ashvin
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pipefit,
On the one hand, I believe you are correct about the idealism inherent in Freegold. OTOH, I believe you are greatly under-estimating the knowledge/thought that has gone into the theory.
Here is an interesting fact: Sir Thomas Gresham did not formulate “Gresham’s law”! It was actually a well known concept of the time, though it didn’t carry any name. It wasn’t until 300 years later, in 1857, when an economist named Henry Dunning MacLeod attributed Gresham’s name to the concept.
I think it is clear from this story that Thomas Gresham was not exactly a hard money hero. In fact, he was an agent of monetary control and debasement. Which brings me to the main concept of this post, that Gresham’s Ghost is still with us today, debasing our medium of exchange and unit of account and driving the evolution of money to Freegold.
Money. It is what confuses our soul and drives us to do that which makes absolutely no sense. It is only because we have been led by a chronological history, rife with warnings of debasement, into thinking that we must retain that which is only an ephemeral medium of exchange as our ultimate store of life-long value. Do the truly wealthy hold rooms-full and truckloads of paper cash? Hell no! They hold real stores of wealth, like artwork, antiques, property, collectibles and land. Why then have we, the subjects of the world, the masses, been led to only hold that one faulty medium of exchange as our main store of value? Why? Because it is the one thing in this world that is vulnerable to the collective, the government and banker debasement and the surreptitious theft of the inflation tax!
With each new advancing stage of civilization we climb one step higher on the ladder of economic sophistication. And once there, we perceive the need for a more sophisticated way to use money. We are told that this newfound monetary sophistication is responsible for our higher standard of living. What a lie!
It is here, at this step of sophistry, that men always attempt to combine receipts with real wealth. Each time we come to this point, each new idea throughout history promises to undo the prior problems. And each time the wealth of the common man, his life-long savings is risked, plundered and squandered once again as the world tries to make gold into something it isn’t.
It is the mashing of the gold wealth concept with the circulating credit receipt concept that opens the door to some of the greatest problems man has ever seen. Take, for example, the period of the modern gold exchange standard. 1913: Creation of the Federal Reserve System. 1914: WWI. 1923: Weimar hyperinflation. 1930: The Great Depression. 1939: WWII. 1950: The Korean War. 1959: The Vietnam War. 1971: Off the gold exchange standard.
Inflation of the circulating money supply is simply a fact of life in our imperfect world. The collective or the King always finds a way to inflate or debase money to its own advantage. And if circulating money is gold, or based on gold, then inflation is historically done through the golden spoils of war or confiscation. The cry of the hungry collective is “if fiat is our money, we must borrow it. We must print it. If gold is our money we must take it. We must have money when it is needed!”
I don’t agree with everything expressed above (such as the implication of causation between the modern gold exchange standard and all of those nasty events – although, they are certainly not unrelated), but the point is that FOFOA is right about the classical/neoclassical corruption of reality through such concepts as “Gresham’s Law”, which may be taken to imply that any use of fiat currency is an inherently BAD thing.
It is not really the market system that determines which forms of money prevail at any given time, but centralized authorities who are attempting to maintain their own wealth/power, as well as that of their supporters. As long as money exists in large scale systems, this will happen, regardless of whether it is pure fiat or gold-backed currency. Under the IDEAL of F-theory, people hoarding gold in response to monetary debasement is fine, because it only serves to maintain purchasing power over time.
Where I diverge from FOFOA and F-theory, as explained in this commentary critique, is when he suggests that an Ideal synthesis can be implemented and sustained at a global scale, which will offer producers/savers a means of monetary protection from the “hungry collective”, as if it is the natural result of some Darwinian socioeconomic “evolution”.
It is for this reason that electronic fiat money is here to stay. Yet evolution still takes us forward, not back. Gresham’s Ghost is with us today, driving the finite physical gold supply of the world into private hands, into mattresses and shoe boxes as the collective’s play money is inflated to the heavens. Moving forward with the flow of evolution means embracing this fiat money experiment that society will always tamper with, and at the same time owning the wealth of ages as the ancients did, in your possession. In this way, the average family can know their wealth is real while society at large pursues its greedy folly while issuing unlimited receipts of credit.
Embrace Gresham’s Ghost, for it is leading us to Freegold!
I believe that FOFOA, more than any other Austrian-oriented economic analyst or HI advocate out there (yes, that includes ALL the big name bloggers), deserves the time to be considered and critiqued. After reading many of his articles and also comments by himself and others F-theory advocates explaining their position, I think it would be very foolish to dismiss their views off-hand based on one or two statements that may sound radical or weird.
It is true that he fails to consider peak oil or net energy issues in F-theory, so the theory is de facto incomplete. However, none of the most famous economists from the 19th century onwards considered those issues either, yet it would be foolish to dismiss all of their theories as unrealistic and unworthy of our time. They can still provide genuine insights into how our economic/financial/monetary systems work and how they may evolve from here – insights that could prove to be important in the lives of many people with excess wealth and tough decisions to make in an ever-shortening amount of time.
agelbert wrote: You cannot EVER control Afghanistan, no matter how many drones , robots and troops you throw at it. It’s OVER there for NATO because ALL the NATO countries cannot squeeze more money out of their people due to the economic crisis enveloping them. And forget the police state tactics at home to force us to fund the war(s). No jobs = no money to be robbed, period.
I give it a year at the most. Always remember that, unless a country is attacked, every penny of swag going to war ‘profiteering’ (profit for a tiny group of psychopaths) is discretionary.
No doubt the efforts of the elites who control NATO are far from sustainable, and there is a good chance they will fail in conquering Eurasia (mostly due to the energy requirements needed to secure the territory and energy resources). However, I am not as optimistic as you about fiscal constraints in the US and Europe forcing them to abandon the effort near-term. In fact, I do not think they will ever voluntarily cease their war efforts, no matter how much their populations have been bled dry. If they were to do that, they may as well kiss their [centuries in the making] globalist agenda goodbye, and I highly doubt that’s something they would be willing to do.
Meanwhile, the war profiteers will still make a killing on the “war on terror”, no matter how ineffective it is at its stated goals or how expensive it becomes for taxpayers. Also, who’s to say that we won’t be attacked? Many people still believe that we were attacked by [pick your country in the Arab world] on 9/11, and there is a lot of evidence that it was a false flag. If they did it once, they could do it again.
Reverse Engineer post=3035 wrote: Sadly of course, I doubt this will gain much traction, but you could get a lot of Publicity if you actually filed said Lawsuit. As Spokesman for the Doomstead Diner Community, consider us IN on a Class Action lawsuit with TAE.
Yes, the Feds will do exactly jack shit at this point to help preserve humanity, but you may be right about the publicity. Before hiring any attorneys and firing any lawsuits, though, we have to file the initial ESA petition with the FWS. It would obviously have to be a bit more involved than what I have above, but it wouldn’t have to contain all of the scientific evidence needed to make the case for a listing – that could come later. I think we could come up with clever ways of classifying a large portion of humans as “wild animals”, based on indigenous populations of certain areas, homeless populations, people without adequate access to facets of modern industrial society, etc. Then, once the petition is naturally rejected, we draft the complaint for a lawsuit.
