. Would Pierre Omidyar? Would Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, or Bill Gates??
The answer is no, of course, and yet I see people lining up to sign onboard projects that are endorsed by millionaires and royals. Why? Well, because, partly, of what Jimmy Wu wrote. And I will add another quote from Wu’s piece…
The psychological toll of this market-extremist thinking is ubiquitous and measurable. A long line of social science research has shown that unemployed people are much more likely to become depressed; after all, under the reigning ideology, our self-worth is measured by our economic output. Moreover, since the market is (we are told) a level playing field, with no single actor appearing as the obvious coordinator, those who happen to be losers in this global scramble ostensibly have no one to blame but themselves.”
Jimmy Wu (Capitalism is Dangerous for Your Mental Health)
The same logic applies to those throwing Maduro or Morales under the bus. Or for that matter Assad. Look, if you are a leader targeted by the U.S. there must be a reason. And that reason is independence from the global neoliberal system — and independence is not allowed. Ask the people of Iran or the DPRK or Cuba. Ask Qadaffi. The U.S. does not do things for moral reasons. They are not motivated by ethics or morality.
The rise of fascism is also a reflection of the same conditions that spawned the ‘Greta Defender’ symptomatology.
Fascism is attractive to those who fear being identified as *losers*. Fascism provides a sense of belonging, of unity and purpose. American democracy does not. The ideological frontier that Slotkin noted is what defines the consciousness of most Americans, certainly white americans.
That rugged individualism that Hollywood continues to spew forth in cop shows and spy shows and lawyer shows and even doctor shows is one that is not real. There is no space, materially or psychologically, for Daniel Boone today.
Most of the empty spaces of western America are owned by the federal government.
Most land overall is owned by billionaires. Sixty-one percent of the surface land of America is privately owned. And most of that is empty. The government owns around thirty percent. The working class owns nothing, essentially. Blacks (13% of the population) own under 1%, as of 2016.
But over the past decade, the nation’s wealthiest private landowners have been laying claim to ever-larger tracts of the countryside, according to data compiled by the Land Report, a magazine about land ownership in America.
In 2007, according to the Land Report, the nation’s 100 largest private landowners owned a combined 27 million acres of land — equivalent to the area of Maine and New Hampshire combined.
A decade later, the 100 largest landowners have holdings of 40.2 million acres, an increase of nearly 50 percent. Their holdings are equivalent in area to the entirety of New England, minus Vermont.”
Christopher Ingraham – Washington Post, 2017
80% of the people live on 3% of the land.
Ted Turner owns over 2 million acres. John Malone over 2 million. Stan Kroenke owns over a million and a half acres. The Hadley family, the Galt family, the Lee family…these are the owners of America’s land. Or Anne Marion who owns the 260,000 acre Four Sixes ranch in Texas. Or the Collier family, or the Barta family in Nebraska.
All own close to a million acres of land. There are essentially 75 families, maybe a few more, that own the vast majority of land in the U.S. Jeff Bezos owns half a million acres in Texas. The Irving family owns a huge percentage of Maine, or the Reeds, who own vast swaths of northern California and Oregon.
You and I own shit. We are the new serfs in the feudalism of advanced capital. So, why defend those who represent the ruling class?
The racial disparity in rural land ownership has deep historical roots based not just in chattel slavery, but in the post-slavery period as well. After emancipation, black farmers tended to be tenants of wealthy white landowners working for sub-poverty wages and doing mostly subsistence farming.
Average land ownership for black farmers peaked in 1910, according to the Agriculture Census, with about 16 to 19 acres. In contrast, black farmers owned just 1.5 million acres of arable land in 1997.
In many cases, the land African Americans lost over the 20th century was expropriated in one form or another and not sold freely. In the 2007 documentary, Banished, filmmaker Marco Williams describes numerous examples of white mobs forcing out African-American farmers and taking their land.
This outright stealing, intimidation, and violence had a devastating impact on black wealth ownership.
Antonio Moore (Inequality.org)
Just as white America feared black ownership of, well, anything, the white ruling class capitalists today fear the potential for a black planet. America has military bases in all the countries of Africa save one. France and Germany and the U.S. continue to recolonize Africa. And now, the U.S. is directing renewed attention to Latin America where they fear indigenous power and socialist movements.
The international financial institutions, all of them situated in Europe or the U.S., are the contemporary expression of colonialism, essentially. They discipline and punish the dark-skinned peoples of Africa, South and Central America, and many Pacific Islands. And in many cases, too, those countries formally part of the Soviet Union.
If you want to grasp the work of Cory Morningstar, this is not a bad place to start for now.
One cannot separate climate change from Imperialism. You cannot separate climate change from militarism. If change is going to try to correct global warming, or limit its impact (which honestly nobody knows) then one must learn to read how marketing works.
One must question anything applauded by the Royal families of Europe, of by billionaires in general. Those billionaires will not betray their class, rest assured. The billionaires and corporate interests behind Greta Thunberg are not looking to help the poor and working class, they are looking for massive land grabs and further raids on pensions, social security, and whats left of working class and socialist movements.
Maybe Proyect can connect the dots between the coup in Boliva, the opposition in Venezuela (that failed state per Sale) and the big money orchestrating the Thunberg phenomenon. The ruling class stick together.
*Conspiracy theory* used to be reserved for invisible helicopters and such, now its simply any class analysis. Anytime someone points out who is funding a project there are cries of *conspiracy theory*.
Why would any rational person look at the Greta phenomenon and not grasp that it is manufactured? There is a LOT of money behind this girl. But the non-profit industrial complex, the UN, the World Bank and IMF — they don’t do things altruistically. Capitalism is investment, not virtue. Capitalism created the crisis, it won’t solve it. Greta also retweeted the now sort of infamous Minh Ngo tweet that was part of the smear campaign against Morales. She is linked and backed, additionally, by Purpose and Avaaz — both of whom are connected to U.S. foreign policy in South America.
But Morningstar has the details here:
She also endorses and tweets support for Hong Kong colour revolution leader Joshua Wong (yet another U.S. asset). She is, as Club de Cordeliers put it (on twitter), ‘the ruling class poster girl’. And this is not even to get into her comments about holding disobedient leaders up against the wall. The infantilism of the western public is well prepared for child leaders. This is a canny gambit by the marketing apparatus and by all indications (and articles like Proyect’s) it is working to perfection.
Greta is not anti-capitalist. She may say a few things that suggest, vaguely, an anti-capitalist sensibility, but the reality (which is what Morningstar provides) is that she works for big money, corporations and FOR capitalism.
You know when Greta gave her last speech in the U.S. … at the UN in fact…(where she flubbed her lines, saying creative PR and clever accounting. It was meant to be creative accounting and clever PR…but learning lines is tough) she sailed back to Europe. The captain had been flown in to sail the yacht on its return voyage.
The whole thing is so ludicrous and idiotic that one really does wonder if the West is not in some trance state. The inability to read marketing as marketing is at this point inexcusable in someone self-identifying as a leftist.
The system sails along, like a billionaire’s yacht, increasing profit at the expense of the everyone not of the top 2 or 3%. Greta is a manufactured distraction, and all those protests that her campaign managed to generate are not to help stop war and exploitation. They are pretty much as meaningless as choosing to drive a Prius.
I will end with a quote from Cory Morningstar (from social media)….
You are about to get slammed by 2 globally orchestrated campaigns
1. #GlobalGreenNewDeal
2. #NewDealForNature & People
And when I say slammed – I mean slammed. Like a hammer over your head. Another campaign to assist both is #SuperYear2020.
Goal: obtaining the social license required to re-boot / save the failing global capitalist economy. To usher in an new unprecedented era of growth. The monetization of nature, global in scale (new/ emerging markets)(see past posts). That is, the corporate capture of nature. Those with money – will literally buy nature.
The pitch: The ruling class, corporations, capital finance – all those that have happily destroyed the planet in pursuit of relentless profit have learned their lesson.They have magically changed. Those that destroyed the biosphere will now save it. And save you. All they need is your consent. Forget that capitalism devours everything in it’s path. They can work around this inconvenient truth. But it’s going to take everyone. There are no class divisions, we are all in this “together”. Yesterday’s capitalists are today’s activists. Accept. Join hands.”
SUPPORT OFFGUARDIAN
If you enjoy OffG's content, please help us make our monthly fund-raising goal and keep the site alive.
For other ways to donate, including direct-transfer bank details click HERE.
Previously, I was of course referring to the Oregon Petition. Debunking the corporate shills and trolls that infest all truthful attempts to bring a balanced view to Geo-Politics is not what I do. I do not need to, they debunk themselves with arguments that expose where their loyalties lie. Having taken the time to read the comments in this article from people who, in the main, are searching for answers to the so called “global climate emergency”, many comments prove that the truth is alive and well and seeded throughout the Off Guardian readership. I challenge anyone to engage me with any arguments, scientific or otherwise, that prove beyond a reasonable doubt that man made global warming, if it exists at all, is having a catastrophic effect on Earths Climate. The peoples “right” to freedom of speech is under attack from all sides and specious arguments which rely on banning… Read more »
Perhaps ORAGE could try and understand the Milankovitch Cycles and the corrupted science revealed in the East Anglia University, Climate Units emails so generously hacked and posted on the net.
Please engage me with your science ORAGE, I have pointed you in the right direction with some of mine.
When constructing the unworkable and false mathematical models, the criteria used, disregarded the actions of the Sun and Water Vapour in the atmosphere. Are there any Guardian journalists that carry out their own research into the Climate Emergency Scam?
If so they will discover that over 30,000 scientists of which 8000 are PHDs have signed the Oregon letter decrying the debasement of science. This has seen schoolchildren being abused and becoming anxious at the hands of the paid for lackeys of Al Gore and George Soros and their Illuminati bosses. This Guardian newspaper is as corrupt and rotten to the core as the BBC and Monbiot a disgrace to the Journalistic profession
Surely, the Climate Change, Global Warming THINGY is the biggest challenge facing man, so why not choose something easier to tackle first?
I suggest making the UN, ICC and the like do their jobs and tackle the war machine, a far simpler task.
Or Greta, here’s a far simpler task. Get the EU to stop moving buildings every month, or move the UN into one of them, away from the cancer that is SpartUSA.
FACTS: As the planet warms and forests and jungles worldwide are being cut and burned, there is increasingly less CO2 consumed thus less oxygen released. The warming of the oceans is a verifiable reality and extreme weather the consequence. Environmental movements are not excluding the poisoning of the planet. Indigenous people all over the world who are at the forefront of the battle to protect their lands against corporations deforestation, mining, spilling and dumping wastes, are allied with Greta. The largest corporations in the world are the fossil fuel industries and they are at the forefront of the campaign to kill the messenger as a distraction from the message, as does this article which does not even mention the realities of what is happening to the planet. That there may be other corporations that will capitalise on the worldwide alarm regarding the obvious results of the Climate Emergency, rising seas,… Read more »
Could you link to a source for the currently warming oceans?
You could consult the science and observations, now couldn’t you. Googling one immediately gets Scientific American quoting ‘numerous studies’ from the Argo program that since 2000 has measured oceanic salinity and temperatures down to 2000 metres. Try starting there.
Hang on a minute. Is the author denying that there is a man made climate crisis or is he merely stating that it is real but that the capitalists have highjacked this to produce an agenda to beat us with?
These are important differences. When I first read the article I thought it was the later but reading the comments which are mainly denialism, and their upvotes, I wonder.
Nobody denies that in 2007 the world economy tanked but mostly we thought they way it was handled stank and the perpetrators of the fraud where bailed out at our expense. This is how I know see man-made climate change, not to deny it’s existence, but to find an answer that does not reward its perpetrators. Denying the science behind the climate change will only help marginalising the ostriches with their head in the sand.
You’re new around here, aren’t you.
I have frequented the site before but only started to comment recently. It is a shame that there are many here who don’t seem to understand what science is.
‘Science’ is what I say it is-the Dunning-Kruger credo.
Richard
I blame it all on Google. People now think they become instant experts by googling something. Google can’t teach interpretation, lateral thinking or substitute for experience.
Science behind Climate change?
Now I’m a bit fuzzy on this, but about 10yrs ago the UN used a piece of science to support man-made climate change. The data supporting the UN assertion was not provided so another scientist challenged the scientist making the claim, for access to this data.
The case, I believe has been rolling on for 10yrs in the Canadian courts, which I believe found that the data should be released.
You have to ask why the UN has suppressed the data up until this point. It off itself does not mean there isn’t a link, just that this particular bit of science is junk. I only say it’s junk, because I see no other possible reason/justification for it being withheld.
Indeed you are fuzzy and you do not provide a link or actual reference. Things have moved on in the last ten years. Apart from the clear evidence of climate change (whether cyclical or man made) that abounds, which I hope you do not contest, but do tell me if you do.
The scientific publications show overwhelmingly that the cause of the climate change is human activity related to burning fossil fuels, very few publications show the opposite or conclude that there is no evidence for this. Most governments in the world believe in this and have taken measures, except for the unscientific Trump and a few others.
Here you go:
https://www.wnd.com/2019/08/court-rules-against-hockey-stick-climate-change-graf-creator/
I notice you similarly fail to list the scientific publications supporting the link. I would have suspected by now, people making this claim, showing link, would have to hand the sum total of supporting evidence, maybe a page on the UN website?
I do not contest the fact that their is a link, because I have not availed myself of the literature, so will not take it as fact by someone else stating it. As for scientific publications, they have a long history of truth, haven’t they?
My take, so far. Mans doing a fine and dandy job of making in unhabitable for ourselves. I can see that with my own eyes. I see it every day I find myself in a Supermarket.
