Highlighting the climate crisis is not 'alarmism', as critics say. Big Business wants an exclusive focus on climate because it downplays the true reasons for alarm
This was so good that it stimulated me to write an article of my own publication on my newsletter NewsForensics asking all my followers to read the original. By coincidence, my friends --The two David --at Media Lens also published an article on climate change in the media in the UK..Read that one too. I'm a Japan-based analyst. So my article was about Japan.
How can humans be both the pinnacle of consciousness and the progenitors of such a massive climate catastrophe which is likely to eradicate ourselves as well as much else? In some ways I think this may be the entering into the mush of a catapillers chrysalis, one form of thing "dying" and disintegrating completely while not knowing in any way what form will follow. Earth has done this before, gone through this before, several times and after each one has emerged more complex. Who is to say that we humans are not doing exactly our part in helping bring forth a new level of complexity? We ourselves likely won't emerge from the initial breakdown but the continuing result will be more complexity. It is hubris to think we should or could continue on indefinitely, what does?
I'm not interested in non sequitur to the premise of my discourse.
This isn't about Neurodivergence, the discourse is about Logic. Propositional/Predicate Logic. Specifically - it is about the 'Algebra of Statements'. If you're interested in this premise, so am I. But, I don't have ADHD. I can stay focused on a premise without being distracted by non sequitur.
Moreover, unless you're an Aspie with an IQ over 150, 12 years of education in Logic/Computer Science and retired from 30 years as a professional Systems Engineer, and Cisco Certified Design & Internetwork Professional, as well as a Veteran Airborne Pathfinder Team Leader - we're not in the same boat. Nonetheless, you should know - no two people with Autism are the same. That's why it's a 'spectrum'.
I never once said Neurodivergence is incompatible with being nice. You wrote that. The premise of my discourse is Logic. My reference to Neurodivergence was an inconsequential remark to a non sequitur pejorative, and I wasn't talking to you. You 'cherry picked' one inconsequential remark that's non sequitur of my premise to focus on... Your AD/HD is obvious.
Moreover, my remark is about MY Autism not yours. Please do not project yourself into my discourse. Remain objective, rational, and Logically certain in your replies and stick to the premise.
Logic doesn't conform to opinion. Opinion is not even Logic.
Opinion is not Logic. Logic is not opinion - these are axioms of Propositional Logic. Opinion is inherent fallacy of Logic. Opinion is moot-point.
If you do not understand the difference between Logic and opinion nobody can understand it for you.
You really should read all and ensure you understand before responding.
Finally, everything I have written is recorded, and axiomatic demonstration of the Propositional/Predicate Logic of Language. There's no reason to speculate or guess, unless you're ignorant of Logic. However, you can always refer back to exactly what I have written.
It is irrefutable of what you have written, you have no education in Logic, only the imagination of an education in Logic. There is no-such-thing as "your logic." Logic is objective and therefore always capitalized when written. Moreover, your ramblings about Geology also demonstrate lack of education.
Why do you imagine education in Logic or Geology, when the Language you use in discourse about these topics demonstrates you have none? Do you believe you can just 'fake' an understanding or education?
It's not speculation. It's the Geological record of Earth.
Your original article was incredibly incisive. This follow-up expands on that .
We are truly just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic – as the people below drown. Here in Japan, I have done a lot of work for the environment agency and various corporations involved in so-called environmental initiatives. I have also worked on submissions by the Japanese Foreign Ministry to the UN and other bodies on the environment, with such great ideas as spreading natto on the desert to green the sand,,. Strangely enough,, some workable ideas!
I also work for the Tokyo government doing PR on environmental issues.
Again, there are people with some good ideas. But good ideas are not allowed to interfere with profit. This is a very mercantile society.
Your points are well taken. Green technology is not a panacea. It requires energy and involves its own environmental issues. As far as I can see some of these issues can be dealt with but not under a capitalist system which prioritizes profit for a few. Only the Chinese seem to be aware of this – and then only marginally.
20 years ago when I was in China, the air in Beijing and Shanghai was like soup. More recently, it's not that different from Tokyo where I live – which in the 70s when I came here was pretty filthy.