Even if many people are now destined to die from economic/ecological collapse, it helps to recognize that the activities of private corporations and governments around the world are only making a bad situation worse and many of them should be curtailed/eliminated. If population control is a necessary element of species recovery, then maybe we can come up with some just ways of going about it (like the ones RE proposes), but only AFTER we use all other methods of mitigating the threat of extinction.
GO and Triv,
True, timing and degree are important factors here. When I say “deterrence is dead”, what I really mean is that it’s dying. Parts of it are alive and well, but the point is that it cannot be consistently relied upon by the disciplinarians and globalists to squash dissent and maintain order.
I believe there is plenty of evidence to suggest that they have already lost a good deal of control over the current system. The coordinated currency swaps by the CBs and the ECB’s LTROs barely lasted a few months before their effects wore off, and the latter had immediate negative consequences for the banks which used them.
If the globalists had full control, Greece would be kept in the Union forever, or at least bled completely dry. Now, they are openly making preparations for a Greek exit, because they have no other option but to do so. Politicians and pundits are openly questioning all of the policies that have been implemented to date (since 08).
When the extend&pretend system of financial capitalism breaks down, will that mean game over for the elites? No, probably not. I’m sure they have plenty of other tricks up their sleeves, up to and including outright military occupation. But let’s remember that people across the world are already protesting/rioting out in the streets and going head to head with the police. They are already putting themselves in physical danger, because there are few other options. The paradigm of quick fixes and rapid returns to normalcy is OVER.
That’s not to say that many of these protestors and dissenters won’t be squashed like ants. They very well may be. I’m not even arguing that what they’re doing is inherently a good thing or a bad thing (although I obviously lean a certain way, on balance). I’m just saying, it’s the natural trend and it can only become deeper over time. The old paradigm has been terminally broken, and there is no going back. Now, it’s all battles for shrinking pockets of wealth/control, all the way down.
Golden Oxen post=3013 wrote: Agree 100% with this forecast of Gary Jenkins. Things are getting out of hand rapidly with deflation shouters now out of control. Shock therapy imminent.
Shock therapy is always imminent – it’s the only thing the banks and their cronies know how to do (threaten shock therapy and/or implement it). It ONLY works consistently in a paradigm of growth/expansion. We are not in that paradigm any more, and that is the point – deterrence is DEAD.
If you think about it, flooding the system with liquidity is a form of deterrence – it punishes people for “betting” on the other side, whether that be investors, hard workers, savers, retirees, or anyone else who has chosen to face reality and be disciplined (personally, not institutionally) in their lives. That punishment will only be effective when the costs of being disciplined outweigh the benefits.
If/when a significant portion of investors, consumers and/or citizens of the world choose to keep their money, efforts, support out of the system no matter what the central bankers threaten to do or actually do, for whatever reason, then Gary Jenkins and all others like him will be exposed as puppets of the Naked Emperor, and their predictions will be flat out wrong.
AndrewP,
And China and Russia (and India, Pakistan, Iran, etc. etc.) do what exactly in this scenario? I’ll give you the UK and the US this time as at least passive observers, and Japan again (it’s quite irrelevant either way), but the Others might not be so tolerant.
Hello Candace,
Several people have reported similar problems. Our programmer says that clearing the cache on your browser should make the .com site work. Hopefully, the .org site will automatically redirect to the .com site soon (that may help also).
Personally, I have not had any problems accessing either site, but that may be because my browser was updated after the transition to .com.
[quote=steve from virginia post=2956]
– Federation is not a panacea but it is better than what is underway. It buys some precious time. What to do with it is another issue all together. 🙂
Who are we buying time for? As you know, time has only worked for the benefit of concentrated (Some Call It “Evil”) interests throughout the last few centuries (and some would say even longer). Here’s a question: why are such a huge portions of the global population actually starved for resources, and forced to leverage their existence against waste-based economies that are consuming themselves and the surrounding environment? I’d say a BIG reason has been because they have been held up at gunpoint for centuries, and Federation in one part of the world (the West) has made that easy to do in other parts of the world (I now use that term loosely to mean centralized economic/political coordination between sovereign states, but also the explicit federation found in the US).
Modern Myths that Destroy Humanity
‘d like to take this opportunity to comment on an oldie but a goodie from the Indian environmentalist, Vandan Shiva. In her brief article for Odewire, “Two myths that keep the world poor”, Shiva tears apart the logic of Harvard economist and neoliberal (-feudal), economic “shock therapy” advocate Jeffrey Sachs with all the force one would expect from the God of destruction. It was in response to a book written by Sachs called The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities of Our Time, which featured all the nonsensical arguments that “liberal progressives” like to spout off in magazines and on television these days.
They proffer the same kind of fundamental myth that Nietzsche identified crawling through the bowels of modern religions such as Christianity – if one toils hard enough on Earth, and accepts one’s designated roles in society, he/she will be rewarded in Heaven. If that is God’s [Blankfein’s] given truth, then there is no need to radically alter the system or fight for justice/equality, right? Shiva first explains why global poverty is not a function of people being “left behind”, as if they had been ten minutes late to the train station, but rather of people being held up for nearly all their wealth/resources at gunpoint.
Theoretically, you could be right about European federation buying the people time to work out some issues. Practically, history shows us that you won’t be right, because that time will only be used to make a lot more people a lot more miserable than they already are. It is actually an explicit part of the NWO agenda, and that’s saying something.
Steve,
By focusing only on the energy issues, you are ignoring the inherent functions of wealth extraction and oppression embedded in the system of capitalism itself (granted, its fossil fuel industrial nature must be considered, but not exclusively), including the political and monetary systems of “democratic republics”, “federations” and credit-based fiat currencies that spring forth from it.
What Arkansas has ceded is the ability to conduct independent foreign- and defense policies. The remaining policy options either parallel other states or the central government.
This is false. Anyone paying attention to legal trends in the US over the last century, and especially the last few decades, should realize that the states have lost almost all control over their ability to make unilateral policy decisions in ANY field. Thanks to the Supremacy clause, Interstate Commerce Clause, interpretations of the 14th amendment, and many other such things, the 10th Amendment doesn’t exist anymore and the states have lost all sovereignty.
Yes, there have been economic benefits of federation, as in it has made it easier to maintain a consumerist, exponential growth capitalist economy, with a healthy dose of imperial warmongering sprinkled on top. I disagree with you about your rather benign view of central banking systems and puppet governments, and agree much more with Triv on that issue.
If Europe wants to emulate the US (whose states are just as broke as Greece), and perhaps extend its prison sentence by a few more lifetimes, then it should by all means do what AEP proposes or “half-proposes”. My argument is that the LAST thing the Europeans should willingly do is emulate the US setup, even if it comes at great short-term costs to avoid doing so. Fortunately, I believe there are some forces within Europe that feel the same way, or at least half-feel the same way.
RE,
Sure, cross-posting fine with me.
skipbreakfast post=2944 wrote: Obviously, I’m not saying that is the right thing to do. I’m saying I just don’t see a solution in any way shape or form, but can’t imagine the alternative either! Can you? I mean, can you really IMAGINE the alternative collapse? It’s too surreal, and so even if it’s probable, we just won’t do what we have to do to really prepare because it’s like a pitch for a cheesy Hollywood sci-fi movie. Or maybe the reality we end up with will be even stranger than our fiction?
Or, because I simply can’t make my mind up entirely, things really do unravel as chaotically as Ash believes. Like when your mum dies, you just always knew it would hapen, but never really believe it.
