Debt Rattle Mar 26 2014: This Is Why We Are Doomed
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Detroit Publishing Co Galveston Flood disaster cyclorama, Coney Island 1904 If there’s one thing that defines why we, and the world we live in, are do
[See the full post at: Debt Rattle Mar 26 2014: This Is Why We Are Doomed]Long ago, when the military began SECRETLY spraying chemtrails from horizon to horizon, presumably to reduce sub-stratospheric solar flux, all “CO2-induced climate change” data were instantly invalidated. Pretending to observe CO2 causing climate change is akin to pretending to observe toxic effects from marijuana (there aren’t any) in patients who are SECRETLY kept hammered on bath salts. Chemtrails aren’t being sprayed to attenuate climate change, they’re sprayed to cause it, and the effects are blamed on carbon dioxide. This fraud gives rise to criminal empires all around the globe that are sustained by carbon credits, carbon taxes, and less obvious forms of theft like state-supported climate “science” that selects data to fit politically desired conclusions.
I’m not at all surprised that the military secretly participates in unforgivable frauds against mankind. I am surprised, however, that the populace dutifully, patriotically, and complacently remains in the dark when the very features preventing sunlight on the situation are plainly visible right above their heads.
Our doom could result from many things, but neither carbon dioxide nor climate change make the list. For those not already self-righteously indignant with climate change religiosity, I strongly recommend :
So,
1. Deny until the window closes on prevention.
2. Resist mitigation as too expensive.
3. Promote adaptation as the less expensive alternative.
4. Exalt adaptation and mass-extinction clearances as a growth opportunity.
5. Wind down life on Earth, declare a time-discounted, fully depreciated and hedged write down.
6. Promote IPO for leveraged move to nearest available planet or space-station.56, are you aware that “global warming” has morphed into “climate change” recently? There is a reason for that. Even David Keith admits there is great peril in geo-engineering. The consequences simply aren’t predictable. So, mitigate what? Warming or cooling, it’s a coin toss, and it’s a coin toss what mitigation efforts will do. Your points 3-6 are all silliness. Have you yourself adapted yet to millimeters in sea level change yet? Hopefully the fear of drowning has not yet forced you onto a space station.
I have a better idea. Mitigate Fukushima. Mitigate nuclear waste. Mitigate the perils of fission reactors all over the planet. If you still sit on a fortune in stolen tax monies after doing all that, and assuming we’re not all penniless from deflation by then, then by all means feel free to envelop the planet in a chemically-induced, cooling (or warming?) chemtrail haze. When the Great Lakes fail to thaw some summer, you can reverse course. The good news is that your six points will still apply, so best save those.
If you prefer “catastrophic anthropogenic climate forcing” or “climate disruption” or “climate destabilization” I’ll play along. Or you might be interested to hear that climate change has always been the used more than global warming in the UK.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2010/aug/05/global-warming-birthday-new-nameWhy the forced choice between addressing the externalities of one part of the energy economy but not the other? Why embrace the science of radiation poisoning but not the simpler physics and chemistry of heat absorption, understood in its implications for the atmosphere a century and a half ago, and the basis of very good prediction of present temperature values by the early 1970s?
Instead of insisting on the ascendancy of your hierarchy of values why not look into what we might agree on?
Perhaps that an economy that factors a full accounting of socio-ecological costs into its activities, that can subtract as well as add, that can look beyond decisions based on its executive bonus structure, would be preferable to both Fukushima and geoengineering, and to the military spending that keeps this globalizing regime in place?
When you’re prepared to embrace the military-caused-global-warming theory, why treat the plausible prospect of potentially catastrophic anthropogenic climate destabilization as a conspiracy theory underpinned by the research of 97% of the world’s scientists most competent to take a position on the question? Or is it that the latter, on the face of it, fails to be marginal enough to gratify the conspiracist mindset–too mainstream, perhaps? Or is it that one conspiracy would require that you alter your behaviour and place our capitalist / corporatist economy at risk, and the other asks only that we shake our keyboard warrior fists at the fighter jets on our TV screens?
What might timely climate action have meant or still mean? Less waste, less pollution, better vehicle mileage and public transportation, more resilient distributed energy systems, more localized economies, less corporate welfare, or accountability for externalities, water and food security, more investment in sustainable economies.
But refuse to manage risk and insist on iron-clad certainty long enough and we get a menu of disaster capitalism, bubble finance, shock doctrine austerity, geoengineering, repression and militarism.
What, other than doubling down on more of the same with a dash of technoromanticism, do you have left to offer? I’ll bet we could find something in your offerings to agree on.
We may be “saved” by an economic collapse.
This is long, but worth noticing.The following is an email from 350.org – their divestment group. Thought provoking.
March 27, 2014
Royal Dutch Shell buried a bombshell in its recently released 2013 annual report.