I shall give you the benefit of the doubt and try to answer your claims. My first comment is this: you quote as your source the WorldNetDaily. This is a right wing publications and here is what Wikipedia says about it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WorldNetDaily I do accept that Wikipedia can be susceptible to bias but we are also here not starting with a scientific publication, but a report of a court case that was dismissed because of delay. Here is what Michael E Mann, the scientist whose case was dismissed has to say https://community.oilprice.com/topic/7448-supreme-court-of-bc-dismisses-dr-michael-mann’s-defamation-lawsuit-vs-canadian-climate-skeptic-dr-tim-ball/ So this was a court case in the District of Columbia, not by any means a major scientific institution that was producing a legal verdict, not a scientific one and therefore is of no relevance here. Now as to evidence, apparently 97% of all climate change papers claim that the current global warming is related to human activity… Read more »
I wonder why this comment was premoderated or is it me who is premoderated?
Yes we know what the problem is but what exactly is the solution? Any suggestions? Global revolution? Is that going to happen anytime soon, like before the icecaps melt?
You can find all these millennial apocalyptic death cults throughout the ages. They were previously of a religious character, with emphasis on dates like 1000 or 1500. In 2000 we had an updated example in Y2K, and there is a long list of similar fantasies and delusions. They seem to be common to all cultures. The Aztecs professed similar end times delusions. The Vikings had their Ragnarok when the gods would go down fighting against the forces of evil. The current Global Warming version is a hangover from mainstream religions, which all talk of a deity violently bringing an end to this system of things to usher in a new golden era. You used to see men with sandwich boards at football grounds proclaiming that the end was nigh. People seem to be predisposed or pre programmed to swallow this garbage, like the Reverend Jim Jones or the Waco Death… Read more »
Well, if you perturb the global climate by causing energy to accumulate in the Earth system by pumping heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, then you are going to cause climate and weather anomalies. It is pretty well inescapable. And they are accumulating after all. And there never was a time when ‘all the scientists’ predicted a looming Ice Age. That is simply not true.
Even Exxon concluded in the 1950’s that the burning of fossil fuels would cause the Earth to heat up.
Your mistake is that you do not seem to understand that it is not the current CO2 from plants, humans, animals etc. causing the problem, because it is simply recycled back into the Earth’s system, as it always has been. The Earths system was in perfect balance.
The problem is the millions of tons of pre-historic CO2 being released from burning fossil fuels by man – CO2 captured from sunlight that last hit planet Earth millions of years ago – and nature cannot keep up with the new rate of re-cycling needed to trap this rush, hence the increase in CO2 levels.
Should be common-sense, really.
CO2 is plant food, a fudamental aspect of the process of photosynthesis, whereby plants consume CO2, water and sunlight in order to release oxygen, which we inhale and which is essential for our existence. This is a God created, synergistic, pefect relationship. All mammals exhale CO2 when they breathe, and the plants eat it. Beautiful. The global warming/climate change hoax is yet another chapter in a long line of Satanic Inversions of reality, where those who control our world, who are verifiably evil, are completely and utterly fucking with our heads, in part, for their own amusement. They are laughing at us, rolling on the floor, pissing themselves while millions and billions of people run around in a state of hysteria over a carefully manufactured lie. Planet poisoning, caused entirely by the big corporations and the military, is the real issue. The amount of carnage these entitites have inflicted upon… Read more »
Hard evidence for the ongoing programme of miltary/corporate weather manipulation. This is a must watch, easily a best in field documentary.
FRANKENSKIES
The point is that you can have too much CO2 as it will cause a planetary energy imbalance by trapping re-radiated heat that would otherwise escape into space. And the rate at which CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere, along with the other greenhouse gases like methane, nitrous oxide etc, is crucial. The current forcing of greenhouse gases from c. 280 ppm to 415ppm and 490 ppm CO2 equivalent, is the most marked and most rapid (c.200 years) for hundreds of millions of years, and, just as science predicted, it has fatally destabilised the planetary climate. It’s just basic science, reinforced by evidence from reality.
You’re misusing terminologies in an attempt to sound as if you understand the science when all you really understand is the media scare articles you have consumed and believe. “The current forcing of greenhouse gases” is science gobbldygook. ‘Forcing’ in climate science means ‘influencing the climate’s behaviour.’ Greenhouse gases are theorised to be one set of forcers. They may ‘force’ the climate. But they themselves are not ‘forced.’ You are totally misusing the word because you don’t understand the science and are trying to affect an understanding you don’t have. You are being dishonest. Please stop pretending you are su fair with the science when you are not. FYI – current CO2 levels are totally unremarkable and much lower than in many times in the geological past. Neither can the speed of increase be compared with any other period of increase since the ice cores and other proxies simply can’t… Read more »
The forcing is of the climate system, through increased CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions, which disturb the heat balance of the Earth system by trapping re-radiated heat that would otherwise escape into space. My usage is fine. The scientists who affirm the current validity of the anthropogenic climate destabilisation theory are the majority of scientists, generally, and nearly all ie c.99% of actively publishing climate scientists. The moneys they receive are called salaries and research grants, and no-one gets rich on those, unlike the tiny coterie of denialists, gifted hundreds of thousands by the climate change denial industry.
When Miss. Thunberg mentions and perhaps discusses the counter effects of global dimming on global warming and the ice formations in the antarctic and how these effects factor into the global climate discussion,
it may rouse my attention.
In the meantime …..
Global dimming is a vital component of the problem. When and if global particulate smogs are reduced, we will see that another degree or two Celsius is baked into the system.
Your correct. Is CO2 the only issue? No, there are a few others that are equally if not more important but I guess they are more complicated to be explained (and taxed) to the mass populace by a sweet young person (girl). So Greta gets involved to break the news ….. governments are listening now Greta. The solution – Governments will impose a carbon tax as a solution to a small part of the problem – if one actually exists. How this solves the issue of corporate environmental rape ? Ask Greta to explain it. Unfortunately she knows little if nothing. But the world is listening, Greta. The key problem here is when corporations thorough governmental occupation latch onto a young persons desire to make a difference and twist it into farcical theatre. The outcomes are predictable. Idiots begin to call Greta a tool – and perhaps she is –… Read more »
Fixing the anthropogenic climate destabilisation cataclysm before it renders the Earth uninhabitable for our species is a vital first step to ecological repair and sustainability. That there are many other ecological crises caused by elite greed is no reason to ignore the worst. I rather hope Thunberg will say something about the others. If she does not, the suspicion that she is ‘controlled opposition’ and a ‘limited hangout’ will surely grow.
So give me your thoughts on the fix. Carbon tax on those who drive their kids to school in SUV’s will be used for what exactly? Those who walk or cycle to work and own no cars will be rebated I suppose if the theory holds. Then Governments will use the carbon tax to do what exactly ? Offset variable mathematics to make corporations look better…. no this is no fix its another waste of time. Useless models forced to make a point. No I am still not interested. Electric cars, ugly wind turbines, outdated solar tech – still not interested. Start discussing Hydrogen fuel and H extractors for use in individual dwellings and offsetting reliance on taxed based electrification energy that is needed to prop up failing government spending – dictated by corporate agendas – then perhaps I will start to listen. Perhaps Greta is trying to say this… Read more »
If I ruled the world every day would be the first day of spring, and I’d totally decarbonise as fast as possible. Carbon pricing is a ‘Market’ solution, so is just another scam to be exploited and rorted by the parasites. I would do taxes, but all the money would be hypothecated to decarbonisation, ecological repair and reimbursements to much of the population, the ‘tax and dividend’ idea. I would electrify everything, have efficiency greatly improve, do something about the albedo flip in the Arctic (what I have to idea), institute a fully circular economy that recycles everything possible, reforest, with forests not plantations, every possible part of the planet, find some means to draw CO2 down from the atmosphere and sequester it for the long-term combined with rocks or in the deep seas, have roofs, roads etc, made more reflective to increase planetary albedo, hopefully safely, and destroy Market… Read more »
Confucius was asked what he would do if in the reigns of power – real power – not the wishful fantasy.
“I would redeem the dictionary” he said (in his own tongue).
I wonder how many here would appreciate why he gave the power of the word the foundation from which all else follows?
As the sage observed, ‘A wassail bowl is not a wassail bowl’.
I would vote for you. But look what happened to Corbyn with a much less ambitious agenda.
Well, I’d fight the ‘antisemite’ smearing for a start, and not stab comrades like Williamson and Livingstone in the back, for starters.
Reasonable discussion.
However, still not the solution, still wiggle in the mud.
Stop the money being the reason for living.
Stop growth.
Stop breeding.
Stop interfering in other tribes territories.
…
There aren’t many days that pass where I fail to experience the narcissistic thirst of some vampirish ego or other, one who’s opinions are founded on nothing more than a sick self bent image of reality, it’s the land of trumpet heads, where partiality is hallowed ground, why so ?…because its a snug and comfortable fit for their mental mirror box of inflated tricks, so try all you like to exchange views, crack the cloudy seeing glass – and gain some visibility – but unless your as equally disposed, it’s pointless, – as they’ll only deflect you into their own deformed reflection, then return it to you in some jibbering disarrangement, far far away from the one you conveyd….whats worse is, I find that that these irritating fantisizers, have more often than not, qualified into positions of power , and actually hold sway over others !….Now that, never ceases to… Read more »
Greta Thunberg. The kid that rocketed to stardom in less than a year, yeah – seems legit to me..
She’s a media creation, PR. Somebody is bankrolling her. I really had to laugh when she told the UN they were a bunch of do nothing hypocrites in here little speech and then watch them applaud “yeah, she’s right! We are a bunch of hypocritical scumbags that express values we don’t actually hold!” (applause).
If I was in front of the UN and called them a bunch of corrupt warmongers on the take, and they are, I wouldn’t get out without being tasered at the minimum.
Richard – as their surveillance technology advances their hope is that one day they’ll be able to taser you for justing – “thinking about” – calling them corrupt warmongers.
The point I was just making is that the idiots that UN demonstrated that Thunberg is a PR plant by applauding her for stating they haven’t done anything in the decades that they’ve warning catastrophe is imminent. They are jokes. You can lie for a decade, maybe 2, maybe 3, but 4 – that’s getting long in the tooth of keeping the lie going. The real threat is peak oil/fossil fuels – that WILL happen. Not certain when, but it may already have. Fossil fuels aren’t a threat to our environment, but imagine all petrochemicals being in scarcity, and being 5 times more expensive tomorrow. That’s a threat to our society, and it’s inevitable. I don’t think the buffoons that are supposedly our “representatives” even know the “global warming” is a lie – I think it’s a cover for the end of extractable oil resources – because eventually, that’s going… Read more »
Richard – I’ll have to respectfully disagree regarding your position on climate change Richard. Having lived in the arctic and now in southern California, as well as having read widely the emerging science over many years, in the end I’ll trust my own eyes over anything else. The underground ice houses that kept whale and seal meat intact for as far back as we can trace Inupiat tribal culture in Alaska are melting, filling with water and ceasing to preserve meat, and this is occurring in “real-time,” not geologic time over thousands or hundreds of thousands of years. Only ten short years ago I lived with Inupiat people in Barrow, Alaska who at that time could still store their food in these underground ice cellars dug into the permafrost. These same ice cellars are now failing rapidly, the meat spoiling and an entire way of life is in danger because… Read more »
Well where I grew up there was plenty of snow in winter so we went skiing every weekend up until the early 1980’s and then it disappeared mostly and was sporadic until 2000. Plenty of it now. You talk about permafrost, do they not know how to dig deeper? The short of this is, that even if global warming is a problem, a life threatening problem to Earth, NOTHING WILL BE DONE. The government proposes a carbon tax – how does that fix anything? How is that supposed to address it, at all? What’s the heat retention of CO2 versus nitrogen? How much better of an insulator is CO2 over Nitrogen, Oxygen, Water Vapor – etc? Why isn’t that known? Easy enough to measure. Seems like this would be a basic thing to measure. For me, it’s that I’ve caught climate change “scientists” LYING a lot. Lying and lying and… Read more »
It is known. You list a series of plain wrong assertions of scientific ignorance, but every one is long established science. And what LYING are you slanderously asserting? Give us just ONE concrete example, please. And your demand that the Inupiat just dig deeper into the permafrost is typical of the denialists lack of human compassion, but it is a nearly entirely Rightist phenomenon, so that comes as no surprise.
FYI we try to discourage the use of propaganda terms such as ‘denialist’ and ‘conspiracy theorist’, because they have been deliberately inserted into the popular mind to close down debate & use programming to render certain POVs unacceptable without analysis.
What do you call someone who denies settled science and the reality of climate and weather destabilisation, for no other reason than ignorance, paranoia and ideological fanaticism, then? Why is a supposedly ‘Leftist’ site such a refuge for fanatic devotees of an irrational Rightwing cult?
List each assertion I’ve made, and demonstrate that each on is long established science.
That CO2 has a longer heat retention than nitrogen which makes up 75% of the air. In other words, that it’s a superior insulator to NO2.
There, you have a concrete example, it’s testable in a laboratory, it’s simple to invalidate or to validate.
Oops, I mean N2. Not NO2 – that belongs almost exclusively in beer. We can measure insulation properties, and we already know that CO2 has less heat retention than N2 and I’ve never heard an explanation of what carbon dioxide is a “greenhouse gas”, when nitrogen is demonstrable worse.
Our media and governments lie to us all the time and sometimes, it is professionally dangerous to explain to the commoner how they do. I know we don’t have freedom of speech, and when you dare to express it our “news” certainly won’t repeat it.
Again, I’m absolutely no scientist, but I know how to test the proposed phenomenon.
I’ll be blunt – fuck the liars that pervert reality. You can’t test everything for certain but if a politician is making the claim, assume they are lying.
‘I’m absolutely no scientist..’. The beginning of wisdom. If N was a greater greenhouse gas than CO2, a proposition so fantastical that I sense we are approaching Peak Denialist Lunacy, the Earth would be like Venus.
Here’s something really simple.
Find out what the heat retention of Co2 and N2 is. Go ahead, should be easy to find that, it’s just measuring their insulating properties.
Notice nobody has actually published this anywhere.
