Why some still "DENY" and others "FAIL TO ACT"

[JimD]

Martin

I see.  Well we obviously mean very different things when we say evolution.  Not much overlap I think.

To switch more to what you seem to be talking about I would respond that much of what we see in today's world is the manifestation of mental illness on a civilizational level.  Yes, what passes in the halls of Congress in Washington clearly qualifies as psychotic behavior (in a loose sense).  But while I do not have any problems acknowledging the illnesses in my leaders I want to state that I am not aware of any country being led by sane men (or women) in this world (Germany being a good example of stupidness lately itself).  No one gets out of being painted with that brush.

One could make the argument that all of modern society is suffering and sort of mentally ill.  We are not evolved to live and prosper in a crowded industrialized world.  We have lived in this situation for only a very brief time and it is making us sick. 

We are supposed to be outside in the sun, wind and rain.  We are a part of nature and we live lives devoid of it in general. 

I appreciate the depths of philosophical thought as well, but I cannot state with any certainty that our depth of thought today exceeds that of Plato and those of his time.  I expect that great minds such as his have existed long before his time and I question whether we really rise to his level often today.  Population levels say we should have about 7 to 10 Platos walking among us right now.  Where are they?  Have we evolved along those lines from his time to today?  Our arguments have more depth to be sure and there has been some good original thought since his time.  But we do stand on his shoulders don't we.  I must admit though that I almost never read anything written by living persons which I think really advances our understanding of the intellectual side of life.  To me we seem to have stagnated rather than evolved.  But what do I really know about all that?  Not that much.

I don't see much likelyhood that the inmates are going to lose control of the levers of power.  And it is pretty certain that they do not have any concern for any of us.  They do seem quite good at the 'natural' selection process of fathering more like themselves and putting them next in line for those levers.  I mention often here, in some manner or other, that all of these people and those who fund them are our enemies.  I get grief for that along with lots of the rest of what I say.  But I think it is all true on the whole.

I should be more philosophical like my daughter.  She says what ends up happening is not important at all on the scale of the universe so not to sweat it so much.  If we totally mess up - or not - it does not really have any impact.   Our span of time is shorter than the flick of a switch and we are not as big as a drop of water in the ocean of the universe.  She is much more content than I am.  I want us to make it so bad that I can taste it. 

[JimD]

ASLR

I am aware of the information about Darwin you mentioned and did know that the 'survival of the fittest' argument was used to help justify colonialism and exploitation.  It's modern corollary is found in the statements during our last presidential election when Mitt Romney used a modified version of it to justify his ilk abusing and discounting the legitimate requirements of the poor here in the US.

What I try and articulate relates more along the lines of what you mention about tribalism and caring for your own and the modern interpretation of how we evolved.  And part of all that of course is distrusting strangers and anything that seems out of place.  We spent hundreds of thousands of years in conflict with not just the rest of the animal world but also with most of the human world we came in contact with.   Over very long periods of time we came to trust our instincts about what was safe and what was a danger to us.  We still behave that way today in almost all cases.  There is no place in the world where those ancient fears do not hold some significant sway.  We all distrust strangers, those not like us, those who do not share our religious beliefs, and those who would compete with us for what we need for our families and tribes.

Modern civilization has attempted to raise  this bar to make our tribes into countries and some, mostly those die hard liberals, want to raise that bar to make the world our tribe.  But we see where that is going.  To almost everyone here the only conceivable path forward is to find some way to achieve that final step to becoming a global tribe, and then it seems assumed that we will all cooperate towards some equitable solution.  Well it is a nice idea and it even appeals to me, but I am here to tell you that there is no chance it is going to happen.  For the reasons I have been trying to explain for years now.

As we approach the panic point for civilization we will step by step remove ourselves from each level of the ideal global civilizational structure.  We are heading into much more difficult times over the next few years and this will not promote global cooperation. I am not trying to say that no one will try what you desire, but that the tide is against you and I don't see how you can reach critical mass. 

Let's look at what near term possibilities await us right now that will tend events and actions in the direction I have indicated.

Conflicts:  The US is likely going to war again in the Middle East just as ISIS is trying to provoke it. A solid majority of Americans want boots on the ground there and view this as a war of Christianity with Islam (just as ISIS does).  We are actively promoting conflict with Russia in Ukraine with the complicity of the Europeans.  Both of these situations are going to draw off enormous amounts of wealth.  The crazy US Congress is trying very hard to significantly increase US defense spending.  The Israeli's have chosen to deliberately try and make the situation in the Middle East worse in concert with their allies in that same US Congress.  There are of course dozens of other conflicts around the globe which have more local impacts but still count.

Finances:  Once again the global financial system is hanging by a thread and dozens of countries and institutions are swimming in unpayable debt.  We are very likely to see a global financial meltdown.  The EU is trying to immolate itself right now over these issues, but it is China that is the real trigger and when it goes it takes much of the world with it.  There is no recovering from these periodic financial meltdowns from here on out as we are no longer in position to grow our way out of them.  Capitalism is collapsing in upon itself as the world has reached the point where it cannot grow any longer.  The world cannot support us living like we have in the past any longer either.  You cannot fix this and it means we are all going to get poorer and we will all look out for ourselves as much as we can.  That, of course, means we will take actions to protect ourselves which will hurt others.  They will not appreciate it all that much.

Carbon concentrations are not going to stop going up for a long time (if ever taking into account feedbacks) and emissions will not probably peak for some years yet.  Climate change will march on.

Global population will continue to rise rapidly for some time.  Every mouth to feed and clothe reduces the amount available for others.  This will result in more and more people living on the edge.

And so on.

What will be the general human reaction to this?  People will more and more over time do what it takes to protect their own.  They will become much less likely to cooperate with others unless there is a clear benefit to them.  Global cooperation does not gain anything for the powerful and wealthy I point out.  Exploitation does. Global cooperation in this environment is much less likely than global competition.  Don't you think everyone is going to hold onto as much as they can for as long as they can and will use what force they think is needed to do that?  You are an American are you not?  How do you assess what your countrymen think about such things.  And no one else is any different in attitude they just have fewer guns than us.  The Germans are more than ready to push the Greeks (and I suspect the Italians and Spanish in their turn) onto the trash heap in order to protect what they have managed to accumulate.  No country is going to save any other unless it has something to pay for it with.  As each additional stress is added to the global system our natural reaction is to focus on taking care of ourselves and letting everyone else sink or swim.  How are you going to get our elites to let their Congressmen vote to take away their wealth and advantages.  And the same in the rest of the countries of the world.

