Note: Some older but still good material on the “dualistic interaction” versus materialism issue can be found in neuroscientist and Nobel laureate John Eccles’ books- “The Wonder of Being Human”, “The Human Mystery”, “The Self and its Brain”, “Evolution of the Brain”.
A “spiritual” thought...
Our invisible conscious self is the most real thing about us, not our physical body. And consciousness may be the most real and fundamental thing in the entire cosmos, with an Ultimate Consciousness giving rise to and sustaining all material reality. Quantum mechanics tells us that we still have no idea what material reality is (see, for example, “Mass: The quest to understand matter from Greek atoms to quantum fields” by Jim Baggott). Mind is fundamental. Matter arises from mind. Philosophical Materialism has this all backwards.
“The stream of knowledge is heading towards a non-mechanical reality; the Universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter… we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter”, quantum theorist James Jeans.
Another…
I accept Consciousness as the most fundamental reality, giving rise to all physical reality. But I do not view the creating/sustaining Consciousness as something neutral, such as the laws of nature. I affirm, along with others across history, that the Consciousness that gives rise to and sustains this material cosmos is most fundamentally love, and a form of love that is inexpressibly more wondrous than anything that we experience during our life journeys through this material realm. It is a stunningly transcendent “no conditions love” (non-retaliatory, non-judging, universally inclusive, not punitive or destructive). I find good expressions of this in the attempts of many in the Near-Death Experience movement (a contemporary “spiritual” movement) to tell us of the love and light that they experienced.
Example: “The very atoms of God were unconditional love; the very substance of God was unconditional love”. My conclusion from this NDE insight- If the Ultimate Reality that many call God is the most fundamental reality, the creator and sustainer of all other reality, then that makes no conditions love the most fundamental reality of all realities.
Others from past history have given us the same insight that “God is love” but often their insights were buried and distorted in religious traditions with all their endless conditions- i.e. conditions of correct belief, required sacrifice/payment, obligatory membership in the religion, proper rituals of the religion, and righteous lifestyle identifying one as a member of the given religion.
While I affirm the valued insights and help that religious traditions have given many people, no religion has ever communicated to humanity this insight that God is absolutely no conditions love. Religious traditions have buried and distorted this insight with endless conditions.
A practical outcome of this insight? “We become just like the god that we believe in”. Most people try to model in their lives what they hold as ultimate ideals and authorities.
Note: Pardon me but I have been recuperating from prostate cancer surgery and slow to put new material up.
Note on exaggeration, distortion, inciting panic in populations that leads to irrational response to problems…
From Aug. 4, 2022 Net Zero Watch newsletter (Global Warming Policy Forum):
“London, 4 August — Official data released today reveals that Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is in excellent health, with coral cover reaching record levels for the second consecutive year.
“The increase will be surprising to members of the public, who are regularly hit with scare stories about coral bleaching and false tales about a reef in long-term decline.
“A new note, published today by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, explains that the data shows clearly how a handful of coral bleaching events that have affected the reef since 2016 have had very limited impact on overall coral cover.
“Dr Peter Ridd says:
“In recent years, the media around the world has been reporting coral bleaching events in increasingly apocalyptic terms. This data proves that they are simply scaremongering.”
“GWPF director, Dr Benny Peiser said:
“This is just the latest example of empirical data making a mockery of the catastrophists. For how much longer do they think they can get away with it?”
See also https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/08/03/surprise-the-australian-great-barrier-reef-has-bounced-back-from-climate-change/
As often repeated here- There are enough things to legitimately fear in an imperfect world. But it is highly irresponsible to exaggerate problems, thereby distorting our understanding of the true state of things and hindering our ability to respond rationally to any given problem.
The idea of decline– a dominant fallacy darkening human consciousness today.
“(The idea of decline) became arguably the single most dominant and influential theme in culture and politics in the twentieth century”, Arthur Herman in “The Idea of Decline in Western History”.
The idea of decline states that the world is becoming worse, that life is degenerating toward a worsening state, and that humanity is also becoming something worse than it previously was.