It’s a very simple measurement to make. The reason there’s such a lack of information on this subject, and it’s so vague, is because it’s BULLSHIT. They are lying. When you try to nail them down to something that actually is testable and is verifiable, they squirm away from it.
gretna greena
fashion and religious ikon indeed indeed
hair by harmony hair spray ozone depleter xtra hold
boy blood and urea make up by maria abrahamovich @ house of epstein inc.
xxx tra small Schutzstaffel ss shirt buy hugo boss
virgin kinder chabad jacket by branson by branson island corpse inc
gender fluid trans medication by bill and melinda gate keeper eugenicks foundation
soul sole property of satan ltd all rights reversed
…gender fluid trans medication… Why ruin a good comment by laying blame on those who are abused in their condition and because of their condition. Why is that an issue? 800 billion for war is not reallt that important. But people with differing gender experiences are connected to these pathetic psychopaths that use a community of human beings that are ready to be gassed in the ovens. Not the rich asswipes. You may consider the intend by the owners to rile up the masses against anybody that is ‘Transgender’. While there is no problem with ‘Transparent’, the childless gender adjuster/ess does not receive that nod. Gender and anything that has to do with it need to be retired. It is time to move on and first get all the other costly shit in order before inciting hate against Trans/Gender/People. As it looks, the Trans- haters have their priorities ludicrously backwards.… Read more »
because greta greena is a boy
dear boy
a very naughty one
the worst possible
a male actor from a sick satanick acting dynasty
as for gender fluidity just another zio communist project
There is another dot to connect in Greta’s story. When considering why the world of billionaires has taken an interest in climate change consider the two areas of the world that are still commons. That is not property which can be owned. They are international waters and the atmosphere. There are already people arguing that the only way to protect the atmosphere is to remove it from the commons and make it a property. This argument uses the libertarian capitalist principle that people will only care for what is theirs. Those promoting this idea say it does not matter who owns the atmosphere just as long as it is private property. That is as good as saying they intend it to be owned by the few which will not include you or I. At first you may think the proposal is ludicrous. However we have already moved in that direction.… Read more »
That the ruling global parasites are seeking to profit from the climate destabilisation disaster does not change the science.
How did capital come about historically? From work, the bourgeois respond ideologically. Marx unmasks the “bourgeois tale” and highlights the true origin of capital, which “comes to the world dripping blood and dirt from head to toe, from every pore”. In fact, far from being born from work, capital is the result of bloody expropriations.
Hyperbole alert! Defcon III.
Iskratov is correct. The six million slaves murdered by the Spanish in mining the silver of Potosi, which provided a great deal of the capital that launched capitalism in Europe, is a pretty bloody Holocaust if you ask me. One of very many.
This excellent article may help connect some dots:
http://www.stovouno.org/2019/02/23/globalism-of-climate-how-faux-environmental-concern-hides-desire-torule-the-world/
JD.
that’s desire-to-rule
JD.
From my viewpoint we no longer live under a capitalist society: it’s morphed into an insidious form of Fascism. When our spineless politicians declared the banks “too big to fail” that threw capitalism out the window. The Fascism becomes more obvious each day. We have a gigantic liar, war criminal & mass murderer, the Stony Bliar, walking free & advising on govt & elections. We have a man who helped reveal war crimes, Julian Assange, banged up in Belmarsh high security, being tortured to death. Looking back in history, reading Matt Ridley’s The Rational Optimist, for example, it is great to see the progress Mankind has made in metrics such as longevity & prosperity since coal power & the steam engine unlocked the Industrial Revolution. Life expectancy has doubled since 1900, for example. It is difficult to see industry & fossil fuels as anything but great boons for mankind. Points… Read more »
Is your description of nuclear power as ‘clean and safe’ meant to be a parody of the Panglossian optimism of the ‘The Market is God’ crowd? Fossil fuels proved useful, but the deadly legacy of their polluting side-effects, primarily greenhouse gases, has been well-known for decades, and will now undo all the benefits bestowed, and much more besides and no quantity of denialism will stop that process.
Greenhouse gasses, like CO2? The entire climate change nonsense is just that, and I was a big believer in it starting when I was 15 years old, 30 years ago. I’m an electrical engineer now, I have a computer that is fully capable of simulating a Cray supercomputer from 1993, but you know what I don’t have? A climate change model. I also have never seen any prediction made by this model turn out to be correct, despite alarmist cries (which I truly believed in) for 30 years. The arctic was supposed to be ice free, the end of snow predicted in the UK, LA and NYC under water by 2000. The polar bears are dying off. I’m not scientist, but I understand the scientific method. A scientific theory takes into account all hypothesis both correct and incorrect, and explains them all. If a theory can’t make any useful predictions,… Read more »
Extraordinary. So ALL the Academies of Science and scientific societies on Earth, 99% of actively researching climate scientists, the IPCC, WMO, NASA etc are all either fools, complete idiots, or engaged in a gigantic conspiracy to some strange end, that nobody has revealed, save in paranoid declarations, sans facts, sans evidence sans a single scintilla of proof.
99% is a myth. I have actually looked up the names of “scientists” listed, and they aren’t scientists at least half the time or they are in the soft sciences the other 1/2 of the time. They aren’t fools. They are liars. They are propagandists. You don’t believe a gigantic conspiracy could possibly exist. Find that weapons of mass destruction program in Iraq yet? The OPCW just had to admit that they have no evidence that Assad gassed his own people. Find that Russian Collusion yet? They happen all the time. Jeffrey Epstein killed himself, right? Governments, and their toadies, lie all the time. Remember the Gulf of Tonkin that never happened? I am an engineer, certainly not a scientist, but I have more than enough education to understand what a scientific theory is. Where’s the model I can test, and I can duplicate? To my right, I literally (and… Read more »
The three examples of conspiracies you list are all cases where the evidence that the ‘official version’ is garbage is and was copious. It was just that the MSM hid it all from the plebs. With climate science there is no evidence of the massive conspiracy, surely the greatest ever in scope, save laughable inventions by the denialist industry, like ‘Climategate’. Red meat only for the true disbelievers.
It was just that the MSM hid it all from the plebs. With all due respect, it’s the MSM that has convinced you that global warming is going to kill us all in 12 years. With climate science there is no evidence of the massive conspiracy, In 12 years, marvel that you are alive when nothing has been done to curb CO2 emissions. Again. I’ve gone through it 3 times. You believe “99% of scientists” – that is your dishonest “news” media. Now: don’t get me wrong, I was tricked too. No shame in being wrong, and you are wrong, just as I was 20 years ago. I’d be on your side of this argument back in 2005. The reason none of the predictions are correct, is that it’s simply a lie. I know it’s hard to imagine your news media would lie to you this blatantly, because you know… Read more »
The MSM is not monolithic. Here in Australia the Murdoch cancer and ‘business’ rags like the Fin Review remain denialist, pro-fossil fuels, viciously anti-Greenies etc, and in places dementedly so. The rest of the MSM remains ‘even-handed’ giving air time to denialist loons, although less so than before. The public is far ahead in recognising the undeniable. However all still downplay the gravity of the situation. The ‘We’ll all be dead in twelve years’ scam was part idiocy, part misrepresentation by the denial industry. It was, if I recall correctly, a prediction that our fate would be sealed in twelve years, because the process of climate destabilisation would be irreversible, even if we totally decarbonised overnight. That’s wrong, but only because we have already reached that situation and there’s no need to wait for 2030. As for water vapour, it is far more prevalent in the atmosphere, but its residence… Read more »
Haha, believe what you like, It’s not my lifelong work to deprogram you. You’ll see for yourself in time.
Your government and your “news” media lies to you constantly. It will just take time for you to realize that, and again, there is no shame in being fooled. I said previously I was. I wasn’t fooled because I was stupid, I was fooled because I didn’t recognize our “news” media as what it actually is – propaganda.
We are all victims of disinformation. I just have the ability in this area to recognize these lies. You do as well but it may take longer for you. I cannot get a model for climate change although I’ve really worked to get it, this is because there is no actual model. It’s really a bold faced lie, and you will know this in another decade or so.
Richard, if I may be so bold-your reply seems not connected to my observations at all.
I don’t care about your observations. They are anecdotal. With all due respect, every scientific theory MUST have a model to accompany it. There are models for evolution (and we use them all the time to make everything from self driving vehicles to optical character recognition systems, to chip routing algorithms), there’s a model for gravity, there’s a model for magnetism, there’s a model for electricity, transistors, for fluids, everything. The purpose of a model is so you can make accurate predictions. With a good model, we can design using the model to come pretty close to an expected result. Everything that an engineer uses is bases on models to make everything and look at what we have today – you can talk to me clear on the other side of the planet and at practically no cost because of models of light through single model fiber optic cables. There… Read more »
None of those authorities you cite have claimed the apocalyptic version of catastrophic climate change you read in the popular media.
The strongest statement yet made by the IPCC et al is that human activity is ‘likely’ to be responsible for ‘some’ recent warming. And even this is a fudge.
But don’t take my word for it, go and read the actual reports issued by these people.
Of course the IPCC and its ‘Reports’ are rubbish. It has been plain that they have seriously understated the extent and rapidity of climate destabilisation for at least twenty years. Apparently the Reports require ‘consensus’, as do the COP conventions, so must be dumbed-down and minimalised to meet with approval from hard Right, fascistic and religious fanatic rogue regimes like the USA, Saudi Arabia and Australia.
Yes . Well done. You’ve finally got it!
Three cheers for John Steppling: an article with real breadth & depth. He has seen through the man-made climate fraud & rightly called out Saint Greta for the billionaire manufactured creature she is. I have an autistic grandson & feel sorry for poor Greta: she has surely been brainwashed by her odious family et al into the climate cult. The cult is totally anti-science: it violates the second law of thermodynamics. A cooler body cannot warm a warmer body. It’s a fraud. A great little book for the layman, by climatologist Dr. Tim Ball: Human Caused Global Warming The Biggest Deception In History Only 121 pages reveals all: the science & scandals, the politics & profiteers. Dr. Tim names the Bankster Rockefellers & multi-billionaire cronies George Soros, Ted Turner, Maurice Strong & others as the chief pushers of this fraud. He identifies their 3 main motives: Depopulation, De-industrialisation & a… Read more »
Excellent posts and links, John. Thank you! And have a Merry Christmas.
@Seamus Padraig,
thank you & have a mighty fine Christmas yourself.
JD.
How can ALL the Academies of Science and scientific societies and 99% of actively researching climate scientists not understand thermodynamics, but you do?
You’re simply reciting a popular lie. The ‘consensus’ story is media propaganda.
There is a rough ‘consensus’ among climate scientists on the very very broad concept that manmade CO2 may be a factor in recent warming in the northern hemisphere.
There is no consensus about the extent of this potential forcing, whether it’s minor or major, no consensus about the likely extent of future warming it may produce (if any), and very little agreement on the matter of climate catastrophe.
This is the reality behind the scare headlines and bogus ‘97%’ figure. So strange that sites such as this and journalists such as Cory Morningstar, that question every other aspect of the media narrative still completely accept the media narrative of AGW.
No-there is very broad and deep consensus among climate scientists. The very few deniers among them are mostly on the denial industry payroll, directly or indirectly, some alumni of the tobacco harm denial industry, and the remainder are mostly Rightwing zealots. Denialism is the quintessential Rightwing project.
That is just not true. Read the literature rather than the lying corporate media version.
I don’t read the corporate media for facts, and, in any case, the corporate media, particularly the Murdoch cancer but others as well, not just here in Australia, are the leading lights of denialism.
Methane in the Arctic and Positive feedback loops not mentioned.
Your Remarks about big money is behind Greta is wrong.
I expected more from off guardian.
We are not impressed.
have a nice day yourself.
If you can provide ONE solid scientific source for ONE piece of solid real world evidence that positive feedback loops have EVER existed in real world climate cycles I for one will be happy to debate that data with you.
Big Money isn’t behind Greta? So Amazon, Google, Facebook and BMW didn’t fund and promote Climate Strike then? Funny I thought they did.
The science regarding ‘hot-house Earth’ mass extinctions like the End Permian ‘Great Dying’, where an initial greenhouse gas forcing eg the eruption of the Siberian Traps igniting great beds of coal, then causes an initial warming, which causes the release of methane from frozen clathrates, and we’re off to the races, is pretty well established. Try reading the literature explaining that process.
None of that is ‘pretty well established’. It’s a hypothesis based on computer models built by people assuming the hypothesis is correct. If a positive feedback loop had occurred in the past the Earth would have continued to warm and warm and warm. It didn’t. In fact it cooled again and warmed again and cooled again in cycles we can clearly observe if not explain. The entirety of physical evidence shows the Earth maintains checks and balances and nothing indicates the probability or even possibility of positive feedback loops.
If you claim the contrary please indicate the physical evidence for such a loop in the geological record. You won’t, of course, because there is none.
There is very much more than computer modelling involved in the hot-house Earth hypothesis. Most of the evidence is geological, and paleontological from the signs of great basaltic eruptions, study of isotopes in rocks from the time, and the fossil, evidence of the extinction, during the End Permian, of 95% of aquatic and 90% of terrestrial genera.
If you understood the science you’d know none of those things you cite are in any way evidence of positive feedback loops and have never been claimed to be.
@ mr sarc, utter tosh, as is all you write. The geological evidence proves that CO2 has NEVER EVER been a main climate driver. A great book by geology Prof Ian Plimer: HEAVEN AND EARTH Global Warming: The Missing Science 500+ pages, 2,000+ ref’s to peer-reviewed papers etc & well indexed. While you seem incapable of producing a single reference to back your waffle. You do, however, seem to manage to stretch the 97% consensus lies to 99%. Where does the extra 2% come from? Your delusions? Dr. Tim Ball, as I ref’d above, in his book calls out 2 of the main frauds guilty of the 97% consensus lies: Naomi Oreskes & John Cook, the crook who runs skepticalscience. If Dr. Tim were wrong these clowns would sue him in an instant. A graph showing, over geological timescales of 600 million years, CO2, Carbon Dioxide, plant food, has had… Read more »
Ian Plimer!! The rogue geologist with extensive interests in fossil fuel businesses? The embarrassment of all who have crossed his path. The fellow is a standing joke. I recommend the Skeptical Science review of Plimer’s most recent tome, if you have a few hours to peruse Plimer’s scores of misrepresentations, distortions and outright idiocies. The man is a renegade even among geologists, the last scientific specialisation to come on board (no doubt due to financial conflicts of interest)with the theory.
