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Comments Posted By Misterbadexample

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Siberian Blowouts, Climate Collapse and Feedback Loops

Sillylittleme–While the planet may still be here, it’s not clear if it will be able to support multi-cellular life. the late Michael C Ruppert enumerated all the problems facing human species from climate change and noted that the REAL extinction threat now is from Fukushima. I won’t bore with the details, but it’s pretty clear from recent statements by Tepco that the corium of three of the reactors melted through their containment vessels and are on their way to the China syndrome. And because they’ve been pouring water on the plant for three years in an attempt to keep other fuel from going critical, the ground underneath the buildings is being turned into mud. I wrote about Ruppert on my site here. http://brooklynculturejammers.com/2014/04/17/farewell-michael-ruppert/

Even if we manage to get Fukushima under control in the next ten years, there are 440 other nuclear reactors worldwide. Absent regular human intervention, they’ll all melt down. Observers at Chernobyl recently saw black moss growing on one side of the containment vessel. That’s what will be left of living species if humans go the way of Tyrannosaurus Rex.

» Posted By Misterbadexample On July 18, 2014 @ 8:01 am

To all: thanks for your comments. I am hoping at least some of these effects can be ameliorated. But we would have to throw industrial civilization into reverse–all the carbon we’re adding to the atmosphere would have to stop.

While much of the problem is in human population overshoot, our crisis can be blamed on an economic system that expects infinite growth on a finite planet. What we can do about that now is up for debate. But we can’t all move to Mars.

» Posted By Misterbadexample On July 17, 2014 @ 8:49 pm

Let’s Put the Blame Where it Belongs

In THE LONG EMERGENCY, James Howard Kunstler writes about the escalating cost (and future shortages) of oil and how the continuing increase in the price of asphalt and other maintenance materials will lead to the deterioration of the highway system and its abandonment. To paraphrase, how many tractor trailers have to break an axle on a specific chunk of under maintained state or interstate highway before trucking companies decide it isn’t worth their time to travel there? Note that the Tea Party is at its strongest in the Old Confederacy, which was an economic basket case before the New Deal and then the arrival of the Federal highway system. It would be different if someone in government was hatching a plan B for replacing the highways. But the railroads have been allowed to fall apart as well. And bulk transport of goods by air isn’t viable owing to the economies of air travel or shipping being highly vulnerable to high fuel costs.

I agree with Nirek. I understand the Tea Party. I don’t understand the people who vote for its candidates.

» Posted By Misterbadexample On July 18, 2014 @ 7:01 am

From Coal to Solar

Miles–the Germans were smart in a number of ways. The government ran surpluses in the 90s and rather than cut taxes, they used the money to run a test pilot program of solar panels along the length of the Autobahn. At the time, the panels were a loss leader, but the people in government knew that solar/renewable was going to come in handy some day.

The Shell Oil International HQ is all solar PV glass.It’s also designed to take maximum advantage of what sunlight there is in The Netherlands by using baffles and mirrors to keep from flipping on electric lights during the day.

Europe has always had to be smarter about energy use. The problem the US has is that we’ve always had all this ‘cheap oil’ around and never had to make plan B’s.

» Posted By Misterbadexample On July 18, 2014 @ 3:52 pm

Ted Cruz: A Thorn In The Side Of The GOP Establishment

Great article-hope to see more like it.

Cruz is an odd duck in any case–he’s a totally corporate phenom. His wife is a high-level Goldman Sachs executive, and Ted is one of the very few legislators to pass on Congress’ gold-plated healthcare plan because his deal through Goldman Sachs is far better. You think he’d be the darling of the GOP corporate wing (aka the country club pubs). So wtf?

Ted is no dummy. I think he’s placing lots of booby traps around for when he needs them. His tirade last year against his ‘marxist’ professors at Harvard Law seems pointless until one recalls that it’s entirely possible that one of his ‘marxist professors’ may have been Elizabeth Warren. A shot across the bow?

And face it–Cruz’ prestige rises as he watches TP candidates knock off his Senate colleagues. It bumps him up on the seniority tree and gives him a new group in the GOP caucus that will be beholden to him alone. Cruz is not stupid. He is sneaky and venal, but people need to think of the plans he might have in his ascendancy.

» Posted By Misterbadexample On July 14, 2014 @ 7:51 am

Unsteady about Hillary: Columbia, SC 2007; and today? How ready are you?

