5 Filters

Media Lens 'climate change', vs Daily Skeptic, somewhat of a poll of 5F posters

#21

Thanks for all the responses, we don’t seem to have a consensus. Few if any commented on the Media Lens article I posted originally, which is either hysterical scare mongering or accurate representation of reality. What is it? Note that some people will say that Extinction Rebellion is a middle class astroturf movement which gets positive media attention and kid glove treatment from the cops, or is, as Media Lens asserts, a true activist organization who is mistreated by the media. What is it? Frankly I don’t give a shit about Media Lens now, because they participated in helping the state turn me into a second class citizen. So, for me they lost all credibility. Really, they and all their fellow ‘lefties’ who accepted state/corporate/media destruction of my freedom. Maybe they’re right, but I don’t really accept them as accurate analysts.

Rarely do we consider the profound emotional distress caused by the concept being sold constantly: We human beings not only CONTROL the weather, we are RESPONSIBLE FOR the weather! Imagine the helplessness that creates in every human soul that accepts those concepts as REALITY! What could be hopeless than trying to change the weather with our pitiful little daily life decisions? To me the message guarantees neurosis, and I think Media Lens is a good example of that neurosis. Yes, they are passive aggressive neurotics. My view. On the other hand maybe I’m just lost in illusion. What is it? What is the truth?

Look at this recent piece from Off Guardian. CO2 in this view is ‘good for growing plants’ so no worry. Simply let the trees grow, stop cutting them down. Easy. Meanwhile they accuse the Extinction Rebellion types of distracting attention from the real danger, which is elite control enslaving us IN THE NAME OF climate change prevention. What is it? What is the truth?

Yes, it felt to me the first little lashes of enslavement, here in France, limited in my travel, my work, my access to coffee and croissants and films and etc, and made to feel the EVIL ONE, because I was helping kill FRAGILE GRANNIES.

So what is it? What is the truth? The people who figuratively STOOD BY MY SIDE were NOT the climate change scaremongers, they were the writers and activists and analysts who question the climate change narrative.

Here’s the article, note the difference with Media Lens, and all those ‘noble souls’ who share the same opinion. What is it? What is the truth?

3 Likes
#22

That. As I said near top of the thread: fear porn.

I have an idea that I linked to the Dustin Broadbery piece elsewhere. I thought it was a good analysis of the Protestitutes, and paid no attention to the discussion of climate per se.

The notion that humans control ANYTHING is a clear cause of suffering. The Buddha was teaching this 2500 years ago.

Not to imply that this is an easy trap to get out of, because it’s not.

Going off on a tangent, I commented the other day to SpouseEliot that I hate few things more than dealing with washing clothes. But I went on to say that this is why it’s good daily life practice: recognising that aversion, but not flying into a sock-flinging bate, is like fitness training. Smiling serenely and ignoring those you’d rather punch in the face gets that little bit easier.

The Davids have become an embarrassment, for sure.

2 Likes
#23

Hi @KarenEliot and @Everyman

I can understand your frustration with ML’s approach to covid but I don’t think that should automatically translate over to all their analysis.

Also, I’m not sure the point is that humans control the weather as much as our pollution has a pronounced effect on the long term weather. It’s like saying our pollution has an effect on any other part of our environment. The cause and effect relationship is clear and has been known for at least a century.

CO2 is a global pollutant that we (because of our civilisation choices) are pumping out in vast quantities into the atmosphere. This will have catastrophic effects for us and for other life on this planet in the very near term.

In particular, our economies and our current form of civilization won’t survive, and a staggering amount of suffering and death will result.

This seems to me to be backed up by every study very many studies that has been done on the subject over the last 40 odd years.

Cheers

Edit: I had a read through the off-guardian article you posted, and although the author makes some very good points about activism in general (and I agree with much of what he writes there) his paragraphs on climate change are laughably bad. Much like their attempt to look into the science of covid, unfortunately. Sadly off-guardian has sunk below the level of The Sun for any accuracy in their science reporting… A shame.