Who is “We”, if I may ask?
It might be the royal ”we.” If so, we are honoured!
If anyone needs me, I’ll be tugging my forelock as hard as I possibly can…
hey chris close the door on the way out
it is bloody cold in hear with all that global warmings
un alls
who owns the carbon fiber graphene ship that greta sails ?
maybe the same family that own the economist perhaps
my life already
For what’s its worth, I’ve started buying solar panel cells via a company called The Sun Exchange, who then install them for South African communities. I use bitcoin to pay for them and they pay me back in bitcoin. It’s not a huge return or anything but I hope this sort of direct action is a way we can start investing in actual, tangible things and services for people rather than paying straight to the fucks at the top.
Scaremongering was the weapon of choice for the US military-industrial complex to increase their sales and reach. USSR, Cuba, Irak WMD, terrorism, Iran.
Now they specifically branched out to Western teenagers and women – emotional civilians to increase profits from Green products, laws and restrictions. The phenomenal fast expansion of XR and “Greta” is a proof of this.
To be not scared by the rapid progress of anthropogenic climate destabilisation indicates some pathopsychological and spiritual malaise, in my opinion.
Please note the decreasing quantity of science and increasing quantity of spin involved in changing the name from ‘global warming’ to ‘climate change’ (adopted when the warming stopped circa 2000) to ‘climate destabilisation’ (adopted when the climate refused to ‘change’.
‘Climate destabilisation’ is such an unscientific and blatantly dishonest term it is refused by most honest scientists. It implies that climate is naturally ‘stable’, when all evidence, observational, historical and prehistoric, clearly shows it is anything but.
Climate is always unstable, shifting, changing, moving through short, medium and long term cycles we only partly grasp.
No one can currently say if human activity is playing any part in influencing any if those cycles.
All we have are competing theories. And a massive multi-billion dollar psychological operation that has succeeded in turning one of those theories into an apocalyptic religious cult.
To argue that all the science and evidence from reality is rendered null and void by some people changing their preferred nomenclature is profoundly bizarre. I prefer ‘anthropogenic climate destabilisation’ myself. And to assert that warming ceased in 2000 is so erroneous that it is beyond ‘wrong’.
So I entered “Capitalism is bad for your mental health” into Amazon, and instead received the first result as being “Saving Capitalism; for the many not the few”. Or “in your face” might be a better title, authored by Jeff Bezos. The above is an excellent article. It resonated mostly with the sense that ‘we own shit’. We cannot change anything, unless the means of production are brought into workers control. It strikes me that there is farmland aplenty in the UK, for example, yet no-one in my village works it, a friend who is a farmer cannot afford staff, yet the middlemen/producers and no less the supermarkets still make a profit, only to throw away vast quantities of food. It is overproduced yet unaffordable, intensively farmed (more often abroad?) by people earning zilch. If it were produced by local people working those fields, and stayed local, I’m quite confident… Read more »
Good comment, thank you for sharing. But also very pessimistic. Which reminds me of Gramsci’s quote: ‘pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.’ There are plenty of chances to change things for the better, it’s just not the chances we are been giving from those who want to control the world as they have controlled it for hundreds of years: more for themselves at the cost of everyone and everything else. I also disagree with the idea of urgency. That we live in apocalyptic times is a mindset that is as old as the Bible. I think we have plenty of time, if not now, then in other times to come. The comment on self-medication is a good one. I tried that myself in my, what Byron called, ‘middle ages’ like many others did an do too, but was fortunate enough to try to find healing in books, art,… Read more »
You see, at this time, it becomes more and more clear what is actually going on. Ever more viewpoints arise, or appear, that make the source of humanity’s real problems more obvious than a pink painted Elephant in an Ansel Adams picture.
There should be a continuous thread somewhere secure and open, where people can discuss in real time the issues that plague them already. And their conclusions. Their observations. Their rising Awareness.
This is not about saving the Earth. This is about saving the Earth for humans and their spiel.
However, it is absolutely clear beyond the shred of a doubt, that Cockroaches will be the next dominant species on Earth. Will they teach their children about a huge species that blew up the whole planet 420 million years ago?
Chris Hastings, Great essay, Thank you for writing it. I feel the same. I know you felt very intense when writing it, and so far as I am aware, you neither made any spelling mistakes, nor grammatical or logicial errors. Please write more here. You write brilliantly, and please occasionally stop writing for a moment, and press enter. It makes paragraphs, which from my perspective makes your work, much more readable. I bet you can play guitar, as well as you write. I know people like you. I wish I could play, got loads of guitars, but I haven’t got the talent. I think some people, are born with it. They pick up a musical instrument, for the first time in their lives, and they can play it… My wife and I have just got our Christmas Tree up. I said there is no way, that will fit in my… Read more »
stages are reached….where it is “decided” that changes must be made in order to activate transformation toward an imagined goal – movements (not of our design) built though those we Elect to rule over us – being the genuine reason they need us to acquiesce to them, for they must complicate our time with manufactured events and regulated movement, with needless desire and indebted routine that connects the masses to a prosaic existence where supplied fabrication becomes the original standard, and therefore, the more fooled we are by the fakery – the more we disown out true selves, imperceptibly…..and easier the alignement, virtually programmed.
I find it interesting how XR including Thunberg do not point out the devastation caused to the planet and humans by the following (and if you try to discuss these subjects in their own orgs, meetings & foums you get ignored, ridiculed, censored and even gaslighted and banned:
– the current and past decades & decades of geoengineering/chemtrails
– damaging frequencies: EMF, RF (incl.wireless and dirty electricity) e.g. 5G
– GMOs
– fracking
– Smart Grid/Internet of Things/Smart Cities (incl. Mega cities with their human densification e.g. micro-flats/pods and co-living stack ‘n’ packs)
– why the UN’s goals put their environment supreme over humans (rather than helping the environment hand-in-hand with helping humans)
– why the general public get no say (power and decision-making) about the UN agendas like their SDGs, Agenda 21/2030/2050 etc
Or the pollution caused by army drills and war.
Yes! Exactly. E.G. Depleted Uranium among other things (purposely used), and its despicable consequences (see Iraq and other places). XR don’t place much (if any ) emphasis on the Military-Industrial-Complex, do they.
They say the Pentagon is the world’s #1 polluter.
Yeah, we live in intresting times, indeed, and by now even you should understand why the Chines sees this as an curse while arrmagedon was an hickup because of bad trasnlation and the word means trasition, an road crossing to be more precise. Yeah, CO2, huh, from the infamous Hockeystick to our very own Missias, Saint Greta the nincompute. I could link to scientists whom indeed works with atmospheric conditions, to solar radiation, and chemists whom can tell you the truth about CO2, witch never have and never can do anything with weather, and sea levels, from milleniums to the present, talk about what some idiots drool about biodiversity, when Polar bears have endured thru times when there was NO icecap at all to the present in our Mother Earths history, and what on earth can an rise if any have or cause of negative impackt when ME have been… Read more »
The more dire our predicament, the more fanatic the denialist zealots become.
No one explains better who this false CO2 propagandists are than the great James Corbett.
The follow up of his video “How Big Oil conquered the world” is his video “WHY BIG OIL CONQUERED THE WORLD”. There we get informed why BIG Oil or “The “Oilygarchs” created and press forward this CO2-myth.
A must see!
You find this Video (“WHY BIG OIL CONQUERED THE WORLD”) on Youtube – https://youtu.be/0wlNey9t7hQ – or on Corbett’s site https://www.corbettreport.com/?s=Big+Oil (look there for “WHY BIG OIL CONQUERED THE WORLD”).
How does a ‘fake’ story that threatens fossil fuel assets come to be ‘invented’ by Big Oil? It is so ludicrous that it exceeds the laughable.
Because the real world is complicated & non-binary. Only propaganda memes for idiots provide the simple constructs you appear to find necessary for your psychological wellbeing.
I would suggest you watch the excellent videos in the link above, butcher both know you’re not going to do that. You have too much proselytising to do for the Church of Climate Catastrophe to be bothered with all that evidence malarkey
You didn’t answer the question. Why would the fossil fuel behemoths control a movement that intends rendering the tens of trillions in fossil fuel assets worthless? It does not compute.
I would encourage you to watch those excellent videos, but since you seem to want fast and easy answers: 1) Their assets will not be worthless. Only in the mind of the most naive oil, gas and carbon will stop burning anytime soon. Civilisation would be inviable. Not even Greta is willing to perish of cold (fair enough, burning all of Sweden´s forest might keep Stockholm warm for a few winters) or to starve to death while her veggies travel from Spain to Sweden on the back of a horse. 2)In fact, many oil companies are increasingly relying on their gas sales to make profits. That´s why many requested Trump to back the Paris agreement: https://money.cnn.com/2017/03/29/investing/exxon-trump-paris-climate-change/index.html Gas, as a ‘greener’ energy source, will be subsidised. 3) “Carbon will be the world’s biggest commodity market, and it could become the world’s biggest market over all,” according to Mr. Redshaw, the head… Read more »
I agree that fossil fuels will not be dropped as required, and therefore we will proceed rapidly to the climate destabilisation Holocaust. The financial interests are too gargantuan, controlled by life-hating psychopaths, and the denialist industry that these psychopaths have created too powerful to overcome. In any case, given global dimming hiding a degree Celsius or so of warming, the residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere, the 150 zettajoules (10 to the 21st power)of heat sequestered in the oceans over the last 200 years, and the positive feedbacks like megafires, warming soils emitting carbon, warming oceans giving up CO2, melting permafrost causing CO2 and methane production and frozen clathrates emitting methane, we are well and truly rooted already. The denialists won, and they are thoroughly enjoying their Pyrrhic victory.
There is no “denialist” industry. The “gargantuan” economic interests of the big oil companies and those of the apocalyptic cult of climate change are one and the same.
You are basically arguing that the story you have been told by those “life hating psychopaths” is true and you don´t seem to even consider questioning it.
The inversion of reality is perfect and priceless. The PR firm that thought up this line of denialist rhetoric must be very proud of itself. There was no tobacco harm denial industry either, was there. No denial of anything-the powers that be just ‘fess up and take their medicine.
Richard, of course there was a “no tobacco harm denial” PR campaign. There were scientists giving testimony of the proven benefits of tobacco, just as much as there are scientists making apocalyptic (and failed) predictions about climate. https://extinctionclock.org You are not making your argument any stronger. Let me remind you: -The climate change agenda was driven by no other than Maurice Strong, a Rockefeller (Standard Oil) protege who was director of, among others, Petro Canada. The UN has kept since then a close relationship with oil companies: Pachauri, former IPCC chair and Nobel Prize winner, was in the board of India´s Oil and Natural Gas Corporation. The current chair of the IPCC started his career, according to wiki “as an economist working for Exxon-mobile”. It is the same club. -Carbon will be the biggest commodity and Carbon trade is expected to become the biggest market altogether. Oil companies have precisely… Read more »
I love the ‘skeptic’ monniker, and am most impressed by your assertion that there was no tobacco harm denial industry, just ‘scientists giving testimony of the proven benefits of tobacco..’, like cancer, heart disease and emphysaema. Not doing your case much good, are you?
Read again, Richard, I wrote exactly the opposite. I will make it even clearer:
The tobacco industry recruited scientists and PR people to assert that tobacco was innocuous, some even spoke about smoking having health benefits. This provides us with an example of how scientists are susceptible to corruption and influence from economic interests (re climate change).
I wonder how could you get the opposite sense of what I wrote?
It is important to pay attention and make at least the tiniest effort to understand what is argued if one wants to get anywhere in a discussion.
Cheers
You typed ‘ There were scientists giving testimony of the proven benefits of tobacco…’ The error in your assertion is, in my opinion, the use of ‘proven’ where surely ‘alleged’ or ‘supposed’ would be better. I see your point now, but the comparison to climate scientists, who are NOT paid to invent anything, but purely for their disinterested scientific investigation, is a classic inversion of reality. The true fabricators of climate science are the tiny cabal of denialist climate scientists, nearly all with well-known and lucrative links to the denialist industry.
Perhaps they are not paid to invent anything, it is obviously hard to know, but certainly they are paid to produce specific results. Funding is crucial for research. When you have most governments and private funding bodies being so biased towards the man made climate change theory, it will necessarily give the impression that this is is the only theory, or that it is at least the dominant one. Dr Curry, one of the top climate scientists of the US (and a “denier”), explains how this bias works much better than myself: -An agency receives biased funding for research from Congress [or whatever other funding body]. -They issue multiple biased Requests for Proposals (RFPs), and -Multiple biased projects are selected for each RFP. -Many projects produce multiple biased articles, press releases, etc, -Many of these articles and releases generate multiple biased news stories, and -The resulting amplified bias is communicated… Read more »
@richard le sarc
“Big Oil” doesn’t mean the physical substance of oil – It means the “Oilygarchs”. And these Oligarchs are also in the pharmaceutical branch and the arms industry and so on and on. It’s about “rruliing se worrld” (as Germans would call it).
“Corbett Fan” hits the spot!
Merry Christmas – or “Guten Appetit”!
True, which is why the Big Parasites are seeking to profit from climate destabilisation, from vain attempts to avert it, and from everything else in existence. That does not render their central repository of loot and power, the fossil fuel assets and the petro-dollar, irrelevant, nor does it make the science incorrect or even, Heavens above, invented.
M. Le Sarc, Corbett you might actually find interesting. Even when he’s wrong he’s worth considering. Here’s his take on 9/11, short and sweet:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3xgjxJwedA&list=PLSkpoEnom-3saHaneQq1Q0EEdYzAKYBnE
There’s a good example of him making a very tight explanation and calling BS on the establishment.
And Corbett Fan – don’t be rude if you want to change minds. Le Sarc isn’t stupid, he’s not simple, he just disagrees with you. If you want an honest conversation, you need to be ready to provide an honest response when somebody asks you something.
