When Did So Many of Us Become So ... Um, Dumb?

Duh!

Still reeling from the dimwitted (not to mention progenycidal) approval of yet another fossil fuel production facility in my Canadian province -- at a time when we need to be shutting down fossil fuel production and heading rapidly to zero-carbon energy -- I stumbled upon a recent article that really demonstrates how governments can get away with this. It's because we're, um, well, dumb.

The article in question was published on a prominent business website, usually known for its sane coverage of the climate crisis (though, to be fair, they made a point of putting "This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board of So-and-So Company and its owners" at the end of the article).

What disturbed me most and made me question our intelligence in this North American culture of ours is that the author compares climate scientists to economists and climate change science to macroeconomics. Her dimwitted thesis is that because economists couldn't seem to model and predict what was going to happen with the economy (I can, by the way: without a revolution, the economy is going to keep making the rich richer), climate scientists can't predict what's going to happen with the climate.

C'mon. Really? You're comparing the dismal pseudo-science of economics with the laws of physics studied by climate scientists? Really? That's idiotic.
 
Then this author insults those of us who understand the climate change emergency by implying that "lukewarmists" are more rational than we so-called "alarmists" are (obviously forgetting that it's not alarmist to sound the alarm when something is alarming). "[Lukewarmists] say that warming is likely to be mild unless you use a model which assumes large positive feedback effects. Because climate scientists, like the macroeconomists, can't run experiments where they test one variable at a time, predictions of feedback effects involve a lot of theory and guesswork."

How can an educated-enough-to-write-for-a-fancy-business-website columnist write that and not laugh at the ludicrousness of it?

Why is this a ludicrous argument? Well, first, because the sentence structure implies that a computer model is the only thing keeping "mild" global warming from becoming hotter global warming.

It's also ludicrous because things are getting pretty scary all over the world already. For example, although fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions don't appear to have increased since 2014, atmospheric concentrations of CO2 are increasing at a frighteningly accelerating rate.

And finally, it's ludicrous because we already have evidence that climate change models have been underestimating the impacts of global warming, not the other way around.

Besides, all the nations that attended the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 and signed on to Agenda 21 agreed to the precautionary principle, which means we shouldn't fall prey to this asinine pretension called lukewarmism -- especially when we're already locked in to dangerously high global warming, with catastrophically dangerous heating just over the horizon.

So are we simply dumb -- too dumb to think critically about the climate crisis and about articles like the one I read? Perhaps all the toxics in our air, land and water have damaged many of us neurologically and intellectually to the point where we're no longer capable of critical thought. 

But I suspect the "powers that be" are happy to have dulled us and numbed us and dumbed us down so we'll be like those frogs in the proverbial pot of water, never complaining about the intensifying heat -- allowing them and their toadies (including that writer) to continue battering life on Earth with their evil, moronic greed.

75 Days - What's Stupid About "The Age of Stupid"

Went to a showing of The Age of Stupid tonight. Not sure what I expected, but I had high hopes. Not only was the movie dispiriting (for an activist) and a huge letdown, but it was stupid.

Forgetting that this is the age of stupid, it uses tactics that will backfire on the majority of the population that needs to see it — because they're too, well, er, um, ah, not altogether with it enough to get the satire.

The movie gets the most important science wrong, quoting the suicidal +2º Celsius target. (Here's why +2ºC is suicidal: Right now we're at 0.8ºC warming ... and several carbon feedbacks are already kicking. Why would we want to aim for more warming than we've already got? Targeting 2ºC as the limit for warming is stupid and suicidal. Our target should be returning to less than 0.8ºC of warming!)

The movie also promotes Contraction and Convergence, which would have been fine if we'd implemented it before getting so far down this path to extinction. C&C is targeting 2065, but if we don't get to zero carbon emissions as rapidly as possible, we're toast — yes, with a generous helping of stupidity spread on top.

I'm sorely disappointed. What a whole lot of marketing, PR and publicity energy wasted. The movie doesn't say anything helpful at all — there was nothing transformative about it. It certainly doesn't attack the evil banks or our grandchildren-eating economy.

However, it does offer the best example ever of how liars flutter their eyelids while lying. If you decide to see this movie, watch for the scene after the county council has turned down a proposal for a wind turbine farm. It's a priceless scene that will be worth the price of admission.