I point out these things which I see as realistic versions of how people think and act in this world and why we must do things differently.  If we continue doing things the way we have done in the past (as our nature tells us to) we are quite clearly heading towards disaster.  No one likes me saying this but they never try and explain how it will not happen this way.  All of their 'solutions' are dependent upon miracles of some sort.  I don't believe in miracles.  Show me a path to fixing this that does not require dramatic population reductions over the next 30 years and show me a path which results in no further rise in CO2 levels in the next 10 years (or even 20 or 30 years) that is based upon a realistic path and not some kind of faith. Show me how any kind of BAU can fix both climate change and carrying capacity issues or even just one of them.  Show me also how we can become sustainable by any realistic definition if we stay on those BAU trajectories. 

Most of that all is rhetorical and I don't expect you do answer it.  I am just making a point about there being no answer to make.  We just have to have real change.  Nothing else will do at this point.

[AbruptSLR]

JimD,

I am not promoting/supporting continued BAU human behavior; however, you might benefit from reviewing how Ray Kurzweil believes that human behavior will change in the next few decades due to such rapidly developing trends (see links) as "hybrid thinking" and "AI":

http://www.kurzweilai.net/ted-ray-kurzweil-get-ready-for-hybrid-thinking
http://www.kurzweilai.net/

Best,
ASLR

[Shared Humanity]

JimD....There are  millions of Platos walking among us. We just don't listen to them.


Also...this is a  nice little video talking about humans and evolution.



In case anyone was curious, this video helps to explain why I post under my name.

[JimD]

ASLR....I know.

SH well I am not so sure about that.

ASLR mentioned, as have many others over the last couple of years, that he does not want us to drift into authoritarian forms of government in our attempts to deal with these problems we face.  Largely, it is a little to late for that as the growth of authoritarian governance is growing fast and all the worlds troubles provide a fertile ground for it to grow.

It is not just places in the developing world and the 3rd world where 'real' democracy is fading from the scence.  We have German officials openly stating that the democratic wishes of the Greek people count for nothing and calling for the removal of Greek government officials.  The EU has directly interfered in the decisions of who gets to rule in member countries.  And then we have the US.  What is happening here is a complete gutting of our vaunted democracy.  To wit I offer an excellent article on that very subject.

Whatever you might call what we have in America the word democracy cannot be used to describe it.  As I have mentioned before I came out of that 4th branch the article speaks of.  It is my firm belief that basically all governments will be using some form of authoritarian rule long before this crisis plays out and that calling them democracies will be just a rhetorical formality.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175970/

....Consider this piece my version of that, and let me put what I do understand about it in a nutshell: based on developments in our post-9/11 world, we could be watching the birth of a new American political system and way of governing for which, as yet, we have no name.

And here’s what I find strange: the evidence of this, however inchoate, is all around us and yet it’s as if we can’t bear to take it in or make sense of it or even say that it might be so.

Let me make my case, however minimally, based on five areas in which at least the faint outlines of that new system seem to be emerging: political campaigns and elections; the privatization of Washington through the marriage of the corporation and the state; the de-legitimization of our traditional system of governance; the empowerment of the national security state as an untouchable fourth branch of government; and the demobilization of “we the people.”

Whatever this may add up to, it seems to be based, at least in part, on the increasing concentration of wealth and power in a new plutocratic class and in that ever-expanding national security state. Certainly, something out of the ordinary is underway, and yet its birth pangs, while widely reported, are generally categorized as aspects of an exceedingly familiar American system somewhat in disarray.......

....

The Birth of a New System

Otherwise, a moment of increasing extremity has also been a moment of — to use Fraser’s word — “acquiescence.” Someday, we’ll assumedly understand far better how this all came to be. In the meantime, let me be as clear as I can be about something that seems murky indeed: this period doesn’t represent a version, no matter how perverse or extreme, of politics as usual; nor is the 2016 campaign an election as usual; nor are we experiencing Washington as usual. Put together our 1% elections, the privatization of our government, the de-legitimization of Congress and the presidency, as well as the empowerment of the national security state and the U.S. military, and add in the demobilization of the American public (in the name of protecting us from terrorism), and you have something like a new ballgame.

While significant planning has been involved in all of this, there may be no ruling pattern or design. Much of it may be happening in a purely seat-of-the-pants fashion. In response, there has been no urge to officially declare that something new is afoot, let alone convene a new constitutional convention. Still, don’t for a second think that the American political system isn’t being rewritten on the run by interested parties in Congress, our present crop of billionaires, corporate interests, lobbyists, the Pentagon, and the officials of the national security state.

Out of the chaos of this prolonged moment and inside the shell of the old system, a new culture, a new kind of politics, a new kind of governance is being born right before our eyes. Call it what you want. But call it something. Stop pretending it’s not happening.

[Sigmetnow]

JimD,

I am not promoting/supporting continued BAU human behavior; however, you might benefit from reviewing how Ray Kurzweil believes that human behavior will change in the next few decades due to such rapidly developing trends (see links) as "hybrid thinking" and "AI":

http://www.kurzweilai.net/ted-ray-kurzweil-get-ready-for-hybrid-thinking
http://www.kurzweilai.net/

Best,
ASLR

Cool idea!  (Fifteen years ago, who thought people would spend their day glued to their smart phones and tablets -- conversing about climate change....)

As long as the nanobots don't make you view an advertisement, first. 

[AbruptSLR]

ASLR....I know.

SH well I am not so sure about that.

ASLR mentioned, as have many others over the last couple of years, that he does not want us to drift into authoritarian forms of government in our attempts to deal with these problems we face.  Largely, it is a little to late for that as the growth of authoritarian governance is growing fast and all the worlds troubles provide a fertile ground for it to grow.

First, I would like to thank SH, as the video that he linked to is very much along the lines of what I am trying to convey about the future human interactions/socio-economics (which are not utopian).

Second, I would like to acknowledge the many challenges that JimD points to and the limited time available to address such challenges if we are going to work toward reducing the likely coming collapse of our current BAU type socio-economic system.

Third,  I suspect that some form of socio-economic collapse (more than an economic recession or depression) is coming after 2050 that we result in billions of people dead by 2100 (certainly not utopia), but that the coming singularity of information technology will result in the remain population learning to work empathically on a global scale for some centuries to come (at least until they forget the lessons learned in the coming socio-economic collapse).

I am fully prepared to accept that I may well be wrong, but I am mostly concerned about helping the people that survive the coming collapse, and I hope (but to not expect) that those who buy-in to our currently dysfunctional socio-economic system have the grace to accept responsibility for the consequences of their actions and decisions that will contribute to the coming collapse (note that I do not believe that the socio-economic collapse will mean the end of civilization).

[Shared Humanity]

First, I would like to thank SH, as the video that he linked to is very much along the lines of what I am trying to convey about the future human interactions/socio-economics (which are not utopian).

