Are we not bothered by the concentration of heavy and rare earth metals necessary for a 21st century life style! Are those elements safely recycled? Are the purifies safe when nature disperses them such that they are considered rare?
not in my back pasture!
How do they know? Those with vast wealth and easy lives have such a different perspective than those of us who live at the bottom of the pyramid how do they know what's going on in the world and where do they get their information?
I imagine the uber wealthy must get into a car and drive or be driven to another building or flown, privately to another location. Their outdoor time is spent vacationing, relaxing, sporting at an exclusive get away. It's doubtful they see the destruction of our environment 1st hand. The only little people they come into contact with must be people in service to them. The information that steers their perspective is most probably gleaned from articles, charts, statistics and consultants. If indeed people get a fleeting notion of our demise and how the natural world is suffering at the same time the minutiae of their lives snaps them back to the present. Some are morons some are clever and some are in denial, most are probably apathetic.
The movie Hunger Games and Mockingjay sums up our predicament succinctly. The leader described the relationship between the capitol and the districts as the capitol was the head and the districts were the body. It was supposed to be a symbiotic relationship with the capitol ruling the body. However as the heroine put it so succinctly, "if we burn you burn"! Meaning they could not destroy the body without the head being affected as well. The wealthy and those with power and influence will, at some point, be substantially effected by the demise of our nations backbone and apathy toward, and desire to control mother nature. Some of us don't have far to fall and have made preparations to land softly. Others have no idea their towers are at risk. And if they do they think a fortress and superior firepower will protect them. Historical ruins appear to say otherwise.
Some one said that it was not medicine that extend the lives of people it was the ability to provide clean water and sanitation. Think about the ramifications of that statement, we all share one planet and everyone is vulnerable in my opinion and its not evil destroying us but rather apathy. The question is - is apathy evil?
AK Grannywgrit
I have long said that the highest and best use of our remaining fossil fuels is developing ways to live without them. The inevitable progression of technology is making it more efficient and usable. Same will hold here. Renewable tech is in its infancy.
for evil men to accomplish their purpose it is only necessary that good men should do nothing.
attribution debated: http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/12/04/good-men-do/
I imagine the super elites (meaning wealthiest) have every reason to want to survive and thrive and we may be just ants on the ground…I have heard some of the talk and how some see the lower 99.999 percent and even if the folks in charge are a mix of dumb, good and evil the evil part is pretty damned evil I am here to say.
Just one anecdotal opinion and all I can offer as I cannot keep up with the technical minds here just my 2 cents 
I will do what I can where I am with what I have and in the way that I see fit. I have a responsibility here.
Sorry I was a little condescending in my reply. I was just making it a little more entertaining. Yours was a serious comment requiring a serious reply so I'm sorry.
Renewable and nuclear energy requires considerable amount of fossil energy for it's deployment and renewal. If the energy returned throughout their lifespans is greater than they have consumed themselves then I agree that this is a worth while endeavour. I regard them as fossil fuel extenders and as such give us extra time to prepare for our post fossil fuel age. However, and this is the crux of the matter, we won't prepare because most people live in a cornucopian dreamland. Instead we will grow our population size into even greater overshoot. Obviously if you are 50+, like myself, then this is great because we don't have to make any sacrifices now and will be long dead (hopefully) before the shit really hits the fan.
In short. Yes it is worthwhile investing in new technology, renewable etc. if we use the extra time to reduce our population naturally and relatively painlessly to our post fossil fuel age carrying capacity. Even if we don't prepare, which seems highly likely, and you are 50+ then you probably don't care and in fact you may be better off in the short run, which after all, is all that matters to most politicians.
I think that's the whole point – use fossil fuels to develop alternative energy infrastructure and then once that is established, alternative energy infrastructure can take the place of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are a one time gift that we should be using to build out a sustainable future, not burning once in SUV's with no lasting benefit and only lasting environmental degradation.
If processes can be developed that convert solar energy into hydrocarbons then we are "set", even if the efficiency isn't that great.
But I am under no illusion that this transition is a given or that it will be possible before a massive global crash and die-off. We are going to get that regardless; the opportunity that electric transportation and solar energy offers is more like a century down the road for the survivors. But to not pursue solar energy and electric transportation today because it isn't currently a perfect solution makes zero sense to me. Any quitter who expects a perfect solution straight out of the bat on the first try will never accomplish anything. We are 100% guaranteed to face a massive global die-off if we continue on with fossil fuels so what other choice do we have?