It’s a very good question, Skip. The problem with rants is that they are, after all, rants, and not very precise analyses. They emotionally (and forcefully) get across a general message, but that message isn’t going to be the best description of reality I can come up with. The message here basically being, “from a big picture perspective, it’s very hard to say I even recognize this world anymore”. Like with most things, there are +s and minuses with putting it all into a rant.
I don’t want people to think that I am a strong advocate of the Mad Max, total anarchy overnight scenario. When I say “Europe will be FUBAR”, that’s not really what I mean. When WWI and then WWII erupted over there, it’s not as if all life came to a grinding halt and people thought, “WOW, I can’t even imagine that this is happening right now!” or “I never could have imagined that this would happen”. I don’t think that’s necessarily what we will be thinking, either.
OTOH, there are obviously reasons why an even more chaotic unwind of economic, sociopolitical structures than THAT is a bigger risk now than it was then. There are so many different (yet inter-connected) fault lines across the Earth now, and any one of them has the capability of producing dramatic consequences, above and beyond the pain that billions of people are already experiencing. If it’s not Greece exiting the EU that sets off a chain reaction, then it may very well be something else, and if it’s not that something else, then maybe the breakdown ends up being less rapid and less concentrated.
BUT, no matter what, the breakdown will occur and our lives will be dramatically changed. Over here in the developed world, we hold sacred this idea that none of the consequences of collapse, either occurring now gradually or materializing more rapidly in the (near) future, will ever get TOO painful for us or will be too much for us to handle. I believe that idea needs to be shattered, and quickly, if people want to have a good chance of understanding the reality of the risks we face, and reacting appropriately. That’s really the message here.
natureisnature post=2927 wrote: whatever explanation, “hyperinflation” contradicts “Automatic Earth’s” persistent view point of “a severe deflation would be ubiquitous and pervasive imminently”
Nope, it doesn’t contradict anything, because that’s not anyone’s view point here. TAE has repeatedly made clear that HI could easily occur in the Euro periphery – see Stoneleigh’s, The Special Relativity of Currencies. Deflation is “ubiquitous” in the sense that credit availability/velocity is slowing down or shrinking just about everywhere now, and especially in the West, but that does not mean any and all currencies will increase in purchasing power relative to domestically-provided goods/services (and obviously not relative to other currencies).
pipefit post=2912 wrote: Quite frankly, I’m having trouble even coming up with a bluff here. How on Earth does this bubble get unwound? I mean, China says, “we need half a trillion to buy up every soy bean in Brazil, and half your corn. Where do we exchange this script you gave us a while back?”
I just don’t see the dollar surviving this.
I see China naturally becoming even more dependent on the US and its currency as European export markets fall off one by one. China needs to continuously bring investment capital into its export industries, and the best way to do that is curry favor with foreign (US) corporations that operate in China, which also bring dollars into China and its governments – dollars that still have a lot of purchasing power for input commodities compared to euros. If we are trying to guess what asset the Chinese will sell first to defend its financial sector, I would start looking at those hordes of gold rather than USTs.
natureisnature post=2923 wrote: explain to viewers and reader why “hyperinflation” is imminent, Please, “Ashvin”!
i demand “Ashvin’s” complete honesty to explaining why “hyperinflation” is imminent.
The word “hyperinflation” came in the paragraph that came after the question, “so what happens after that?” Meaning, what will happen in EUROPE after Greece exits, and/or others eventually follow. If Greece reverts back to the Drachma, there is a good chance they will experience HI.
I was NOT talking about the USD.
TheTrivium4TW post=2882 wrote: Even if they leave the Euro, they are toast. They will impoverish their savers and the Big Finance Capital oligarchs likely won’t sell them oil or, if they do, it will be for an arm and a leg.
When Greece exits the EZ, it will reflect a loss of control among the Western elites, no matter what actually ends up happening in Greece. The popular/political resistance to the Eurocratic agenda is not only a Greek phenomenon anymore, but is popping up all over the Union. I am not claiming that any of it is a “solution” or a clear path to freedom, but it is a reality that cannot be ignored and I do think that it is clearly OUTSIDE of the NWO agenda.
Yes, they will punish Greece severely to set an example (through capital/trade/emigration restrictions), but that kind of deterrent does not work well with other populations when they have little left to lose anyway. It’s the same reason why the death penalty (Greece) does not really act as a deterrent in places with the penalty of life in prison (everywhere else). I am confident that the Greek exit and its resulting economic, financial, political and psychosocial effects will be a very big blow to BFC.
BTW, did Marx reject “communism” after predicting evil dictators would take control (Stalin and Mao) or did he have his own gaping blind spot as well?
I’m not what you mean here. He never rejected Communism or predicted “evil dictators” would take control of anything. He believed the workers of the world would unite and create a “dictatorship of the proletariat”, with all means of production owned collectively through the State. Although, he was upset with some of the so-called Socialist movements that took hold while he was alive (obviously not Stalin or Mao, as they came after he died). He is said to have remarked, “If that is Socialism, then I am not a Socialist”, or something like that.
Reverse Engineer post=2876 wrote: GREAT Header Pic there Ashvin! Where do you guys go to dig up these pics? Any particular archive I should be pilfering from?
Far as Tspiras goes, one hopes he is wearing Body Armor all the time and avoids small and large planes, limousines and restaurants.
RE
The pic is from Shorpy. Although… it’s kind of a TAE THING started by I&S.
Elimination of political leaders probably wouldn’t do much good here. Perhaps it would provide some very short-term relief, but it is really the anti-austerity mentality that has now taken root across Europe, and that’s something that cannot be whacked. Hell, a suspicious killing of Tspiras may just make it stronger.
TheTrivium4TW post=2851 wrote: As for Marx, did I miss it or did he also predict Stalin and Mao?
Just askin’.
Using Marx’s predictions about Communist utopia to discredit his predictions about capitalist meltdown. That has to be some sort of logical fallacy!
The Straw Man is Ash.
So now I have actually become “The Straw Man”?? I think you maybe meant Ilargi here, because he wrote this article.
Reverse Engineer post=2849 wrote: Again, I do not think any of these economists directly confronted the issue of limitations to the energy reserves of the world. The assumptions they make sometimes hold true in a world of surplus energy, but for the most part I do not think any of these economic theories are holding up too well as the energy inputs become scarce and expensive.
Seeing as how the theories of Marx, Fisher and Minsky dealt with the breakdown of financial/industrial capitalism through wealth extraction, over-production, excessive leverage and euphoric speculation, I’d say they are holding up quite well right now (even though they did not focus on peak oil).
Marx foresaw a crisis in Capitalism based on economic principles, and he was largely correct far as I understand Marx anyhow. The analysis is not complete though, because Avaialble per capita Energy puts even more stress on the system and undermines the Finance economy further. Basically, this just produces a Bigger and Better Collapse than Marx ever foresaw.
Yes, that is definitely true. Any theory that ignores energy/resource abundance or scarcity is an incomplete one, and will fail to make precise predictions long-term. The point is that these theories are still useful when applied to our economic/financial/monetary system, just like Einstein’s relativity is still useful when applied to macro-scales, even though they are all incomplete (the latter much less so).
pipefit post=2843 wrote: The oil trade is all that is propping up the dollar. Without it, it is completely worthless.