Second, I would like to acknowledge the many challenges that JimD points to and the limited time available to address such challenges if we are going to work toward reducing the likely coming collapse of our current BAU type socio-economic system.

Third,  I suspect that some form of socio-economic collapse (more than an economic recession or depression) is coming after 2050 that we result in billions of people dead by 2100 (certainly not utopia), but that the coming singularity of information technology will result in the remain population learning to work empathically on a global scale for some centuries to come (at least until they forget the lessons learned in the coming socio-economic collapse).

........(note that I do not believe that the socio-economic collapse will mean the end of civilization).

Your welcome regarding the video. I actually believe it to be on the right track because, without a predisposition towards empathy, we would not have the relatively peaceful living of 7 billion humans on this crowded planet. Yes, there is a lot of violence but there is far more peace.

I also agree with JimD in most respects regarding the challenges we are facing and feel that, as  humans, we prefer not to acknowledge the approaching catastrophe  or even the possibility of one. The error in not acknowledging the magnitude of our problems is that it makes it far more difficult  to engineer a soft landing, something that I believe is still possible. The soft landing will be anything but smooth but it will be far better than the crash we are racing towards. This soft landing can only occur if we completely rethink how humanity has organized itself. Like it or not, we do need some form of effective world governance. Our problems span the planet and are all interconnected. Humanity recognized this need after WWII and the UN was formed. It simply has not lived up to its potential.

Finally, I do not believe the crash will wipe us off the planet. It will not be a global extinction level event. It will certainly look like that in particular regions of the world and most of what we take for  granted in our respective nations will be forever altered. For those of us on this blog who argue for  the continued existence of modern capitalism as the best way to organize civilization, trust me, this system won't survive the crash.

[JimD]

ALSR I had a long post about Kurzweil all ready to go and then saw your post above.

So I deleted most of it as it was quite harsh and very critical of him.

There are a host of critiques out there to read which provide in depth reasons why one could come to very different conclusions about everything Kurzweil talks about.  I share those opinions and just consider him a science fiction writer and not a real scientist.  I must admit I think the Singularity is nonsense and I am sure you are aware of the many many take downs out there of that idea.  I find them compelling. But your YMMV.

I would note that all of his claims about the neocortex imply that it is used for good, but is that realistic in any way?  It has been around for 2 million years and its evolvement traces to the beginnings of our rise to become the dominant predator.  Its processing power was used to get us to where we are today and is certainly responsible in great part for our bad behaviors as well as the art and philosophy we came up with when we were bored.  It figures out ways to implement the basic drives and desires which come from the rest of the brain is all.  It is not fundamentally good or bad.  It is just added processing power.  So any further added processing power will not be reserved for good things.  It would be used to be more efficient at executing those basic desires. 

We had a little discussion in another topic about how the credibility of scientists with the general public is affected by the way science is always seemingly changing its mind about facts.  They just do not trust what they are being told because it flies in the face of their direct experience or because what they are told changes 90 to 180 degrees all the time.  Well this type of talk from someone who is marketed as a top scientist is a perfect example of why the public has good cause to not trust scientists. 

The general person who listens to this will conclude the guy is talking out his hind end (he is a crazy  man) or they would think what he is describing is a direct threat to their existence. I think he is likely the first, but if they actually do start to do those things then the elite which get access to the technology (and you can bet your life it will be strictly limited) will absolutely be a deadly threat to the 'old' form of human.  For the old form of human would be obsolete and there would be no need for them to exist anymore.  Plus they would be emitting carbon, using up resources and after all they are just dumb animals and the world belongs to the strong not the weak.  Just as we exterminated our Neandrathal ancestors our fate would be sealed by these 'better' humans of Kurzweil's imagination.  Maybe we could be their slaves.

Hoping for the Singularity and a human/AI interface which results in 'good' humans and no more 'bad' humans seems to me the same as depending on a miracle to save us.  But since they would not need us anymore I guess it is hoping for something to replace us?

I don't know where to go with this.  I am for humans and only humans.  We can fix our problems by exercising some basic courage and sacrificing for others to come.  Or not.  We are very inconsistent in our behavior.  But, for me anyway, whether I like most of them or not, humanity is our team and there is nothing else.

[Martin Gisser]

I should be more philosophical like my daughter.  She says what ends up happening is not important at all on the scale of the universe so not to sweat it so much.  If we totally mess up - or not - it does not really have any impact.   Our span of time is shorter than the flick of a switch and we are not as big as a drop of water in the ocean of the universe.

Methinks this is not philosophical. It is a vain excuse for defeatist nihilism. What if we are the only planet with life? What if we mess it up so thoroughly that it wouldn't have a 2nd chance to re-grow life as we knew it? Space and time are relative. What counts is the here and now.

For all practical purposes the relevant universe consists of Earth, Sun and Moon. The stars sprinkled on the night sky are mostly ornamentation whose only practical use is navigation. The planets were helpful for finding Newton's law of gravity. And that's all. Else, the universe beyond Earth, Sun and Moon is of no philosophical relevance whatsoever.

(It seems I'm getting into some rambling... But I'm actually working at a larger text concerning all that. So I'm quite happy for the inspiration by this thread. :-) )

I'm reminded of a famous quote of Blaise Pascal. Some take it literally (e.g. Jacques Monod at the end of  "Chance and Necessity") - but it is not Pascal's own position, rather he is satirizing the non-believer:

I do not know who put me in the world, nor what the world is, nor what I am myself. I am terribly ignorant about everything. I do not know what my body is, or my senses, or my soul, or even that part of me which thinks what I am saying, which reflects about everything, and about itself, and does not know itself any better than it knows anything else.

I see the terrifying spaces of the universe hemming me in, and I find myself attached to one corner of this vast expanse without knowing why I have been put in this place rather than that, or why the brief span of life allotted to me should be assigned to one moment rather than another of all the eternity which went before me and all that which will come after me. I see only infinity on every side, hemming me in like an atom or like the shadow of a fleeting instant.

[AbruptSLR]

I don't know where to go with this.  I am for humans and only humans.  We can fix our problems by exercising some basic courage and sacrificing for others to come.  Or not.  We are very inconsistent in our behavior.  But, for me anyway, whether I like most of them or not, humanity is our team and there is nothing else.

"The picture's pretty bleak, gentlemen ... The world's climates are changing, the mammals are taking over, and we all have a brain about the size of a walnut."  - Dinosaurs talking in "The Far Side" by Gary Larson.

[viddaloo]

Methinks this is not philosophical. It is a vain excuse for defeatist nihilism. What if we are the only planet with life? What if we mess it up so thoroughly that it wouldn't have a 2nd chance to re-grow life as we knew it? Space and time are relative. What counts is the here and now.

