H.L. Mencken once observed that the entire aim of politics is to keep the populace in a state of alarm by menacing it with imaginary hobgoblins. AOC, and Thunberg in Davos reveal that little has changed.
Teenage environmentalist Thunberg addressed the World Economic Forum (WEF) and once again admonished western nations, “Our house is still on fire. Your inaction is fueling the flames by the hour. We are still telling you to panic, and to act as if you loved your children above all else…We don’t want these things done in 2050, 2030, or even 2021. We want this done now.”
“60% of CO2 emissions since Greta Thunberg was born is attributable to China… but nobody talks about that. They talk as if its somehow Europeans and Americans who are going to fix this problem… which is frustrating because it doesn’t get to the heart of the matter…If you’re serious about slowing CO2 emissions and temperatures rising it has to be China and India you constrain…while Greta travels to New York and Davos, I don’t see her in Beijing or Delhi.” — Niall Ferguson, from Summit News report.
The majority of pollution is coming from Asia and Africa. Why ignore them unless you are anti-West, and there is actually another agenda.
In Davos, Thunberg called for a “zero emissions” economy, beginning right now. Which is pure insanity, and effectively means the end of civilization. But she speaks with passion, so that means we must all take her suggestions incredibly seriously. Not.
She actually said this:
Obviously, Africa, India and China will continue to use fossil fuels to build and strengthen their countries, no matter how many tantrums Greta continues to have.
At the end of the tour of Charlie’s Chocolate Factory, Veruca was the third to leave, with both her and her father are covered in garbage. When Veruca sees the Great Glass Elevator, she demands her dad buy one for her, in which her father responds that she was getting nothing but a bath. Not only did he stop giving her anything she wants, Rupert Salt realized that they had been constantly spoiling their daughter. Veruca then pouts, with her father giving her an angry glare.
When will we start acting Mr. Salt and be the adults in the room?
Paul Plante says
We adults who were born in an entirely different geological era known as the HOLOCENE simply have got to learn, perhaps by re-education at hard labor, which was said to work quite well as a treatment for dissidents in the old Soviet Union with its Gulags, that our time has come and past, and we and our old-fashioned, simple-minded, “science” are no longer relevant in the ANTHROPOCENE era, which is now the domain of scared little girls like Greta Thunberg, who has some serious financial backing that allows her to flit all over the world like Tinkerbell in the Peter Pan movie, being seen in New York, then Madrid, then Davos, with Canada and the rest of America and the world thrown in (how does she get all these visa, one must wonder), and AOC, whose book of “science” came from a Cracker-Jax box wrapped in cellophane to keep it from being stuck to whatever sticky stuff is all over those Cracker-Jax inside the box.
Whoever programmed this poor little girl’s mind that has her screeching at people like she is little lady Fauntleroy has sure done a good job of it, that is one thing I can say with certainty.
Little Greta knows all, everybody else, with the possible exception of Jimmy Hansen, knows nothing at all, and that is where it all begins and ends.
And one has to truly wonder how it is that this little girl manages to get into all these venues, especially Davos, where we read in the CNBC article “Snipers, security guards and soldiers: Keeping the elite safe at Davos is not cheap” by Holly Ellyatt @HollyEllyatt published Jan 20 2020, as follows:
Soldiers patrol the streets of the small ski-orientated town and security checks are carried out on personnel, vehicle and bags on access roads into the area.
Snipers can be seen stationed on the roofs of buildings; security is obviously extremely tight within the main Forum too, known as the Congress Center.
end quotes
So how does little Greta go waltzing through all of that security cordon so she could go screech at the big-wigs assembled inside?
How does that happen?
And why?
What power does this scared little girl hold over these people?
And how did this little girl amass such power, when we here in America have none?
J says
Not sure where to start here:
1. Holocene is still on going;
2. Anthropocene has not been accepted by any of the approving institutions;
3. Even if Anthropocene was an accepted geological epoch, in order for you to be in a separate geological epoch, you would have had to been born prior to the 1800s.
*I will note, out of the spirit of transparency, that The Great Acceleration and 1945 (First nuclear bomb detonation) had been proposed as have the 1500s.
Paul Plante says
J, thanks for signing on here, but you are clearly missing the point – even if you can rationally rebut the idea that the Holocene has ended, and that there is no such thing as the Anthropocene, the actual facts of the matter, since we are dealing with emotions here, not facts, are that the Holocene has in fact ended, and yes, we are now firmly in the Anthropocene, as we can clearly see from this following article entitled “IPCC report puts global warming crisis in Anthropocene framework” posted by Ian Angus on October 11, 2018, where we have as follows:
This week’s special report on global warming has been widely reported in the mainstream media, but no account I’ve seen has mentioned that for the first time the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has explicitly linked climate change to the broader implications of Anthropocene science.
The report’s discussion of the Anthropocene appears below.
Chapter 1, Executive Summary, pages 5-6
There is no single answer to the question of whether it is feasible to limit warming to 1.5°C and adapt to the consequences.
Feasibility is considered in this report as the capacity of a system as a whole to achieve a specific outcome.
The global transformation that would be needed to limit warming to 1.5°C requires enabling conditions that reflect the links, synergies and trade-offs between mitigation, adaptation and sustainable development.
These enabling conditions have many systemic dimensions—geophysical, environmental-ecological, technological, economic, socio-cultural and institutional—that may be considered through the unifying lens of the Anthropocene, acknowledging profound, differential but increasingly geologically significant human influences on the Earth system as a whole.
Chapter 1, page 7
The overarching context of this report is this: human influence has become a principal agent of change on the planet, shifting the world out of the relatively stable Holocene period into a new geological era, often termed the Anthropocene.
Responding to climate change in the Anthropocene will require approaches that integrate multiple levels of inter-connectivity across the global community.
Chapter 1, pages 8-9
The Anthropocene: Strengthening the global response to 1.5°C global warming
Introduction
The concept of the Anthropocene can be linked to the aspiration of the Paris Agreement.
The abundant empirical evidence of the unprecedented rate and global scale of impact of human influence on the Earth System has led many scientists to call for an acknowledgement that the Earth has entered a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene.
The geological dimension of the Anthropocene and 1.5°C global warming
The process of formalizing the Anthropocene is on-going, but a strong majority of the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) established by the Sub–Committee on Quaternary Stratigraphy of the International Commission on Stratigraphy have agreed that:
(i) the Anthropocene has a geological merit;
(ii) it should follow the Holocene as a formal epoch in the Geological Time Scale; and, that
(iii) its onset should be defined as the mid–20th century.
Potential markers in the stratigraphic record include an array of novel manufactured materials of human origin, and “these combined signals render the Anthropocene stratigraphically distinct from the Holocene and earlier epochs.”
The Holocene period, which itself was formally adopted in 1885 by geological science community, began 11,700 years ago with a more stable warm climate providing for emergence of human civilization and growing human-nature interactions that have expanded to give rise to the Anthropocene.
The Anthropocene and the challenge of a 1.5° C warmer world
The Anthropocene can be employed as a “boundary concept” that frames critical insights into understanding the drivers, dynamics and specific challenges in responding to the ambition of keeping global temperature well below 2°C while pursuing efforts towards and adapting to a 1.5°C warmer world.
The Anthropocene offers a structured understanding of the culmination of past and present human– environmental relations and provides an opportunity to better visualize the future to minimize pitfalls, while acknowledging the differentiated responsibility and opportunity to limit global warming and invest in prospects for climate-resilient sustainable development.
The Anthropocene also provides an opportunity to raise questions regarding the regional differences, social inequities and uneven capacities and drivers of global social–environmental changes, which in turn inform the search for solutions as explored in Chapter 4 of this report.