How could ANY global reserve currency be worth anything without the support of the oil trade? Like I said, axiomatic. But that does not mean the oil trade is the ONLY function the debt-dollar serves, or the financial system in general. Imperialism and wealth extraction come in many forms – the oil trade just makes it really easy.
All the problems in the credit markets are directly traceable to money’s role as a proxy for Oil in the industrial era.
At the same time, Karl Marx just about predicted all of the problems occurring in global markets right now, and he didn’t write a lick about energy or oil. OTOH, he implicitly recognized its importance when he focused on the global expansion of industrial capitalism and its constant means of “revolutionizing production” through technology.
Saying money/credit is a proxy for energy (and, most importantly now, oil) is like saying working hours during the day is a proxy for energy. It is axiomatic. There can be no logical separation of the financial/monetary system from the extraction/production of net energy.
However, not every issue that arises within the former is directly a function of the latter, as evidenced by the theories of people like Marx, Fisher, Keynes, Minsky, etc. which accurately describe the dynamics of the economic/financial system but do not directly rely on the functions of the energy/oil industry to do so.
TheTrivium4TW post=2751 wrote:
https://childhealthsafety.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/uk-smallpox-1838-1890.gifhttps://childhealthsafety.wordpress.com/2010/11/03/small-pox-big-lie/
Why did Smallpox mortality fall of a cliff as vaccination rates declined by over 50%?
https://www.healthsentinel.com/joomla/images/stories/graphs/uk-smallpox-cov-1872-1922.jpg
https://www.healthsentinel.com/joomla/images/stories/graphs/uk-smallpox-1838-1922.jpg
https://www.healthsentinel.com/joomla/images/stories/graphs/uk-vacc-deaths-1906-1922.jpg
You must realize that there are multiple sides to this argument, and all have a certain amount of data/logic on their side. The consensus view is that vaccination played a large role in preventing transmission of the disease, but was also aided by “surveillance-containment” strategies, which proved to be more effective in certain under-developed communities.
As far as data/logic goes, the links you provided are unimpressive to me. First, your two graphs, one of which is entirely derived from written comments made to British Parliament in 1923 (not a great source for data points on a graph), seem to be consistent with the fact that smallpox deaths drastically declined after vaccination campaigns were launched, albeit not in a linear manner.
Also, in the first graph, smallpox deaths “dropped off of a cliff” while % vaccinations only declined by a small amount. One would expect the mortality rate to drop once levels of vaccinations reached a critical point within the population, and then for vaccinations to steadily decline in use. I’m not sure why Scarlet Fever is also included in the second graph?
Let’s close back up on small pox…
“Between the 1st and 2nd epidemic, there was only a 7% increase in population with an increase of smallpox deaths by 40.8%. During the 2nd and 3rd epidemic a 9% increase of population with an increase of smallpox deaths of 123% with an ever-multiplying number of vaccinations! Deaths per year from cancer in England and Wales between 1857-72 also began to rapidly increase.
I don’t see any references cited for the claims by “Dr. Roger Shafly, PhD” or “Dr. Joyce Marshall, N.D., PhD.”, nor any information about who they actually are. According to you, wouldn’t it be the ultimate ATA fallacy to rely on anything claimed by them in that article?
Note that I agree with you that a lot of these medical strategies are devised to maximize profits, and many times are over-hyped as to how effective they really are. I’m just less willing to dismiss vaccination entirely as an evil tactic of the elite to poison the masses and nothing more than that.
Reverse Engineer post=2772 wrote: Far as Ash is concerned, he worries about the negative consequences of a Back Fire, in the literal sense of setting a fire purposefully to control a fire already raging out of control. I am not unaware of the dangers of an Uncle Joe Stalin, a Mao or a Hitler in this mess. Every single Back Fire you can set here presents its own set of dangers.RE
One specific concern I have with this in present time is the current “new age spiritual” trend that is ongoing and gaining steam. The philosophy underlying these new age movements creates some disturbing implications, in light of the fact that only “enlightened” beings are thought to be worthy of the alleged transition that will be occurring very soon. Many of the ultimate goals of these movements – such as a one world religion, centralization of economic/political authority in international institutions, generally developing a spiritual “utopia” on Earth, etc. – are the same goals of the NWO elites, just framed in different terms.
If enough common people buy into this new age pseudo-scientific/spiritual babble, it would not be very difficult for the elite to convince them that a modern holocaust of “non-enlightened” ones is needed (or must be tolerated) in order to make the proper transition to a consciousness-soaked utopia. If such a policy WAS put in place, then maybe a few banking elite would be sacrificed to make it look like a legitimate “cleansing” of the parasites from the system, but ultimately I think the goal/result of these plans will be anything but helpful for the disenfranchised and, now, bloodthirsty masses.
Reverse Engineer post=2739 wrote: Didn’t work in Africa as it did in the Americas because Africa has been connected through trade with Europe and the ME going back to the dawn of agriculture when all these diseases were incubated. So the African population has some resisitance to them, unlike the native population of the Americas.
I understand why it wouldn’t work, but since the question here is one of premeditated intent, do we have any evidence that the European elite tried it in Africa, or elsewhere? Since they would have no idea about who has or has not built up resistance to these diseases on different continents, they may have given it a shot. I’m guessing it’s the kind of thing we could never really have evidence of, though. Still, it’s one of the only ways I can think of to add support in favor of the intentional biological warfare argument.
It seems that, similar to most long-dated historical conspiracy theories, this is one of those things that can never be substantiated or refuted, but will always seem plausible looking back. That’s not to say that these CTs are invalid, but that fact does give those using them in modern narratives a big advantage.
The one question that pops up in my mind is whether there are other historical instances of European explorers/colonizers infecting native populations. Why not use the same tactic in South/Central Africa, instead of waiting for industrialization to do the trick? It is clear that many Europeans ended up dying from tropical diseases when they tried to settle Africa.
Triv,
I’m sure the irony isn’t lost on you that smallpox was killing millions of people across the world until vaccinations became more common. It’s ironic in light of the video you posted on this particular thread, that’s all.
Reverse Engineer post=2735 wrote: This time the extermination has to be Global and COMPLETE, no stone left unturned. Global population has to be reduced one way or the other, so we can use this opportunity to make sure the RIGHT people get their tickets to the Great Beyond FIRST.
Do you have a detailed plan for how this new age “reign of terror” would work, or are you just throwing the idea out there, knowing there will never a come a time when you will have to think it through and make the extremely tough decisions that are necessarily attached to it? Maybe you could collaborate with the Golden Dawn over in Greece – I’m sure they wouldn’t mind calling it something other than what it really is.
I’m confident that if something like this ever came to pass, it would be sold to the masses as what must be done to cleanse the system and liberate them, but it would actually serve to do the opposite and solidify humanity’s existence in a spiritual vacuum.
Triv wrote: “Guns are neither good nor bad, it is the people that wield them that determines how the gun is used, not the gun itself.
The history of guns is one of a long line of bloodshed. Do you also believe that guns are evil and should be abolished?”
That is only one part of the equation, Triv. Guns also make it much, much easier and quicker for people with violent tendencies to kill others, as well as people coerced into standing armies (or street-level gangs) and then physically required to kill others. Not that there isn’t any choice involved, because there is, but it is the SYSTEM that inhibits the range and effectiveness of those choices, not the people themselves.