For all practical purposes the relevant universe consists of Earth, Sun and Moon. The stars sprinkled on the night sky are mostly ornamentation whose only practical use is navigation. The planets were helpful for finding Newton's law of gravity. And that's all. Else, the universe beyond Earth, Sun and Moon is of no philosophical relevance whatsoever.

Martin, I think you're onto something here! Totally agree, it's what I would call a 'Get Real' politics or worldview. People who meditate keep nagging me about everything of interest being on the inside, well, if we don't save the outside, baby, it looks really dark for the future of the 'inside'.

Also, Eco–Philosophy, I think, is an important impulse to get real and focus on the here and now and real life on *this* planet.

[Neven]

Like Jiddu Krishnamurti always said, the outside is a reflection of the inside. The outward and inward revolution go hand in hand, one doesn't follow the other.

And Carl Sagan said that we would either venture out to the stars or cease to exist.

[viddaloo]

You also have the problem of civilisation philosophically speaking and in general terms being all about shutting out Nature and focusing on Culture and inner stuff, and some of the 'inner' people who cross a certain line are IMO just extreme protagonists for this 'shut out everything else' line of thought, some of them even telling me it doesn't matter if our species would go extinct, as our 'spiritual bodies' would live happily ever after.

I do believe we all need to find inner peace and balance in all our 'lives' (personal/lovelife, worklife, societal life and so on), but we mustn't "throw the baby out with the bathwater" (Norwegian expression), ie lose sight of the real world completely. Especially not now when we need to save as much of the natural world as possible for future generations of dreamers 

[Martin Gisser]

Methinks this is not philosophical. It is a vain excuse for defeatist nihilism. What if we are the only planet with life? What if we mess it up so thoroughly that it wouldn't have a 2nd chance to re-grow life as we knew it? Space and time are relative. What counts is the here and now.

For all practical purposes the relevant universe consists of Earth, Sun and Moon. The stars sprinkled on the night sky are mostly ornamentation whose only practical use is navigation. The planets were helpful for finding Newton's law of gravity. And that's all. Else, the universe beyond Earth, Sun and Moon is of no philosophical relevance whatsoever.

Martin, I think you're onto something here! Totally agree, it's what I would call a 'Get Real' politics or worldview. People who meditate keep nagging me about everything of interest being on the inside, well, if we don't save the outside, baby, it looks really dark for the future of the 'inside'.

Also, Eco–Philosophy, I think, is an important impulse to get real and focus on the here and now and real life on *this* planet.

Exactly. (I'm actually working at a critique of certain Buddhist metaphysics. Sort of finding an answer to Heidegger's question "Why is the earth silent" from this perspective. Heideggers's answer is that western philosophy got lost in metaphysics (got too "real" in a sense) ever since Plato and Aristotle. My answer: The earth is silent because she is empty. (I.e. Shunyata: Emptiness of own-being. I.e. the Buddha'a insight into his mind being not-self generalized by later Buddhists to absolutely everything being non-self). Philosophically this is a hyper megalomaniac project, plus risks the Dalai Lama getting a hiccup. But from the modern scientific perspective it is quite easy to see, methinks.)

Thanks a lot to Shared Humanity for the video link. - But methinks our mirror neurons aren't enough. We need a new philosopical perspective; a grounding: a closer look at the dirt below our boots. (It's already there: Heidegger, Aldo Leopold, Arne Naess, Hans Jonas, David Abram, Joanna Macy, etc. etc.) As a naturalist I've never been interested in philosphers' blahblah - until recently: Something crucial is not working in the earth system (incl. humans). Some major rewiring of human brains seems necessary to avert a reductio ad absurdum of evolution: Rendering it a waste of a few hundred million years of time, or, if we survive without learning, everything stuck in eternal catastrophe until the sun burns out. Wrrrr... We live in interesting times!

[viddaloo]

If you have a chance to read Zapffe ("Om det tragiske") I think you'll be rewarded, Martin. Read it during my first spring of philosophy studies at the University of Oslo, and it pretty much changed everything in the way I perceived and related to this world.

Zapffe pretty much nails it — in Norwegian — in 1941 when he declares humankind is tragic (and doomed) because of its Überausrüstung. Being too good at it, as the English would say, using 4 more words.

[Sigmetnow]

Text of an interview on climate activism with Bill McKibben of 350.org.

What kind of obstacles prevent public engagement with scientific research? What obligations do scientists have, if any, to engage in climate politics beyond their own research?

In a rational world, Jim Hansen would not have to regularly end up in handcuffs. We would long since have heeded the scientific alarm and gotten to work. But in the real world, I fear scientists have the same civic duty as the rest of us: after hours and on weekends it’s time to join together in real protest.

Can we really use blockades and divestment as a mechanism to buy time while the price of renewables comes down in the market? Can that approach work quickly enough given the extreme limits of our time frame? What about the people before profit/ecology before economy models of climate activism?

I think we can freeze the growth of the fossil fuel industry long enough for renewables to take the lead in this race — the price of solar panels has fallen enormously in the last few years, and it will continue to plummet. Whether it happens fast enough to outpace the warming of the planet is an open question, but in any event putting people (and every other living thing) before the profit of the fossil fuel industry is key.

http://www.salon.com/2015/03/19/bill_mckibben_scientists_cant_save_us/

[Sleepy]

Great interview, Sigmetnow.

Whether it happens fast enough to outpace the warming of the planet is an open question, but in any event putting people (and every other living thing) before the profit of the fossil fuel industry is key.

Regarding that open question, it's not fast enough IMO as 2015 is the year we should be doing this:

http://youtu.be/MeRghYqi090?t=1m48s

At 1m48s, brake hard and bail out. But I'll wait until Paris, if nothing comes out of that meeting I might become a sleepy acitivist with grey beard, armed with a cane...

[JimD]

I don't know where to go with this.  I am for humans and only humans.  We can fix our problems by exercising some basic courage and sacrificing for others to come.  Or not.  We are very inconsistent in our behavior.  But, for me anyway, whether I like most of them or not, humanity is our team and there is nothing else.

"The picture's pretty bleak, gentlemen ... The world's climates are changing, the mammals are taking over, and we all have a brain about the size of a walnut."  - Dinosaurs talking in "The Far Side" by Gary Larson.

I think that proves my point rather than yours.  The only thing important to us in terms of existence is us.  If we cease to exist it is irrelevant whether we are replaced by a species more or less capable than we.  We will still not exist and all we love will be gone.  As flawed as humans are they are still all we have to dance with.  The wolves will not take us in and the sharks will eat us.  We are our own and no one else's and any species which might appear to challenge us will be our deadly enemy until one of us no longer is.  Natural selection, if that is what we are talking about here, does not mean you don't fight to the death for your own existence.  This possible being you hint at here will seek to stamp us out if it comes along and we will try to do the same to it.  I know which side I will be on.  Win or lose, live or die.