Le Sarc, Big Oil isn’t threatened by these other technologies and nobody is going to buy less oil even if climate change is a real threat, that will kill us all – and it’s not.
I think that most can see where this is going…
Harry Dunn’s family ‘reassured’ after meeting with Priti Patel
These vermin are trying to soft-soap the extradition of Assange.
It’s the label, “capitalism” which confuses the issue here for many on the “left” (another confusing label), I’ve sometimes heard it said that the problem is Bad Capitalism, and that capitalism itself is a good thing. There is probably useful food for thought in that idea – but I feel the need for more precise definition, and my hunch is that the problem is simply Unsupervised Capitalism. As we currently know it, capitalism has got away with being staggeringly unaccountable, but this never needed to be the case, nor is it now necessary for it to be the case. It has profited, deliberately, from the unwillingness of intelligent, educated people to stand up and protest in large numbers; to insist that adequate accountability be forcefully enshrined in laws, constitutions and tenets, valid everywhere under the demands of mere common decency. We don’t even need labels like “left” to betoken common… Read more »
Capitalism destroyed human evolution because it had nothing better to do.
Man should be credited for being as dumb as a bag of rocks just like modern advertisers portray him.
MOU
I’d agree with you, except that capitalism also consists of those dumb men.
We can surely do better than that.
wardropper, the general election was totally rigged, which kind of negates your arguement.
I just about agree with everything you say in your post.
What you don’t seem to see is just how totally corrupt the world you live in is.
I think you misunderstand my argument, Rob.
It’s not that we should trust capitalism, but, on the contrary, we should mistrust unsupervised capitalism and its inherent temptations for the greedy by enforcing strict controls on what it is allowed to get away with.
We’re talking about how to deal with fundamentally dishonest people, so that they can’t harm normal society with impunity. That requires setting, and enforcing, rational, and detailed standards of honesty, which have recently become an optional frill in all our politics. An unnecessary inconvenience to the corrupt, in fact.
Like you, I am totally convinced that the GE was rigged, and I believe I see the world’s sickening corruption as clearly as you do.
That is precisely akin to arguing for the ‘regulation’ of cancer.
It is precisely NOT akin to that.
Cancer is a naturally-occurring phenomenon, whereas unregulated capitalism is a man-made abomination.
I am, however not against labelling such capitalism as a cancer, although it is of course only a figurative analogy.
Whether man-made or ‘natural’ (many cancers are caused by man-made pollutants)the process is the same.
Capitalism is not an organic process.
It is a robotic, anti-human mentality, and, even if there are parallels, my argument targets not capitalism itself (which is, really just another word for “business”, “commerce”, or “trade”), but unregulated, unaccountable capitalism, which is another way of describing gross theft.
For clarity’s sake, I personally insist (for myself) on distinguishing between the two.
Can you imagine Tiny Tim as figurehead for the Climate Change Movement singing Tip Toe Through the Tulips as opposed to Greta & the D-Funkadelics doing climate rap?
I long for the good old days of Big Band music & smoke filled bars.
MOU
Proyect is not with the effort to criticize. Afterall he writes for, inter alia, Counterpunch. Another source not worth criticizing since its founder died.
just to add that I really admired your book…globalization of american fear culture. Ive quoted it, im pretty sure, a couple times on my blog.
Thank you!
i would have preferred an id magazine fashon cover with a queen victoria winking greta. this is a great boy who will soon be a new old man. i have looked at all the data and it is true the world had only 33 years left but that was then this is now. some are saying we only have 13 years left eye say in cern time we may only have 13 months maybe even 66 days because the climate crisis is crashing time as we speaketh we need emergency earth repair taxes all over now. we in the west must year zero so india and china can grows make bike your friend eat insects pay your pollution dirt tax help richard branson and sting build greta a virgin balloon so she can look down and spit on is and inform us via loud hailer that we must work harder… Read more »
Banking Nature – a documentary on youtube offers a glimpse into the way ‘carbon’ guilt offsetting operates.
“Cory Morningstar is almost certainly the most important living journalist in the world (next to Assange perhaps)”. Assange is the most important. As for Cory Morningstar, I’ve never heard of her, and she doesn’t have a Wikipedia article. Who is she? Also; “…capitalism is actually bad”. No. Some aspects of capitalism are bad, some are good. And their are more acceptable flavours of capitalism that undoubtedly work to the benefit of mankind, and the planet.
Sorry – ‘there’.
Please, Alan-what are those supposedly ‘beneficial’ aspects of capitalism?
How can the concept of eternal growth benefit the planet?
Lookit, planet Earth was doing nothing anyways and an eternal growth conundrum was just what the good doctor ordered so that planet Earth had something to do in its infinite bordom.
Opposing planet Earth via atmosphere & stellar activity was not enough interaction for planet Earth to be meaningfully engaged existentially, of course. Man had to find a reason for planet Earth to exist because man does not know why it exists.
MOU
What type of growth? The world needs to move from extensive growth to intensive growth, but the latter is still growth, and is good for the environment and mankind generally.
Do you envisage any, dare I say it, limits to growth on this planet?
Not having a Wikipedia page is a plus since it indicates lack of corporate approval.
It means they are not notable.
It means Wikipedia supports the Establishment.
It won’t stick its neck out and recognize any new genius or stunning contribution to society which is not already well-enough advertised.
Read this, and then you’ll understand why we respect Corey Morningstar: http://www.wrongkindofgreen.org/2019/01/17/the-manufacturing-of-greta-thunberg-for-consent-the-political-economy-of-the-non-profit-industrial-complex/
shirley we should all listen and mark the words of greta already for like damian omen and the baby from rosemary polanski the babies are important are they not. we need to listen to the kinder surprise the kinder know knowledge do they not. let us not look at the greta family of actor going back hundreds of years kingsmen and queensman. greta gets the man of the year awards all media overs for is she not that already is 16 not man for the army we are dirty goy we must pay the taxes making the planet clean again like it was in caanan and babylon not forgeting khazaria. we must pay we must regress eat bugs and except are barbera lerner spector futures mongrels all the owls have it we must become husk picked bare is it not the city of london needs the monies for oded yinon… Read more »
we are dirty goy we must pay the taxes making the planet clean again like it was in caanan and babylon
not forgeting khazaria.
—
How does this kind of anti-Semitic tripe remain here?
Freedom of speech Louis. And Mr Wisdom does have a point considering the genocidal content of much of the Old Testament – as with Canaan. From Wiki:
We are then reassured that “genetic and archeological evidence prove that the Canaanites were never exterminated “. Of course all this means is that the Canaanites were never *completely* exterminated. But the thought was obviously there.
Freedom of speech Louis.
—
I guess I have different standards. I would not allow anti-Semitic, racist, homophobic or sexist comments on my blog. But if that passes muster here, so be it.
Well this is the whole problem. We know the labels of outrage: “anti-Semitic”, “racist”, “homophobic”, “sexist” etc. – and I daresay there will be another couple of dozen of them by the time we get to next Christmas. But who is the judge here? And it’s oh so easy to play the morally offended card and just make everything go away. But what is it that’s being banished?
One of the reasons that Off-G existed in the first place was the seemingly compulsive banishing of comment after comment on the Guardian. Whole swathes of communication “disappeared”. And we’ll never know why. We are supposed to trust those who set themselves up as moral guardians.
In any case Off-G do have a limit but they converse with those who they deem offensive first. And they explain WHAT the offense is. It’s nice to be treated as adults in this way.
marxism burst forth from the loins of the zionist
as a marxist louis project
tell us about the family the history of karl?
who or what where his family connections
zionist rabbi class perhaps?
what exactly is your project louis?
i think the world is tired of your internationalist
projects
my boy
already
You who said Vanessa Beeley was “too ugly to fuck” are saying you “wouldn’t allow sexist comments”?
I’ve seen $3 bills with more sincerity than you, my friend. It’s people like you who stoke anti-semitism.
Judeophobia (‘antisemitism’ is a complete propaganda invention)is welcomed by all true Talmudists, religious and secular. This is because Judaism was invented in and to perpetuate hatred of the other, of the non-Jew, and the apostate Jew, and has always welcomed Judeophobia as a means to perpetuate the cult, and the power of the Rabbis and the other elites, and keep the tribal rabble in line. Zionism is the perfect expression of that milieu of hatred, which has almost always been the root cause of Judeophobic atrocities. The ‘Oldest Hatred’ is not Judeophobia, let alone ‘antisemitism’, but Judaism itself. The Oldest Extant Hatred, to be precise, because the basic xenophobic and exclusivist paradigm no doubt pre-dates Judaism.
Genocide was central to their tribal cult, which proved tragically ironic on more than one occasion thereafter.
Because we have an open comment policy , which means a very tiny minority of our thousands of visitors sometimes post racist stuff. We will generally remove the worst examples, but since we get hundreds of comments a day some will occasionally slip by. And we have to moderate sensitively since free speech includes the right to be offensive and ridiculous – up to a point. As witness the fact you are free to roll up here and be abusive to the site, its authors and readership – a luxury not available to visitors at the outlet you work for, we understand.
As witness the fact you are free to roll up here and be abusive to the site, its authors and readership – a luxury not available to visitors at the outlet you work for, we understand.
—-
Actually, CounterPunch has a FB group that has many comments far more hostile to CounterPunch proportionately than anything seen here. Furthermore, my own blog has far more critics proportionately than this website. And I get a laugh out of them. Too bad you are so thin-skinned about my appearances here. I generally have little interest in intervening here unless it has something to do with Syria or in this instance is commentary on something I have written.
Off-G are far more thick skinned about your appearances here than you have been to criticism on your own blog. I have frequently read some – to say the least – intemperate responses from yourself. How about here:
https://louisproyect.org/2015/10/04/a-masterclass-in-sophistry-patrick-cockburn-on-the-russian-intervention-in-syria/
Comment 6 which ends with the delightfully civilised “Now kiss my ass and fuck off.”
Or how about this?:
https://louisproyect.org/2015/06/08/a-reply-to-cult-leader-david-north-on-an-american-first-strike-on-russia/
Note the grotesque picture of “David North”. Classy.
Not sure you’re wise to be ‘getting a laugh’ out of receiving majority negative responses from your readers everywhere you post. Maybe try to be a little less arrogant and consider it an indication to rethink your position on some things that so many find insupportable.
What you call ‘thin-skinned’ others might call being accountable to our readers. We certainly try to take on board other POVs – even when as aggressively expressed as yours tend to be.
You’re more than welcome to continue posting here as much as you like – it may help to widen your audience a little in these trying times.
Why Syria Louis? You only repost pro establishment narratives so what’s the point?
i am in all actuality a semite can eye bee anti myself
i am
you are not
for it is written that your tribe are histories
cookoo and red beard pirate
all actor
performing twisted and sick role
be proud of your russio turkick non semite roots
mr donmeh mr jacob frank
for your tribe kill the children of gaza every day
and they are semites all.
your gang had a transfer agreement with adolf
you fund nazi rape squads in ukraine
you sterilize oriental jews
give them jobs as cleaners
poor sephardim
ashkanazi i ask you who is the anti semite
yahoo
here hare here
but you
Proyect I understand, because he wears that placard announcing he is a leftist, and because he sort of is an editor at CP. Sale doesn’t and isn’t, so I really do wonder at why this reactionary non-article is published by anyone this side of the CATO Institute?
—
Because Counterpunch is not a line publication, obviously. People like Diana Johnstone went berserk after it began to publish articles more in line with my POV. She migrated to Consortium News, which does have a line just like Off-Guardian. In fact, it is healthy to have ideological diversity otherwise you end up with websites that essentially involve preaching to the choir. I will not name names but you know who I am talking about.
Pretend leftism is not healthy, it’s propaganda.
Regarding the CounterPuff site, Louie Proyect’s observation that – ” it is healthy to have ideological diversity ” – translates quite clearly and simply to = endless support for endless imperial regime-change wars, but all in the name of “progressive values” and only the very “best of intentions” of course. I mean, what could possibly be more “progressive” and “ideologically diverse” than support for yet another U.S. sponsored color revolution or jihadist proxy conducted – “civil war?”
Sadly the concept of “ideological diversity” at CounterPuff no longer includes many of my favorite anti-imperialist writers, such as Diana Johnstone, Andre Vltchek, Edward Curtain and C.J. Hopkins. One would imagine it is only a matter of time before we have to add John Steppling’s name to that list.
I always get a chuckle out of the idea that CounterPunch is no longer “anti-imperialist”. If you keep a running tally of pro-Assad articles there, I am outnumbered by at least 10 to 1. You can see frequent items from Jonathan Cook, Robert Fisk, Patrick Cockburn, et al. What galls people is that my single article against all theirs is a bridge too far. As for Diana Johnstone, Andre Vltchek, Edward Curtain and C.J. Hopkins, they got booted because they attacked Counterpunch on other venues. Hopkins was the worst of the lot. He assumed that I was responsible for him being dropped when I never objected to a single word he wrote there, as hackneyed as they were. I only objected to him crossposting to UNZ.com, a white supremacist website. And even then, it was an objection made on my blog, not on Counterpunch.
What would the holidays be without a heaping serving of hypocrisy and few more lies from Louis Proyect? Here’s a bit of background, for anyone unfamiliar with the events Louis is lying about …
https://consentfactory.org/2018/09/29/how-to-maliciously-smear-your-critics-and-not-get-away-with-it/
What I said is the absolute truth, CJ. In any case, you are welcome to have your stuff published on a website which is almost entirely devoted to articles arguing that Blacks are genetically inferior and that Hitler’s evil reputation was based on lies.