This dark and despair-inducing fallacy has primitive roots in the earliest human mythologies and their misread of the cyclical patterns of the natural world. Early people did not have the larger historical perspective to fully understand the cyclical rhythms of the natural world, such as the multi-million year ice-age eras with roughly 100,000 year cycles of glaciations punctuated by interglacial periods.
John Pfeiffer in “Explosion: An Inquiry into the Origins of Art and Religion” suggests that early people of some 100,000 years ago may have held a belief in an original golden age.
What happened around that time that may have given rise to the myth of decline from a better past? I would suggest that the myth of decline toward disaster could have arisen from the experience of the end of the previous Eemian interglacial (130,000 to 115,000 years ago). Some studies argue the end of that interglacial may have been quite sudden, occurring in under just a few centuries (note, for example, https://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/transit.html, https://www.climate-policy-watcher.org/abrupt-climate/eemian-rapid-climate-change.html ). That would have imprinted the memory of a better past (original golden age or paradise, Eden) during the warmer interglacial followed by the descent into the threatening cold of an oncoming glaciation (known as the Wisconsin glaciation in North America) that made survival more difficult. That experience and memory of decline from a better past may have been passed down to succeeding generations in myths of degeneration toward a worsening world.
Other early events that could have incited the myth of decline to something worse, and moreso of apocalyptic catastrophe and end of the world, would include the great flood of the Black Sea around 7600 years ago (“a catastrophic inflow of Mediterranean seawater into the Black Sea freshwater lake”, Wikipedia). Such events certainly would have appeared to be world-ending to early peoples with limited geographical exposure.
Decline toward something worse then became the central theme of apocalyptic mythology in Sumerian/Babylonian religion, Zoroastrian religion, and the Western offspring of Zoroastrianism- i.e. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Eastern religions also embraced their own versions of decline toward something worse, toward the end of the world- i.e. the great Hindu cycles of rise followed by a decline to catastrophic ending. And Buddhism embraced declinism with its myth of the historical decrease in human lifespans.
Hence, decline toward apocalypse was already a dominant theme in the earliest human writing and mythology, notably the Sumerian Flood myth. And as prehistorians Jacquetta Hawkes and John Pfeiffer have said, what we find in the earliest writing we may assume was already believed long before in prehistory.
Added themes that re-enforced the myth of life declining included the ideas of angry, punitive deity blaming humanity for the ruin of the original golden age/paradise and subsequent degradation of life. This was accompanied by the threat of divine intervention to violently destroy the world in an apocalypse as punishment for human sin.
The gods then demanded sacrifice as payment for sin in order to qualify for entrance into the prophesied restored paradise, after corrupting evil would be purged from the world (i.e. the enemies in “false religions” destroyed).
We are still battered today with this primitive mythology in the apocalyptic religion of environmental declinism, notably climate change apocalypse. This profoundly religious movement continues to irresponsibly traumatize human consciousness with unnecessary fear, anxiety, shame/guilt, despair/depression, and even violence (see Zenon Lotufo’s “Cruel God, Kind God”, Arthur Mendel’s “Vision and Violence”, among other histories of apocalyptic millennialism that show violent, punitive deity at the core of apocalyptic mythology). Also note historian Arthur Mendel’s treatment of declinism and detail on how that primitive mythology was transformed into ideology for the modern era. The old themes remain the same even though given new expression as “secular ideology”, even “science”.
(Declinism themes in modern ideology- (1) The world has declined from a previous wilderness paradise toward the worsening state of human civilization that engages and changes elements of the natural world. (2) “Sinful/corrupting” humans are blamed for this degradation of nature. (3) There is the threat of divine intervention to punish and destroy humanity- whether in the form of “the revenge of Gaia, or the threat from angry Planet/Mother Earth, or the threat of retribution from the Universe, or from payback karma”, all contemporary punitive deities. (4) The demanded sacrifice/payment to appease the angry deities is to give up the good life in industrial civilization, and (5) also to purge the world of the evil of “too many people consuming to much of Earth’s resources”. Then (6) the lost paradise can be restored.)
Yes, behind daily media hysteria over heat waves and claims that other features of life are becoming worse (against evidence to the contrary), I detect the residue of the above ancient ideas now deeply embedded in human consciousness and narratives, even in human subconscious.