[JimD]

I should be more philosophical like my daughter.  She says what ends up happening is not important at all on the scale of the universe so not to sweat it so much.  If we totally mess up - or not - it does not really have any impact.   Our span of time is shorter than the flick of a switch and we are not as big as a drop of water in the ocean of the universe.

Methinks this is not philosophical. It is a vain excuse for defeatist nihilism. What if we are the only planet with life? What if we mess it up so thoroughly that it wouldn't have a 2nd chance to re-grow life as we knew it? Space and time are relative. What counts is the here and now.

For all practical purposes the relevant universe consists of Earth, Sun and Moon. The stars sprinkled on the night sky are mostly ornamentation whose only practical use is navigation. The planets were helpful for finding Newton's law of gravity. And that's all. Else, the universe beyond Earth, Sun and Moon is of no philosophical relevance whatsoever.

(It seems I'm getting into some rambling... But I'm actually working at a larger text concerning all that. So I'm quite happy for the inspiration by this thread. :-) )

I'm reminded of a famous quote of Blaise Pascal. Some take it literally - but it is not his own position, rather he is satirizing the non-believer:

I do not know who put me in the world, nor what the world is, nor what I am myself. I am terribly ignorant about everything. I do not know what my body is, or my senses, or my soul, or even that part of me which thinks what I am saying, which reflects about everything, and about itself, and does not know itself any better than it knows anything else.

I see the terrifying spaces of the universe hemming me in, and I find myself attached to one corner of this vast expanse without knowing why I have been put in this place rather than that, or why the brief span of life allotted to me should be assigned to one moment rather than another of all the eternity which went before me and all that which will come after me. I see only infinity on every side, hemming me in like an atom or like the shadow of a fleeting instant.

... a vain excuse for defeatist nihilism...

Wow, pretty harsh. 

One could say I guess that you are a strong proponent of the supremacy of the ego, of 'us', or something like that.  An extreme arrogance of the self over everything else?

I understand that there are people like yourself who seem to hold that our seemed existence gives rise to some incredible importance in the universe. 

.. What if we are the only planet with life? What if we mess it up so thoroughly that it wouldn't have a 2nd chance to re-grow life as we knew it? Space and time are relative. What counts is the here and now.

For all practical purposes the relevant universe consists of Earth, Sun and Moon...

What you are really saying here is that 'we', us humans, are the most important part of existence and all the rest of what we seem to perceive is of lessor or even of no consequence. All that matters is us and all that matters is now.

Very self centered.  Extremely so.  I utterly reject such approaches and thought processes.  Thinking that 'we' are all that matters and is important is the basis for our lack of rational thought and selfish behavior, and directly leads to our current civilizational dilemma's of climate change and exceeding the carrying capacity.  We can do better than this.

I get all wrapped up in the weeds of existence and how our species can do better and prosper if we act intelligently.  My daughter stands above this fray, not that she does not share my concerns and hopes we can do better, in that she does not lose sight on a daily basis about our part and place in this universe...like I often do.

If one opens up their mind to what existence really is and the scale of the universe it is much harder to be self centered and inward looking.  To understand the scope and scale of existence and time is perhaps the greatest accomplishment there is.  For we are truly insignificant and but a microscopic part of the whole.  To the universe what happens here on Earth is of no consequence except to us as part of our petty concerns and desires.  We will exist for less than a blink of time in a span which has stretched for beyond imagination into the past and will into the limitless future.  The fate of the Earth we so anguish over here is already sealed.  The Sun will eventually run out of fuel and expand and consume this planet in fire.  It is doomed as are we all.

It matters not to the universe whether in our arrogance about our existence we are right that we are the 'only ones' or whether our galaxy and the billions of other galaxy's are chock full of peoples far more capable than us.   Neither we nor they will have any effect on the passage of time or determine existence.  That is beyond us and we need to keep all that in mind.  If you ignore these things then how do you put a proper scale on beauty and love.  By some simple looking inwardness?  If the only thing you see is yourself I expect one would find themselves pretty special.  Narcissism is self-fulfilling I guess.

The greatest fears to overcome is in the contemplating of the unknown, the scale of time and our insignificance.  It makes the mind whirl and disorients you.  But you also realize that you are a part, however insignificant, of all of this magnificent place and time.  That is what has real meaning and we have our place in it.  For a time at least.  You and I are made of the parts of exploded stars which existed for unimaginable lengths of time and we will be disintegrated sometime in the future to repeat the process again.  We will not live our tiny lives of awareness for long but we will exist almost forever.  We can and should do our best, appreciate what time we have and love each other intensely, because it is the right thing to do, not because we are special.

[Sigmetnow]

Action taken against vociferous climate change troll "Steve Goddard".

@EricHolthaus: Wow, Twitter has suspended the account of uber-troll @SteveSGoddard.
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2015/03/23/as-expected-the-nazis-at-twitter-have-shut-down-my-account/

[Sigmetnow]

Journalists have to decide what to do about candidates who are climate change denialists.
The linked article explores various options.

NYT: "Claims that the entire field of climate science is some kind of giant hoax do not hold water, and we have made a conscious decision that we are not going to take that point of view seriously."
http://pressthink.org/2015/03/journalists-have-to-decide-what-to-do-about-candidates-who-are-climate-change-denialists/

[Sigmetnow]

Fun times at a Florida Senate budget subcommittee.

Awkward: Watch as Florida lawmaker mocks Rick Scott official for refusing to say ‘climate change’
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/03/awkward-watch-as-florida-lawmaker-mocks-rick-scott-official-for-refusing-to-say-climate-change/

[Martin Gisser]

... a vain excuse for defeatist nihilism...

Wow, pretty harsh. 

Yeah. I've heard this argument way too often, so I'm a bit impatient with it: Pointing to somewhere else to relativize our wrongdoing. Heck, the "somewhere else" is mostly vacuum! (Alas the universe is not infinite, so outer space does not render us infinitely small. Then the absurdity of this excuse would be more clear. (I could also go on with similar excuses from Auschwitz denial to chicken maltreatment. But I'm ruthlessly fed up with kindergarten.))

So, forget about outer space as an excuse. What about time? 300 million years: That's the time gone by since last time the oceans were acidifying at the same rate as today. Today, we are responsible. Another large time perspective: 6th Great Extinction in the history of life: We are responsible.

So, we are undoubtedly a force of planetary scale (even on planetary time scale). The dominating species. Doing harm like no species before. (Except perhaps for the Great Oxygenation perpetrated 2.5 billion years back by cyanobacteria.)