It links uneven influences of human actions on planetary functions to an uneven distribution of impacts as well as the responsibility and response capacity to for example, limiting global warming to no more than a 1.5°C rise above pre–industrial levels.
Efforts to curtail greenhouse gas emissions without incorporating the intrinsic interconnectivity and disparities associated with the Anthropocene world may themselves negatively affect the development ambitions of some regions more than others and negate sustainable development efforts.
end quotes
So as you can clearly see, J, the Holocene has ended and yes, we are now in the Anthropocene where hysteria and insanity rule because when the Holocene ended, so did rationality and the age of reason in the United States of America.
MJM says
Off topic are we ?
Whenever I see anything in here about this young girl I continue to reply in much the same way, who give s a *+!# ????? I really, seriously, could not care less what this high school dropout says.
For me, the horrible part of the notification this delivers, is that our world leaders are somehow subjected to listen to this child’s b.s. I used to wonder about how important the meetings in Davos must be.
Now I wonder just how much of it all is this type of disingenuous marketing b.s, and I wonder just how the heck she even got a soap box to stand on there……….gheeeezus…….
J says
Paul,
Thanks for the information. However, the article you passed along is not an accurate portrait of the full report. He only cites Chapter 1. There are five chapters:
https://report.ipcc.ch/sr15/pdf/sr15_chapter1.pdf
https://report.ipcc.ch/sr15/pdf/sr15_chapter2.pdf
https://report.ipcc.ch/sr15/pdf/sr15_chapter3.pdf
https://report.ipcc.ch/sr15/pdf/sr15_chapter4.pdf
https://report.ipcc.ch/sr15/pdf/sr15_chapter5.pdf
In addition to the information provided by Mr. Angus, the ICS Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) will be submitting formal proposal in 2021 – https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01641-5.
While it may be your opinion that Holocene has officially ended; those who make that determination have not made such determination.
You, as well as I or anyone else, are entitled to our opinions. However, when we provide opinion, we should not present it as fact. As a society, we have the means to broadly, easily, and freely distribute information and without an appropriate guardrail, we can easily misinform.
Paul Plante says
J, with all due respect to yourself, you have obviously missed the memo informing us that as of now, whatever else you or some crowd at whatever the ICS Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) might in fact be might think about what era we are really in, the fact of the matter, regardless of what you might think, is that we are really in the ANTHROPOCENE, as we clearly see from the following official government language, as it is a treaty, and thus, law of the land, to wit:
The IPCC produces reports that contribute to the work of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the main international treaty on climate change.
The objective of the UNFCCC is to “stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic (human-induced) interference with the climate system”.
end quotes
You see what I am saying there, J?
Even though you and the ICS Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) might not think we are in the ANTHROPOCENE, this treaty that says we are in the ANTHROPOCENE renders their opinion on reality irrelevant, and has you taking heresy against politico-scientific orthodoxy.
So from the above, we can see that it is not merely my opinion that the Holocene has officially ended; those who make that determination have in fact made such a determination as part of a global treaty and whatever the ICS Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) might in fact be, their opinion has been rendered meaningless and un-essential.
So, yes, J, you, as well as I or anyone else, are entitled to our opinions, and I whole-heartedly agree with you that when we provide opinion, we should not present it as fact.
And yes, as a society, we do have the means to broadly, easily, and freely distribute information and without an appropriate guardrail, we can easily misinform.
That is what The Guardian and NOAA and AP science fiction writer Seth Borenstein have been doing, which is why I am so thankful as an American citizen to the Cape Charles Mirror for being the only venue in America where a free exchange of ideas between us could take place, J. as the Mirror is open to all points of view, and let me say I am also thankful the Mirror gave me an opportunity to give you a warning about speaking heretical statements by insisting this is not the ANTHROPOCENE when it clearly is.
Paul Plante says
Little Greta, MJM, has some big bucks backing her action, otherwise we would not even know who this ignorant little girl even is.
How ignorant the little girl actually is can be seen in her statements in Davos, and here I am quoting from her published transcript of that speech, which is available on-line, as follows:
And let’s be clear: We don’t need a low-carbon economy.
We don’t need to lower emissions.
Our emissions have to stop, if we are to have a chance to stay below the 1.5-degree target.
And until we have the technologies that at scale can put our emissions to minus, then we must forget about net zero.
We need real zero, because distant net-zero emission targets will mean absolutely nothing if we just continue to ignore the carbon dioxide budget that applies for today, not distant future dates.
end quotes
First of all, and not surprisingly, that is almost undecipherable gibberish, which is usually what pours from out the mouth of little Greta, along with prodigious amounts of carbon dioxide, and although mindless gibberish, nonetheless, the attentive media that dotes of little Greta prints her words as if they were the utterances of the Pythia or Oracle of Delphi, the priestess who held court at Pytho, the sanctuary of the Delphinians, a sanctuary dedicated to the Greek god Apollo whose unintelligible utterances were highly regarded, for it was believed that she channeled prophecies from Apollo himself, while steeped in a dreamlike trance.
As to our emissions of CO2 having to stop, then human life itself has to stop precisely because the average human exhales about 2.3 pounds of carbon dioxide on an average day, and a hysterical little girl like Greta when she has her mouth running at flank speed produces up to eight times as much CO2 as the rest of us who unlike little Greta are not hysterical ravers.
So if little Greta wants to set a good example for the rest of us, and she should, being a leader as she is, she should be the first to stop emitting CO2 by ceasing to exhale.
And then she should get all of her many followers, and this would start with AOC and the staff at The Guardian to stop emitting CO2 by ceasing to exhale, and my goodness, I can see hope for the future beginning right there.
But then, ALL combustion of anything flammable also has to cease, because ALL combustion produces not only CO2, which is bad enough, but water vapor, as well, which is a much more serious “greenhouse” gas than is CO2.
Consider the combustion of wood, for example:
C6H12O6 (cellulose) + 6 O2 = 6 CO2 + 6 H2O
Or the combustion of gasoline:
C8H18 + 12.5 O2 → 8 CO2 + 9 H2O
Or butane:
2C4 H10 + 13O2 → 8CO2 + 10H2O
And on and on that list goes because life on earth is carbon-based, and for there to be zero emissions of carbon dioxide, essentially, all life on earth has to come to an end.
Greta is demanding that we all commit mass suicide in order to save the earth.
Greta, you and AOC go first, is my thought.
Paul Plante says
J sounds like many of us older people here in America who are still mired in HOLOCENE era thinking, where facts once did matter, who are foolish enough to think that facts still do matter, when they clearly don’t, as in little Greta, “THE SCIENCE AUTHORITY,” telling the Davos crowd of rich dudes, “No political ideology or economic structure has been able to tackle the climate and environmental emergency and create a cohesive and sustainable world, because that world, in case you haven’t noticed, is currently on fire,” when the world is hardly on fire, and in fact, where I am it is snowing and the only fire in sight is that which I have going in my stove to keep me warm and to keep my water from freezing.
So even though it really is a blatantly false statement that the world is on fire, when it isn’t on fire at all, just the most fire-prone place in the world right now is living up to its well-established reputation as the most fire-prone place in the world by being on fire, because Greta said the world is on fire, well, it is, and we people who think it isn’t. because we look out our window and see snow, will just have to adjust our thinking to see the world as Greta sees it, because she has true vision and we don’t, being adults, as we can see from the little girl’s stirring speech at Davos on January 21, 2020, to wit:
I wonder: What will you tell your children was the reason to fail and leave them facing a climate chaos that you knowingly brought upon them?