1 Like
#24

Also, I’m not sure the point is that humans control the weather as much as our pollution has a pronounced effect on the long term weather. It’s like saying our pollution has an effect on any other part of our environment. The cause and effect relationship is clear and has been known for at least a century.

I’m on board with that PP though I think the emphasis on consumer behaviour is a bit of a cheek when industry shapes that behaviour so much. Was my off at a tangent comment too oblique. I was implying that we CAN control our selves, to some extent, by watching our reactions and tempering our responses. The problem with the hyperbole of late is that it encourages division and adds fuel to the Something Has To Be Done fire.

Lots of little local actions add up. Expressive dancing in red robes? Possibly not :wink:

The Davids have become an embarrassment

become

davids
davids1125×1757 202 KB

…doesn’t mean I will be burning these nor forgetting the great work they have done in the past (at least one more on Kindle). The science of climate change, or public health, etc, aren’t things I know much about, but propaganda, and The Science as a branch of that, I would like to think I understand fairly well.

… And that segues nicely into your comment @PontiusPrimate regarding OffGuardian. Oh my. Yes: I 100% agree that OffG has been “off” for quite a while now in many (most?) areas. They are shrieking from one corner of the room, the opposite corner to the Woke. But shrieking nonetheless. That’s embarrassing too, for sure.

1 Like
#25

Hahaha! Well said. Agree with just about everything you wrote

Cheers

1 Like
#26

Pontius Primate, is this thus grossly false?

image
image828×1024 71.4 KB

#27

Yes, I think that’s false

2 Likes
#28

PP: “I can understand your frustration with ML’s approach to covid but I don’t think that should automatically translate over to all their analysis”

I have to agree. Coivd is a blind spot for them, as it is with most of the left.

I sympathise with this too:

Everyman: “Frankly I don’t give a shit about Media Lens now, because they participated in helping the state turn me into a second class citizen. So, for me they lost all credibility.”

Chomsky is even worse - you buy six of a guy’s books, and soon he is saying on TV you should be locked up. Or even lock yourelf up.

On covid and medical tyrrany, much of the strongest support comes from ‘the right’. This is a corollary to the left vacating the Covid premises.
I recently watched a short clip of Dr Scott Jensen. He had returned from a drive (to support another threatened doctor), and found a letter announcing the fifth investigation of his medical license:

It’s a bit Gregory Peck - the brave homely little little guy standing up for what’s right, as he’s presumably been doing since the start of the pandemic. Heartwarming! The little guy is now going to run for governor.

Then I saw a link to something else:

Oh.

The Republicans will try to protect your equal medical rights - unless you’re a pregnant woman.
When you see something encouraging on Covid and you read underneath, you often find comments about commie covid plots or immigrants sponging off the great american individualists.
Another covid luminary, Dr Paul Alexander, deplores communism and socialism, though it’s really not clear if he knows one from the other as he thinks that Justin Trudeau is one of the two. But they both know it’s wrong to deprive people of effective covid treatments and force them to have dangerous injections, and they will fight for that.
Funny old world #1524358.
I think you just have to take people’s credibility by issue :grimacing:, and dream of a world with joined up thinking.

2 Likes
#29

Everyman, one picture does not an argument make (though that’s an interesting assertion). Has that graphic statement got any actual detailed, fact-heavy argument attached to it? Worth seeing, if it has, to see whether it can stand up to inspection in detail. Have you any links?

2 Likes
#30

DIscussed here.

Says it’s not true.

2 Likes
#31

Some say it’s not true. But in the general commentary - from allegedly well-qualified commentators - about relative human/non-human effects on CO2, by no means all agree that human activity outruns all other processes. And that idea of dangerously-low CO2 for the continuation of photosynthesis, in recent geological times, appears again - with graph… :slight_smile: Clearly, it’s a complicated topic, not conducive to justified certainties.

Seems to me that open-minded scepticism remains the canny position on this whole Chicken Little panic… We just don’t know what’s going to happen, even though our numbers have exploded, and we seem to be injecting more CO2 into the atmosphere than anything else is at the moment.