Accepting this fact has nothing to do with ego bloat. To the contrary.

One could say I guess that you are a strong proponent of the supremacy of the ego, of 'us', or something like that.  An extreme arrogance of the self over everything else?

I understand that there are people like yourself who seem to hold that our seemed existence gives rise to some incredible importance in the universe. 

Maybe I was a bit tense and polemic, as often. You get me quite backward here. What is important is the planet. We can no longer escape our responsibility with childish excuses about the vastness of the universe. When I say "We the Planet" this includes the rest of the planet, too, from bacteria to whales and forests. (And that's not just basic respect for millions of years of hard work of Mother Evolution. By bad chance we also depend on this "stuff" for survival.)

Which of the following irrelevant hypothesis do you prefer:
1) This is the only planet bearing higher life. -- Then we are, indeed, of incredible importance.
2) There are others. -- Then why haven't we heard of them? They must be dead, having messed up like we are doing now. Then, we are either going to end like them: Another fatal accident of evolution and waste of time. Or, we manage something incredibly important: The first instance of intelligent life not f*ing up their planet.

I'm not appealing to ego. I'm appealing to basic self respect.

[JimD]

Which of the following irrelevant hypothesis do you prefer:
1) This is the only planet bearing higher life. -- Then we are, indeed, of incredible importance.
2) There are others. -- Then why haven't we heard of them? They must be dead, having messed up like we are doing now. Then, we are either going to end like them: Another fatal accident of evolution and waste of time. Or, we manage something incredibly important: The first instance of intelligent life not f*ing up their planet.

I'm not appealing to ego. I'm appealing to basic self respect.

Like I said.  This is all ego and self importance.  It is childish to me.

Neither 1 or 2 imply importance.  To who and what would either be important?  Only to us.  Thus ego and self importance.

Being intensely focused on fixing our problems and trying to ensure we survive in no way implies we are serving some greater purpose.  Or that we are special.  We do it because, like all creatures, the drive to survive dominates us.  We do not do it for any other reason. 

People like to think they are special and important because they find it intimidating to think that we are just a chance occurrence and don't really matter to anyone or anything but ourselves.  The more we know about the vastness of time and space the more miniscule we appear to be.  While our survival matters not to the whole it surely matters a lot to us.  The Earth matters to us and the other creatures which live here.  But once again it matters not to the universe and its time is limited just as ours is.  There is a big difference here that needs to be kept in perspective.

No where in anything I have ever written have I avoided or denied our responsibility for our problems and I am the last person you will ever meet who makes excuses for it.  You will struggle to find people more focused on fixing it than me.

But to claim we have to save it because it and we are special is just runaway ego.  We want to do it because we want to survive, and some few of us also because we feel the weight of the moral responsibility for what has happened.

It is good to keep in mind as well that among our population those who most think we are 'special' and that we were put here for some 'greater' purpose are those most strongly pursuing paths which lead to destruction.  Be very wary of these people.  They are not our friends.

[AbruptSLR]

I agree with Neil deGrasse Tyson on this one:

http://news.google.com/news/section?pz=1&cf=all&topic=snc&siidp=2221a668f3d0c4d2b338bf9dff9d3748c96b&ict=ln

Extract: "Popular astrophysicist and anointed spokesperson for science Neil deGrasse Tyson is not impressed by the recent antics of Republican leaders, from Sen. Ted Cruz’s directive that NASA stop focusing on Earth to Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s reported ban on the term “climate change.”

“I don’t know if our country has any precedent for emergent scientific truths to be debated on political grounds,” he said during a live appearance in Sarasota, Florida, referring to the aforementioned censorship. “I’m astonished by that. Astonished and disappointed. I thought as a nation we were above this.”

Tyson, who is the director of the Hayden Planetarium and, as a side gig, host of the hit series Cosmos, also stood up for NASA’s work studying climate change, which Cruz, as chairman of the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Space, is actively discouraging.

“If you’re going to ignore Earth — and no one else is paying attention to Earth the way NASA is — you could be planting the seeds of your own destruction,” he argued, adding, “It’d be different if most of [NASA’s budget] was spent on Earth, but that’s not the case.”

It’s easy to shake our heads at politicians who seem to be actively steering us toward destruction, but in what’s sure to be his most inflammatory statement, Tyson maintained that the real people to blame are the ones who put climate deniers in office in the first place. “I don’t blame the politicians for a damn thing because we vote for the politicians,” he told his audience. “I blame the electorate.”"

[JimD]

Well if the electorate had any idea what they were voting for he would have a point, but they don't and neither does he.  He is blaming the wrong set of people.

We do not really live in a democratic system filled with well informed citizens who make the decisions on the directions we follow.  We live in a plutocracy and decisions on what to do are made in other venues and then the mechanism to put them in place is run.  He should know that.

The way our citizens are fed political and religious ideology and propaganda and then deliberately not provided access to a real education there is no chance they could be making reasoned decisions.  Ahh but then he should also know that almost no one makes decisions on rational and logical thought processes.  Thus the great effect of the propaganda.

One of the problems with statements about how the world works coming from PhD physicists is that there is probably no other general group of people on earth who are more clueless about how the human world works and functions.  Sort of by definition they are the few among us most likely to actually use reason and logic in their work.  But since almost all human decisions and interactions are not reason based they are generally clueless about what and why humans do what they do. 

We see this kind of false expertise all the time.  Someone is famous in something so anything they say is given credence even though they are only expert in one thing.

[viddaloo]

IMO, JimD is correct on democracy and plutocracy, yet I cannot agree with him that wanting to save humanity and the wider biosphere (other species that we coexist with and depend on) has anything to do with ego: If someone feels important while fighting this fight, then good, they *are* important.

Ego to me is not caring about anything in the world except getting a nicer vehicle and a bigger house.

[Sleepy]

Here we don't have the luxury of deep discussions. Here we have to be really clear to get through, since we have 800000 people actively voting for denial. And then there's the rest of the BAUsers (tot pop ~9M).

I just referred to this picture to one of those really dense mammals.


But, if one consider the mass of the average Swede (75,2kg) one will have 60160 metric tons in that right bowl, just from those who actively vote for denial here.

This might work?

[Sigmetnow]

I agree with Neil deGrasse Tyson on this one:

http://news.google.com/news/section?pz=1&cf=all&topic=snc&siidp=2221a668f3d0c4d2b338bf9dff9d3748c96b&ict=ln
...

I like this quote:   

Now we have a time where people are cherry picking science,” he said. “The science is not political. That’s like repealing gravity because you gained 10 pounds last week.”