That it seemed so bad for the economy that we decided to resign the idea of securing future living conditions without even trying?
Our house is still on fire.
Your inaction is fueling the flames by the hour.
end quotes
That is why nobody is waiting around for a bunch of stuffy old geologists to get around to finally realizing “our house is still burning, ” because the inaction of the geologists in proclaiming the “AGE OF THE ANTHROPOCENE” is fueling the flames by the hour, which takes us back to the Cape Charles Mirror archives on the subject of “contrived science,” where again the word “contrived” is taken to mean “having an unnatural or false appearance or quality: artificial, labored, as in a contrived plot,” such as the AP NEWS article entitled “‘We’re all in big trouble’: Climate panel sees a dire future” by the hysteria mongerer Seth Borenstein on September 25, 2019, which screamed out at us that the IPCC, which is a political lash-up prostituting science to create HYSTERIA in the public at large to make them “tractable” and therefore, easy to manipulate with falsehoods, warned that if steps aren’t taken to reduce emissions and slow global warming, seas will rise 3 feet by the end of the century, with many fewer fish, less snow and ice, stronger and wetter hurricanes and other, nastier weather systems, and focus in on a phrase the IPCC uses to scare us with, that being “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system,” which is yet more bull****, especially that word “anthropogenic,” a totally-contrived political term, as we can clearly see by going to an article in the Brit publication The Guardian entitled “The Anthropocene epoch: have we entered a new phase of planetary history? – Human activity has transformed the Earth – but scientists are divided about whether this is really a turning point in geological history” by Nicola Davison on 10 Jun 2019, to wit:
It was February 2000 and the Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen was sitting in a meeting room in Cuernavaca, Mexico, stewing quietly.
Five years earlier, Crutzen and two colleagues had been awarded the Nobel prize in chemistry for proving that the ozone layer, which shields the planet from ultraviolet light, was thinning at the poles because of rising concentrations of industrial gas.
Now he was attending a meeting of scientists who studied the planet’s oceans, land surfaces and atmosphere.
As the scientists presented their findings, most of which described dramatic planetary changes, Crutzen shifted in his seat.
“You could see he was getting agitated.”
“He wasn’t happy,” Will Steffen, a chemist who organised the meeting, told me recently.
What finally tipped Crutzen over the edge was a presentation by a group of scientists that focused on the Holocene, the geological epoch that began around 11,700 years ago and continues to the present day.
After Crutzen heard the word Holocene for the umpteenth time, he lost it.
“He stopped everybody and said: ‘Stop saying the Holocene!’”
“‘We’re not in the Holocene any more,’” Steffen recalled.
end quotes
Now, speaking as an engineer, here, which is a totally different breed of cat from a “scientist,” such as this Crutzen dude who heard the word Holocene for the umpteenth time and flipped out and lost it, yelling at the people around him to “Stop saying the Holocene,” I would say the dude sounds like a dangerous lunatic who might be better off being institutionalized somewhere safe, but at the same time, and this is based on experience with the trade, there is absolutely nothing which prevents a dangerous lunatic from being a scientist, so there it is, which takes us back to The Guardian, as follows:
But then Crutzen stalled.
The outburst had not been premeditated, but now all eyes were on him.
So he blurted out a name for a new epoch.
A combination of anthropos, the Greek for “human”, and “-cene”, the suffix used in names of geological epochs, “Anthropocene” at least sounded academic.
end quotes
So the term the IPCC uses is an un-scientific, political term pulled from straight out of the *** of someone who might well be unhinged, but that does serve as any kind of bar to the IPCC using the bull**** term to scare people with, since that is how the IPCC needs people – frightened out of their wits and unable to see the SCAM going on here, which is a big money transfer scheme in the guise of “fighting global warming,” which takes us back to The Guardian for more of that story, as follows:
A few months after the meeting, Crutzen and an American biologist, Eugene Stoermer, expanded on the idea in an article on the “Anthropocene”.
We were entering an entirely new phase of planetary history, they argued, in which human beings had become the driving force.
And without a major catastrophe, such as an asteroid impact or nuclear war, humankind would remain a major geological force for many millennia.
end quotes
Now, keep in mind that those assertions aren’t based on any “science,” or “scientific findings;” to the contrary, they are based solely on the emotional “feelings” of someone who may well not be all there, which takes us again back to The Guardian:
The article appeared on page 17 of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme’s newsletter.
At this point it did not seem likely the term would ever travel beyond the abstruse literature produced by institutions preoccupied with things like the nitrogen cycle.
But the concept took flight.
Environmental scientists latched on to what they saw as a useful catch-all term for the changes to the natural world – retreating sea ice, accelerating species extinction, bleached coral reefs – that they were already attributing to human activity.
Academic articles began to appear with “Anthropocene” in the title, followed by entire journals dedicated to the topic.
Soon the idea jumped to the humanities, then newspapers and magazines, and then to the arts, becoming a subject of photography, poetry, opera and a song by Nick Cave.
“The proliferation of this concept can mainly be traced back to the fact that, under the guise of scientific neutrality, it conveys a message of almost unparalleled moral-political urgency,” wrote the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk.
end quotes
And seriously, people, if you were pulling off the SCAM OF THE CENTURY, which is what this IPCC global climate crisis crowd is doing, and you needed people petrified with fear and unable to think straight while you are fleecing them, why would you go for less than a message of almost unparalleled moral-political urgency?
Getting back to the genesis of this horse**** term “anhropogenic,” The Guardian continues as follows:
There was just one place where the Anthropocene seemed not to be catching on: among the geologists who actually define these terms.
To many geologists, accustomed to working with rocks that are hundreds of millions of years old, the notion that a species that has been around for the blink of an eye was now a genuine geological force seemed absurd.
Few would deny we are in a period of climatic turmoil, but many feel that, compared with some of the truly apocalyptic events of the deep past – such as the period, 252m years ago, when temperatures rose 10C and 96% of marine species died – the change so far has not been especially severe.
end quotes
As I have said elsewhere, compared to the climatic “hands” the earth has dealt people at various times in its long, history (humans have in fact been on earth since before 2000 when millennials think the world was created just for them), we really have it being fairly benign, but hey, that is just me.
Getting back to the genesis of the political term “anthropogenic”:
At a meeting of the Geological Society of London, in 2006, a stratigrapher named Jan Zalasiewicz argued that it was time to look at the concept seriously.
With a mounting sense of apprehension, Zalasiewicz agreed to take on the task.
He knew the undertaking would not only be difficult but divisive, risking the ire of colleagues who felt that all the chatter around the Anthropocene had more to do with politics and media hype than actual science.
“All the things the Anthropocene implies that are beyond geology, particularly the social-political stuff, is new terrain for many geologists,” Zalasiewicz told me.
“To have this word used by climate commissions and environmental organisations is unfamiliar and may feel dangerous.”
end quotes
And the use of the term has everything to do with politics and media hype, and absolutely nothing whatever to do with science, and yes, it is indeed quite dangerous for these politicians on this IPCC to be turning people’s heads inside out with contrived pseudo-science to scare them and render them unable to think or question, which are basic citizenship requirements for any democracy to be able to function properly as opposed to being a despotism or tyranny, which this IPCC will be if only it can trick and fool us American citizens to come on board and surrender our collective futures to them to manage, which is the “social-political stuff” that the IPCC really is all about – redistribution of wealth, by them, which takes us back to The Guardian, once again, for more, as follows:
One of the loudest critics of the Anthropocene is Stanley Finney, who as the secretary-general of the IUGS, the body that ratifies changes to the timescale, is perhaps the most powerful stratigrapher in the world.