But the Japanese did not really care about the filthy air back then. It cleaned up because the energy companies wanted to switch to gas and oil from coal. Profit can be an incentive for improvement. The trouble is that improvement is not the goal – just profit. The big companies in Japan in the 70s also wanted to build nuclear power plants and change the law so they could build on top of tectonic fault lines. Or, in places like Fukushima.
I also worked for the nuclear power companies and the ministries in charge. I asked an engineer why the Fukushima plant was not stressed for a major earthquake or had a wall high enough to prevent flooding in the case of a major tsunami. He shrugged and said "money".
The Japanese will build more nuclear power plants – of course not taking advantage of the recent Chinese advances in this field. Nor will they exploit their enormous resources of geothermal energy. For the major companies, there is much more money to be made in constructing and maintaining conventional nuclear power plants.
Remember that the next time you go for sushi. The garnish is tritium.
"endless growth...conflicts in its very essence with a bounded, finite eco-system"
Endless growth is not only possible on a finite ball of resources, it's essential. Economic growth is precisely the process of getting smarter about solving more human needs using fewer resources.
And what's the alternative? Human needs are bottomless, the planet is not. Either we need free markets and economic growth, we must prevail upon the Lord to let us back into the Garden of Eden where resources are abundant, or we must somehow evolve into a new species.
Lenin and Mao attempted to turn us into Marx's Socialist Man with re-education camps, but it didn't work particularly well. Re-educating people is difficult and terribly inefficient; why bother when you could just kill them? And if billions must be killed, why fuss with building and operating gulags when you could simply destroy humanity's sources of affordable energy?
Interesting that Prof Mann suggests an asteroid strike as an event that would reverse global warming. That could do it. I was thinking maybe a supervolcano eruption or - for a "DIY" option - nuclear war...
Very good article Jonathan, thank you again. Glanced at the comments, it's funny how some people seem to spend ages discharging their various obssessions, and missing the big picture, about how we are messing up the earth's natural systems that have evolved complex life like us, and how capitalism is the prime example!
If I were the kind of person who liked long-distance flights, consumerist holidays, throwing away and endlessly replacing personal possessions (i.e. a planet destroyer) I might do more of it, to speed up the time when we get wiped out and the planet, free of its present parasite, would have the chance to recover, however that would happen. If we really care about "the planet" we should consider its future as well as our own. But I think I have been influenced by my geologist father's views both on proportionality and on time.
I live in Costa Rica. We are supposed to be in the Rainy Season. We have had little rain, in fact no rain for 10 days when it should be raining every day. We are also hitting between 36-39C when it should, at this time of the year be 28-32C. High humidity as well.
I might be a MI5/6 plant but to me it's totally clear that we are in a climate crisis. Our high water mark is creeping up. I live 150m from it.
I am not surprised that Rusere Shoniwa's article achieved a lot of support amongst your readers Jonathan. Like me, they may have been following his deeply thoughtful writing for a couple of years and appreciate his viewpoint as much as they appreciate yours. In many ways you are similar. Rather than taking potshots out of each other, why don't you engage directly? I for one would love to see what transpired and, as is often the case, I'm sure you will find you are not as far apart as you may think.
There's a pollution crisis, not a climate crisis and the vilification of CO2 is utter nonsense when looking at historical variation. It is irritating that those banging on about the 'greenhouse effect' don't seem to understand how greenhouses work, i.e. an increase in CO2 to promote vegetation growth.
The oil lobby, let's call it, Standard Oil and the Rockerfeller cabal are disingenuous, that is undoubted, however I would argue the plastics and derivatives and the active suppression of competing technology (hydrogen, cold fusion?) and identification of humanity as the problem that needs reducing pose a greater threat to us than whether or not the planet is a few percentage points of a degree warmer than last year.
Western oligarchs and their lickspittles flying in to Davos or COP in their private jets to pontificate about how everyone else needs to reduce their carbon footprint whilst simultaneously buying up reduced or land cleared beachfront should tell you all you need to know.
Thank you as always for your cogent, intelligent analysis.