The pathology of declinism mythology continues to incite and fuel modern era crusades of alarmist panic-mongering, crusades that, followed by irrational salvation schemes, wreak immense harm on societies. We counter these “profoundly religious” crusades with evidence-based hope on the actual state of the world and the true trajectory of life. Note the research of Julian Simon (Ultimate Resource), and many others in this regard.
We also counter primitive declinism mythology by going to those deeply embedded religious themes and offering better alternatives to structure human narratives.
This from “Weekly Climate and Energy New Roundup #515 posted at Wattsupwiththat.com
The quotes below are from Ken Haapala, President, Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)
“So, I will ignore the click bait news media’s fear mongering that our oceans are “on the boil” due to rising CO2. There is simply no scientific proof to support such dishonest narratives.
“And I will sleep well. There is no climate crisis…”
“Fact or Fiction? Generally, climate studies, including those government sponsored, are not a physical science. They are contradicted by the best physical evidence available – including over forty years of atmospheric temperature trends and measurements of the impact of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Humans adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere are not causing dangerous warming. Except for the West, much of the world does not believe the results of climate models…”
And a note on an MIT paper…
“A paper edited by Professor Emeritus Kerry Emanuel of Massachusetts Institute of Technology calls for bolder studies of extreme claims. An expert on tropical cyclones, Emanuel is a strong supporter of the IPCC and its models. The ACE index of tropical cyclones shows that intensities of storms are declining, not increasing, for whatever the reason.
“The paper then states:
“How bad could climate change get? As early as 1988, the landmark Toronto Conference declaration described the ultimate consequences of climate change as potentially ‘second only to a global nuclear war.’ Despite such proclamations decades ago, climate catastrophe is relatively under-studied and poorly understood. [Boldface added]
“This is complete non-science, based on speculation, not physical evidence. Over the past 40 years, there have been great advances in understanding what is occurring in the atmosphere. This physical evidence does not support the claims of catastrophic climate change. The exaggerations are mindless. Accepting this advice is as foolish as accepting the advice of a heart specialist who has ignored the advances in understanding heart disease over the past 40 years. In 1980 the US death rate from heart diseases was 412 per 100,000 in population; in 2018 164 per 100,000, a decline of 60%. See links under Defending the Orthodoxy, Questioning the Orthodoxy, Communicating Better to the Public – Use Propaganda, and https://www.statista.com/statistics/184515/deaths-by-heart-diseases-in-the-us-since-1950/”
And this from Francis Menton on the emerging war on nitrogen which is a war on agriculture.
Net Zero Is Not Just For Carbon Emissions — Now It’s Nitrogen
Some more speculation on the “spiritual/metaphysical” (My ongoing fascination with this uniquely wondrous feature of conscious human existence- love)
The greatest of human achievements is open equally to every person and is not dependent on education, skills, wealth, or other markers of human status.
The highest human experience, and the ultimate liberation from our base animal inheritance, is to love one’s enemies, like a Mandela. Or like the ladies at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa (“The Forgiven”), or “The Railway Man”, or the prisoners in “To End All Wars”. Meaning: Love that takes the courageous initiative to love without expecting a similar response, that gives even when receiving nothing in return, and that forgives when the offender has not shown remorse or asked for forgiveness. Such expressions of love take us to the absolute heights of being human, of what it means to be maturely humane. These expressions of love enable us to tower in stature, to become the true heroes of our stories. Love of enemies is the ultimate human experience and achievement.
A wisdom sage stated it this way:
“Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you. If you love only those who love you, what credit is that to you? Everyone finds it easy to love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Everyone can do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Most will lend to others, expecting to be repaid in full. But do something more heroic, more humane. (Live on a higher plane of human experience). Do not retaliate against your offenders/enemies with ‘eye for eye’ justice. Instead, love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then you will be just like God, because God does not retaliate against God’s enemies. God does not mete out eye for eye justice. Instead, God is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. God causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. Be unconditionally loving, just as your God is unconditionally loving”. (My paraphrase of Luke 6:32-36.)