Murph–this article got wide circulation a year or so ago. It points to why NYers with deep pockets may be jumping ship.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/01/08/mosbacher-i-m-furious-at-my-own-party.html

» Posted By Misterbadexample On July 14, 2014 @ 11:32 am

Murph, I’m in the same boat re Hillary. 2014 seems to be playing out the way 2007 did, with Hillary being the ‘inevitable’ candidate. But Hillary has never had the political instincts of her husband, and seems incapable of speaking extemporaneously without laying a giant goose egg. Her recent statement about being broke is exhibit A, and she did plenty of that back in 92–remember her ill-considered crack about not staying home to bake cookies?
She will not make it through the Democratic convention, imho. And I think she is the perfect GOP candidate–moderate, and not likely to go on a jihad against the moneyed interests. There is some really contentious business going on in GOP land–one of the GOP’s most famous Wall Street fundraisers, Georgette Mossbacher, has practically jumped ship on the party because of the crazy shenanigans of the Tea Party. Boehner’s turf war with Cantor (who had huge Wall Street backing) over emergency aid for NY post-Sandy alienated a whole bunch of donors from Wall Street. The country club GOP may be ready for a divorce from the Bircher loonies who’ve taken over the primary process.

I don’t know where this all goes. But it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that the moneyed interests will bolt from the GOP if the primary voters find everyone but Sarah Palin or Mike Huckabee too far to the left.

» Posted By Misterbadexample On July 12, 2014 @ 6:27 am

Could Hillary Clinton Become the Next Republican President?

AdLib, while most of the Rove info is old, I don’t think Rove ever broke up his opposition team (and there’s always Benghazi). And you’re right about her tone-deafness and inability to connect to people. She also walks a fine line–if she distances herself from Obama too much, she’ll alienate the Dem voters who still think he was a great president. And her tendency to prevaricate will inevitably remind people of Bubba’s worst behavior.

Hillary (and Biden for that matter) both face the problem McCain had in 2008. How do you advocate for your candidacy while your party’s guy is still in office and not doing so well? What can you say about what you’d do differently without upsetting the apple cart? There was no Repub heir apparent in 2008, but McCain still had W’s support–and that didn’t help. That problem of being linked to the incumbent is NOT shared by Warren and Sanders–Warren hasn’t had a warm and cuddly relationship with Obama, and Sanders is a Socialist.
Nobody should be making assumptions about 2016.

» Posted By Misterbadexample On July 10, 2014 @ 4:56 am

Excellent. Summed up many of the misgivings I have about Hillary. FWIW, I don’t think she’ll be the next president in any case, but it’s going to be ugly. There’s a dusty tractor-trailer parked somewhere in Texas that has all of Karl Rove’s unused opposition research from 2008 still in it. It won’t get used until/unless she gets the nomination, but if that happens, the revelations are nasty. And there’s probably no political figure as polarizing as Hillary Clinton–a significant plurality of Americans hate her and would never vote for her.

The Repub field is a mess at the moment–somebody was asking Romney a month or so ago if he’d take up the cause. Christie, Scott, and Baker are all in perp-walk territory, and Cruz and Rubio can’t cut it. If the GOP field is broken, why should Democrats settle for a pro-corporate, pro-war, pro-Monsanto candidate?

» Posted By Misterbadexample On July 9, 2014 @ 12:34 pm

Why Democrats Lag Behind Despite Growing Population Advantages

The thing that sticks (at least for me) is that not a single banker has been perp-walked. Not for the toxic mortgage games, not for looting AIG, not for the LIBOR manipulation, not for laundering drug money. We always talk about the people the GOP has written off–people of color, Latinos, LGBT voters, etc. But millions have lost their homes to fraudulent foreclosures. Millions lost their jobs because of the meltdown. Millions have seen their jobs off-shored. Where’s the Democratic outrage? Outside of Warren and Sanders (who isn’t a Democrat), nobody has been pounding on this over the past six years.

I can understand the argument that the Senate Democrats never had a ‘super majority’ and the GOP could forestall any substantial action. But there hasn’t even been symbolic action. Look how long it took to get rid of Lanny Breuer, who refused to pursue prosecution of the bankers and Wall Streeters. Now the statute of limitations has run out.
The Democrats tread gingerly on the Wall Street interests, because their campaign money comes from business as well. In theory the GOP should have an uphill battle. But they don’t because there’s widespread disgust with the Democrats’ lack of response to the economy and corporate criminality.