I always find it mystifying when non-physicists argue against the laws of physics. It's physics that accurately predicts climate heating, and it's proceeding on schedule, regardless of the denial of a number of commenters here, who seem to be victims of a huge and dangerous swindle (if they even believe what they are saying--they may just be trolling your site to create controversy). If they actually believe that climate change caused by humans is a hoax, boy have I got a bridge to sell them.
Funny that. I posted those that argue against CO2 as the control knob are either climatologists of long standing like Lindzen and Happer, or phycists like the majority of the rest of the critics.
thank you, jonathan cook, for this eximious, numinous, inspiring, and topical but long-overdue article. when i first read bill peet's heart-shattering, brain-vellicating THE WUMP WORLD, published in 1970, to my 7 bantlings, they were all determined to become non-consuming conservationists and environmentalists. which they did. however, as time and circumstances have transpired over the past 53 years, few seem to have listened to bill peet's 'cri de coeur' w/ naught but deafened ears, nor seen w/ clarity of vision. the petro-conglomerates, big-corp, big pharma, their myrmidon politicians in congress and parliament, and the planet's uber-consuming mallrats have won. esurience is our species' ultimate achilles heel and will be the fountainhead of our demise. i say, 'good riddance'. may all 'wumps' somehow persist in surviving, buried in their tenebrous caves until it is finally safe for them to return to a more balanced and equitable zeitgeist.
Thank you, Jonathan. I am aware that this is only a part of your argument, but - to me - it seems rather central what is going on. So, on the one hand, I simply fail to understand why the left (whatever this label now describes) went to the side of unbridled individualism, as you note: “Many on the left similarly don’t like a climate crisis because it poses major challenges to current Western ideas of individualism.” On the other, the idea of freedom is rewritten into an incomprehensible jumble: “doing something to stop it might infringe on our “personal liberty””. Or, to put it differently, personal Liberty seems to me a contradiction in terms...which we have stopped seeing. Anyway, one possible way to counteract our present conundrum is to realise where this consumer capitalism is taking us. And that part is somehow missing in debates.
This was so good that it stimulated me to write an article of my own publication on my newsletter NewsForensics asking all my followers to read the original. By coincidence, my friends --The two David --at Media Lens also published an article on climate change in the media in the UK..Read that one too. I'm a Japan-based analyst. So my article was about Japan.
https://julianmacfarlane.substack.com/p/no-room-in-the-lifeboat I don't usually write about this kind of thing-- so many thanks to Jonathan Cook were stimulating my imagination.
https://julianmacfarlane.substack.com/p/no-room-in-the-lifeboat
“There is no ‘greater good’ than personal liberty.”
'Personal responsibility' is a greater good than personal liberty.
How can humans be both the pinnacle of consciousness and the progenitors of such a massive climate catastrophe which is likely to eradicate ourselves as well as much else? In some ways I think this may be the entering into the mush of a catapillers chrysalis, one form of thing "dying" and disintegrating completely while not knowing in any way what form will follow. Earth has done this before, gone through this before, several times and after each one has emerged more complex. Who is to say that we humans are not doing exactly our part in helping bring forth a new level of complexity? We ourselves likely won't emerge from the initial breakdown but the continuing result will be more complexity. It is hubris to think we should or could continue on indefinitely, what does?
I think you might find this writer interesting:
indi.ca
I'm not interested in non sequitur to the premise of my discourse.
This isn't about Neurodivergence, the discourse is about Logic. Propositional/Predicate Logic. Specifically - it is about the 'Algebra of Statements'. If you're interested in this premise, so am I. But, I don't have ADHD. I can stay focused on a premise without being distracted by non sequitur.
Moreover, unless you're an Aspie with an IQ over 150, 12 years of education in Logic/Computer Science and retired from 30 years as a professional Systems Engineer, and Cisco Certified Design & Internetwork Professional, as well as a Veteran Airborne Pathfinder Team Leader - we're not in the same boat. Nonetheless, you should know - no two people with Autism are the same. That's why it's a 'spectrum'.
I never once said Neurodivergence is incompatible with being nice. You wrote that. The premise of my discourse is Logic. My reference to Neurodivergence was an inconsequential remark to a non sequitur pejorative, and I wasn't talking to you. You 'cherry picked' one inconsequential remark that's non sequitur of my premise to focus on... Your AD/HD is obvious.