I also do not like the way that Musk and others who promote these technologies use this as an excuse for more growth. It is anything but; it is more like a safety net to catch us on our fall down and prevent a total catastrophe. That is my beef with Musk.
I don't care that the government subsidizes Tesla and other similar technologies. Everything else is subsidized so why not level the playing field. I heard numbers like 1% of global GDP goes directly to oil subsidies so why can't Tesla get a few billion? There is no such thing as a genuine market anymore so "profitability" in today's environment shouldn't necessarily mean much at all.
The cure for bad decisions is independent auditing: For politicians that would mean employing a jury of highly educated (middle class) people to vet senate bills (as opposed to elitist senators). Yes that requires giving up on the denial that perpetuates belief in an old-world governmental structure born out of parliament by aristocracy.
Serial cronyism perpetuates the lack of courage. People in power (managers in general) don't want to be criticised or embarrassed by people who have the courage to make the sissy shot. Bernanke's lack of "courage to act" is reinforced by promoting gutless sycophants as successors over any potential boat-rockers.
Again if human culture would simply recognise the truth that AT has described: That experts aren't immune from making wrong decisions, then we could start to fix it. For every panel of experts you need an educated jury of the very people they preside over to audit policy.
That only requires humility and modesty to implement. A tiny change in ethics that needs to spread and heard then implemented… by revolution if necessary.
Treebeard,
Thanks for confirming my recent decision to no longer support NPR and PBS. Their lack of balanced reporting around anti - establishment candidate(s) is astonishing.and sad. ZeroHedge is reporting that the Koch brothers are now supporting Hillary, that just about says it all.
I agree with your observations about TPTB pillaging of the 99%, with predatory wealth extraction being not only ignored but encouraged as the new normal and with fear of the terror boogey man used to subordinate our Constitutional rights for our own good.
I also love Chris Hedges' Death of the Liberal Class, where he calls out the liberal intellectual class who's support for Hillary's astounding record of corruption and warmongering is breathtaking. Trump is now being called the peace candidate compared to Hillary in some circles, stupid indeed !
Tim.
The Fed is just the central enabler of the all-pervading debt money “Scheme for the Confiscation of Wealth” young Dr. Greenspan decried — before he sold out to become the worst central bank Confiscator ever (or was given an offer he couldn’t refuse).
As Greenspan simply described (second link below), all debt money systems like present US dollars automagically transfer ever more wealth from the many to the wealthiest few, virtually effortlessly making them ever wealthier, as known since ancient times:
Hence, since completing the debt money Wealth Confiscation Scheme by Nixing the gold peg in 1971, when US was greatest middle class society of all time, with an otherwise unheard-of wealth distribution: a majority of households owning a majority of the nation’s total wealth…
the Wealth Confiscation Scheme is the primary reason half of US households now have virtually zero net worth on average per latest Fed Household Survey, and the top few percent own and/or control essentially everything (especially the megawealthy 0.001%).
Since the Scheme is exceedingly simple to understand, the wealthy* spent more than a century endowing Chairs of Finance and Economics and otherwise commandeering all discourse to expunge colonists’ understanding and hate of debt money. (That’s the expunged backstory to Boston Tea Party: the tea tax had to be paid in hated debt money British pounds.) *actually the wealthy worldwide, where necessary
Without a peg, the value of debts/money ever collapse as asset prices soar…*
thus essentially effortlessly mushrooming net worth of especially those with the most access to credit, the wealthiest, thus enabling them to borrow ever more and accumulate ever more as their net worth ever grows automagically via soaring asset prices (plus rising retail prices boosting earnings and dividends, etc.)…
as explained in detail on this page
* = prices soar due to ever more lent money chasing a constant amount* of a nation’s assets *or slower growing ALL wealthy portfolios* expand automagically via the debt money price escalator, ever larger, up to exponentially fast, as following 1971..ever accumulating ever more of everyone else’s assets.
*that don’t get too reckless
Banksters are just the enablers, the well-paid agents indebting/bankrupting the masses, ever infecting them with endless propaganda and spin..the Scheme colonists well understood hence hated: that’s the backstory to bankster Hamiltonians vs. Jeffersonians, the hardest-fought battles of the Constitutional Convention.
Please note the Fed was just chartered by Uncle Shame, it is OWNED and DIRECTED by banksters, primarily by megabanks who have most on deposit with the Fed hence own most of its stock, hence choose the Directors of the twelve Fed District Banks… who are also members of the Open Market Committee that sets monetary policy. All these interested parties, especially megabank owners who are the primary powerbrokers though never acknowledged…
all these are also intimately involved in determining who is appointed to the Board of Governors and who becomes Fed Chair.