Of course what you claimed is not the truth, Louis, as anyone who reads the above-referenced essay (and checks the links) will quickly discover. But I do applaud you CounterPunch guys for your audacity. It takes balls to blatantly lie and smear a person, knowing in advance that he’s going to post evidence of your mendacity and hypocrisy. For example, the fact that CounterPunch has taken approximately §100K from Ron Unz, the guy that runs the “white supremacist” outlet that you are, once again, trying to smear me with, as I documented in an addendum to my above-referenced essay … Addendum, January 2019: In an amusing twist to the events recounted above, it turns out the CounterPunch Red-Brown hunters who are so fond of smearing writers like myself as “far-right shills” and “anti-Semites” based on the fact that we allow our essays to be posted in The Unz Review have… Read more »
You clearly expect people to believe that when Ron Unz was donating to CounterPunch, he was also hosting a website that Black people were genetically inferior and that Hitler was slandered by the Jews. You know and I know that Cockburn broke with Unz as soon as he became a white supremacist. I guess that is par for the course with you.
edited by Admin to improve legibility
Alexander Cockburn died in 2012.
Ron Unz launched The Unz Review in 2013.
CounterPunch accepted $15K from Unz in 2013 and $20K in 2015.
Did you have any more lies you want to try out, or was that it?
https://www.adl.org/news/article/ron-unz-controversial-writer-and-funder-of-anti-israel-activists
https://www.algemeiner.com/2013/12/12/new-york-times-others-praised-anti-semitic-and-slanderous-article/
You are being too hard on Counterpuff, C.J.
They have to keep those Soros shekels rolling in, like old Amy Goodman at Democracy Now.
Louie, Louie, Louie! I never said that you regime-change “progressives” at CounterPuff “never” publish “anything” that might be anti-imperialist, I just said you got rid of those writers that I considered the very most clear and well informed anti-imperialist voices that were once present at CounterPuff, while of course continuing to publish your own endless imperialist pro-regime change nonsense. It is of course just like you to twist the truth into a pretzel to fit your purposes – eh? Sort of like your endless “moderate rebels” shtick and your credulous acceptance of the OPCW management’s manipulated report, while ignoring the now many internal whistleblowers who have literally destroyed that report. Of course the most telling phrase in your response Louie is stating that CounterPuff publishes “pro-Assad articles.” LOL! “Pro-Assad” of course translates from “Newspeak” into the actual real world as meaning – ANY article that might so much as questions… Read more »
I just said you got rid of those writers that I considered the very most clear and well informed anti-imperialist voices that were once present at CounterPuff, while of course continuing to publish your own endless imperialist pro-regime change nonsense.
—
And I repeat that they were dropped after attacking Counterpunch on other venues. That’s Jeff St. Clair’s policy and clearly understandable.
May I request (once more) mr Proyect that you FORMAT YOUR POSTS. I can’t imagine you, as an editor at CP, have NO understanding of basic HTML, but since you seem unable to grasp our simple formatting, I will take you through this as if you are completely clueless.
If you look carefully at the comment form you will see a number of formatting tabs.
When you want to cite another comment or other content click the one marked “b-quote” , paste in your copied text, then click “b-quote” again. This will wrap the quoted text in a blockquote that makes it obvious to your readers you are quoting.
At the moment your quoted material is indistinguishable from your own words and highly confusing for readers.
Please do your best to grasp this very basic requirement.
Ah, but all these regime change wars are all done for the best of motives, Wimmin’s rights and gay rights and freedom and democracy and liberating the oilfields.
The anthropogenic global warming hypothesis is so obviously flawed it is difficult to see how any scientifically literate person cannot see it is wrong.
you are dirty
you pollute
you must pay your united nations allocated pollution taxes
do not think
pay goy pay
Yes, all those scientific illiterates at all the Academies of Science and scientific societies on Earth, and all those fools who are actually doing climate science research. If the fate of humanity was not at stake, Dunning-Krugerism would be exquisitely entertaining, like synchronised aquatic karaoke down the shallow end of the gene pool.
richard le sarc Sarcasm is hardly an argument. However, to the point. The hypothesis holds that increased carbon dioxide emissions cause increased average global temperature. Since the beginning of the twentieth century CO2 emissions have constantly increased. However, the temperature has not. From 1910 to 1940 there was a warming trend. From then until 1975 there was a cooling trend. From then until 1998 there was a warming trend. Since when there has been no statistically significant warming. This is not even a positive correlation, let alone a cause and effect relationship. Indeed, you could find a better correlation between ice cream sales and deaths by drowning.
Everything you say is, unsurprisingly, erroneous. There is no way that climate will change in a straight relationship to greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. It is, I’m sad to tell you, more complex than that. You have fluctuations in the radiance of the Sun, you have albedo changes on Earth, most particularly after volcanic eruptions and from particulate smogs resulting from industrialisation, wars, megafires etc. When you assert that there has been no statistically significant warming since 2000, well you are just asserting the opposite of the facts. The last five years have been the five warmest globally ever recorded.
richard le sarc You are correct in noting that there are many factors influencing the climate. Indeed, until the beginning of the century the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change asserted on its website that the climate is a non-linear, complex, chaotic system that is unpredictable. They deleted this assertion, not because the science had improved so as to make the climate predictable, but because it is an inconvenient fact.
That the planetary climate is a chaotic, non-linear, system is precisely why we are in such deep excrement. If you remember your ornithology, the ‘Butterfly Effect’ shows that even a small change in a chaotic system can lead to great chaos and wild fluctuations for extended periods, before a new stability is reached. When the ‘butterfly’ is many gigatons of greenhouse gases added to the atmosphere every year, the chaos ensuing, which is already evident and will grow much, much, worse for millennia, will destroy any civilization, starting with agriculture, I would guess.
richard le sarc You completely (wilfully?) missed the point: the climate is unpredictable.
Steven, the climate is predictable in the macrocosm, if not the microcosm. You cannot say what the temperature, humidity, precipitation will be at any particular time, but you can make ever more accurate probabilistic estimates of climate trends over decades and centuries. You cannot say if and when lying down on a railway will prove detrimental to your health, but you can list the probability of it proving harmful.
richard le sarc You are just wrong. The climate is unpredictable. This assertion is uncontroversial. Here’s a quote from the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change:
In plain English, it acknowledges that we cannot predict the climate. https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/03/TAR-14.pdf
edited by admin for clarity
Please peruse my contribution, again. I was talking of probabilities. The probability that pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, thereby trapping re-radiated heat in the earth system, and consequently perturbing the planet’s heat balance, will lead to climate instability is high. You will not be able to predict what the weather will be like at 13 oclock on the 32nd of Juneuary, 3456, but you will have a good and getting better idea of climate trends over decades and centuries, ie hotter average, maximum and minimum temperatures, greater deluges, more massive floods and deeper and longer droughts, as we are already seeing.
Brilliant article by John Steppling.
He cuts through all the shite, like a hot razor knife on butter.
Thank You,
Tony
The overall piece is correct in that every kind of deceit is employed to protect the sustainability of a sense of possession and control – identified as ‘survival’ or persisting in ‘prevailing over’. The very nature of possession and control operates at all levels as the idea of separation given power of allegiance and support. It operates in reaction to, and attempt to override, or escape, a sense of lack and chaos associated with fear of pain of loss. It overrides relational communication as the imposition of structures of systemic rules. No one gives up their self (investment) unless from a recognition from which the investment is realised to be false – and negative. The nature of any false self investment is to defend itself against exposure to threat – and where self-honesty is threat to self-experience – the experience is given priority over relational honesty. Relational honesty is both… Read more »
I’m very much pro-environment, building a sustainable economy and future for people and all other species that we share this planet with. I think any right-minded person wold probably agree.
However, I find Thunberg and the whole political movement building around her, and Extinction Rebellion, extremely disturbing and anti-democratic.
For what it’s worth (two pence) I’ll try and write a piece over the Christmas holidays to rationalise my concerns as someone who is a green “industry insider” yet fundamentally disagrees with the approaches now evolving.
Greta is in showbiz, where the media make you, and then they break you, if and when they choose.
A few years down the line, when there is no longer anything particularly special about her age, and New York isn’t under water, and the Arctic and Greenland Ice is still there, she will be forgotten. Hopefully she won’t get the ill-treatment that some former celebrities get. It’s not her fault, but those around her.
The media don’t choose – in such matters they are instructed.
It doesn’t have to be overt, so much as trained to be seen as obedient.
The Arctic summer sea ice is already not there. What year do you think it is-1972?
don’t worry Mike – you probably won’t be able to see her in the dark.
“The whole thing is so ludicrous and idiotic that one really does wonder if the West is not in some trance state. ”
There is no need to wonder about this patently obvious fact. Stop watching TV for a while. It does wonders. Really.
People are in denial about how powerful this medium that beams “information” with light, directly into our brains via our visual cortex. It is way, way more powerful than anyone really give s it credit for.
It’s called Programming for a reason
It is a form of mind-capture and identity manipulation.
But it doesn’t matter if its demonstrably absurd or deceitful to those who control the narrative – as no one can hear the critical warning as anything but ‘denialism’.
However, you are right. We do not have to get our ‘world’, or news or our identity of emotional investment in the framework of another’s programming.
But this means accepting social exclusion for the sake of aligning in that which identifies us truly.
Could it be that Cory and the ‘serious Greens’ are pissed off/envious of Greta’s celebrity status?
Plots within plots make me very suspicious.
If Greta makes any of the Sheeple stop and think, that can’t be a bad thing.
What if they think that the same capitalist system that has been destroying the planet for 200 years, has seen the error of its ways and is now going to save it?
Would that be a bad thing?
Is it possible that somebody has constructed a slick corporate marketing campaign to produce exactly that result, and avoid the alternative conclusion that capitalism is unreformable, and must be abolished to prevent environmental and social collapse?
Would a cute and cuddly teenage figurehead be an obvious choice, for the sort of people who would be asked to design such an advertising campaign?
Of course the deceit appeals to anti-capitalism and anti corporatism – and in some ways will achieve that – because a contraction to a global state control would also hold energy/guilt control over corporate compliance – not just nations and populations.
But possession and control consolidate to the very very few – while the many are reduced – not least by their own programming – to smart city concentrations.
How would you abolish possession or combination of capital – as the money and resources by which to undertake an endeavour?
The carbon guilt system has echoes of original sin – fused with the idea of social credits – but you still have to pay for or make exchange for energy and services.
State control can replace corporates as a global state can – such that nothing will be able to move or have influence that can in any way threaten ‘stability’ of the system.
Only certain pathological types would not feel guilt, or remorse or deep sadness at the prospect of our greed leading to an ecological Holocaust that will render our children’s lives bitter and brief.
I said nothing about feeling – I was talking of the weaponisation and marketisation of guilt. What you feel is your OWN consciousness. What you choose to use it for will determine the meanings you give it. And vice versa. The meanings YOU give your experience determine your responses and that generates your identification or ‘programming’. Your narrative is YOUR gift to yourself and your world and your freedom to use as a lens through which to explore what you are giving priority of meaning to. ‘Greed’ is used as a moral pejorative – and thus as a guilting or shaming leverage that does not address its roots. The roots of greed are in the substitution for love and life with a mentalised emotionalised narrative that can never rest in or share in its being – because it is without love – in the seeking of an external replacement –… Read more »
Pompous pop psychology in the service of denying reality-truly uplifting.
You are free to deny your feelings if that is what you choose – I wasn’t trying to recruit you. But by your own act you are exemplifying the very thing you accuse or flag onto me, and then attack to prop up a lack of substance. What truly uplifts you – apart from playing the pompous judge of your fellow beings? You refuse to read or indeed relate. That is your freedom. I am not opposed to your freedom and so I don’t attack your choices but reflect that they ARE choices – so as to live my own choice instead of aligning in a negative transference. Smear, put-down and pomposity reveal you have nothing of substance to say. Only attempt to deny and leech from those who have. Parasitic and destructive behaviour is the pattern of what you SAY you are sad about in terms of a world… Read more »
I read plenty, and ‘relate’ to the misguided peddling pernicious and immensely harmful rubbish with compassion and sympathy for their moral and intellectual afflictions, and hope and pray that they will come to see the error of their ways.
That is bullshit, richard le sarc! How pompously you set yourself in judgement over others! When you meet your own afflictions and yet live and move through them, you may open to the embrace of a compassion that extends willing embrace in place of affecting a sympathy that works to destroy no less than open attack – for sympathy damns the victim in its judgement even while seeming to join with. You use the terms compassion and sympathy as if they are the same – but compassion is identifying with another as your self – and recognising your self in the other. In presumptive ‘morally superior’ damning of others you project your sins onto others to look down on them. But that is simply a chosen or accepted self-illusion. That then programs You. You are free to choose illusion, but you are not free to make it true, nor to… Read more »
I well understand compassion which is why I forgive the lumpen denialists their sins, they being the product of pathopsychologies that very well may have been imposed on them by genetics, nurturing, socialisation and bad intellectual hygiene.
That you believe this is your freedom. The only limit on creative imagination is tolerance for pain.
We each conceive and perceive worlds so differently that. There really is no communication between us beyond extending a blessing on your journey through life and the trust that it will find you in a way or a timing that you recognise and appreciate.
It worked for Tommy Hillfinger Inc., and the Energizer Bunny, man.
There is no business like show business. Ethel Merman
MOU
What’s with all the put downs and belittling of Greta?
If she’s been co- opted who gives a shit. Most of the right wing detest her.
The grown ups have fucked up, big time. Young people could do no worse.
Fair Dinkum… Look at the people behind Greta, and who is applauding her, as John points out.
Bottom line (no pun) is its about saving the capitalist system itself with its ‘green new deal’ and unlocking trillions to invest in green technologies.
I humbly suggest you read Cory’s articles. She’s bang on the money regards Greta and Extinction Rebellion @ Wrong Kind Of Green.
When someone or some group is getting lots of coverage in the MSM, straight away, that sets off alarm bells in my head.
There is a reason they are getting that coverage.
‘If Greta makes any of the Sheeple stop and think, that can’t be a bad thing.’ That is also MediaLens’s take. Problem with the Thunberg phenomenon however is that she does not make other people think. It’s just a slight adaptation from narrative that the green warriors use to finance their narrative. Where we used to fight against the terrorists, now we fight against against climate change. And the fight is always the same, i.e., we don’t have to fight, actually we do not have to do anything at all including thinking. The only thing we need to do, is send money, and ‘they’, whoever they are, will do all the dirty work for us. And that is exactly the reason why the message sells: what could be easier than to let other people do the work for you? Until we get bored of that narrative, and they will invent… Read more »
So we should avoid all new green technologies?