» Posted By Misterbadexample On July 8, 2014 @ 7:02 am

The Irresponsible Electorate and the 4th of July

Don’t necessarily disagree with your sentiment, Murph. But it’s a bit more complicated. I think a lot of people didn’t feel comfortable with either presidential candidate. There is absolutely no reason for me to vote locally in most NY State elections–the Dems have locked down the elections regardless of their corruption or incompetence, and the occasional republican challenger is a Tea Party creep. The state hasn’t gone Repub on a national election in decades.

And what do you do if BOTH parties are putting up incompetent and corrupt candidates? I don’t agree with people who say that Romney would have been better. But I can understand why large numbers of people are disappointed with Obama.

» Posted By Misterbadexample On July 5, 2014 @ 9:06 am

Is The United States Of America A Christian Nation?

TY. Sadly, the Xian right has been able to insinuate itself as the leading-edge ‘Christian’ organization. There are Jerry Falwell Christians and Dan Berrigan Christians and whole lots of people in between.

My Muslim neighbors have no sympathy with any of the terrorist groups, and will countenance no equivalency between the Al Qaeda’s of the world and the average American Muslim. If we’re willing to believe that, we should believe that the bible-thumping folks pushing against abortion and birth control are in the minority of the Christian community (such as it is ) in the US.

» Posted By Misterbadexample On July 2, 2014 @ 3:09 pm

Nicely put.

The FF were probably influenced by the history of religious wars in Europe, especially the thirty years’ war between Protestants and Catholics. They wanted to try and make it clear that their new country was not going to play host to the same sorts of bloodshed over which version of the Xian God people wanted to accept.

By the way, the sorts of strictures SCOTUS put on contraception in the Hobby Lobby case don’t even appeal to a majority of Catholics anymore. Pax Christi, the Catholic-based peace alliance, even states that although they condemn abortion, they recognize that it exists in context with the relative lack of power and resources women have in society, and should not be automatically condemned. Most Mainline Protestant denominations support its legality. Some pastor friends of mine just put in a protest letter to the NY Times saying that the views of the Green Family (Hobby Lobby) should not be construed as representing the views of every person of Christian faith.

Just sayin.

» Posted By Misterbadexample On July 2, 2014 @ 10:32 am

Hobby Lobby, Contraception and Bearing False Witness

Monica, I used the ‘bearing false witness’ phrase because it’s Biblical language from the Big Ten. During W’s second term, there was a move afoot to excommunicate W and Cheney from the Methodist Church for breaking the Commandments (Bearing false witness, coveting thy neighbors’ property, and the old ‘thou shalt not kill’ thing). It was from the laity, and it never got much traction. But the fundi crowd applauding this SCOTUS decision would find such arguments compelling.
And they H8 to be called out for their hypocrisy, especially from a liberal who’s doing it via the Bible. They’re less impressed with legal arguments based on ‘man’s law’.

» Posted By Misterbadexample On July 1, 2014 @ 9:41 am

The conservative supporters hailing this decision have already tipped their hand. Remember that the Religious Right ‘persuaded’ all of the 2012 GOP presidential candidates to support a Human Life Amendment which, broadly interpreted, would make the Pill and IUD’s illegal (it defines life as beginning at conception). Randall Terry and other xian right activists have drawn a target on contraception altogether, defining human eggs as the ‘preborn’. I don’t think they’ll ever get that passed (it opens up a whole can of worms about prenatal exposure to toxins and the ability to sue for redress). But it’s out there.

» Posted By Misterbadexample On July 1, 2014 @ 9:27 am

SLM, It’s in Mount Holyoke. If you follow the link to my web page on the story, you can even find the Hobby Lobby webpage announcing the opening.

» Posted By Misterbadexample On July 1, 2014 @ 9:18 am

The Court Ruling that Could Kill ACA

All too true. I was actually saddened when SCOTUS ruled the ACA constitutional (with some provisos) because cases like Hobby Lobby were brewing early on. The conservative game-plan here is death by a thousand cuts, and they have the money and the Bush/Reagan legacy judiciary on their side.

Should this appeal be upheld through the whole court system, there’s no putting ACA together again. That’s why the Public Option was so critical–and why it won’t proceed. Who’s willing to run in 2016 on Medicare for ALL? Whatever its faults, it has stood up to court challenges and it would be nearly impossible to undo.