I don’t expect that to continue, though. One comment points out that the global lockdown scam made only the most insignificant reduction in atmospheric CO2 this past two years. But the - already begun - Long Descent isn’t going to be for a couple of years, but probably for hundreds or even thousands of years. That, I imagine, is going to reduce both our numbers and our CO2 output drastically, particularly fossil-hydrocarbon burning which is right now poised on the cusp of its own Long - and irreversible - Descent.

And meanwhile, some commenters point out that there’s a big range, in the multi-thousand ppm of atmospheric concentrations, which life, including human life, can stand easily - so long as photosynthesis keeps going. It’s been A LOT higher in the past. Yet here we still are, living creatures of Mam Gaia’s kindred.

1 Like
#32

From my reading of the situation, I think that picture grossly false.

eg "Add all of these up, and you get an estimate of around 645 million tons of CO2 per year. Yes, there are uncertainties; yes, there’s annual variation; yes, it’s easy to get led astray if you think that Mt. Etna is typical, rather than the unusually large emitter of CO2 that it is. When you realize that volcanism contributes 645 million tons of CO2 per year – and it becomes clearer if you write it as 0.645 billion tons of CO2 per year – compared to humanity’s 29 billion tons per year, it’s overwhelmingly clear what’s caused the carbon dioxide increase in Earth’s atmosphere since 1750."

from How Much CO2 Does A Single Volcano Emit? (I know it’s Forbes magazine, so maybe should be dismissed!)

On the general subject of “climate change”, I do see a certain amount of “fear mongering” which, superficially, resembles the covid fear mongering. I’m also quite sure this issue will be used to control people. It doesn’t however mean that there is no problem. Indeed the problem of increased CO2 (and other greenhouse gases with the resulting higher global temperatures and consequences) has been recognized by scientists for many decades but ignored by politicians. I think that’s largely due to powerful interests. Now, it seems to have become politically convenient to recognize the problem (in order to push through all sorts of other controls perhaps, or to pursue some new WEF inspired utopia), but again, doesn’t mean it is just made up.

It’s quite ridiculous really, over the last few decades our leaders have wanted to globalize the world (taking manufacturing to China, Bangladesh, etc.), greatly expanded air travel, encouraged consumerism, and much more. Now, without any sense of wrong doing, they are telling (forcing really) us to do the opposite, while blaming the masses.

Something needs to be done, that’s for sure, but a recognition that our pro-consumerist leaders share much of the blame is vital.

4 Likes
#33

One thing that can be done, Willem, is to welcome - and prepare for - the Long Descent, as that will reduce our CO2 releases hugely, over a geologically very short time. Call me fanciful if you will - I’m sure all the technocratically-indoctrinated gocos* will! - but I also wonder whether Mam Gaia, in her constant homeostatic reactions to the endless variations in Earth’s surface conditions, may have a deliberate purpose here (sic!): If you think of her as a conscious being, as I do, then how is it impossible that she could have triggered our population overshoot - closely lock-stepped as it is with per-capita energy-use - simply to make a homeostatic response to the dangerously LOW levels of atmospheric CO2 in recent times?

If you think that’s a daft idea, just ride with the Kuhnian paradigm-shift in basic world-view that’s already happening in the world of science - much to the screeching outrage of the current crop of hyper-materialist gocos - and wait and see! :slight_smile:

*Gocos - guardians of current orthodoxy.

2 Likes
#34

Yes, it’s like an if { } then { } loop for a good percentage of these folks :grinning:

A trope that’s particularly annoying is the notion that conservatives have faith and realism, whereas liberals/¢0mm1€$ are wholly blinded by ideology. By which they mean the whole false consciousness schtick, as if 130 years of refinement just never happened. Even Engels refined his ideas on this for goodness sake.

I’ll tend to chip in once in a while pointing out that ideology is not just social control but also social cement (h/t Stuart Hall) but this falls on stony ground.