Greta is a corporate puppet and Cory is the new Messiah?
That’s too simplistic.
One step at a time Geezah.
The message of extinction must inevitably be followed by the questions of How? Who? and Why?
Then the shit will hit the fan.
With respect FD, I never said Cory Morningstar is the new messiah, and neither did John Steppling or anyone else here that has referenced her work.
Again, read her work with an open mind. It is very detailed, and she details who is behind orgs like Avaaz and Get Up, and other NGO’s which are all interconnected.
And funded by the same billionaires.
You’ve heard the term ‘Manufacturing Consent’. That’s what this is all about. These bastards have their eyes on potentially many trillions $$$$.
Question is Geezah: Are they manufacturing consent or manufacturing dissent amongst the Left? Another divide and rule strategy.
Greta, whatever her motivations and whoever has manipulated her message, is stirring the hornet’s nest. Let’s withhold judgment until the ruling psychopaths start to stomp on her.
Fair Dinkum, the ruling psychopaths loathe Thunberg. But they’ll use her, too, to protect their Precious-the Wealth, Power and Control. The girl is almost certainly beingmanipulated, but who isn’t these days? Perhaps she imagines that she can use them. In any case she and her generation do, indeed, face mass extermination if the ecocidal capitalist cancer system continues as at present.
The billionaires are licking their chops salivating over the trillions of pension assets they intend to loot on the pretext of funding green boondoggles.
Seasonal greetings Paul…. Yep. – many many trillions. The bastard filth.
Read an excellent takedown of all this at The Art Of Annihilation blog last night:
‘The Global Climate Strikes: No, This Was Not Co-Optation. This Was And Is PR”. A chronological timeliness of how it all unfolded.
Greta’ s social media accounts were set up in June 2018. She was ‘discovered’ in August 2018, coincidentally (cough!) by Ingmar Rentzhog, founder of We Don’t Have Time, who are, of course, fully in bed with these vampiric parasites.
… ‘together, these organisations represent the most powerful – and ruthless corporations on the planet, groups salivating to unleash 100 Trillion dollars to fuel the Fourth Industrial revolution – pushed by the World Economic Forum.
Surprise, surprise.
Who else would be pushing it!
It’s not ‘extinction’, cobber. It’s extermination because deliberate.
A deliberate extinction or huge contraction of population, works through the CO2 scam – not as a result of CO2 ‘threat’. Without demonising CO2 this whole thing falls apart. In other words the real polluters are saved by the CO2 psyop. ‘Banking nature’ on youtube – reveals the underneath of some of the ‘carbon economics’ – but the behavioural (thought) control is much more insidious than merely degraded health, environment, foods, and living conditions. Control of energy supply is not enough. Food and water control, medical control, educational and information control. Its all about control – and this is obvious by the cultic lack of capacity to think or communicate in those who succumb to its false premises. Eugenics by stealth operates as a top down agenda because it was publicly rejected and yet officially ‘flagged’ as if special to German Nazi ideology and thus stamped out. Induce the poor… Read more »
Fd, the ONLY good thing that came out of it was that many of the kiddies (teenagers) and young voters will have transmuted into Corbynistas by the swift move to grab them with a policy for protecting the environment and a ‘GND’. Many of the XR /AR types in their coordinated two week campaign are just older sad hippie types many of whom were paid to be organisers ! Most believed all the tripe about AS and Jezza. The media didn’t know which way to turn as the election was planned – to support the XR cause and build the case for the investment of hundreds of billions from the public purse (watch as the tories turn on a pin and suddenly deliver it as tbey claim the many extreme events justify it and god told Bozo directly to do – Queenie and Charlie) following suit any day now. The… Read more »
When you dismiss young people as ‘kiddies’ you dismiss humanity itself.
It’s the grown ups who have created the looming apocalypse.
Teenagers are usually ready to skip school or protest against rules or adults because of the quantities of hormones flushing through their systems.
Fair enough me little dimkun, if you are so certain of what you believe in and think all of us are just spouting organised shade against little Greta and your extinction can only be saved by her and her new toddle army, good luck! Just a final response to your last message: “When you dismiss young people as ‘kiddies’ ” Young people are adult young with agency Kiddies are not adult and without it. “you dismiss humanity itself.” Humanity is A LOT bigger then the western centric, charade that you seem to allude to being the totality of humanity – the world really does not revolve around us. Pretending that it does and reinforcing that illusion is how the powerful retain that power – as in the story of Copernicus as you no doubt know. “It’s the grown ups ” Not all grown ups – very, very, very FEW. Perhaps… Read more »
And when will you be done groanin?
On your last breath perhaps.
PS. Don’t believe in luck, Xmas, or ‘making up my mind’
All fantasies of the thought process.
Yes, ok, happy the death of the old sungod and rebirth of the new sungod! (In the northern hemisphere!)
Or as we now scientifically know – Happy Solstice.
All religious worship is pretty much about astronomy- not fantasy elves.
Children are less likely to have sold out psychologically and spiritually than adults. Life defeats the many, who retreat into idiocy and conformity, and mindless consumption in a frantic attempt to compensate for inner emptiness.
You entirely miss the plot.
What is the weaponisation of climate aimed at achieving?
Reseting the Economic and social order – globally.
What is the environmentalist identity being subverted to enact?
The taking on of corporately manufactured toxic guilt – as a form of atoning or saving from apocalyptic fear and worship of Nature as victim.
I invite you to stop thinking in the frame of programmed identities – for such is the mind that thinks it thinks – or runs the thought that its framers propagate and nurture.
Who programmed you, Brian?
You make a statement as if asking a question. That is the intent to frame and program another in your image so as to cast them to serve the script of your narrative identification. In this you are resonating in behaviours that collectively embody the mindless conformity to a self-programmed emptiness that no amount of anything can fill. But you can ask a real question if you want a real answer. The programming in guilt always posits a ‘who’ to blame because blame is the predicate of identity as self-denial cast out on the other. I am deprogramming from the idea of choosing to use guilt as means of control over life – of self or others. You are free to choose to frame your mind in guilt by attempting to get rid of it on others and world – and thus storing up debts and denials in waiting. “Give… Read more »
I see-self-programed. When did you begin to doubt science in regard to anthropogenic climate destabilisation. I think the ‘why’ is pretty plain.
There you go again Richard, making statements in the form of questions. There is no science supporting the narrative of AGW or whatever name you morph it to. I didn’t ever need to doubt what does not have a leg to stand on in the first place. But just in case your phrasing was clumsy and you genuinely wanted to know something of where I stand; I was aware of the signature patterns of deceit from the outset – although political background came in later – across a wider field of scientific distortion than merely weaponising climate change. A lot of this and other issues is identity and worldview. Invested identity is invisibly structured by its worldview. As for self-programmed. That could be erroneously interpreted as a closed loop. My experience is that becoming aware of ‘self-programmed negative conditioning initiates or activates desire to be free of it or indeed… Read more »
free (OF the need to struggle in a false sense of self).
(apocalypse itself is revelation – fear of damnation bringS the destructive into play)
…NOT to emotionally invest by reaction and then CONSCIOUSLY DO nothing relative to its dictate…
Your assertion that the science of anthropogenic climate destabilisation does not exist is truly bizarre. Beyond wrong, beyond erroneous it is. I would say, the product of a deep neurosis that only you could truly contemplate, if you ever feel the need to return to the real world of rationality, science and evidence. Whether your brainwashing and Thought Control is externally derived, or comes from the depths of your own psychology is of no interest to me.
I just do not accept AGW (aka anthropogenic climate destabilisation), as true science – But I see that – within its framing, scientists, along with many others HAVE to operate. You simply cannot engage in ordinary human communication, Richard. I AM aware that weather modification weapons exist – have been developed in secret, have an international treaty agreeing NOT to use them way back when first being explored. But you are not talking about these areas of human interference – are you? Some of these are being brought out of the black op into open use under cover of the carbon-guilt-unit narrative. You and many others gain a sense of meaning and identity from demonising CO2 – and claim the high moral judgement as to rationality, science, admissible evidences and of course the unerring ability to not only diagnose disorder – but to create new categories of not just wrong… Read more »
You assert that a massive scientific consensus based on scientific axioms, 200 years of theorising, gargantuan quantities of direct and proxy observations and constantly improving computer models does not exist. That is, in my opinion, a truly delusional state, in the pathopsychological meaning of the expression.
You are delusional in reading only what you want to see in what I write – for I never said what you are framing me as having said. Go back and read what I said and either engage with what I said or stop making false statements in the pretence of a conversation. You claim to be supported by scientific axioms, 200 yrs of theoretical thinking, and amassed data of records and mathematical computer modelling, with regard to the specific point of my choosing not to accept carbon dioxide as the ‘forcer’ of runaway or dangerous warming (or in your psyop-speak ‘climate destabilisation’), much less the teeny human component? And you call me delusional? You make the appeal to ‘Authority’ as a strategy by which to evade discussion. Because you do not know what you are talking about or you are unwilling to openly own your agenda. The networks of… Read more »
Just why you wish to deny science and evidence and rely on charlatans like Heller and the other alumni of the fossil fuel industry and Rightwing controlled denial industry is your problem. I see you use a favourite denialist tactic, of denying your denialism, one that the Murdochites in our MSM use habitually. One facet of your agit-prop I find charming is its brazen projection and reality inversion, as when you assert that the piper calls the tune, when the denialist pipers pay millions, and billions indirectly, for propaganda services and to buy and bribe politicians and the MSM, while the scientific piper pays an ordinary salary and research grants if you’re lucky.
I looked and did not find science. I don’t deny science. I’m aware of energy cartel monopoly that extends way beyond the energy sector. You are being played mister. I am not in control – but they put that at the top of their priority. Until and unless new energy sources are allowed in, the so called ‘fossil’ fuels actually WORK. But there is no technical reason why they cant be much much cleaner and much more efficient – that is – outside the regulatory control structure of ‘power and profit’ on this world. Lead was added to petrol just for patent-yielding revenue – regardless knowingly lead poisoning the living – particularly the kids. Instead of jumping on people who don’t align in Mr Gold’s plan to replace humanity with robots of flesh or tech or hideous hybrids of both – why don’t you shoot your mouth at ‘Mr Gold’… Read more »
You found ‘no science’ (ahhh, the lofty condescension)but the Academies of Science and scientific societies of Earth, all found what the the US NAS called ‘settled science’. When do your Nobel Prizes begin arriving?
You deal in oxymoronic doublespeak.
‘Settled science’ is a self-contradiction – and the say so is not a scientific outcome.
Narrative dictate is not science. It’s dogma – that serves private agenda.
Any theories can be opened to scientific investigation. In theory.
But how does science work – Oh I know! – theories are subjected to attempts to disprove them. And if they cant be disproved they stand as current best model until or unless anomalies render them questionable.
But have you noticed? There is no science allowed in the narrative assertion of carbon dioxide driven global warming – or for that other fudge term you use. ‘Destabilisation’.
I don’t care for your sarcasm.
You would make a fool of yourself if you were intending to make sense – but that is not your purpose here is it?
PS: By creating a special psychopathic disorder for me, you don’t have to say that I am wrong or mistaken -and so do not have to back anything up with reason, or science or even passionately held feelings that you cant altogether articulate. Thus you lay CLAIM to science and reason – whilst keeping it sealed off from occurring as already a done deal or a ‘settled consensus’. There’s no debate with a madman – and so the madman protects his madness by attacking it in others. Mass madness is normally induced as a means to get an unwilling people to back a war or other destructive agenda that no one in their right mind would support. Hence the drip drip poison of PR and incentive to distort the record – so as to induce a manufactured context in which you WANT to support war under some sense of moral… Read more »
More text-book projection.
Obviously we all want to be on the cover of GQ, wagging our fingers and looking like damn funky game changers.
Yeah well, get used to it.
So Cory is beyond reproach?
And Greta is evil?
No I’m not playing the straw man game. Greta is an innocent who’s being used by unscrupulous bastards. Cory is an intelligent reporter with an insight into what is going on.
That sounds about right to me.
Stop looking for saviours.
COREY: In case you stilled haven’t read her ground-breaking article, Corey Morningstar happens to be an environmental activist of long standing who believes completely in the standard anthropogenic global warming theory–in that respect, her environmentalism is totally mainstream. (I, on the other hand, do question some aspects of AGW Theory; she never does.) Where Corey departs from the Thunberg/XR crowd is that she questions the so-called solutions being marketed by these ‘greenwash’ PR campaigns. She maintains that they have little if anything to do with solving any climate problems. She claims they are mostly about using a crisis to dupe people into handing more power and wealth over to the big banks and global corporations that caused the problem to begin with, so that they can effectively finish the job of privatizing all of nature. GRETA: Corey never attacks her as a person or questions her motives. Nor do I.… Read more »
That, I would say, is just about what is happening. How could it not? The capitalist parasites control all the MSM, so Thunberg must be considered ‘useful’ to corporate rule.
I struggled through this garbage as far as “Greta is being presented as the virgin symbol of purity”.That was enough you sad sick bastard Steppling.I look forward to all the down votes from the other sad bastards who hog comments here.
This is simply empty abuse. Any further examples or anyone replying in kind will be removed. Please try to express a reasoned and coherent criticism
Balls, I found the article abusive.Your response tells me a lot about “Admin” also.
There is nothing abusive about the article. Greta is 16, I’d left home at that age. She, on the other hand, doesn’t appear to have reached puberty and is autistic… Who’s using who in this operation where ‘image’ is everything?
Yes but Greta IS being presented as the virgin symbol of purity. Imagine this campaign with a full grown adult as the main focus. It would have sunk without trace.
wow, corporate marketing really works.