Moreover, my remark is about MY Autism not yours. Please do not project yourself into my discourse. Remain objective, rational, and Logically certain in your replies and stick to the premise.
Logic doesn't conform to opinion. Opinion is not even Logic.
Opinion is not Logic. Logic is not opinion - these are axioms of Propositional Logic. Opinion is inherent fallacy of Logic. Opinion is moot-point.
If you do not understand the difference between Logic and opinion nobody can understand it for you.
You really should read all and ensure you understand before responding.
Finally, everything I have written is recorded, and axiomatic demonstration of the Propositional/Predicate Logic of Language. There's no reason to speculate or guess, unless you're ignorant of Logic. However, you can always refer back to exactly what I have written.
It is irrefutable of what you have written, you have no education in Logic, only the imagination of an education in Logic. There is no-such-thing as "your logic." Logic is objective and therefore always capitalized when written. Moreover, your ramblings about Geology also demonstrate lack of education.
Why do you imagine education in Logic or Geology, when the Language you use in discourse about these topics demonstrates you have none? Do you believe you can just 'fake' an understanding or education?
It's not speculation. It's the Geological record of Earth.
Your original article was incredibly incisive. This follow-up expands on that .
We are truly just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic – as the people below drown. Here in Japan, I have done a lot of work for the environment agency and various corporations involved in so-called environmental initiatives. I have also worked on submissions by the Japanese Foreign Ministry to the UN and other bodies on the environment, with such great ideas as spreading natto on the desert to green the sand,,. Strangely enough,, some workable ideas!
I also work for the Tokyo government doing PR on environmental issues.
Again, there are people with some good ideas. But good ideas are not allowed to interfere with profit. This is a very mercantile society.
Your points are well taken. Green technology is not a panacea. It requires energy and involves its own environmental issues. As far as I can see some of these issues can be dealt with but not under a capitalist system which prioritizes profit for a few. Only the Chinese seem to be aware of this – and then only marginally.
20 years ago when I was in China, the air in Beijing and Shanghai was like soup. More recently, it's not that different from Tokyo where I live – which in the 70s when I came here was pretty filthy.
But the Japanese did not really care about the filthy air back then. It cleaned up because the energy companies wanted to switch to gas and oil from coal. Profit can be an incentive for improvement. The trouble is that improvement is not the goal – just profit. The big companies in Japan in the 70s also wanted to build nuclear power plants and change the law so they could build on top of tectonic fault lines. Or, in places like Fukushima.
I also worked for the nuclear power companies and the ministries in charge. I asked an engineer why the Fukushima plant was not stressed for a major earthquake or had a wall high enough to prevent flooding in the case of a major tsunami. He shrugged and said "money".
The Japanese will build more nuclear power plants – of course not taking advantage of the recent Chinese advances in this field. Nor will they exploit their enormous resources of geothermal energy. For the major companies, there is much more money to be made in constructing and maintaining conventional nuclear power plants.
Remember that the next time you go for sushi. The garnish is tritium.
"endless growth...conflicts in its very essence with a bounded, finite eco-system"
Endless growth is not only possible on a finite ball of resources, it's essential. Economic growth is precisely the process of getting smarter about solving more human needs using fewer resources.
And what's the alternative? Human needs are bottomless, the planet is not. Either we need free markets and economic growth, we must prevail upon the Lord to let us back into the Garden of Eden where resources are abundant, or we must somehow evolve into a new species.
Lenin and Mao attempted to turn us into Marx's Socialist Man with re-education camps, but it didn't work particularly well. Re-educating people is difficult and terribly inefficient; why bother when you could just kill them? And if billions must be killed, why fuss with building and operating gulags when you could simply destroy humanity's sources of affordable energy?
Interesting that Prof Mann suggests an asteroid strike as an event that would reverse global warming. That could do it. I was thinking maybe a supervolcano eruption or - for a "DIY" option - nuclear war...
Very good article Jonathan, thank you again. Glanced at the comments, it's funny how some people seem to spend ages discharging their various obssessions, and missing the big picture, about how we are messing up the earth's natural systems that have evolved complex life like us, and how capitalism is the prime example!