When Finney first came across the term “Anthropocene”, in a paper written by Zalasiewicz in 2008, he thought little of it.
As the Anthropocene working group gained momentum, he grew concerned that the ICS was being pressured into issuing a statement that at its heart had little to do with advancing stratigraphy, and more to do with politics.
end quotes
It has everything to do with politics, which is driving this train, and nothing to do with “science,” at all, to wit:
Academics both inside and outside geology have noted the Anthropocene’s political implications.
In “After Nature,” the law professor Jedediah Purdy writes that using the term “Anthropocene” to describe a wide array of human-caused geological and ecological change is “an effort to meld them into a single situation, gathered under a single name”.
To Purdy, the Anthropocene is an attempt to do what the concept of “the environment” did in the 1960s and 70s.
It is pragmatic, a way to name the problem – and thus begin the process of solving it.
Yet if a term becomes too broad, its meaning can become unhelpfully vague.
“There is an impulse to want to put things in capital letters, in formal definitions, just to make them look like they’re nicely organised so you can put them on a shelf and they’ll behave,” said Bill Ruddiman, professor emeritus at the University of Virginia.
A seasoned geologist, Ruddiman has written papers arguing against the stratigraphic definition of the Anthropocene on the grounds that any single start-date would be meaningless since humans have been gradually shaping the planet for at least 50,000 years.
“What the working group is trying to say is everything pre-1950 is pre-Anthropocene, and that’s just absurd,” he told me.
end quotes
And I believe that absurd is a very accurate scientific term for this CHARADE going on here, which takes us back to the narrative, to wit:
Ruddiman’s arguments have found wide support, even from a handful of members of the working group.
Then, in late April, the group decided to hold a vote that would settle, once and for all, the matter of the start-date.
Working group members had one month to cast their votes; a supermajority of at least 60% would be needed for the vote to be binding.
The results, announced on 21 May, were unequivocal.
Twenty-nine members of the group, representing 88%, voted for the start of the Anthropocene to be in the mid-20th century.
end quotes
And that is how the term “anthropogenic” as used by the IPCC, the Democrats in this country and Greta Thunberg, came into existence, people – it was pulled straight from the *** of one scientist who might not have been mentally stable, and made mainstream by the HYSTERIA-MONGERING media!
Paul Plante says
And to put J’s mind to rest here, when I speak of us being in the ANTHROPOCENE, the AGE of ABSURDITY and IRRATIONALITY and INSANITY, I speak of it not in geological terms, even though the term “Anthropocene” itself came from the mouth of as possibly-deranged geologist as a meeting of fellow geologists, but in terms related to Western Civilization, or in this case, the decline of western civilization into benighted ignorance and hysteria and aberrated thinking, where the ANTHROPOCENE is the end of the AGE OF REASON, not the Holocene.
According to basic high school Western Civilization texts, the Age of Reason began in the 18th century in England and France, and it was a period characterized by a prevailing belief in the use of reason.
According to the high school history site “All About History,” the Age of Reason was an eighteenth-century movement which followed hard after the mysticism, religion, and superstition of the Middle Ages.
The Age of Reason represented a genesis in the way man viewed himself, the pursuit of knowledge, and the universe.
In this time period, man’s previously held concepts of conduct and thought could now be challenged verbally and in written form; fears of being labeled a heretic or being burned at the stake were done away with.
end quotes
My OPINION as expressed in here based on a long study that began when I was a combat infantryman in VEET NAM, that 4th rate “raggedy-ass” country that Democrat Lyndon Baines Johnson thought he could subdue at the point of a bayonet, is that the AGE OF REASON came to a definitive end in 2005, if not actually earlier, when Sonia Sotomayer, then an appeals court judge on the 2d Circuit Court of Appeals in New York state ruled that it was for the good of society-at-large that a professional engineer who would not lie to them or deceive them with “scientific falsehoods” should be declared “mentally ill and dangerous” by the State of New York and consigned to a gulag (state mental hospital) for drug-induced “mind wiping,” which is not something I am making up, at all.
If that is not a benchmark to denote the end of the Age of Reason, and the beginning of the Age of Hysteria and Insanity we are now in, nothing is or can be.
Getting back to what used to be high school history, we have:
The Age of Reason included the shorter time period described as the Age of Enlightenment; during this time great changes occurred in scientific thought and exploration.
With the end of that Age, we are now back to DOGMA, defined as a principle or set of
principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true as in because of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the world is now on fire, and even though the land being flooded is really sinking or subsiding, as may well be the case with Cape Charles, as it is for Norfolk and a goodly portion of the east coast of the United States, it really is flooding because of sea level rise.
And if like myself, you are a remnant of society left over from the Age of Reason who disputes that HORSE****, then you are labeled a heretic, or what is even worse, a (God forbid) Republican!
As to the Age of Reason, German philosopher, Immanuel Kant defined enlightenment this way:
“Enlightenment is the liberation of man from his self-caused state of minority.”
“Minority is the incapacity of using one’s understanding without the direction of another.”
end quotes
And from out of that, we are now right back into that where we are all now endowed with the incapacity of using our understanding without the direction of Greta Thunberg, who I would not be surprised to see reviving the old Baader-Meinhoff gang and the Red Army Faction (“RAF”) with her at its head, and the IPCC, which is now not only the source of all scientific knowledge concerning the earth’s climate, which is high school level earth science, but the KEEPER of that knowledge, as well, which makes them into another church and another sort of mind-stifling religion.
“This state of minority is self-caused when its source lies not in a lack of understanding but in a lack of determination to use it without the assistance of another.”
Getting back to the Age of Reason, which I will say ended for certain in December of 2005 with the Sotomayor decision mentioned above, although its decline began perhaps back in the 1970s, we have:
Reason, philosophically, is defined as the ability to form and operate upon concepts in abstraction, narrowing information to its bare content, without emotion.
end quotes
And with the end of the Age of Reason, emotion is now what governs!
As little Greta, the poster child for the AGE OF UNREASON, HYSTERIA AND INSANITY said to the big wigs assembled in Davos on January 21, 2020:
“One year ago, I came to Davos and told you that our house is on fire.”
“I said I wanted you to panic.”
end quotes
As for me, I don’t do “panic” because some scared little girl incapable of rational thought tells me I too have to be irrational, because so many other people are, and so, like many others before me, I too have become a heretic, because I do not accept as truth the DOGMA spouted by little Greta and the IPCC, or CHURCH OF SCIENCE.
Paul Plante says
By way of review here, as we comment on the demise of the Age of Reason, which the New York Times editorial staff would likely say we are better off without, reason not being all it was cracked up to be in the first place, afterall, and reason doesn’t sell newspapers, either, as well as hype and hysteria does, and the onset of what is variously known as the Age of Un-Reason, or Age of Insanity, or Age of the Totally Absurd as the top contenders to date, according to an on-line learning site on the History of Western Civilization, in the section entitled “The Age of Enlightenment,” we have this historical background to the Age of Reason whose end has been established as December 2005 when Sonia Sotomayor, then an appeals court judge on the 2d Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City, ruled that it was for the good of society-at-large that a professional engineer who would not lie to them or deceive them with “scientific falsehoods” should be declared “mentally ill and dangerous” by the State of New York and consigned to a gulag (state mental hospital) for drug-induced “mind wiping,” to wit:
The Age of Enlightenment, also known as the Enlightenment, was a philosophical movement that dominated the world of ideas in Europe in the 18th century.
end quotes
Now, to me, an engineer licensed by the state to protect and safeguard life, health and property, that comment about the WORLD OF IDEAS is important to this discussion on several levels, starting with the fact that the “science” I was taught on my way to becoming an associate level public health engineer is both rooted in this enlightenment ideas, as well as grounded in them in terms of public health protection, and the “scientific method,” as well.