Guns also can serve as deterrents in some situations, or the most effective means of self-defense against oppressive acts, so it’s not all bad for guns. There are probably many other factors that could go into this equation. My point is that having a debate over the ROOT cause of “evil” is apriori meaningless. It’s not guns vs. selfish people, or money vs. selfish people, or any other dichotomy so simple.
re: your original post
When reading many of your comments, I always get the feeling that you have just come across a lot of information about debt dollar tyranny in recent months during your free online research time and you are uber-excited (maybe “excited” isn’t the right word) to go out and spread the message to all of the lost souls. Is that close? If not, then I admire your ability to remain so juiced up about that specific issue for so long.
I understand how you feel, and I think many of us have been there. But the reason that we don’t always share your excitement, or don’t always reference the Fed, debt-based money, etc. in our posts, is because we simply take those things for granted and prefer to focus on other aspects of the same issues. You seem to take that as a sign that we are either ignorant of or refusing to consider the central banking cartel’s role in all of this. So maybe it would help for you to keep reminding yourself that we are well aware of all that.
TheTrivium4TW post=2690 wrote: I think you believe the argument is undermined because you don’t understand what I actually argued. I NEVER argued that any of the claims presented were false. Never. I never claimed they were true.
What I claimed was that logical fallacy was used (just trust us, we don’t need to present the actual data and logic or links to it – that’s a logical fallacy – call it whatever name you like!) to allegedly prove certain claims – and that the logic, being logical fallacy, didn’t actually establish what the article said it did.
…
So, no – my review wasn’t undermined at all given that I didn’t even offer a conclusion as to validity of the conclusions.
The way to undermine my review is simple, though. I made quite a few very specific claims following the format of, “A was claimed by article, data B and logic C was not presented to support claim A, therefore, we must simply trust in the “authority” of the article author and that is a logical fallacy.”
In order to undermine one of those claims, all one has to do is find where the article actually provides the data B and logic C where I claim it was not presented.
That ought to be a very simple task, IF IT EXISTS. I didn’t find it when I said I didn’t find it, but I make mistakes. I’ve reread a few posts of mine and the grammar and misspelling errors have been more than a few – not intentional, but errors do creep in when I’m knee deep in stuff I’m trying to do.
I know what you were arguing. You did not claim the arguments were true or false. You claimed that they were inherently suspect due to the fact that they were logically fallacious, which you later admitted to mean something much different and more broad than the actual definition of “logical (ATA) fallacy” (now you have somehow managed to claim that the original concept of ATA fallacy is an ATA fallacy…..)
In my responses to you on the other thread, I did explain to you where the data/logic for the claims were presented, and how those referenced papers actually did provide the reasoning behind the specific claims in the article. I have no idea why you still believe those sources were inadequate – please feel free to explain.
I have no problem citing external source AS LONG AS THE EXTERNAL SOURCES PROVIDE THE DATA AND THE LOGIC.
When I claimed it did not, it is because I went to the external source AND DIDN’T FIND IT. In one case, I cited a paragraph from the external source and explained that it didn’t have the data or logic to actually support the conclusion (which might be right or wrong, I don’t know because I can’t review the data and the logic!).
Yes, I remember that, and I remember responding that the paragraph you cited actually did explain how they reached the conclusion, along with other surrounding paragraphs in that same section of the paper. Once again, I have no idea why you find the “data/logic” presented to be inadequate.
I agree – just because the logic is bad doesn’t mean the conclusion is bad. That’s exactly why I repeated that fact throughout the first SS review – I didn’t want people to get confused on that point (and they do quite easily!).
No, that’s not what I said or meant. What I said was that just because you personally cannot be sure whether what’s being claimed is true (no one can ever know anything with confidence without first exploring many different sources and reflecting critically), doesn’t mean the claim is automatically a logically false one (bad logic). That seems to be a big part of your thinking re: ATA logical fallacies.
However, information has come out that there has been no significant global warming to a 95% confidence level.
Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995
I also know that the headline is misleading (it wasn’t a U-turn) and that people who cite this as proof global warming isn’t occurring are doing so falsely.
The article you linked seems to be a compilation and cesspool of AGW denier arguments that have been found to be 99-100% bogus.
I think SS itself deals with many of those arguments (“climategate” emails, hockey stick “alarmism”, climate has changed before, statistically insignificant warming, no significant warming since 1995, etc. etc.) adequately at these links:
https://www.skepticalscience.com/Climategate-CRU-emails-hacked.htm
https://www.skepticalscience.com/broken-hockey-stick.htm
https://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-change-little-ice-age-medieval-warm-period.htm
https://www.skepticalscience.com/Phil-Jones-says-no-global-warming-since-1995.htm (anyone who understands short-term variance in data sets should be able to debunk this skeptic argument)
Oh, and remember when you said that the “climate has been warmer before, and therefore is not man-made now” AGW skeptic argument was very weak and a straw man to use?? Well, the article you just linked to for support uses that exact argument:
“Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.”
Triv,
I agree with 99.9% of what you wrote, but I also believe what you wrote was 99.9% outside the scope of our specific disagreement.
TheTrivium4TW post=2654 wrote: As for your Bernanke example, all I would know is that ATA was used to establish the need for Central Banks and that is logical fallacy – so that argument can’t be used to establish the need for Central Banks.
In my example, I cited a paper by BB as support for my statement, which implies that you can access the paper and check the “data/logic” that he used to derive the conclusion. So, according to my definition, there was no ATA fallacy.
Attacking Bernanke himself is simply ad Hominem and that proves nothing, either.
When I said “personal characteristics”, I really meant those characteristics of the source that are directly relevant to the issue at at hand. So it is fair game to bring up the fact that a researcher has fudged data in the past, or done something else intellectually dishonest, in order to cast suspicion on his current claims.
As for attacking the **substance** of Bernnake’s argument – I couldn’t do that unless I actually had access to the underlying data he used (to vet it out and make sure it is accurate and not skewed one way or another) and the logic he applied.
That’s why I can prove he’s lying when he says he has a “dual mandate.”
I have the actual law. I can read it and understand it. I know the mandate, I know the results of following the mandate are different entities.
Denninger went and took the Federal Reserve data that proves the Fed has broken their very own mandate for 25 years running!
I followed Denninger’s Fed links to verify the data itself so I could be confident the chart was correct!
Exactly. No one is arguing that we should just rely on what authorities say to determine reality. I AM arguing that we cannot dismiss arguments simply because they cite legitimate authorities for their claims (i.e. they are not logically fallacious), and rather we must do exactly what you did with the Fed law and data to attack the argument.
Do you see how that undermines your original arguments on the other thread about the SS site? You say that you were only dealing with one specific article, but I can tell you right now that all the other ones follow the same format (making a lot of claims that are supported by citations to external references). When you think about it, that’s really the only practical way they could do it.
But is key to understand that, if you didn’t do the research yourself, you don’t actually KNOW it.
Not knowing something with certainty doesn’t mean it isn’t true.
You might get 95% of things right without doing the “due diligence” to KNOW and be able to confirm, falsify or get somewhere inbetween.
Maybe even 99%.
But when you get that 1% wrong (even 0.1%) and it is your monetary system or your food supply or your water supply or your diet or your medical system or your energy policy or your economic system…
Look out.
