The Endless Task of Dismantling Ignorance and Stupidity

Jeff Masters, the climate guru at Weather Underground, has come up with “The Top Ten Reasons to be Hopeful on Climate Change.” Actually, Masters is merely quoting from his favorite presentation at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union on 16 December 2015, as delivered by Susan Hassol of climatecommunication.org. As implied by the title of this essay, I disagree with Hassol and Masters, and I’ll take this opportunity to point out why.

At the meeting, Hassol presented her top ten list of reasons to be hopeful about climate change. Her list is presented below in italics, and my response follows in plain font.

10) President Obama has put climate change at the top of his agenda.

I’ve no doubt President Obama has put climate change near the top of his agenda, not far below maintaining this set of living arrangements. The latter, of course, involves promoting omnicide by converting the living planet into “resources,” killing many people throughout the world for “our” fossil fuels, and quashing every counter-cultural act in this country and beyond. The typical American has no idea these actions are occurring, because the typical American is willfully ignorant about them. Were the typical American informed of these actions, s/he would deny them. If the typical American were willing to be convinced by overwhelming evidence — an oxymoron so evident it’s tragic — s/he would find the actions not only necessary, but desirable. “American exceptionalism” has its price.

Considering climate change is merely one symptom among many resulting from this set of living arrangements, I believe President Obama will pay little heed to climate change. And I doubt he ever mentions the topic of abrupt climate change in public, a topic about which he is undoubtedly familiar.

9) The Pope has framed climate change as a moral issue.

Well, that’ll fix it. One of the world’s leading voices for patriarchal immorality has spoken. Please let me know when the Pope redistributes the Vatican’s enormous wealth to benefit the world’s poor. Let me know when the Church he heads recognizes equal rights for women and ethnic minorities. Let me know when he takes a moral stand on industrial civilization, which underlies the climate-change predicament in which we are embroiled.

8) China has become highly motivated and engaged, and naysayers can no longer claim that we shouldn’t do anything because China is not.

China’s motivation and engagement has led to no substantive positive outcomes. Plenty of fans were motivated and engaged by the Super Bowl, and their chosen team still didn’t win. Furthermore, whether “we” should or should not do anything is irrelevant and certainly is not influenced by China’s motivation and engagement. I’ll be interested when Chinese leaders tell the citizenry that collapse of industrial civilization is not only necessary, but desirable. And I’ll be especially interested when politicians in the United States follow China’s lead on this topic.

7) Emissions and the economy are decoupling: for the first time, we had a year where the economy grew, but emissions of greenhouse gases did not.

The economy grew only on computer screens housed deep in the vaults of the world’s central banks and governments. Emissions fell because the world has fallen into the Great Depression 2.0. Actual economic growth is closely tied to emissions of greenhouse gases. Still.

6) The cost of solar power is falling fast.

Civilization is a heat engine. Promoting the “new economy” maintains the heat engine as well as the omnicide attendant to civilization.

5) Solar energy capacity is growing rapidly.

Ditto. And electricity represents less than 20% of energy usage.

4) Wind energy capacity is growing rapidly.

Any port in a shitstorm, eh? See above.

3) Half of all new power resources coming on-line globally are in renewable energy, and that percentage is near 70% in the U.S.

As Vladimir Lenin allegedly said (or perhaps it was Joseph Goebbels), “A lie told often enough becomes the truth.”

“Renewable” energy is derived from fossil fuels. These derivatives require and promote planetary destruction. All this was old news when I wrote about it during early November 2013. Apparently well-paid, starry-eyed climate scientists are not expected to keep up with evidence.

2) Businesses are engaging in promoting climate change action.

Follow the money all the way to the “new economy,” mentioned above.

1) The Paris Accord! The nations of the world have now dedicated themselves to decarbonizing the world economy.

Climate science James Hansen called the Paris Accord a “fraud” and “bullshit.” Mr. Optimist himself, Bill McKibben, correctly concluded the agreement reached in Paris will leave us with a planet that is “uninhabitable.”

Apparently well-paid, starry-eyed climate scientists are not expected to keep up with evidence. But I repeat myself.

Dismantling ignorance and stupidity within a culture that promotes both is an unending task. And, obviously, there is nothing to be gained by using evidence along the path to truth. Some of us will never learn.