According to that Western Civ learning site, science as I knew it came to play a leading role in Enlightenment discourse and thought.
The Enlightenment has long been hailed as the foundation of modern Western political and intellectual culture.
It brought political modernization to the West.
And out of that came the United States of America in 1776, at least by the old history of the United States of America in vogue in the previous millennia which is what I learned as an older American born in a completely different millennium than the one which came into existence in the year 2000 , as we can clearly see in the 54 page Decision and Order of the United States District Court for the District of Oregon, Eugene Division in KELSEY CASCADIA ROSE JULIANA, et al., Plaintiffs, v. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, et al., Defendants, Aiken, Judge, Case No. 6:15-cv-01517-TC, decided November 2016, to wit:
Plaintiffs allege that over the 263 years between 1751 and 2014, the United States produced more than twenty-five percent of global C02 emissions. First Am. Compl. para.151.
end quotes
In this Age of Un-Reason, or Age of Insanity, or Age of the Bizarre, facts have become malleable, so that it is not necessarily necessary anymore for the United States of America to have began its political existence on 4 July 1776; if 1751 fits the argument or narrative better, or sounds more symmetric or poetic, then certainly use 1751, and we’ll all understand, since none of us can really prove that 1776 is any better a date than 1751.
Getting back to the Age of Enlightenment, which met its end from the pen of Sonia Sotomayor in December 2005, we have as follows concerning the scientific method, to wit:
A body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge that apply empirical or measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning.
It has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting of systematic observation, measurement, and experimentation, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses.
end quotes
And if not earlier, the scientific method met its demise on 17 January 2020 when the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled it dead on arrival, and began the era of science by judicial decree, which science by judicial decree need not even come close to the rigor demanded by the scientific method, nor need it be scientifically valid, for it is now whatever a federal judge decides it is going to be, based on God alone knows what factors, which takes us back to the Age of Enlightenment, as follows:
Centered on the idea that reason is the primary source of authority and legitimacy, this movement advocated such ideals as liberty, progress, tolerance, fraternity, constitutional government, and separation of church and state.
end quotes
The December 2005 Sotomayor decision in question is a text book example of intolerance, which is one of the characteristics of this new age which differentiates this age from the preceding Age of Reason.
Getting back to the history lesson:
The Enlightenment was marked by an emphasis on the scientific method and reductionism along with increased questioning of religious orthodoxy.
end quotes
And now we have religious orthodoxy with respect to the earth from the pen of a federal judge, and the CHURCH OF SCIENCE, otherwise known by its initials of IPCC.
Staying with the history:
The core ideas advocated by modern democracies, including the civil society, human and civil rights, and separation of powers, are the product of the Enlightenment.
Furthermore, the sciences and academic disciplines (including social sciences and the humanities) as we know them today, based on empirical methods, are also rooted in the Age of Enlightenment.
There is little consensus on the precise beginning of the Age of Enlightenment, with the beginning of the 18th century (1701) or the middle of the 17th century (1650) often considered starting points.
French historians usually place the period between 1715 and 1789, from the beginning of the reign of Louis XV until the French Revolution.
In the mid-17th century, the Enlightenment traces its origins to Descartes’ Discourse on Method, published in 1637.
In France, many cite the publication of Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica in 1687.
Some historians and philosophers have argued that the beginning of the Enlightenment is when Descartes shifted the epistemological basis from external authority to internal certainty by his cogito ergo sum (1637).
The prime example of reference works that systematized scientific knowledge in the Age of Enlightenment were universal encyclopedias rather than technical dictionaries.
It was the goal of universal encyclopedias to record all human knowledge in a comprehensive reference work.
The most well-known of these works is Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers.
The work, which began publication in 1751, was composed of thirty-five volumes and over 71,000 separate entries.
A great number of the entries were dedicated to describing the sciences and crafts in detail, and provided intellectuals across Europe with a high-quality survey of human knowledge.
In the mid-18th century, Europe witnessed an explosion of philosophic and scientific activity that challenged traditional doctrines and dogmas.
The philosophic movement was led by Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who argued for a society based upon reason rather than faith and Catholic doctrine, for a new civil order based on natural law, and for science based on experiments and observation.
The political philosopher Montesquieu introduced the idea of a separation of powers in a government, a concept which was enthusiastically adopted by the authors of the United States Constitution.
Science came to play a leading role in Enlightenment discourse and thought.
Many Enlightenment writers and thinkers had backgrounds in the sciences and associated scientific advancement with the overthrow of religion and traditional authority in favor of the development of free speech and thought.
Broadly speaking, Enlightenment science greatly valued empiricism and rational thought and was embedded with the Enlightenment ideal of advancement and progress.
The Enlightenment has also long been hailed as the foundation of modern Western political and intellectual culture.
end quotes
And now we are sliding back into benighted ignorance, with doctrine and dogma on the rise as we enter the ANTHROPOCENE era, or the Age of the Totally Absurd.
Age of Reason, it was nice knowing you – RIP!
J says
That is a lot of words and I am not sure of the point being made. Maybe it is the use of end-quote, but not having a begin-quote.
Would be helpful for your points to be labeled or broken out into separate submissions.
Ray Otton says
Uh oh, now you’ve done it.
Didn’t your mom tell you not to poke the bear? 🙂
Paul Plante says
J. if you are unable to understand a single word I wrote, and they were not complex or unusual or difficult to comprehend words, at all, there really is nothing more that I can do to help you.
Perhaps you would be more comfortable on TWITTER, where people who can’t really comprehend more than a short string on monosyballic words, are perhaps better accommodated than they are in here.
J says
Paul, Thanks for your suggestion. My intentions were a mere suggestion to help further a dialog. It appears your goals are not to debate, but to berate. Might I suggest reading a thesaurus as you plagiarize content from other sites; this may help you understand why your comments do not convey coherent thought.
At the end of the day, you find solace in mocking a teenager. Debate requires a level of respect, intelligence, and original thought; all of which are absent in this thread.
Also – benighted ignorance is like saying ignorant ignorance. On second thought, maybe a thesaurus is too advanced for you…
Ray Otton says
Paul, take this as constructive criticism.
You are your own worst enemy.
No one can get from one end of one of your comments to the other without falling asleep at the keyboard.
The endless quotes do not back up your positions, they numb people to what you want to say.
The habit of repeatedly using the addressee’s name in your responses is denigrating. Maybe that’s your plan but if so, it turns people off.
What it looks like to other readers is that you write for your own self aggrandizement not to convince anyone of anything. That too may be the plan. If that’s case, congrats, self aggrandizement achieved.
The sad part is that if you would cut your comments down by about 75% you would be much more effective as an advocate for the Conservative / Libertarian position.
The short of it?
No one likes a gasbag.
Don’t be a gasbag.
Paul Plante says
If no one likes gas bags, Mr. Otton, how come they elect so many of them to Congress, do you think?
And why are the MSM talk shows so chock-a-block with them?
What do you think is up with that?
And I am not advocating for the Conservative/Libertarian position in here, as I am neither of them, by choice.
If anything, I am lamenting the end of the AGE of Reason and bemoaning this AGE of BENIGHTED IGNORANCE we have entered into, where sheer stupid reigns and people can no longer reason their way through the sentence “see Dick run,” because they can’t read it – too many syllables combined with too many words for it to be readily comprehensible without access to a good thesaurus.