Don’t be bloody impertinent.Some here can’t seem to separate the message than this girl puts out,which is basically “Listen to the scientists” and capital going about its usual business of co-opting ,where it can,any movement or ideas,with a view to turning them to profit.The use of State power is pretty swift when climate change and those who try and warn about it stray onto territory not to capital’s liking.All we get here however,is an essentially simple minded rejection of the complete climate change argument because capital,as capital does,seeks to exploit it for profitable opportunities.
There’s no co-opting. This was capital at work from the start.
She debuted at Davos!
She is like the Dalai Lama, chosen to fulfill a role, from a young age. As was Melala whats her name.
Why do you not see that?
Is it because her look is hypnotic?
Or something else about her?
After all the message is not new ONLY the messenger.
John Thatcher: another name for the category of ‘Skip over; don’t read’. Reason in this case: not housetrained in basic civility. So: ignore, along with the invincibly delusional Proyect.
Yet again, another absolutely profound peice of writing from John Steppling. And I much enjoyed his take down of the odious shill Proyect, who tends to visit here a tad too often. I sent Cory Morningstar’s article about Greta Thunberg to a ‘liberal’ Guardian reading friend 8 weeks ago now, pointing out who was behind Greta. Complete silence. No response. Not even a basic ‘How ya going Gezzah’ in at least 8 weeks. I agree Greta Thunberg along with Extinction Rebellion are manufactured for our consent. Most interesting to note, the same ‘socialist groups’ that have ignored Julian Assange for years, cheered on the Hong Kong protests as fighting for ‘democracy’, who parroted the mainstream narrative about Syria (and Libya) are also huge fans of Extinction Rebellion and Greta Thunberg. Most fascinating that. As John says…. join the dots. Or follow the money trial. “The whole thing is so ludicrous… Read more »
“I sent Cory Morningstar’s article about Greta Thunberg to a ‘liberal’ Guardian reading friend 8 weeks ago now, pointing out who was behind Greta.
Complete silence. No response. Not even a basic ‘How ya going Gezzah’ in at least 8 weeks.”
nearly opposite reaction from my 20-yo daughter who is doing an anthropology degree…She wants to learn about this “side” of the “science is settled debate” even if to try to debunk a lot of it, but she can’t; she (and her friends) know they are being lied to; they just can’t quite articulate how or why just yet..Despite the MSM wall to wall lies, they’re getting there, and Cory Morningstar is a large part of that (as is Tony Heller, who needs more exposure)
My friend is 55, and her and her husband are white collar, and quite well off. Glad to hear about your daughter Yarkob, at least she’s questioning what is going on.
A lot more people need to know about Cory Morningstar and her excellent analytical work in my opinion. Havn’t heard of Tony Heller tho, will check him out, cheers Y.
Don’t waste your precious time on Heller-he’s just another Bolt, Jones, Morrison, Abbott, Joananova, IPA etc obscurant.
Your daughter wants to become a denialist? How ad. Better tell her all the better paid work peddling denialism is taken-by the likes of Heller, an alpha Dunning-Krugerite if ever there was one.
(s)ad, not (m)ad, or (b)ad etc.
Nothing like a bit of Marxist infighting with breakfast! Excellent to see that the Marxists are still suffering from their age old problem: Marxism doesn’t account for the behaviour of people. Will the author be advocating Marx’s usual fix: the use of violence to pull the uncooperative into line.
That’s what Marx advocated? Scintillating analysis right there.
You don’t know what Marx advocated? Marx advocated violence for political ends. Please don’t try to cover up the bad bits of Marx, he is what he is.
Erm, Marx did an unmatched analysis of capitalism in the context of how this incredibly successful economic system PROFOUNDLY changes human behaviour because of it being a completely inhuman system….(!)
That’s what capitalists do.
erm, that’s what any human tends to do, irrespective of political leaning, given enough power and resources to force their will. Every single time.
We have never seen true capitalism. We have bankism, cronyism, oligarchy. Not capitalism.
“We have never seen true capitalism.” That has never passed muster when communists claim “we have never seen true communism”. Except that the communists have more of a point in that any attempt at communism was always under pressure from outside capitalist forces. In the meantime we have certainly seem actually existing capitalism. Any ill effects are always blamed on externalities – the usual scapegoats being “the state” or “bad people”. But capitalism needs the state to provide the necessary framework and protect the rights of capitalists to exploit (which is what capitalists do). As for “bad people”, people’s personal behaviour is irrelevant to capitalism. They can be as decent as they want privately. As capitalists, their behaviour is strictly demarcated. They have to maximise profits or go to the wall. And that is what determines the cruelty, the coercion etc. The imperative driving capital is profit which trumps all… Read more »
Modern Capitalism has promoted corporations into a legal tool used by owners to enforce profit seeking behaviour from their employees and to avoid any individual responsibility: where the efficient deployment of Capital trumps any moral code and overrides any other restraining influence within society, even politics. But is this a necessary element of Capitalism?
You and I and everyone would love to believe we could have some kind of modified or restrained capitalism. Well – we did have that for a few decades but only in the West and only under conditions that can never be repeated. It also took no less than centuries of workers’ struggles and two world wars and two revolutions to get capitalism even to the stage we knew. And – I must emphasise – the “nice capitalism” only affected our part of the world. cf. Trotsky’s comment (paraphrased) that the rich have only yielded an inch when they were being held by the throat.
So in reponse to your question i.e. is enforced profit maximisation a necessary element of capital: Yes it is.
Nice capitalism only existed while the capitalists feared revolution. Once the USSR disappeared, capitalism instantly returned to its essence-cruelty, murder, destruction, exploitation and parasitism, in a process that has created both an ecological Holocaust and neo-feudalism throughout the West.
Yep, all gloves came off when the Berlin Wall came down, and Neoliberal zombies like Francis Fukuyama proclaimed it was the end of history. Because, in their sheer arrogance, they couldn’t imagine any alternative arising to turbo charged capitalism. That has now bought us to the very edge of the precipice, and not just regarding the mass environmental destruction caused by this obscene system, but the very real threat of a war to end all wars – meaning the end of us. And then you have the inevitable economic collapse sometime in the not too distant future. Perhaps sooner than we think. After that bout of black reality, I hope your day tomorrow is pleasant and relaxing and you enjoy your pavlova. This site is pretty lenient, and there are numerous trolls who post some nasty stuff here – they’re not banned, but are reminded of abusing other commenters, and… Read more »
Thanks Gezzah. Same to you.
Yes-it is the very essence of capitalism.
Oh God! Not another ‘true capitalism’ fantasist. Capitalism is and always must be a death-cult run for insatiably greedy parasites, as we are seeing, right now, as humanity is force-marched into a global gas-chamber to protect the ‘assets’ of the capitalist kakistocracy.
Speaking of the use of violence to pull the uncooperative into line, here’s a bit of light reading for you over tomorrow’s breakfast, aspnaz. Bon appétit!
https://systemicdisorder.wordpress.com/2013/11/06/how-capitalism-began/
An emotionl article complaining about human nature and providing no references to back up the stated assertions. Even the first senstence is nonsense, given that there is no system that provides anything but inequality: even Marx advocated limited inequality. It would have been better written as “All system require violence”. Any system that rules over the masses requires the exclusive use of violence, that is the nature of government.
You’re going to use the lack of references as a reason for not providing any counterarguments, then?
Asp – well you said something true about State and Violence, which brought to mind this excellent piece by Craig Murray recently- which will benefit others more than engaging with a bit of troll dancing and maybe even you – https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2019/12/violence-and-the-state/
“An emotionl (sic) article”? Looked pretty sober to me.
As for this stuff about ALL systems necessarily ruling violently over the masses, it always assumes that the individuals are already there BEFORE the system, as if they were all floating in some free liberal void. But individuals are born into a system which has a huge influence on forming their very individuality. Indeed even “individuality” is conceived in terms of a system. As is “equality”.
aspnaz writes: “providing no references to back up the stated assertions. ” There are several links embedded within the text linking to sources, there are direct quotes from four different books and there is this note at the bottom: “In addition to the works directly quoted, sources include Karl Marx,“Expropriation of the Agricultural Population from the Land”; David Dickson, The Politics of Alternative Technology; Eric Williams, From Columbus to Castro: The History of the Caribbean; Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent; John C. Mohawk, Utopian Legacies: A History of Conquest and Oppression in the Western World; and David McNally, Against the Market: Political Economy, Market Socialism and the Marxist Critique.” There are full footnotes in the book from which the article is excerpted. If you want to disagree with the thesis of the article, that’s fine. I will have no more… Read more »
What has Marx got to do with it?
US scare propaganda was initially for military purposes and by old men for young men (Uncle Sam 1812 : I want YOU for US army). Today with women having 50% voting rights plus Big Profits also possible from civilian projects you get a girl like Greta.
“Why would any rational person look at the Greta phenomenon and not grasp that it is manufactured? “ I would guess that most social movements which altered the status quo had to some degree been “manufactured”. I subscribe to many to leftist groups and receive leftist email advocacy every day with the express objective of “manufacturing” public support for the cause. Left-wing criticism of Thunberg is echoed by similar criticism on the right: Thunberg is a tool of an elite conspiracy to trick the masses into legitimating elites and perhaps even furthering dictatorial control over society. Billionaires are like the rest of us breathing flesh and blood, driven by emotion and Maslovian imperatives. Not all are blind to the evils of capitalism, not to the threat capitalism poses to Mother Earth. Neither do all minimum wage workers care about the environment. Billionaires, however, wield great power. Why not ask for… Read more »
I just went and bought an Amazon Echo speaker. Bezos needed my help so I just had to chip in.
His first wife just divorced him and his new wife is a trophy wife.
Trophy wives cost more money.
MOU
Good to know. This isn’t about individual billionaires though is it? It’s about the phoney Green Capitalist movement, and there’s proof positive this is nothing but a scam to get even more cash flowing from us to ‘them’.
If some billionaires are actually dyed in wool socialists who just happened to become wealthy exploiters of the poor and really aren’t happy about it, the best thing you can do is get in touch with them and point them at articles like this. Then they’ll use their billions to warn people about the scam won’t they.
If busboys traded places with millionaires, busboys would act like millionaires, and millionaires would act like busboys.
“I suggest we applaud Greta for her work”
which is?
Surely you’ve, erm, uh, I mean, don’t you know that….er, well, and then there’s….
…..hmm…good point, what is it?
I’d say Greta has done quite a bit to get the entire world talking about environmental issues. That’s a good thing.
As I pointed out earlier, there is a boisterous Greek Chorus of may-sayers on both the Left Wing and Right Wing who appear to ridicule Thunberg, Al Gore, billionaires who point out the problem and suggest specific solutions. Someone thanked me above, for pointing out that billionaires are of flesh and blood, like the rest of us, as if that were so obvious it need not be mentioned. I likewise thank those here who inveigh against capitalism ( greedy, amoral, driven by profit-seeking) for pointing out the obvious. When I look out the window, I see nature dying before my eyes. In the eyes of Greta, AOC, Al Gore, and many other establish/corporate figures I see genuine concern and the willingness to try to actually do something to save Mother Earth. Instead of trying to tear down others who try to act, I suggest we support them and contribute to… Read more »
The current issue of The Atlantic has an piece by Sebastian Mallaby discussing Paul Krugman’s exhaustion with Republican refusal to engage in factual discourse.
Cool It, Krugman
Quantitative Easing-QE shenanigans played out over the last decade and there is no more Financial largesse to spread around for the elite. They need their monetary heroin or they will end up with delirium, and Dr. Feelgood has always provided for their addictions at the end of Keynesian Cycles of money infusions.
Is it so bad for elite Capitalists to want more when they have seen their assets decline over the last decade?
Can you not feel some empathy for a man like Warren Buffett who has taken billions off the table in anticipation of a stock market crash?
Can you not feel some empathy for the poor souls at Deutsche Bank that need to keep lying to the public & investors about the sanctity of their bank & future investments?
MOU
Did you mean ‘greed-minded billionaires’, because that (despite its tautologous nature)is the only type of billionaire there is. ‘Green-minded’ billionaires are only there to manipulate the process for profit-their profit.
Greta is the preferred corporate model of advertising for the IMF & World Bank, UN, & Mark Carney who recently estimated Climate Change Carbon Based business to be a $23 trillion USD enterprise going forward. As a Grumpy Marxist myself I don’t give a damn if the IMF & BIS support Carbon Based Taxation & Climate Change for neoliberal purposes given that Secular Stagnation has necessitated new growth in the financially synthetic domain due to a lack of real organic growth systemically across all sectors of the Western Banking System. If you don’t get that the superordinate goal for all is now financial survival given debt-to-GDP across the board, you will never understand that without the Fake Greta Movement there will be no growth at all which will result in kinetic war that is far more destructive than the mass genocide Bill Gates is advocating for. Agenda 21 and every… Read more »
The Pathocracy is ancient and it picks it’s ceo’s while they are very young and malleable, they have to display psychopathic tendencies which will allow them ti be disconnected from normal human empathy.
Look at who exactly Cecil Rhodes was and how young when he was set on the path to being the creator of the empire, following the East India Company trajectory.
The jesuits great claim to power was ‘give me a child of six and i’ll give you the man’ – even earlier Empire builders.
Ever seen pictures of Greta playing? With other kids? Her toys? Pets?
No. I’ve only seen her being prepared to be on coins, notes posters and as statues.
Big Brother transmutes to Big Sister.
It is pretty obvious once one gets past – she is a child!
“Going Green” makes good business sense or it wouldn’t get pushed the way it is. Ignoring the obvious , that its desirable it is to reduce our consumption as a society, the more cynical among us see this as a rather neat trick to sell us less for more. This is a useful trick since capitalism is predicated on growth — if it fails to grow then it fails — so when you’ve ‘topped out’ for growth you have to figure out other ways of maintaining or even enhancing your revenue stream using the same amount or less product. Railing against this isn’t going to change anything and change itself may require co-opting people who are obviously from the other side. Its also a good idea not to try to worship false gods (or godesses), that is, pin your hopes on individuals. The problem with Greta Thornberg, for example, isn’t… Read more »