I agree.
But the fact that you don’t “know” a claim (supported by reference to authority) is true does not mean you “know” the claim is logically false, i.e. inherently suspect.
Triv,
I appreciate your latest response because it gets to the heart of our disagreement:
My point here is that YOU are making a grave mistake by LISTENING TO AND RELYING ON ANY AUTHORITY. YOU need to understand the data being communicated by that person and you need to apply the necessary TO REACH YOUR OWN CONCLUSION.
By your definition of ATA fallacy, anyone who ever cites an authority for support is committing a “logical lie” and should automatically be considered suspect. You are (admittedly) using “logical fallacy” to mean “a subjectively ‘unreasonable’ statement used in an argument” instead of the technical definition, which is closer to “an objectively incoherent statement”.
Using the latter definition, one can identify logical fallacies in an argument and discredit the entire style of argumentation without ever discussing the substance of the argument. That is because the method of argumentation is absurd by definition, and therefore should not be taken seriously. Using your much more lax definition of logical fallacy, I do not believe we can dismiss the method of argumentation at all.
Instead, we must look to the substance of the argument to see if it has any merit. For example, if I wrote that “a central bank must exist in modern financial economies to manage unemployment and inflation” and cited a paper by BB as support, then you cannot simply dismiss my argument because of the mere fact that I cited an “authority” in the field. You would have to attack the personal characteristics of BB (maybe he is clearly a lying crook) and/or the substance of his reasoning to attack the argument (as you know, that wouldn’t be very hard to do).
I just realized the way I posted this may have been a bit misleading. I only posted one of the videos from the original article, because the other one could not be embedded (at least, I couldn’t figure out how to do it and was in a rush). The video that is not posted came right after this sentence:
“Here is an impressive example of blatantly employing such a strategy to get a specific result.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ZyQjr1YL0zg
Triv,
I had a feeling we’d just end up running around in circles in this discussion.
Here is the short and sweet version of my argument to you:
The SS article you referenced does not contain the logical fallacies you have claimed that it does. All of the major conclusions that were stated in the article, and that you took issue within your original post, came with citations on the Intermediate tab. You have acknowledged these citations exist, but have not explained why you think they are inadequate or amount to non-credible expert sources, thus making the original argumentation in the SS article ATA fallacy. The burden of proof is on you to go through these sources and figure out what they are lacking in credibility, substance, methodology, whatever.
Your original post certainly took a tone that seemed to imply the entire SS site is a sham, filled with fallacious arguments that were not worthy of your 3rd grade math teacher’s class. Frank and I do not believe that is true at all, and also that you have failed to make a remotely good case for why it is. If you have another one to make, I’d like to hear it, but, if not, I’d rather not continue to go around endlessly in circles on this same issue of ATA logical fallacy.
Wow, Triv, talk about using logical fallacies in an argument. What do you call it when someone tries to respond to another person’s argument by completely substituting that argument for another one and then attacking it? Oh yeah, STRAW MAN. Your last post is chalk full of them.
First of all, I never said that ATA fallacy cannot be present when an expert is involved. In fact, with regards to scientific discussions, I said the expert must be within the specific field at issue, within a scientific consensus and his/her work (i.e. the derivation of his conclusions) must be referenced. Obviously, even that does not establish that the cited conclusion is CORRECT – it means no fallacy has been committed in the argumentation.
That last part is what you are really failing to understand. Instead of arguing the substantive points made/referenced in the SS article, you are trying to discredit the entire site by claiming they use logical fallacies, or “lie through logic”. The point of my responses were to tell you why that isn’t true, and why the examples you provided are not logical fallacies. None of that means we should automatically accept the data presented and assume it is true.
Same thing with BB and the Fed. If I write some conclusion about Fed policy and use some paper written by BB or even his comments in a speech as a reference, I am NOT committing a logical fallacy. BB could be the devil incarnate and lying through his teeth about everything related to the Fed, but that doesn’t mean my argument is logically incoherent in any way, shape or form. People must determine the legitimacy of Ben’s arguments/statements for themselves by consulting different sources and putting in the effort to understand macroeconomics, political corruption, etc.
You are committing a huge logical fallacy yourself when you try to manufacture logical fallacies by associating experts in climate science with experts in finance and pointing out how the latter have been responsible for so many destructive effects in the world. Same thing with the lab coat doctor example. Your logic is that “the SS articles are committing logical fallacies by referencing climate experts for their conclusions, because tobacco companies in the past have fallaciously appealed to people in lab coats (perhaps doctors, perhaps not) to promote false claims about smoking”.
There is really no logical connection between the two. Also,
the fact that many “experts” are heavily biased by academic pressures and monetary incentives cannot be used to discredit ALL experts as unreliable sources of information. If you can look at the specific sources cited by SS and find information about why those sources should not be trusted for whatever reason (other than generally saying they are “conflicted”), then that’s a different story. So far you have not done that. You have simply tried to discredit the site by the mere fact that they have appealed to authoritative sources for support.Instead you choose to impugn my objective instead of actually support your critique of what I wrote. At least at the beginning of your missive here.
BTW, the beauty of what I wrote is that my intent, however Machiavellian you will assume it is, doesn’t matter.
I was not claiming you have any bad intent or motives here. I was just briefly explaining one of the reasons that I feel you are incorrectly writing off everything written in the article as a “logical fallacy”, even though those fallacies don’t actually exist. You say this:
BTW, this doesn’t mean imminent, catastrophic AGW is right or wrong. I don’t know – I’m still looking for the data, the assumptions and the models so I can critique them.
Given your initial reaction to SS, I imagine that no amount of data, explanations, models or anything else will convince you that the theory of AGW is grounded in a lot of credible scientific evidence. You will always find “logical fallacies” strewn about, and will dismiss the science because you believe AGW advocates are biased and manipulated by TPTB (which I actually believe to be true in many cases). That is just my opinion, of course, based on experience with other skeptics, and it’s why I generally don’t like to debate AGW in the first place.
The reason I didn’t decide to address every single point you made is because I believe almost all of them can be attributed to the same general misunderstanding of logical fallacy and failure to identify the empirical support contained within links and other critiques on the site. I understand that you only meant to address one article on the site, but then you cannot criticize that article for not having all the information about AGW that you want or accuse it of being a straw man. That being said, I will get back to the specifics of your argument.
That’s 100% totally false. [my explanation of appeal to authority fallacy]
No, it’s not, and your own link shows that my definition is correct.
“Not every appeal to authority commits this fallacy, but every appeal to an authority with respect to matters outside his special province commits the fallacy. Example: ‘These pills must be safe and effective for reducing. They have been endorsed by Miss X, star of stage, screen, and television.'”
If I was referencing Ben Bernanke to establish a fact about current Fed monetary policy, it would not be an ATA fallacy. Similarly, SS referencing respected climate scientists and their studies as support for definitions of climate sensitivity to CO2 absorption is not a fallacy. You cannot expect every single piece of supporting data to be included within the main text of the article, yet that is what most of your initial criticisms amounted to.
The specific issue is that SS claimed that people argue that past climate without human factors, BY DEFINITION, means that humans CAN’T be impacting climate now. I don’t know who votes or how they vote, but that, on the surface is an IDIOTIC argument on its face. It is completely irrational and illogical.