If I were the kind of person who liked long-distance flights, consumerist holidays, throwing away and endlessly replacing personal possessions (i.e. a planet destroyer) I might do more of it, to speed up the time when we get wiped out and the planet, free of its present parasite, would have the chance to recover, however that would happen. If we really care about "the planet" we should consider its future as well as our own. But I think I have been influenced by my geologist father's views both on proportionality and on time.
I live in Costa Rica. We are supposed to be in the Rainy Season. We have had little rain, in fact no rain for 10 days when it should be raining every day. We are also hitting between 36-39C when it should, at this time of the year be 28-32C. High humidity as well.
I might be a MI5/6 plant but to me it's totally clear that we are in a climate crisis. Our high water mark is creeping up. I live 150m from it.
Jonathan's article nailed it for me.
I am not surprised that Rusere Shoniwa's article achieved a lot of support amongst your readers Jonathan. Like me, they may have been following his deeply thoughtful writing for a couple of years and appreciate his viewpoint as much as they appreciate yours. In many ways you are similar. Rather than taking potshots out of each other, why don't you engage directly? I for one would love to see what transpired and, as is often the case, I'm sure you will find you are not as far apart as you may think.
Peace, Jenny x
There's a pollution crisis, not a climate crisis and the vilification of CO2 is utter nonsense when looking at historical variation. It is irritating that those banging on about the 'greenhouse effect' don't seem to understand how greenhouses work, i.e. an increase in CO2 to promote vegetation growth.
The oil lobby, let's call it, Standard Oil and the Rockerfeller cabal are disingenuous, that is undoubted, however I would argue the plastics and derivatives and the active suppression of competing technology (hydrogen, cold fusion?) and identification of humanity as the problem that needs reducing pose a greater threat to us than whether or not the planet is a few percentage points of a degree warmer than last year.
Western oligarchs and their lickspittles flying in to Davos or COP in their private jets to pontificate about how everyone else needs to reduce their carbon footprint whilst simultaneously buying up reduced or land cleared beachfront should tell you all you need to know.
Very well said.
Thank you as always for your cogent, intelligent analysis.
I always find it mystifying when non-physicists argue against the laws of physics. It's physics that accurately predicts climate heating, and it's proceeding on schedule, regardless of the denial of a number of commenters here, who seem to be victims of a huge and dangerous swindle (if they even believe what they are saying--they may just be trolling your site to create controversy). If they actually believe that climate change caused by humans is a hoax, boy have I got a bridge to sell them.
Funny that. I posted those that argue against CO2 as the control knob are either climatologists of long standing like Lindzen and Happer, or phycists like the majority of the rest of the critics.
thank you, jonathan cook, for this eximious, numinous, inspiring, and topical but long-overdue article. when i first read bill peet's heart-shattering, brain-vellicating THE WUMP WORLD, published in 1970, to my 7 bantlings, they were all determined to become non-consuming conservationists and environmentalists. which they did. however, as time and circumstances have transpired over the past 53 years, few seem to have listened to bill peet's 'cri de coeur' w/ naught but deafened ears, nor seen w/ clarity of vision. the petro-conglomerates, big-corp, big pharma, their myrmidon politicians in congress and parliament, and the planet's uber-consuming mallrats have won. esurience is our species' ultimate achilles heel and will be the fountainhead of our demise. i say, 'good riddance'. may all 'wumps' somehow persist in surviving, buried in their tenebrous caves until it is finally safe for them to return to a more balanced and equitable zeitgeist.
Thank you, Jonathan. I am aware that this is only a part of your argument, but - to me - it seems rather central what is going on. So, on the one hand, I simply fail to understand why the left (whatever this label now describes) went to the side of unbridled individualism, as you note: “Many on the left similarly don’t like a climate crisis because it poses major challenges to current Western ideas of individualism.” On the other, the idea of freedom is rewritten into an incomprehensible jumble: “doing something to stop it might infringe on our “personal liberty””. Or, to put it differently, personal Liberty seems to me a contradiction in terms...which we have stopped seeing. Anyway, one possible way to counteract our present conundrum is to realise where this consumer capitalism is taking us. And that part is somehow missing in debates.