Anyone sufficiently familiar how banksters operate watching Congress’ alleged oversight of the Fed via the Chair’s biannual testimony knows at most one or two members of Congress have any significant understanding of the Fed, and debt money banking in general. (Not to mention the arcane, Jurassic Park predator worlds of derivatives, etc.)
Global banking is coordinated and directed via the world’s rarely mentioned Bank for International Settlements. Although the Fed Chair and US Treasury Secretary make at least quarterly trips to the BIS to work with their peers in the rest of the world’s nations, to govern and integrate the global monetary/financial system, these ultra-crucial meetings are rarely to never mentioned in the press.
Banksters rule finance, including financing governments, rule and dominate in endless ways…
ever primarily serving their über wealthy owners who are among the primary owners / clandestine dictators of the entire world, including governments:
Wall Street and its law firms provided almost 60% of the cost of Obama’s first presidential campaign.
Many more little to unknown but crucial details can be found via the above links.
The primary effect of all such systems that concentrate wealth and/or power in few hands is exploiting if not impoverishing the rest of humanity.
"Don't Panic" German Interior Minister urges the population after a week of domestic attacks on German citizens by refugees. He advises that these attacks have nothing to do with Merkel's refugee policy (that accepted >500,000 refugees in 2015 and continues to admit them in 2016).
And furthermore
German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said that "the attacks are unrelated to Merkel's refugee policy." He urged people not to panic, adding "naturally people are concerned and are questioning whether they should change their routines. We should not. ... we should continue to live our free lives" AP adds.So, how gullible are we willing to be?And to help them do just that, the interior minister said that he has ordered increased security presence at airports, train stations and other public places, adding that the "German army can play a domestic role in special cases." Cases such as these.
Or do we notice to the social re-engineering project?
(See post #18 above)
Sand Puppy, in the most amazing coincidence in the history of the world, "local reporter" Richard Gutjahr happened to film both the Nice attack, the balcony footage showing the truck barreling down the boulevard at 10 mph not hitting anyone, but also made his way back to Munich in time to also film the McRampage that happened there. This guy gets around!!!
We should all be on the same page as Climber 99. The simple fact of the matter is that he is right (see #17 and #24). The math has been done by people like James Howard Kunstler. In Kunstler's The Long Emergency, he had a chapter about the solar panels on top of his off-grid cabin. Unlike a lot of other Kunstler writings, this one was a "just the facts ma'am" analysis. The conclusion is not "don't do solar don't do wind, etc., but rather, best case scenario, if we plan for the future - and so far we aren't - solar and other renewables will allow us a smoother transition into the agrarian lifestyle that Climber, Kunstler and other sober-minded and well-informed people are expecting.
I suppose the only other thing that needs to be said is that if we know and accept this kind of thing we have to be careful how we talk about it, the information itself is too hard for most to accept, so if we are too snarky in how we present it, then nobody will be persuaded to look into it further.
Thank you, pyranablade, for your kind words and I'll take onboard the observation that being too snarky is counter productive. Not read The Long Emergency strangely enough but occasionally read Kunstler's blog.
I took Mark_BC's suggestion and looked into the lucky photographer, Richard Gutjahr, who was positioned on a balcony in Nice, France running his camera just as the truck begins to move into the crowd. Stunning timing.
The same photographer was positioned on a balcony with running camera for the opening shots of the Munich MacDonald's massacre last week, also.
I know that everyone already knows this, but I will point out the obvious. Getting a camera running BEFORE a SURPRISE event is very difficult. So catching the first shots or moments on film of a terrorist incident is most remarkable. Catching two such events is really really remarkable.
The Munich police have asked everyone with video footage of the Munich attacks to NOT post them.
The French Anit-terrorism unit has ordered the destruction of security camera footage of the event.
Who is this guy? Where does he come from?
We cannot respond effectively unless our understanding of world events is accurate.
…. that you gave, SandPuppy, I saw a reference to a teenager who was killed, and a lot of what is probably really bad websites.
Your mileage may vary if you use Google instead of duck-duck-go.
What I did not see was evidence that this guy is a professional news photographer.
So that then makes me wonder: is he actually an ISIS publicist? Or is his name a hoax you fell for? Or could he be a substitute name of a deceased person, ued like John Doe, when the real person does not want to release his identity?
I’m sure there are many other possibilities out there… we just don’t know yet.