Added note: If it is true that God is love or as one NDEr discovered (Near Death Experiencer) “The very substance of God, the very atoms of God were unconditional love”, and if God as the creating Consciousness sustains all reality in existence, then love is the most fundamental reality of all, the transcendent core reality of the cosmos and all material reality. Love is then also our most fundamental nature, the essential nature of our conscious self, as varied sages remind us that we are one with the ultimate love and light that is Creating Consciousness. To love is to be most authentically human, to be our most authentic self.
(Yes, some in the NDE movement speak of that divine love as more than just a feature/characteristic of deity, and more as an actual fundamental essence or substance in the sense of a metaphysical substance like consciousness which many others argue is the most fundamental reality behind all physical reality, the core creating and sustaining reality behind all else. Put this in your pipe and smoke it for a while.)
Another: Is there some inseparable relation of love to light as is consistently expressed in Near Death Experiences? Einstein wanted to spend the rest of his life exploring light (“For the rest of my life I want to reflect on what light is.”). Did he sense that light, aside from its physical elements, was something more fundamental to reality?
I refer often here to the Near-Death Experiences because, better than many other insights on metaphysical realities, they remind us of what matters ultimately- love.
James Lovelock, creator of the Gaia hypothesis, father of modern environmentalism, has just died. Here are some quotes from the latest “Net Zero Watch” newsletter, a memorial to Lovelock, July 28, 2022…
“Of the green movement, (Lovelock) said: “Well, it’s a religion. It’s totally unscientific.”
“He went on: “I’m afraid the thing gets exaggerated out of all proportion, and the greens have behaved deplorably instead of being reasonably sensible.”
“I think you have to accept that the sceptics have kept us sane… They have been a breath of fresh air. They have kept us from regarding the science of climate change as a religion. It had gone too far that way. There is a role for sceptics in science. They shouldn’t be brushed aside.
“I’ve got quite a few friends among the sceptics, as well as among the “angels” of climate science. There are some sceptics that I fully respect. Nigel Lawson is one. He writes sensibly and well. He raises questions. I find him an interesting sceptic. What I like about sceptics is that in good science you need critics that make you think.
“James Lovelock, the maverick scientist who became a guru to the environmental movement with his “Gaia” theory of the Earth as a single organism, has admitted to being “alarmist” about climate change and says other environmental commentators, such as Al Gore, were too.
“The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened,” Lovelock said.
“The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now,” he said.
“He pointed to Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” and Tim Flannery’s “The Weather Makers” as other examples of “alarmist” forecasts of the future.
Lovelock had the integrity and humility to admit that his climate alarmism had been wrong: He concluded near the end of his life, “I made a mistake”.
This from Climate Change Weekly, number 442:
96% of US temperature data sets (surface temperature stations) are fatally flawed…
Climate Change Weekly #442: U.S. Surface Station Network Is Fatally Flawed, Heartland Report Shows
Quotes:
“The basic underlying cause of how catastrophic climate change is supposed to be occurring is greenhouse gases accumulating in the atmosphere, trapping heat, warming the Earth, and driving myriad other changes such as worsening weather events.
“The problem for that narrative is that the Earth has not been warming to the degree… that climate models have consistently projected over the years it would. No catastrophic warming, no catastrophic climate change. If climate models are wrong about the most basic projection they were created to make, there is no reason to take any of their other projections seriously.
“Worse news for climate alarmists—though not for normal people with other things to worry about—is that even the warming that has been recorded is a result of bias, not reality, with reported average temperatures being higher and trending steeper than if the system used accurate measurements. Proof of this has been published in a new report by The Heartland Institute: Corrupted Climate Stations: The Official U.S. Surface Temperature Record Remains Fatally Flawed. This report is an update of a 2009 study by meteorologist Anthony Watts, a Heartland senior fellow…
And
“The temperature data sets used in official government reports making alarming claims about rapidly rising temperatures and dangerous climate change come from a fatally flawed network of weather stations. More than 96 percent of the stations surveyed fail to meet the National Weather Service’s requirements for quality measurements.
“As a result, the official temperature record is biased, being more than twice as hot as records from the U.S. Climate Reference Network. If we can’t trust the temperature records, which is supposed to be the driving force for dangerous climate change, why should we trust the predictions of worsening extreme weather made by government agencies?”