I put in a good word for Foucault on one SubStack a week or so ago (specifically The Order Of Things, which he seemed to be plagiarising) and the author replied he has a very low opinion of MF. Not that he has ever read any of his stuff. But because he was a “sexual degenerate”.

2 Likes
#35

I’ll add one further thing to this debate. That being, how can you believe anything you’re told? Governments and the media are all totally corrupt, bought and paid for by big corporations.

I would guess that all you can do is trust your own senses. In the case of covid, were you aware of greater numbers of people dying than had died in previous years from seasonal flu? Did you have a cart coming down your street every evening with a ringing bell and “bring out your dead”? (this was before they started injecting people)

Likewise with climate change. In your own immediate environment have you noticed climate change, beyond the corporate rape of the planet? (this is not a criticism; I’m just curious to ask)

You can cite academic studies that prove climate change, but academia has been totally corrupted, as has the medical profession with regard to covid. Science is never settled, but now they are telling you that it is settled, and by funny coincidence it’s settled on the side of the rich and powerful, who also by funny coincidence own the mainstream media which tells you that the climate crisis is real.

Who to believe…? your own senses or a bunch of psychos who would quite happily kill you faster than you can take a piss.

2 Likes
#36

Fwiw, in eighty years I’ve observed the British climate warming just slightly; getting a bit more Mediterranean in its character. Not that eighty years is even an eye-blink in geological time. Though some of the previous temperature shifts have been that quick, and much more striking: ten degrees or so.

1 Like
#37

Hi ED

Yes, it’s been heartbreaking for me to watch Noam these last few years. He seems to have really lost it…

Ai yai yai. What a mess it all is. I had a similar problem with a bunch of commentators on the Ukrainian sitch - Col Douglas MacGregor, Gonzalo Lira, even Alexander Mercouris - are all presenting what looks to me like really good analyses, but step away from Ukraine and I really struggle to listen to them for long.

Great advice my friend.

Cheers

4 Likes
#38

On the “something is to be done” subject, I’m not sure that there are a lot of good choices ahead of us absent a wholesale restructuring of our economy away from growth and towards valuing the natural world as a valuable thing in itself, and not simply for what we can extract from it… Is this gonna happen any time soon? Not by choice, I think.

So then what? Again, I find the work of Jem Bendell and the concept of Deep Adaptation to be most helpful practically as well as psychologically. In particular some hard thinking on the"4-Rs" is beneficial, I think

Edit: here’s a pic I saw online that sums up the basic concept

IMG_20220605_002230
IMG_20220605_0022301080×1271 189 KB

2 Likes
#39

With the Duran crew, you have to remember that, despite the obviously canny analyses that they offer about the Ukraine, they’re a nest of rather conservative thinkers.

That guy ‘The Dark Man’ for example is what I would describe as: like a shagged-out provincial newspaper hack, of average intellect, somewhat drink-soused, full of populist prejudices of the most simple-minded kind, accompanied by a cloud of tell-tale knee-jerk journo-cliches: ‘Mystic Meg’ for anything paranormal; ‘mud huts’ for traditional simple, local-materials dwellings’, ‘we [European armed-robbery imperialists*] dragged Africa out of the Stone Age’, being just three of his recent excrescences. I’ve known hacks like that, whilst working on provincial papers.

And there are other contributors roughly in the same category of hopeless small-minded reactionaries. Not all, though; and the two Greeks are intelligent and closer to civilised good sense. They at least strike my as pretty good calibre.

And have you seen the utterly crass ads. that they give house-room to? Shite of the worst kind; just to earn a bit of funding. Some serious error of judgement there…

*RhG’s interpolation; not the sort of concept ‘The Dark Man’ would entertain, except to scoff at it.

2 Likes
#40

Naw, this is the great intellect you need to listen to (at least he wasn’t wearing all his medals on this occasion)…

Do you know how many shares the royal family has in many of the most destructive corporations on Earth.

But of course the most destructive is the Crown Estate itself.

3 Likes