» Posted By Misterbadexample On July 9, 2014 @ 1:26 pm

Where’s the Headline on Human Extinction?

I think it’s valid to look at the predictions that have been wrong. I would note that global cooling was not something anticipated by climatologists in the period when Time wrote articles on it. The problem should also go under the name Global Climate disruption, which means that while the trend is toward warming, there will be much broader swings in temperature. A year ago, a freak early snowstorm hit the Dakota’s early in the season and killed thousands of cattle, which hadn’t grown winter coats yet and usually don’t have to until November. Some other notes:

* the computer modeling to simulate climate change scenarios is orders of magnitude better than it was even five years ago;
* In the lecture I link to on my page, McPherson spends much of the first five minutes talking about the predictors who prognosticated about carbon-driven global warming.
* All of these effects are subject to Chaos theory, which holds that very minor changes in wind or temperature can have huge unpredictable effects.

McPherson gives a list of known predictions over the past few years on his website here:
http://guymcpherson.com/2013/01/climate-change-summary-and-update/

» Posted By Misterbadexample On July 2, 2014 @ 12:46 pm

Yeah, about the only thing Bloomberg ever did that I agreed with is talk about climate issues. the things that would be called on to protect NYC alone from another Sandy event have a minimum $10 B pricetag.

» Posted By Misterbadexample On June 29, 2014 @ 10:33 am

I wish we’d started on electrics about 40 years ago, but I don’t think that solves the problem. First, the electricity comes from power grids that are already at or over capacity. Second the act of creating a car is oil-intensive regardless of what it uses as a power-plant–all that plastic and glass and paint uses lots of energy and oil. Cars represent a minimum of 20 barrels of oil in manufacture and maintenance. And the powerplants of EVs use the same rare earth metals as wind turbines and some PV glass–and the metals are called ‘rare’ for a reason. I’m not sure cars are in our future. Even conventionally powered cars are in trouble if our oil sources are shale and tar sands–gas prices will put what James Kunstler calls ‘happy motoring’ to an end. If only the 1% can afford to drive, there’s going to be huge taxpayer pushback on subsidizing roads and highways.

Totally in agreement on the KXL pipeline. But the problem is too dire to think we can fix it with EV’s. Our German counterparts unplug all appliances at night except for the refrigerator. The Japanese and Dutch recycle bathwater. Just sayin.

» Posted By Misterbadexample On June 29, 2014 @ 10:30 am

Murph–
This was more of a rant than anything else, and I’ve been thinking of posting on Kos in a couple days. I would want to clean up some of the factoids, for example. I will let you know.

I’ve read some of the critiques of McPherson’s work. I don’t discount them, and on McPherson’s weekly update, he readily admits to using worst case scenarios. But climate change isn’t the only crisis he (and others) are addressing. There are several other problems converging at the same time. Fukushima is exhibit A. Peak oil/peak resources is exhibit B. Tim Garrett has argued that only economic collapse can forestall climate disaster, but as McPherson and the late Michael Ruppert both postulated, once industrial civilization collapses, the world’s nuclear power plants will go into meltdown mode unless we’ve had the foresight to decommission them first. As for the end of cheap oil–If we’re at peak energy, what’s going to keep the Fukushima ice-wall functioning for the next century or so?

I don’t have the answers, and I don’t think that anybody does. It is possible that McPherson is wrong about human extinction coming within a decade. But the situation is far more dire than you’d think from looking at what makes the top of the MSM mastheads.

» Posted By Misterbadexample On June 28, 2014 @ 8:05 am

I hope no one here thinks I’m unaware of what’s happening to other species. Well aware of the specieist argument. I think it’s necessary to call out people who say dumb things like “I don’t give a Sh*t about the snail darter” and tell them we’re a species too and our fate on this planet is tied to the rest of the animal kingdom.

» Posted By Misterbadexample On June 28, 2014 @ 7:49 am

The website http://peoplesclimate.org/march/ is currently taking people’s email addresses. I know the march will be on the weekend of the 20th. The people I’m working with are coordinating the arts and media around the week. I’ll probably be doing some iteration of my one man show HOW TO STOP THE EMPIRE WHILE KEEPING YOUR DAY JOB. Current version on YouTube, it will be rewritten to talk about things people need to do (including protest).