I am always hesitant to conclude too much rn an absence of evidence.
Like when I see the things about merkel’s “illuminati hand signs”. I have no idea from that whether she’s actually illuminati-controlled. But if she IS flashing hand signs, then I find that to be a very similar structure to the gang hand signs flashed by gang members when they’re in enemy territory.
Yes, it means they’re part of a dangerous gang. But it also means that they’re weak, scared, and running. It also makes me wonder what other gangs are out there, with what other hand signs. One might look around and see. It make me question: for whose benefit do they flash these signs?
What it doesn’t do is lead me directly to a conclusion. If it were to do that, then I’d never have a chance at understanding the structure of the battlefield.
“But what's much harder to condone – and this is the focus of this article – is when people embrace the wrong decision even when they have ample evidence and comprehension that doing so runs counter to their welfare.
Really? you might be skeptically thinking. Do people really ever do this?
Yes, sadly. Absolutely they do.”
Well it’s actually the opposite: most people “embrace the wrong decision even when they have ample evidence and comprehension that doing so runs counter to their welfare” most means 90-95% of the population.
The reasons are quite obvious once you start to profile behaviors as manifestation of systematic thought processing which in term define the mindset of an individual:
On one hand you have a thinking process that is based on empirical data and multi-dimensionality (layers of symbols in the short-term memory) which we call logic which defines the mindset of an individual as “System thinking”.
On the other hand you have a thinking process that is based on combination of empirical data and non-empirical data (opinions and myths), low level of short-term memory dimensionality and high dependency on long-term memory storage of multi-dimensional super symbols (ideologies indoctrinated by memorizing) which contain emotional triggers and set of actions and regulations for dealing with stimulus (external & internal) a categorical (symbolic) thinking mindset – i.e. belief.
An individual which obtain the first mindset (System thinking) will always maintain critical thinking and will always process data in the same methods while an individual which obtain the latest (Categorical thinking) will always rely on non-empirical data (beliefs ) to certain levels.
The two thinking systems are based on two different neurological circuits the logic System thinking mindset will start process information and stimulus via the high-road (prefrontal cortex) and the ideological/believer Categorical thinking mind will almost always start process the info via the low-road (amygdala’s fight or flight mechanism).
The good thing about understanding the fundamentals of mindsets is that it produces a certainty in profiling a person:
The manifestation of every thought that is processed and communicated can be easily detected as empiric or non-empiric, if there is a constant of non-empirical data as part of the calculation and communication of an individual then its mindset can be profiled as Categorical thinking and vice a versa.
Any persistence of non-empirical data that is regarded as factual by an individual such as belief in god, myths, ideologies etc. can define the individual mindset as a whole and that type of people will rarely succumb to logic (obviously there are borderline mindsets ones with potential but lack of guide and info).
That means that a person with System thinking will never be able to communicate on factual levels with individual of the opposite mindset and that is the reason that no matter how many time this people will watch the PP crash course they will never be able to conceptualize the complex interactions between multiple systems. And that goes with all the rest of the complexity that makes the system in which they are living.
This people will always see the internal ideas in their heads rather than the factors of reality and therefor they are prone for constant errors and miscalculations of probabilities and plausibility’s in every aspects of their life actually a decision of such individual is more of a flip of a coin then a strategically planned decision.
The problem is that when you count the religious and other ideologists (from political fan boys (left or right) to veganism, climate deniers, evolution deniers, fanatic conformists, new-age freaks and many more) you come to the astonishing understanding that almost everyone around you is from the non-empirical/critical thinking crowd – 90-95% of the global population.
The implications are also important: if you choose to tie your life with one or live in a community with a mix of mindsets that includes individuals with limited level of communication and with decision making mechanism that is based on data processing malpractices and fear (amygdala) when shit hit the fan you will be in a problem.
Thank you for that insightful comment; nonetheless, I think I’d have to disagree with it.
First, you deal with a system of thinking based on empirical data that is multidensional, that we call logic, and you name as “system thinking”.
I’m going to say that almost EVERYONE is capable of logical thought, but it is of extroardinary limited applicability, since logic can only apply in extremely well defined limited tracks of reasoning. When you are absolutely SURE you know the boundaries of a system, then you can start applying logic. If you don’t, then the conclusions of logic are going to be flawed. It is for this reason that in the hard sciences, millions of dollars are spent to set up extremely limited experiments, just so that a logical conclusion about reality can be made. One example experiment was to pump and then bake all the impurities out of a specially designed hydrogen-ion trap that used a million-dollar superconducting magnet, so that then a few such ions could be trapped, and then the photodetachment of electrons under specific laser-light energy packets could be studied.