And if you value your life, Mr. Otton, I would advise running for the high ground now while you still can before all those Himalayan glaciers melt and Cape Charles disappears beneath the waves, never to be seen again, along with Miami, Florida.
Just saying.
But at least when that happens, the water might finally douse the fires that are burning the earth to a crisp right now, except here where I am, where we had snow this morning to keep the fires away for at least another day, anyway.
And now a word from our sponsors as we take a pause for station identification from the insanity that now reigns in the United States of America.
Paul Plante says
Mr. Otton, might I suggest to you that with these mindless outbursts of yours like the above that tend to take us off-topic that you are coming across to people who read and study your words for content and meaning as a thug who having nothing of consequence to say himself simply follows others around who might, yelling at them to shut up because they are making you confused and angry by using too many words, as opposed to just grunting.
Just saying.
People think you are your own worst enemy in that regard.
It is hard to argue with them on that score.
Paul Plante says
LOGICAL PREMISE 1: The AGE OF REASON in the United States of America is unequivocally and officially dead as of December 2005 when now-Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayer, then an appeals court judge on the 2d Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City, ruled that it was for the good of society-at-large that a professional engineer who would not lie to them or deceive them with “scientific falsehoods” should be declared “mentally ill and dangerous” by the State of New York and consigned to a gulag (state mental hospital) for drug-induced “mind wiping.”
LOGICAL PREMISE 2: The AGE of UN-REASON, or ANTHROPOCENE, a Greek word which translates roughly as AGE of ABSURDITY, came into being definitively in December of 2005, when society-at-large in America accepted without question the ruling of now-Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayer, then an appeals court judge on the 2d Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City, that it was for their own good that a professional engineer who would not lie to them or deceive them with “scientific falsehoods” should be declared “mentally ill and dangerous” by the State of New York and consigned to a gulag (state mental hospital) for drug-induced “mind wiping.”
LOGICAL PREMISE 3: The premise that the AGE of Reason is dead in the United States of America is a thought that follows logically from the observation of H.L. Mencken that the entire aim of politics is to keep the populace in a state of alarm by menacing it with imaginary hobgoblins as little Greta Thunberg did just recently in Davos, where little Greta told not only the Davos crowd of rich dudes but the candid world, as well, that “No political ideology or economic structure has been able to tackle the climate and environmental emergency and create a cohesive and sustainable world, because that world, in case you haven’t noticed, is currently on fire.”
LOGICAL PREMISE 4: Stark proof that we have departed the Age of Reason and advanced firmly into the depths of the ANTHROPOCENE, or AGE of the TOTAL BIZARRE can readily be found in the unchallenged statement of little Greta Thunberg in Davos that the world is on fire, when it is not on fire at all, and where I am, it snowed this morning.
LOGICAL PREMISE 5: Further stark proof and conclusive evidence that we have long since departed the AGE of REASON and entered into the AGE of UN-REASON, or ANTHROPOCENE, is the sad fact that all of this had to be explained to J in the first place, because he or she was unable to reason through the Mencken quote above and follow it to its logical conclusion that we are no longer in a world of rationality, when a scared little Girl like little Greta Thunberg tells people to feel panic because she is scared, and then people blindly follow her commands without thinking or questioning or reasoning their way through the sheer absurdity of what little Greta is saying when she tells them to be afraid because the world is on fire, when outside there is snow on the ground.
MJM says
Paul. Have you ever heard the phrase that sometimes less is more ?
Oh, and by the way, no one inferred anything to you that was an insult. An intelligent individual such as yourself should be confident enough in yourself that you shouldn’t have found a need to insult J’s level or ability of participation here. J is simply stating you muddy the waters with what J considers to be an excessive amount of words. That’s not an insult to your ability. J is actually trying to help you better participate and reach more people. Insulting us won’t accomplish that. J believes some people, myself included, think your opinions are brilliant, but could use some editing and reduction in volume. That’s all. Just a consideration. Do what works for you.
Paul Plante says
To both you, MJM, whose opinions I treat seriously, and Mr. Otton, as well, whose opinions I also value, I came into this thread solely to comment on the opening line of this specific thread, with the intellectually stimulating and captivating title of “Is Greta Thunber our age’s Veruca Salt?”, which quote in question reads as follows for those just entering the fray, to see what the fray is even about, which is the END of the AGE of REASON and its replacement by the AGE of ABSURDITY, or ANTROPOCENE, to wit:
H.L. Mencken once observed that the entire aim of politics is to keep the populace in a state of alarm by menacing it with imaginary hobgoblins. AOC, and Thunberg in Davos reveal that little has changed.
end quotes
That’s it, gentlemen – like perhaps a million other people not only in America, but the world, as well, given the now-global reach of the Cape Charles Mirror, I read that line, and re-read it, and then re-read it perhaps for a fourth or fifth time, I no longer remember, nor is it anymore even relevant, and having read it and pondered its meaning to us in our times here in the ANTHROPOCENE, given that Henry Louis Mencken, the American journalist, essayist, satirist, cultural critic and scholar of American English who commented widely on the social scene, literature, music, prominent politicians and contemporary movements with his satirical reporting on the Scopes Trial, which he dubbed the “Monkey Trial,” was only himself alive between September 12, 1880 to January 29, 1956, and so, in my mind, anyway, and this, gentlemen, is what continues to draw me back to the Cape Charles Mirror day after day, that being the high intellectual plane maintained by the Cape Charles Mirror plus the vigorous and rigorous peer review by people such as yourselves, which always keeps me on my toes, his views compared to vastly different operative views today, I simply thought to comment on the Mencken quote with my own observations.
Should have been and could have been that simple – say what I had to say in as concise a manner as possible and move on, which is exactly what I did, as follows:
So how does little Greta go waltzing through all of that security cordon (at Davos) so she could go screech at the big-wigs assembled inside?
How does that happen?
And why?
What power does this scared little girl hold over these people?
And how did this little girl amass such power, when we here in America have none?
end quotes
There, gentlemen of the peer review jury is what I said, in response to the original post, which I was taught on-line etiquette had us responding to – who the hell if Greta Thunberg, which I thought was a legitimate subject of intellectual inquiry in here, and I in fact still do.
Instead of responding to the Mencken quote as I did, J then entered the discussion for the first time, as follows:
J says @ January 26, 2020 at 8:05 pm:
Not sure where to start here:
1. Holocene is still on going;
2. Anthropocene has not been accepted by any of the approving institutions;
end quotes
Reading that response, I found myself literally yanked back into the discussion by J, who I actually mistook for an angry geologist, which then had me resorting to science, in the belief that I needed to resort to science to convince a fellow scientist of the scientific validity of what I was actually saying, which was as follows:
Paul Plante says @ January 31, 2020 at 7:32 pm:
By way of review here, as we comment on the demise of the Age of Reason, which the New York Times editorial staff would likely say we are better off without, reason not being all it was cracked up to be in the first place, afterall, and reason doesn’t sell newspapers, either, as well as hype and hysteria does, and the onset of what is variously known as the Age of Un-Reason, or Age of Insanity, or Age of the Totally Absurd as the top contenders to date, according to an on-line learning site on the History of Western Civilization, in the section entitled “The Age of Enlightenment,” we have this historical background to the Age of Reason whose end has been established as December 2005 when Sonia Sotomayor, then an appeals court judge on the 2d Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City, ruled that it was for the good of society-at-large that a professional engineer who would not lie to them or deceive them with “scientific falsehoods” should be declared “mentally ill and dangerous” by the State of New York and consigned to a gulag (state mental hospital) for drug-induced “mind wiping,” to wit:
end quotes
And there is where the wheels then came off this discussion, which has led us to where we are now, with J bringing the discussion down to the present low intellectual level both of you esteemed gentlemen are observing in here at present, to wit:
J says @ February 1, 2020 at 9:13 pm:
It appears your goals are not to debate, but to berate.