» Posted By Misterbadexample On June 27, 2014 @ 4:05 pm

Monicaangela, I’m working on the People’s Climate March, which is coming up on September 21–the UN has finally convened a summit to address the issue (The US didn’t show up in Copenhagen in 2009, and so many other governments also blew it off).

The science looks very close to irrefutable. But I also take to heart something that McPherson has said–if you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t–then do.

» Posted By Misterbadexample On June 27, 2014 @ 3:21 pm

Hey. Thanks for responding. The issue is that human beings might be able to survive that sort of weather. But our food sources and the plankton that supply the earth with half its oxygen can’t.

The message that McPherson is trying to put out here is how we cope with this reality. Do we rise to the best that humanity can, or do we devolve into a series of wars and scrabbles over the last food the planet can supply?

» Posted By Misterbadexample On June 27, 2014 @ 3:13 pm

GreenChica, that is the implication of the various reports. The problem is that the reports for climate change are done by one group of Climatology scientists. and the implications of the reports have to be sorted out by people like McPherson whose specialty is in evolutionary biology and such. What the latest reports from groups like IPCC and Bradley Center and the Arctic Emergency group indicate is warming to 3.5 deg celsius above baseline in a matter of a decade or so. McPherson and his biology colleagues can tell you that life on this planet doesn’t do very well at 3.5 c and even if humans can survive such temperatures, our food and our primary source of oxygen (plankton) can’t.

» Posted By Misterbadexample On June 27, 2014 @ 3:10 pm

Why I Am Against War

Interesting link. Barbie was also one of the prime movers in hunting down and killing Che Guevara in Bolivia.

» Posted By Misterbadexample On July 2, 2014 @ 9:22 pm

Nirek–
Thanks for the article.

The reason the US has felt safe about committing troops since Reagan is that we did away with the draft in the 70’s and substituted a ‘poverty draft’. As long as middle-class kids weren’t coming home in body bags, the political pressure to justify military action was pretty muted. I’m given to understand that some 40% of the people we deployed during the Gulf War have qualified for disability as a result of exposure to toxins like depleted uranium and problems with the anti-nerve gas inoculations given out without proper testing. If that toll had been spread out a bit more, I think there’d be far more widespread protest against military adventures.

» Posted By Misterbadexample On July 2, 2014 @ 8:24 am

Thanks for posting this. My MFA thesis project was an historical play about the CIC/CIA in the postwar period, and I had relied on Christopher Simpson’s book and the Operation Paperclip info. One thing the documentary misses (I haven’t seen all of it) was that Barbie’s intelligence value in postwar Germany was his knowledge of the communist parties in Germany and France. He gave the CIA sufficient information to penetrate and destroy these parties before they could make it to the ballot. His CIC case officer, Erhard Dabringhaus, came forward when Barbie was captured in South America and wrote about the work Barbie did in Europe.

This part of this discussion deserves its own thread.
/on topic
A FB friend of mine has set up a couple of peace-related sites for protest and info. One is called Soldiers for Peace International. The other is WorldWide peace Strike, which is trying to set up monthly protests about war and peace.

» Posted By Misterbadexample On July 2, 2014 @ 7:59 am

“At Last!”: How HP Continues to Cultivate Cynicism

I am one of the progressives being complained about here. I want to make this clear: I did not expect Obama to immediately solve unemployment or turn swords into plowshares or fix immigration. I did expect him to give the single-payer advocates a place at the table when the ACA was being discussed. I did expect him not to cave on the public option. He had a huge accomplishment with passing the ACA. That I understand.

What I don’t understand are the things that are completely under his control that were botched. The banksters blew up some $22 trillion in home equity and pension funds and nobody’s ever been indicted. Holder won’t even indict over events on Obama’s watch such as LIBOR or the HSBC drug money laundering scandal. Obama’s energy policy is also same-old, same-old. No Democrat should be using the bromides ‘clean coal’ or ‘100 years of natural gas’, especially when his own energy department has debunked them. Ditto for appeals for new nuke plants.

The NSA. The prosecution of whistleblowers. Obama’s pressure on the Spanish government to drop prosecution of the Bush team for war crimes (reported in Wikileaks cables). The NDAA, which if it had been passed by a President Romney would’ve surely caused vitriolic editorials and protests. I don’t like HP and their headlines (which are all about clicks). But sometimes they were right.

» Posted By Misterbadexample On June 19, 2014 @ 10:48 am