Yet, somehow, the idiotic gets puts forth and ranked #1. Fine.
However, the real argument skeptics make is that climate is always changing, therefore, you can’t automatically pin climate change now on human activity as in, “see temperatures are rising, therefore, humans are doing it.” In other words, we need to see the data, we need to know how it was collected and we need to know all the assumptions and we need to know all the logic to be able to verify the results being presented THE AUTHORITY.
SS did not claim that skeptics think that past climate change makes it impossible for humans to influence climate. What they DO claim is that past episodes of dramatic warming in pre-industrial society make it very unlikely that current warming trends are being driven by human CO2 emissions and industrial activity, despite what recent data shows. I’m not sure where you go for your anti-AGW arguments, but this one is definitely very popular. SS does not determine popularity by vote, but rather by how many times they find the argument popping up on various sites critiquing AGW.
Whether or not you believe it is a very weak argument (I do too), your claim that SS is presenting a straw man is completely invalid, and that’s the point I was trying to make. So there is one specific example of you incorrectly associating the SS article with a logical flaw.
Second of all, I went to the links and included them in the critique – I even quoted text from one of the links. Now, if I missed a link, do point out that link specifically so I can understand and address your concern. Otherwise, your comment is pretty useless other than to imply I didn’t do the research without any way for me to counter that point.
Yes, I see that you included the links. Then you go on to basically dismiss them as credible support for the claims made, even though they are very good sources of support. You say this:
Unfortunately, there are no links to the references for easy access, nor are there any quotes from said articles to show the methodology used to arrive at 3.7 Watts/m^2. That’s why the link was provided and it failed to perform its provided function.
I’m not sure why you make that statement after quoting the section explaining the 3.7Wm-2 doubling figure cited in the article. That part you quoted is also contained in a much larger section from that report dealing with the contribution of Atmospheric CO2 to warming. That also deals with this claim you made – “Also note that the author DEFINED CO2 as being a critical part of this process without actually establishing it is a critical part of this process.”, as well as this one – “Uh, but including CO2 in the definition of climate sensitivity could be completely subjective. This article sure doesn’t present a logical case that it isn’t.”
P5: “How much does it warm if CO2 is doubled? If we lived in a climate with no feedbacks, global temperatures would rise 1.2°C (Lorius 1990)”
Click on Lorius – “all other factors remain fixed.” Is this a valid assumption? This isn’t addressed at all. its just assume by the Authority.
I’m not really sure what your issue is here. Lorius is cited for the 1.2 degree figure, which is admittedly what the most simple models show when assuming no feedbacks whatsoever. Obviously, this is not really the world we live in, but that is why “all other factors remain fixed” in that model. By definition, they must for purposes of the simple model.
“This forcing doesn’t necessarily have to come from CO2. It can come from any factor that causes an energy imbalance.”
The grand extrapolation is just thrown in for good measure. No supporting data, no supporting logic, no discussion of complexity, nothing. Just an Appeal to Authority statement.
Once again, an incorrect application of ATA. The statement that climate forcing can occur from any factor that causes an energy imbalance is basically a tautology, meaning it is true by definition. How could something that causes an energy imbalance not be a factor in climate forcing?
Reverse Engineer post=2478 wrote: Seriously, I’ll go check out the blog and see if I can’t insinuate myself in there and recruit a few new Diners. Sounds like a good Blog to do some Fishing of Commenters
All you really have to do is register at the site, and then go to this Article Submissions Form, and try to submit your article.
Triv,
I believe you are throwing out the “logical fallacy” claim rather carelessly at this point. From your POV, Skeptical Science is lying through logic to promote an unspoken agenda. From my POV, you went to SS expecting to find a site that promotes TPTB agenda without any real science, and you found exactly what you were expecting to find by incorrectly identifying logical fallacies all over the place.
The appeal to authority fallacy results from someone claiming X to be true because some claimed “expert” said it was true, even though there is no reason to think that the person is actually an expert in the field and/or is within the scientific consensus. The fallacy does not happen anytime someones states a scientific/empirical conclusion without going into detail about how that conclusion was derived. It might be practical for little kids to do that on their 3rd grade arithmetic exam, but it’s not at all practical for these types of complex scientific theories. Usually, extensive references must be used, and from what I see, the Intermediate tab provides plenty of those. It’s easy to sit back and criticize the way people construct articles, and obviously they will not be perfect, but it’s not at all easy to actually write the articles, especially when it comes to something like AGW.
You are also failing to understand how SS is organized, and therefore claiming that the article you linked is a straw man argument. SS clearly breaks down their articles by specific AGW critiques that actually exist and have been cataloged in their database. They even provide a rough measure of how “popular” each critique is. The one you chose (past climate change suggests natural, non-human factors are the cause of current climate change) is apparently the most popular, representing 4.6% of all critiques in their database.
“Climate is always changing. We have had ice ages and warmer periods when alligators were found in Spitzbergen. Ice ages have occurred in a hundred thousand year cycle for the last 700 thousand years, and there have been previous periods that appear to have been warmer than the present despite CO2 levels being lower than they are now. More recently, we have had the medieval warm period and the little ice age.”
There are plenty of other critiques addressed on the website. 153 of them to be exact. You seem to very critical of the fact that this particular article did not provide the data for why GHGs and CO2 contribute to warming, and simply assumed it was true (even though they did provide a reference). Perhaps you would find more of the specific you were looking for if you simply moved to a different critique, such as this one:
Reverse Engineer post=2491 wrote: It only stands to reason that the most particles our solar system would encounter would be during the time it is placed dead center of the flat disk on a north-south orientation to the central rotation axis of the galaxy. The day that occurs in this cycle of oscillations is on 12/21/2012, but all during the time you are moving into greater particle density.
I just explained to you why our solar system will not be in the “dead center” of this disk. We are actually moving away from the center right now. Even if we were moving into dead center, the various effects you claim are scientifically questionable at best, but we are not moving into the dead center, so the entire point is moot.
Finally there are the magnetic possibilities. The core of the earth is spinning metal, and creates its own magnetic field as a result. The Sun silarly has a magnetic field, and then so does the Galaxy above that, because it is also spinning. The smaller magnets all have to line up with the biggest magnet. If you move from the northern plane of the big magnet to the southern side of it, the magnetic orientation of the Earth’s poles has to flip. This doesn’t mean the whole EARTH flips over, just that all the little magnets inside the core have to flip over. This could create a LOT of stress in aggregate. In terms of experimental evidence, the migration of the North Pole is accelerating, up from about 4Km per year to now about 40Km per year. We know from the geologic record that the Earth flips its magnetic orientation, but the periodicity of this is irregular.
So there are likely some other effects here besides just where you sit in the plane of the big magnet determining whether the orientation flips or not. However, if we are on the cusp of a “flipping event”, then this could be the reason behind core heating.
What really happens during a Geomagnetic Reversal?
“Theories concerning geomagnetic reversals have been circulating every media outlet playing to 2012 worriers and wonder-ers possible over the past few years. The name itself can be off-putting, but simply stated, a geomagnetic reversal is just that: the change of orientation (reversal) in Earth’s magnetic field (geomagnetic) in regards to the magnetic north and south poles. I’m sure those of you either studying or worrying about Y2012 have wondered if we would or even could undergo a geomagnetic reversal during that time and if that reversal would cause the catastrophes the media has foretold (see the movie, 2012).