Amid 200 pages of predictably and mind-numbingly dry text, the world’s seventh-largest oil company foreshadowed something big. Here are the exact words, which Shell buried in the report’s “ risk factors” section:
“If we are unable to find economically viable, as well as publicly acceptable, solutions that reduce our CO2 emissions for new and existing projects or products, we may experience additional costs, delayed projects, reduced production and reduced demand for hydrocarbons.”
Believe it or not, Shell — of all companies — gets it.
Shell gets that unless things change quickly, another big financial market bubble has the potential to bring people to their knees.
It’s called the “Carbon Bubble,” and it’s a very simple equation.
Fossil-fuel companies already hold more coal, oil, and gas reserves than people and industry can possibly use before climate change reaches the point where life as we know it can’t continue.
Simply put, these companies have more product than they can sell. And their value is based on their total reserves. That means fossil-fuel assets are significantly overvalued.
Why hasn’t Wall Street imploded over this yet? Well, remember how “nobody” could see the housing bubble coming?
The truth is, Wall Street is still profiting from fossil fuels. And when economists and analysts tried to warn people about the housing bubble, just like some of them are now attempting to do about the carbon bubble, their foresight fell on deaf ears.
And if memories of the last economic crisis or even the phrase “market bubble” give you goose bumps, ask yourself how exposed you are to investments in oil, gas, and coal — the three kinds of fossil fuels. Does your pension plan, retirement plan, or family nest egg invest in the likes of Shell Oil?
As a senior analyst for 350.org, an activist organization that fights climate change, my job is to help persuade college endowments, city pension funds, and foundations to divest from fossil fuels.
In my conversations (really they’re debates) with boards of trustees and treasurers of multibillion-dollar pension funds and endowments, the biggest concern is always risk and return.
People charged with these investment decisions want to maximize returns.
Well, as our ability to burn carbon safely diminishes and the reserves of fossil-fuel companies increase, those investments will continue to become riskier and less profitable.
The logic is so clear, even Shell doesn’t think they are a good investment. The oil giant is looking for “ viable solutions to reduce” its own CO2 emissions.
Shell’s not the only oil giant reckoning with this reality. Bowing to shareholder pressure, ExxonMobil just announced plans to produce a first-of-its-kind report showing how the growing trend in climate change activism is destabilizing their financial security.
“The deal is a big victory for the relatively new movement by some investors to get energy companies to consider how climate change policies will affect the bottom line,” according toPolitico Morning Energy.
If you do one thing for your future, consider divesting from fossil fuels. It’s a great way to minimize your vulnerability to a serious financial crisis while investing in a more hospitable future for your children.
This story is from the Guardian from April 2013, but it still has merit.
The world could be heading for a major economic crisis as stock markets inflate an investment bubble in fossil fuels to the tune of trillions of dollars, according to leading economists.
“The financial crisis has shown what happens when risks accumulate unnoticed,” said Lord (Nicholas) Stern, a professor at the London School of Economics. He said the risk was “very big indeed” and that almost all investors and regulators were failing to address it.
The so-called “carbon bubble” is the result of an over-valuation of oil, coal and gas reserves held by fossil fuel companies. According to a report published on Friday, at least two-thirds of these reserves will have to remain underground if the world is to meet existing internationally agreed targets to avoid the threshold for “dangerous” climate change. If the agreements hold, these reserves will be in effect unburnable and so worthless – leading to massive market losses. But the stock markets are betting on countries’ inaction on climate change.
—https://www.alternet.org/environment/fossil-fueled-bombshell
OtherWords / By Brett Fleishman
Why Hasn’t Wall Street Imploded Over “The Carbon Bubble” Yet?
Shell reveals that fossil-fuel companies have more product than they can sell and their value is based on total reserves. That means fossil-fuel assets are significantly overvalued.
I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the final draft doesn’t contain that unlikely estimate. Michael Mann (he of the oft validated hockey stick) now estimates that the politically dangerous temperature of 2C above preindustrial will be passed by 2036, and that is through what we’ve already released, due to delays in the earth’s systems. That’s for BAU, of course, but who expects anything else until at least 2020?
If the impression is that the global economy will suffer by only 0.2%, by 2100, there is no chance of even a far too late deal in 2015, to be implemented in 2020. Why bother, for a measly 0.2%? Looking at the purely economic cost is crazy but I can’t see the economic impact being that small, unless continuous rebuilding activity after a continuous stream of weather catastrophes “compensates” economically for the wreaked lives of millions (ignoring whether or not rebuilding can go in the the light of the climate impacts).
Tony,
I was relieved to note some pushback from the IPCC authors on the misleading underestimate of costs. But as useful as Michael Mann’s 2036 timeline is, give feedback lag times, if we reach 2C we will already likely be locked into 4, 5, 6 … runaway. It would have been helpful if he or whoever quoted him had finished the thought…I haven’t seen the final report yet but I’m glad to hear it.
yes, Mann was just concentrating on when the temperature would pass the mythical dangerous level. It’s certain that more warming would follow. What actually gets locked in depends on ECS, which is still unknown but with some soundly based estimates.
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