Might I suggest reading a thesaurus as you plagiarize content from other sites; this may help you understand why your comments do not convey coherent thought.
At the end of the day, you find solace in mocking a teenager.
Debate requires a level of respect, intelligence, and original thought; all of which are absent in this thread.
Also – benighted ignorance is like saying ignorant ignorance.
On second thought, maybe a thesaurus is too advanced for you…
end quotes
How, gentlemen, did it become about me, as opposed to H.L. Mencken?
In response to J, whose above personal attack on myself as opposed to H.L. Mencken, demands a response on the record to keep the record balanced, as to “benighted ignorance” being like saying “ignorant ignorance,” that is not correct, given that the meaning of the word “benighted” is “intellectually or morally ignorant; unenlightened,” which is considered a special kind of ignorance that is chosen, especially in this day and age where it is impossible to be ignorant unless one willingly chooses that course, as little Greta Thunberg has chosen to do.
As to J’s comment that “It appears your goals are not to debate, but to berate,” I think based on the record in here starting with my first post in response to the Mencken observation that it is a ridiculous statement on his or her part intended to distract our attention away from the subject at hand which is Greta Thunberg and CLIMATE CHANGE HYSTERIA, such as the 2007 IPCC report that said all the glaciers in the Himalayas were going to be melted by 2035, which was later proven FALSE in what is known variously as “GLACIERGATE,” or “HIMALAYAGATE,” while my intention is to bring our attention back around to that CRAP SCIENCE so as to counter and perhaps put an end to this media HYSTERIA-MONGERING about the end of the world coming because the Himalaya glaciers are melting real fast, which will have the ocean swallowing not only Miami, but Cape Charles, itself, which will put an end to having to worry about how many people the Cape Charles beach could accommodate, anyway.
And that attempt on my part to steer us back away from HYSTERIA and ABSURDITY, such as the Himalaya glaciers melting by 2035 (4th IPCC Report 2007) resulted in this from J, to wit:
At the end of the day, you find solace in mocking a teenager.
end quote
To which I can only respond by saying “HORSE****!”
Point I is that little Greta is not being mocked in here, at least by me – but her bogus science certainly is, as it deserves to be in a land of FREE PEOPLE, where debate requires a level of respect, intelligence, and original thought; all of which are absent in little Greta’s various speeches to people in power around the world.
Point II is that if little Greta wants to screech at adults here in the United States of America, then she will find herself in turn being treated as an adult (she is 17), and if she cannot defend her points, then she deserves to have them demolished in public, which is what peer review is really all about, given that little Greta is making her questionable claims about the world being on fire in a public setting reported on by the main-stream media which do not allow peer review of Greta’s claims as does the Cape Charles Mirror.
And such it will continue to be, and if J does not like that level of intellectual freedom in here, I would have to suggest having a serious talk with the editor about the Cape Charles Mirror about that policy of intellectual freedom to dissent in here from IDIOCY and ABSURDITY, as opposed to making juvenile attacks on me because I dare to use that intellectual freedom to question what Greta Thunberg, who I would not be surprised to see reviving the old Baader-Meinhoff gang and the Red Army Faction (“RAF”) with her at its head, that based on her comments to the big wigs at Davos just recently, as follows:
We demand, at this year’s World Economic Forum, participants from all companies, banks, institutions and governments immediately halt all investments in fossil fuel exploration and extraction, immediately end all fossil fuel subsidies and immediately and completely divest from fossil fuels.
We don’t want these things done by 2050 or 2030 or even 2021; we want this done now.
It may seem like we are asking for a lot, and you will of course say that we are naive.
But this is just the very minimum amount of effort that is needed to start the rapid sustainable transition.
So, either you do this, or you’re going to have to explain to your children why you are giving up on the 1.5-degree target — giving up without even trying.
Well, I’m here to tell you that, unlike you, my generation will not give up without a fight.
The facts are clear, but they are still too uncomfortable for you to address.
You just leave it, because you just think it’s too depressing and people will give up.
But people will not give up.
You are the ones who are giving up.
Last week, I met with Polish coal miners who lost their jobs because their mine was closed.
And even they had not given up.
On the contrary, they seem to understand the fact that we need to change more than you do.
end quotes
There, gentlemen, is what I thought this thread was about, what little Greta said in Davos, not how I responded to it in here, and instead of everybody trying to make this thread about me, perhaps it would be most beneficial to all involved to turn it back to where it never should have left, which is commenting on Greta in Davos, and what she said, and what it means.
As to the “1.5-degree target” little Greta is demanding right now, the World Meteorological Organization in an excellent but long essay containing a real lot of words, far more than what I have posted in here, entitled “The Discovery of Clobal Warming,” states thusly on that subject, to wit:
At the long-awaited Paris meeting in December 2015 the diplomacy went smoothly for once, lubricated with excellent French diplomacy and cuisine.
195 nations concurred in an agreement, if only because not much was demanded of anyone.
Typical of the process was an argument over a statement that nations “shall” set their own goals for cutting emissions.
The word implied a legally binding treaty, which the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate would have rejected.
A last-minute demand by the U.S. changed the offending word to “should.”
Thus the agreement allowed each nation to limit emissions as it chose, and left them to monitor their own compliance.
The Paris Agreement included a solemn declaration that the world would strive to limit the global rise to 1.5°C.
Asked to study the implications, the IPCC duly reported in 2018 that 1.5° would be far less harmful than 2° in many ways.
But global temperature in 2015 was 1.0° above the pre-industrial level, and another half degree was locked in as a delayed effect from the greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere.
Everybody knew that even if all nation met their pledged targets — which was hardly likely — the targets were so modest that temperatures would probably mount 3° or more.
Only a gargantuan program to suck carbon out of the atmosphere could prevent that, and few imagined such a program was economically or technologically feasible.
The diplomats’ 1.5° target was unrealistic to the point of fantasy.
end quotes
But in the AGE OF THE ANTHROPOCENE, or AGE OF ABSURDITY, fantasy is the new reality, and there, gentlemen of the peer review jury, I will rest my case with the suggestion once again that we make this thread what it is about, which is the use of INDUCED HYSTERIA as a powerful political tool to manipulate the otherwise ignorant and unquestioning masses who do not think for themselves, because like the Eloi in H.G. Wells masterpiece, “The Time Machine,” they either lost the ability or had it bred out of them, and here I am speaking as a social scientist who makes these kinds of observations as a mater of interest.
Paul Plante says
I have heard that term “less is more” many, many times over the years I have been posting in here, MJM, and believe me, you and people like yourself were not in any way insulted by me, nor would I have any reason to insult you or purpose in insulting you, when my purpose in here is to illuminate and inform.
And I did not feel in any way insulted by J.
And why would I?
The dude or dudette obviously is congnitively challenged and so I simply quit wasting my time with J, that’s all.
I’m not in here to play silly little games with people who think themselves the “Miss Manners” of the internet with all their rules about how many words you can use, and how they must be placed on the page is such fashion as to render them pleasing to the finer tastes of these people as to literary style.
As to “less is more,” in this conversation about little Greta Thunberg and the enormous political power that little girl wields, and what purpose exactly she is wielding that power to achieve, that is stupid, because little Greta’s untruths, half-truths, misconceptions, deceptions and outright lies, such as the world is burning, when again this morning we had more snow up this way where I am, require a l9ot of words to debunk, which is why the outright liars always hold the advantage in these kinds of contests.