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/03/24/3638084/neil-degrasse-tyson-florida-climate-ban/

[JimD]

IMO, JimD is correct on democracy and plutocracy, yet I cannot agree with him that wanting to save humanity and the wider biosphere (other species that we coexist with and depend on) has anything to do with ego: If someone feels important while fighting this fight, then good, they *are* important.

Ego to me is not caring about anything in the world except getting a nicer vehicle and a bigger house.

This is not a correct characterization of what Martin and I are talking about. We are having a philosophical discussion about how we perceive our place in the universe.  Are we just one small natural and insignificant part of it, or does our existence imply or impart that we have a uniqueness which means we have some 'special' place in it.  It is basically a religious/non-religious discussion.

We are not talking about each others commitment to dealing with climate change. 

[JimD]

Kind of interesting

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/03/climate-denial-is-immoral-says-head-of-us-episcopal-church-it-is-a-very-blind-position/

So the Catholic/Episcopalian side of this equation is at least seeing some movement. 

[AbruptSLR]

Some denalists have pointed to measured decreases in tropospheric temperatures as an indication that climate change is not occurring; however, the linked reference discusses how re-calibration of this observed data can go a long ways towards disproving such denalist statements:

Stephen Po-Chedley, Tyler J. Thorsen, and Qiang Fu, (2015), "Removing Diurnal Cycle Contamination in Satellite-Derived Tropospheric Temperatures: Understanding Tropical Tropospheric Trend Discrepancies", J. Climate, 28, 2274–2290, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-13-00767.1


http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-13-00767.1

Abstract: "Independent research teams have constructed long-term tropical time series of the temperature of the middle troposphere (TMT) using satellite Microwave Sounding Unit (MSU) and Advanced MSU (AMSU) measurements. Despite careful efforts to homogenize the MSU/AMSU measurements, tropical TMT trends beginning in 1979 disagree by more than a factor of 3. Previous studies suggest that the discrepancy in tropical TMT trends is caused by differences in both the NOAA-9 warm target factor and diurnal drift corrections. This work introduces a new observationally based method for removing biases related to satellite diurnal drift. Over land, the derived diurnal correction is similar to a general circulation model (GCM) diurnal cycle. Over ocean, the diurnal corrections have a negligible effect on TMT trends, indicating that oceanic biases are small. It is demonstrated that this method is effective at removing biases between coorbiting satellites and biases between nodes of individual satellites. Using a homogenized TMT dataset, the ratio of tropical tropospheric temperature trends relative to surface temperature trends is in accord with the ratio from GCMs. It is shown that bias corrections for diurnal drift based on a GCM produce tropical trends very similar to those from the observationally based correction, with a trend difference smaller than 0.02 K decade−1. Differences between various TMT datasets are explored further. Large differences in tropical TMT trends between this work and that of the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) are attributed to differences in the treatment of the NOAA-9 target factor and the diurnal cycle correction."

See also:

https://www.skepticalscience.com/uah-lowballing-global-warming.html

Extract: "This paper, in my mind, makes a major step toward reconciling differences in satellite temperature records of the mid-troposphere region. As before, it is found that the scientists (and politicians) who have cast doubt on global warming in the past are shown to be outliers because of bias in their results."

[Martin Gisser]

We are having a philosophical discussion about how we perceive our place in the universe.  Are we just one small natural and insignificant part of it, or does our existence imply or impart that we have a uniqueness which means we have some 'special' place in it.  It is basically a religious/non-religious discussion.

What is the significance of the universe?
I've explained my view above, that it is insignificant for almost all practical purposes (with 2 minor practical exceptions).
Now here's another, theoretical/philosophical exception: The universe is significant for it can render us insignificant. :-)

[Martin Gisser]

Jim, thanks for your insistence. Now I clearly see the paradox: You can say, for sure, that it is utterly megalomaniac to view the universe (beyond Sun. Moon, Earth) as insignificant. But methinks one can as well turn this around.

On religion: Methinks universe-gazing often is an ersatz religion. Heaven secularized.

Problem is, the universe really exists. That makes it difficult to say like Laplace said of god: "I don't need this hypothesis". (A famous comment to Napoleon about celestial mechanics.)

My position is a refinement of Laplace's: I'm neither theist nor atheist. Both are 2 sides of one coin: A superfluous hypothesis. (Hence, a danger to a consistent world view: The more hypotheses the greater the possibility of a contradiction. (And we know the evils (a)theist fundamentalism has wreaked on us time and again.).)

I'd like to treat the universe just like god. And re-align our view toward earth again.


-------------
P.S.: Denial has new apotheosis of stupid: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/03/25/3638622/ted-cruz-is-like-galileo/

[anotheramethyst]

ted cruz is like galileo?  sure, if they mean he's living in the past. 

[JimD]

Martin

..Problem is, the universe really exists. That makes it difficult to say like Laplace said of god: "I don't need this hypothesis". (A famous comment to Napoleon about celestial mechanics.)...

Well I am currently more confused than normal on this topic of existence as I am about 4/5ths of the way through reading Jim Holt's recent book "Why Does the World Exist?" which, as you likely know, is a comprehensive review of all the various positions/views on existence (or lack thereof) found in the history of philosophy/physics.

I have and am still learning a lot from that.  Who could have known there were so many approaches to this fundamental question?

This question has been of life long interest to me since I got disinvited from attending any further Sunday school classes at our church when I was about 10 years old.  I failed repeatedly to stop insisting on an answer to the question, "If God made the universe then who made God?"  I suggested perhaps we might have made this up as I could not understand how something came from nothing so if God existed then God had a beginning also. 

I was never one to let an unsettled issue just lie there even when I was young.  So I went fishing on weekends after that.  Fishing is also a kind of religion and, as you pointed out, also that part of physics which studies the cosmos.   My brother who had a PhD in theoretical math once told me that at the level he worked at there was no difference between philosophy and mathematics.

I don't know if you are aware of it but Laplace himself said that what was being reported that he said to Napoleon was not what he actually said.  The real message was along the lines of the following..

...Newton, believing that the secular perturbations which he had sketched out in his theory would in the long run end up destroying the solar system, says somewhere that God was obliged to intervene from time to time to remedy the evil and somehow keep the system working properly. This, however, was a pure supposition suggested to Newton by an incomplete view of the conditions of the stability of our little world. Science was not yet advanced enough at that time to bring these conditions into full view. But Laplace, who had discovered them by a deep analysis, would have replied to the First Consul that Newton had wrongly invoked the intervention of God to adjust from time to time the machine of the world (la machine du monde) and that he, Laplace, had no need of such an assumption. It was not God, therefore, that Laplace treated as a hypothesis, but his intervention in a certain place.....

And then we have Hawking really complicating things when he states that the maths show that there are 10 to the 500th universes.  Existence (if there actually  is such a thing) is infinitely puzzling.