Even soft sciences no longer can use logic. How much less can “system thinking” us logic, then?
Therefore, I would contend that “system thinking”, which I do exercise, is more of a soft science. It involves structures of rational approximations that are designed to attempt to navigate the system of collective experiments. One of these methods is statistical analysis. Statistical analysis is a flawed method of processing huge amounts of experiments where the controls are insufficient to the task of logic. Flawed, did I say? Yes, but the flaws are very limited, and can be controlled to give a known limit on the flaws. But again, the value of statistical analysis is of limited applicability. Now, you have to spend tens of thousands to set up the experiment. If you don’t, then you can’t claim to know the extent of your ignorance.
Most people have to operate below that level of confidence. So what do you do as a softer science to reason your way through life? Well, the beginnings of science are stamp collecting. You classify what you have, and then see how new data fits into the classifications, or doesn’t. And to get better data, you compine datasets with other trusted sources.
But here’s the thing: most people still engage in every level of rational thought at all of these levels. I suspect that anyone who doesn’t, is sitting in an insane asylum; or is otherwise having all their needs taken care of by a person who is more capable of everyday life than they.
And those who are aware of their thought, are aware that they engage in all of these, and that others engage in all of these, too. Indeed, a person who is aware of these things sees the same structure of thinking in others, and understand that they are indeed rational.
So where do myths, and belief in God, and belief in an “end times” fit in all this? That’s the third level. A person who believes in end times will look at events, and stamp-collect the data, asking, “how much do I think this event matches this belief?”. If a great enough percentage of event matches, then the person may be rather convinced we are in an end time. Or let me try it another way. How does a rational logical physicist reconcile his rational thought with a belief in God? My own father is a good example. He is a physics pHD who forecast back in 1967 or so that practical nuclear fusion, which was only fifteen years away, would remain only fifteen years away for the next fiftty years (that is, would never come to fruit). He forecast that for practical, logical, tier-two reasons, including the limited availability of Lithium to make tritium.
But he always said he was a skeptic. But when a local friend of his had her polio-shortened leg healed at a prayer meeting, he engaged in extensive tier-three investigation, interviewing everyone involved. When another physicist in his university department had a wife with debilitating MS healed through prayer, in which she told her husband that in prayer God wanted them to drive to florida, and as they walked in the door of a church He led her to, the pastor was saying “I had a sermon, and God wants me not to give it, but to conduct a healing instead…” then he again investigated as fully as he could. And when his sister’s husband was healed of a MRSA infection from the level of all his organs shutting down, and hie investigated again… at some point the tier three logic said, “I may be a skeptic, but if so, I have to accept this as valid”.
At this point, he says that nine out of ten people he talks to knows a person who has experienced a modern Christian miracle. The implication of that statement is that they also know about that miracle. He says that if that is true, then the dead guy named Jesus of Nazareth isn’t dead at all, and is extroardinarily active keeping His word. And if that is so, then a lot of assumptions he HAD made as a physicist are possibly not correct.
Anyhow, it isn’t “rational/ myth believing” It is three tiers of rationality, and it allows for many forms of thought, all of which are rational and useful for dealing with limited knowledge in an extensively interactive and uncontrolled world.
"I know that god lives in everybodys soul, and the only devil in your world, lives in the human heart"
Starts 40 seconds in.
Much evidence indicates at least some central banksters are well aware the primary function of every debt money Scheme is transferring wealth from the many to the few.
As noted in my 25July post, it took vast effort over more than a century to conquer Founding Fathers' and colonists' rejection of the Scheme. Linked articles provide many details.
Bernanke spun QEII as stimulus to economy to avoid panic from acknowledging global investors lost their appetite for hopelessly bankrupt Uncle Shame's debt.
Fed conjured dollars to purchase vast majority additional Treasury borrowings since 2010 because global investors see writing on wall:
Graph of Uncle Shame's current plus next decade's debt Congressional Budget Office projects demonstrates hopeless US bankruptcy. (scroll down for graph)
Fed was never hoping to stimulate economy, it was forced to become dreaded Lender of Last Resort.
All going to plan: as US finishes collapsing into worst depression of all time, ultra-wealthy Crooks in Charge will buy up most of rest of US assets they don't already own at fire-sale prices.
Already in 2013, top few % of US households had accumulated vast majority of entire nation's net wealth (Fed's latest Household Survey).
Welcome to the New Serfdom.