To debunk Greta’s lies with facts, I have had to read over these months the Mirror has been hosting this discussion on “climate,” which is nothing more than weather, I have had to read well in excess of 400 pages of technical information and reports in order to do so.
So, yes, life is a real *****, isn’t it, in that regard – all that effort that has to be expended to debunk little Greta’s lies.
I learned to read, MJM, because I was told that to be an informed citizen of a REPUBLIC (not the Republican party), which used to be a DUTY, before we became a BENIGHTED DEMOCRACY where STUPID now reigns, as we just experienced with this COLOSOAL IMPEACHMENT CIRCUS that just fizzled at a cost of millions in taxpayer dollars, we had to inform our self, which requires us to have to exert ourselves, instead of laying around like a nation of lazy slugs, waiting for somebody else to do it, instead.
To learn to read, I kept a dictionary by my side, and every time I came across a word I didn’t understand the usage of, or meaning of, like the word “benighted,” for example, I would stop reading (OMG, how tedious), and look the word up to find its meaning, and then I had to figure out which meaning applied, and then go back to the reading part, which took time and effort on my part, so I totally lack sympathy for people like J who want to sit there on their dead *** and have everything handed to them on a silver spoon.
But enough of that – IS THIS A SERIOUS TOPIC, THIS THREAD, OR ARE WE ALL HERE TO PLAY STUPID, CHILDISH WORD GAMES?
Is the Mencken observation that entire aim of politics is to keep the populace in a state of alarm by menacing it with imaginary hobgoblins true, or not true?
Paul Plante says
MJM, let me say that I have been reading with interest your commentary in another thread in here where you soundly excoriated (slap the **** out of on an intellectual level) a fellow commentator for not bothering to read the news to get some actual facts about that truck driver who went off the bridge, which could be construed as an example of “benighted ignorance,” where even though the facts were readily available and easily obtained, yet no effort was made to consider those facts before rendering an opinion about them in public, also known as “vincible ignorance,” which is ignorance that a person could remove by applying reasonable diligence in the given set of circumstances.
I wonder if you see that same critique applying in here, where the subject happens to be little Greta Thunberg, who right now, despite being only 17 years of age, is one of the most powerful people in the world, bar none?
Should we do our homework in here to that same level of diligence with respect to who is Greta Thunberg and where her considerable political power comes from as should be applied to the circumstances of some truck driver meeting his fate on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge?
I also made note of your belief in Darwinism, as well as personal responsibility, and I am curious as to how many different levels you see them applying?
Specifically, does Darwinism, in your estimation, apply to societies, as well as to species?
Consider what is known as SOCIAL DARWINISM, for example, which is an extension of Darwinism, the theory of the evolution of species by natural selection advanced by Charles Darwin, to social phenomena such as the AGE of UN-REASON, or ANTHROPOCENE, a Greek word which translates roughly as AGE of ABSURDITY, coming into being definitively in December of 2005, when society-at-large in America accepted without question the ruling of now-Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayer, then an appeals court judge on the 2d Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City, that it was for their own good that a professional engineer who would not lie to them or deceive them with “scientific falsehoods” should be declared “mentally ill and dangerous” by the State of New York and consigned to a gulag (state mental hospital) for drug-induced “mind wiping.”
Specifically, SOCIAL DARWINISM is a sociological theory that sociocultural advance is the product of intergroup conflict and competition and the socially elite classes (such as those possessing wealth and power) possess biological superiority in the struggle for existence.
In the late 1800s, many Americans enthusiastically embraced Spencer’s “Social Darwinism” to justify laissez-faire, or unrestricted, capitalism.
Herbert Spencer based his concept of social evolution, popularly known as “Social Darwinism,” on individual competition.
Spencer believed that competition was “the law of life” and resulted in the “survival of the fittest.”
“Society advances,” Spencer wrote, “where its fittest members are allowed to assert their fitness with the least hindrance.”
He went on to argue that the unfit should “not be prevented from dying out.”
And that brings us back around to the intergroup conflict right now being between little Greta Thunberg and her ever-increasing army on the one side, who want to reduce us to a world-scale poverty or worse, and the big wigs who were assembled at Davos, on the other, and the competition right now is for money and who gets to put carbon dioxide in the air, and who doesn’t.
And that takes us to a philosophical concept known as “Natural Selection at its Finest,” which would be natural selection by having all those who do not learn and evolve with the others die off due to simple mistakes, like building a house to live in next to the ocean just above the surf zone in mild weather, thinking it will always stay just the same, because humans are now entitled to the climate they desire where they desire it, leaving only those who evolve to prevail above those who don’t evolve, with natural selection being the process in nature by which organisms better adapted to their environment tend to survive and reproduce more than those less adapted to their environment.
Do you see that at play here in this on-going drama about climate change that has little Greta Thunberg’s generation so scared they can’t think straight and according to the federal judges in Juliana v. USA, are suffering psychiatric disorders as a result of their fear that the world is going to end by 2035 because all the glaciers in the Himalayas will be melted by then, with the result that the world will be covered by the ocean, even though that is a false statement easily verified as being false?
And what of personal responsibility?
At that age does it begin?
In my case, it was about two years old, or earlier, I would say, and certainly by the time I was five.
So what then is it today?
The candid world would like to know.
Paul Plante says
And getting back to the existential question asked at the end of the original post as the age of reason and rationality recedes in the rear view mirror, and the age of insanity beckons us forward into its grip of abject, mindless fear, that existential question being “When will we start acting Mr. Salt and be the adults in the room,” as we can see from the Marketwatch article “Climate activist Greta Thunberg, who Trump has told to ‘chill,’ put forth again for Nobel Peace prize” by Rachel Koning Beals published Feb. 3, 2020 10:26 a.m. ET, where we are told that two lawmakers in Sweden have nominated climate activist Greta Thunberg for the 2020 Nobel Peace Prize, the second straight nod for the teenager whose solo protests outside Swedish parliament quickly expanded to worldwide “school-skipping” activism and high-profile speeches, that answer may well be not in our lifetimes, anyway.
According to that story, Jens Holm and Hakan Svenneling, who are not surprisingly members of Sweden’s Left Party, said Monday that Thunberg “has worked hard to make politicians open their eyes to the climate crisis” and “action for reducing our emissions and complying with the Paris Agreement is therefore also an act of making peace.”
Except, the Paris Agreement is in actuality a SHAM, so complying with a sham is hardly an act of peace, but this is the ANTHROPOCENE, or AGE of ABSURDITY, afterall, so facts no longer matter.
How people feel is all that is important in this ay and age of un-reason we are now firmly entered into, which brings us back to that article one more time, as follows:
Last week Thunberg announced she had applied to trademark her name and that of the international school strike movement she inspired.
end quotes
And that is the latest from the continuing saga of little Greta Thunberg, who will now own the name Greta so that when all the other liberal mommies out there name their daughters Greta in emulation of little Greta Thunberg, little Greta will be able to charge hem royalties for the use of the name, and if that isn’t an insane concept, nothing is.
Paul Plante says
And after last night, where, as President Trump finished his State of the Union speech, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was seen on national TV to stand up behind Trump, where she was seated, tap her copy of Trump’s speech on the desk in front of her to line the papers up just so, and then rip them in half before putting them back down, perhaps we should be wondering if Nancy Pelosi isn’t another Veruca Salt along with little Greta.
Temper tantrum, anyone?
Is Nancy copying Greta, perhaps?
Or are they twins?