[JimD]

I can imagine how this plays out and one could also speculate on what kind of effect this kind of thing has on the credibility of science with the general public - not to mention perhaps even other scientists.

Like I said the other day.  If you get caught lying to people they will never trust you again.

A major publisher of scholarly medical and science articles has retracted 43 papers because of “fabricated” peer reviews amid signs of a broader fake peer review racket affecting many more publications....

Meanwhile, the Committee on Publication Ethics, a multidisciplinary group that includes more than 9,000 journal editors, issued a statement suggesting a much broader potential problem. The committee, it said, “has become aware of systematic, inappropriate attempts to manipulate the peer review processes of several journals across different publishers.” Those journals are now reviewing manuscripts to determine how many may need to be retracted, it said....

Last year, in one of the most publicized scandals, the Journal of Vibration and Control, in the field of acoustics, retracted 60 articles at one time due to what it called a “peer review and citation ring” in which the reviews, mostly from scholars in Taiwan, were submitted by people using fake names....

Ivan Oransky and Adam Marcus, the co-editors of Retraction Watch, a blog that tracks research integrity and first reported the BioMed Central retractions, have counted a total of 170 retractions in the past few years across several journals because of fake peer reviews....

 “The spectrum of ‘fakery’ has ranged from authors suggesting their friends who agree in advance to provide a positive review, to elaborate peer review circles where a group of authors agree to peer review each others’ manuscripts, to impersonating real people, and to generating completely fictitious characters. From what we have discovered amongst our journals, it appears to have reached a higher level of sophistication. The pattern we have found, where there is no apparent connection between the authors but similarities between the suggested reviewers, suggests that a third party could be behind this sophisticated fraud.”...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/03/27/fabricated-peer-reviews-prompt-scientific-journal-to-retract-43-papers-systematic-scheme-may-affect-other-journals/

[Sigmetnow]

Sou takes on Richard Tol and explains his denier tactic of a "Gish Gallop."
http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2015/03/the-fall-and-fall-of-gish-galloping.html

[Buddy]

Looks like Joe Bastardi's denial is dying a slow death.  Over on the lie machine known as "The Patriot Post".....Joe's entry's are slowing WAY DOWN.  He posted 4 times from December of 2014 through March of 2015.  For the same period from December of 2013 through March of 2014.....he posted 17 times.

I wonder what Joe is going to do for a living after the oil and gas companies stop supporting him?

[Neven]

Sou takes on Richard Tol and explains his denier tactic of a "Gish Gallop."
http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2015/03/the-fall-and-fall-of-gish-galloping.html

I followed the discussion leading to the blog post, and it's simply appalling how Tol is behaving. Really makes one wonder how a university can hire a guy like that, and let him keep his job.

[Sigmetnow]

Former U.K. Climate envoy John Ashton accuses Shell oil company and others of being ‘narcissistic, paranoid and psychopathic’ and being unable to contemplate low-carbon future.

In the letter, Ashton wrote: “You and your peers cannot complain if society increasingly comes to see in your behaviour the characteristic marks of the professional narcissist, paranoiac, and psychopath.”

He said Shell was narcissistic because it was so intoxicated by the current energy system it had helped to build that it could not contemplate the need to build a new one: “You could accept squarely that the days of yesterday’s business model are numbered, that the challenge now is to manage its decline and build alongside it a new business fit for today.”

“The paranoiac fears conspiracies that do not exist,” Ashton wrote. “You fear a non-existent conspiracy to bring about your sudden death.” While current fossil fuel reserves are several times greater than can be burned while avoiding catastrophic climate change, all experts acknowledge that coal, oil and gas will need to be phased out over the next few decades.

“The psychopath displays inflated self-appraisal, lack of empathy, and a tendency to squash those who block the way,” Ashton told van Beurden. “All these traits can be found in your [speech].”

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/30/shell-cynical-attempt-climate-change-john-ashton-oil-fossil-fuel

[Sigmetnow]

John Cook's Skeptical Science course on combatting climate denial is now online! 
You can audit it for free, or for certification.  See the link -- many big climate science names are involved.

https://www.edx.org/course/making-sense-climate-science-denial-uqx-denial101x

[AbruptSLR]

The linked Mother Jones article discusses why the US FEMA wants denalist state governors (like Florida, Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, etc.) to recognize and prepare for climate change consequences:

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2015/03/fema-governors-climate-change

[OldLeatherneck]

More Americans Trust Fox News Than Obama On Climate Change, Poll Finds

The Huffington Post   , By   James Gerken, 2 April, 2015

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/02/americans-fox-news-climate-change_n_6993360.html

In recent years, Fox News has called climate change a "superstition," a "scam" and a "hoax."

Fox hosts have also accused NASA of "fudging the numbers" on climate change and said the phenomenon is something only "corrupt" scientists believe in.

At times I wonder if FOX NEWS is not a greater threat to US National Security than Climate Change, ISIS and Vladimir Putin combined.

[Sleepy]

Would the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Planetary Discrimination work against those who discriminates our entire civilization?

We do have the fifty year old International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. That didn't stop racism, discrimination or hate speech, but at least it provides a tool to stop media (and individuals) from systematically publishing nonsense.

[Buddy]

....and that is why it is so important to hold FOX accountable for their lies...

[AbruptSLR]

The linked article discusses why corporate America is slow (or absent) in its support of Obama's EPA Clean Power Plan (that is the cornerstone of the US commitment for CoP21):

http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/apr/02/corporate-america-climate-change-fight-epa

Extract: "The EPA’s Clean Power Plant might be the only hope the US has to make a real dent in the climate change battle. So why aren’t more companies on-board?"

[Sigmetnow]

Berkeley California Energy Commission wants to put climate change warning labels on gasoline pumps.

The Bay Area’s pioneering interest in climate branding is reflected in a January recommendation from Berkeley’s Energy Commission, saying it has the “potential for long-term behavior change” and is in line with the city’s long-term goal of reducing emissions 80 percent by 2050. Wrote the commission:

"Although the link between motorized vehicle use and GHG emissions is widely known, making this information available at the point of purchase of motor vehicle fuel is intended to contribute to behavioral changes to reduce motorized vehicle use, thus contributing helping to accomplish the Berkeley Climate Action Plan (CAP) goals and helping to mitigate impacts on climate. These labels are analogous to the health warnings placed on cigarettes."

http://grist.org/climate-energy/climate-warning-labels-could-be-coming-to-a-gas-pump-near-you/

[Sigmetnow]

The Senate’s Biggest Climate Deniers Are Demanding The EPA Explain Climate Models To Them
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/04/03/3642142/gop-wants-to-learn-climate-models/