In short, the answer is no. The longer version, however, gets a bit more complex. Reversals traditionally happen every 300,000 years or so. We are now considered overdue since the last reversal was close to 780,000 years ago and is often referred to as the Brunhes-Matuyama reversal. It is not known exactly how long the reversal took, but geologists estimate the reversal took between 1,200 and 10,000 years to complete the process.
Regardless of when, it is imperative that our focus remains on the “how” when trying to negate Doomsayers. These are the people who use a base of fact to allow their own far-fetched ideas to gather power through fear, and thus validation. In regards to geomagnetic reversal as a theory to cause the devastating results we have come to expect from the Media’s 2012, the loudest voice of doom come from Patrick Geryl.
Patrick Geryl believes that a Geomagnetic Reversal is directly linked to a Rotational Pole Shift. Earth’s magnetic field is formed by electrical currents that are generated by motions within the fluid outer core(1). Note that it’s the liquid outer core not the solid inner core that produces magnetism. Geryl seems to think that magnetism is generated at the solid inner core.
According to Geryl, these geomagnetic reversals happen like clock-work. The last being 11,803 years ago and for Braden it was about 13,000 years ago. (3) This is obviously not the case since the last reversal was known to have happened closer to 800,000 years ago then 12,000. In addition, they are hardly cyclical as the doomsayers would like you to think.
Gregg Braden writes in his books that the “falling magnetic field” is directly linked to our consciousness. When the magnetic field is weaker, we are much more vulnerable to be “changed.”(2) Both Braden and Geryl theorize that these reversals are much more common than mainstream science acknowledges.
The difference between Braden and Geryl is obvious. Geryl predicts complete and utter devastation and death. Braden’s theory does not advocate the selling of fear. In the end, you do not need to fear Geomagnetic Reversals. There is no reason whatsoever to believe that they cause harm to life on Earth. There is also no reason to believe that the reversal will take place in our lifetimes. These reversals take time. When a geologist states that a magnetic reversal happens rapidly, you need to realize what rapidly means to a geologist. Thousands, tens of thousand, hundreds of thousands and even millions of years can mean rapidly for a geologist. Other than having to re-orient compasses and navigational devices, life will not be affected by a reversal.”
These are all the possible reasons I can think of to explain the geotectonics we see playing out here.
The problem is, all of those reasons amount to little more than psuedo-scientific propaganda. I think you should start thinking about other reasons for your observed effects.
There may be others as well, but what is undeniable is the EFFECT of more energy releasing quakes and eruptions. That energy goes somewhere, because of conservation of energy. Where it goes is into the Heat Sink of the world Oceans.
I’m more than willing to consider this possibility. It’s a very unique argument AFAIK, so I haven’t come across anything about it one way or the other. It definitely requires further investigation to determine its relation to warming trends.
RE,
The myth I was referring to is the one first formulated by psuedo-scientist John Major Jenkins that the winter-solistice sun (and Earth) will be aligned with the central plane of the Milky Way Galaxy on Dec. 21st, and therefore bombarded with energy/particles from the black hole in the center. The only thing remotely true about this claim is that it will appear from Earth that the Sun is close to the center of the Milky Way’s “Dark Rift” for many Winters (at least 70 years), due to the Earth’s tilt and the resulting view of the night sky. From the point of view of anywhere else in the solar system or galaxy, there is NO alignment of any astronomical significance.
It takes our solar system 200-250 millions years to orbit around the center of the galaxy, and about 33 million years to pass through any central plane galaxy on its orbital path (the last time this happened is estimated to be 3 million years ago, so it won’t happen again for many millions of years). If there is no REAL alignment occurring, then there is no reason to think we are being bombarded by gunk from the galactic center. This psuedoastronomical myth has been perpetuated by the various 2012 “prophets” to act as some kind of support for their bogus interpretations of the Mayan calendar, Hopi prophecy, etc. See also The 2012 Deception:
RE,
Regarding your Geotectonic Ocean Heat Transfer Theory, here are my initial thoughts:
It is not really a debunking of AGW at all, but a hypothesis about an alternate source of warming. Your implication is that all of the warming data/projections can be explained by this natural geotectonic cycle, and therefore human industrial activity is not responsible and therefore would not have to be curtailed/eliminated to stop the process or mitigate the damage.
However, you don’t really provide any evidence for that implication. The closest you come is making casual remarks such as these:
Now, I personally cannot see how slight changes in atmospheric temperatures since 1990 would cause such a volume of water to have so big a rise in total heat content. The specific heat of water is far greater than gases in the atmosphere, so you couldn’t get that much heat into them this way
The Ocean is such a huge mass with high specific heat tht only something much bigger and hotter could effectively heat it up. What is bigger and hotter than the Ocean? The molten rock that makes up the mantle of the earth. If it gets significantly hotter, the Oceans will get significantly hotter, they sit right on top of it. The Ocean isn’t ever going to heat up enough to make the molten
rock under it hotter, but the rock can eaily make the Oceans hotter. Same thing with atmospheric warming. The Atmosphere doesn’t have high enough specific heat to heat the Oceans, but the Oceans do have plenty to heat the atmosphere.That is just a conclusion you have reached with regards to the heating of the oceans and the atmosphere, and the inability of greenhouse gases to significantly contribute to such heating. Do you have any credible sources to back up this conclusion? AGW proposes that GHGs both absorb and reflect back solar energy that is attempting to radiate back out into space, and a very large portion of that heat ends up in the oceans (atmospheric warming is much less, but more critical to human populations). Do you have evidence to debunk this process?
Another big issue I have with your theory is this:
Further thoughts on the Geo-Tectonic Ocean Heat Transfer Theory, as I am now calling it.Assuming the theory of increasing tectonic activity as we pass through the Galactic Ecliptic in 2012 is correct…
Do you mean our solar system’s alignment with the center of the galaxy by “galactic ecliptic”? If so, then you have a slight problem, because there is no alignment. That is just a bogus myth perpetuated by the equally bogus 2012 apocalypse/new age crowd. Similarly, the Earth is not passing through any sort of highly charged “photon belt”.
This fact does not by any means destroy your theory, though. It just rules out galactic alignment as a cause of your geo-tectonic stresses. I will have to take a closer look at the specifics of this theory, your correlation data, etc. and get back to you with my thoughts later. In the meantime, I second steve’s recommendation that you submit it to Skeptical Science – you will certainly get a more detailed and knowledgeable response from them.
I have been to India many times and have seen their version of American culture. Yes, its obscene. No, it’s not anymore obscene OR dorky than the corporate crap that has existed over here in past years. Older people than myself can probably attest to this fact better than I can, but I remember the commercials from the 90s quite well, and even then they were dorky to the nth degree.
Have you seen some of the food products that are marketed here?? How about the KFC Double Down Sandwich:
Of course corporations will tailor the specifics of their products differently in different countries, and will get away with different things over time. The only reason the crown crust pizza seems more dorky to you is because you think like an American. People in the ME are not fundamentally more dorky and more easily duped by crazy combinations of foods. They are victims of material excess and corporate propaganda just like everyone else.
Given the fact that American corporations have hired 3x as many foreigners as Americans in the last few years, I would think it would be hard to miss the symbolism in these PH tactics. But what do I know?