Good advice from Joe Rogan– episode 1848 with guests Francis Foster and Konstantin Kisin… available for free on Spotify
Among many other topics, they discuss the beginning of some new venture or job and how poorly we perform in such situations. But that is the learning process that makes us who we are later in life. So “Don’t be scared that you suck in the beginning. Everything you do when you start out, you suck at. There is no way to be amazing from the start. Just do it and get better… plan to fail but don’t give up. Just work hard at getting better”, Joe Rogan.
This by Jordan Peterson on the ruinous policies of the Trudeau Liberals deserves wide reading…
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/jordan-peterson-worst-is-yet-to-come-from-trudeau-liberals
Climate alarmism is a story, a narrative. And it is a dominant story today, re-enforced daily with hysterical news stories about extreme weather events of all sorts, mainly heat waves and storms.
The climate alarm story embraces a variety of common themes that have shaped human stories across history- both personal and public stories. The themes are as old as recorded human history and have been found in the earliest human writing (Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, and other ancient societies). Note these themes in the list below (“Old Narrative Themes, Better Alternatives”) that have been adopted by the climate alarm story, themes now given “secular/ideological” expression for the modern world.
Climate alarmism is essentially an apocalyptic/millennial story, concocted to incite fear, panic, and to push populations to embrace an irrational salvation scheme (“save the world from the coming collapse and ending”). And like all apocalyptic stories, climate alarmism is pushing societies to commit collective suicide with no good scientific justification.
Let’s hope that enough rational people will regain their senses before the damage from the “decarbonization salvation crusade” becomes too overwhelming for many of the most vulnerable people.
My point here? Be aware of the ideas that shape alarmist movements and expose the primitive origins of such ideas and then offer better alternatives. Change the meta-narratives, the big public stories, and thereby liberate people from irresponsible, mythically-based panic-mongering.
Yes, climate is changing, and CO2 contributes to climate warming, and yes humans are contributing some to this trend. But the change has not created a “climate emergency”. To the contrary, the change has been very mild (1 degree C over the past century in an abnormally cold world where far more people die from cold every year than die from warmth). The climate change we have experienced has been mostly net beneficial to all life.
Varied commentators are bemoaning that scientific fact does not change many minds regarding climate alarmism. I would suggest this is because most people still hold to stories that are shaped by themes/beliefs from an ancient past. And they hold an emotional commitment to those beliefs that is not shaken by facts. The outcome of emotional commitment to beliefs is that people then engage confirmation bias responses- only accepting information that affirms their beliefs and ignoring contrary information. We are all susceptible to these things.
Take the myth of apocalypse, for example, one of the most dominant myths across history. Apocalyptic mythology states that life is declining toward a worse future, toward collapse and disaster, even ending. Despite growing evidence over past centuries that life is not declining but has been improving toward more complexity, organization, and a better future, the myth of decline toward apocalypse is still a dominant theme in the world religions and now also shapes the ideology of Declinism- “The most dominant and influential theme in the modern world” (Arthur Herman- The Idea of Decline in Western History).
The public story industry- i.e. Hollywood- further solidifies the confirmation bias orientation to apocalypse by endlessly promoting apocalyptic mythology. The endless affirmation of this pathological myth is shameless, irresponsible, and dangerous panic-mongering- inciting the human survival impulse and frightening people to embrace destructive salvation schemes like decarbonization, schemes that are ruining societies and harming the most vulnerable people the most.
Insert: See “The Most Self-Destructive Force in the World” at
Climate alarmism is the most prominent version of apocalyptic lunacy today. News media buttress apocalyptic hysteria by obsessing endlessly over every natural weather extreme, claiming such are “the worst on record”, and more proof of the looming, imminent disaster. The confirmation bias element in climate alarmism? Ignoring the good evidence to the contrary that shows there is no increase in extreme weather events and, overall, the mild warming of the past century (1 degree C), and added CO2, have been net beneficial to all life.
Far more people die every year from cold than die from warmth (see Lomborg article just below) and the added warming has decreased cold deaths more than it has increased warm deaths. Add that more basic plant food- i.e. CO2- has added 15% more green vegetation to the Earth, meaning more food for animals and increased crop production for humanity. Hence, I continue to post the best evidence on climate such as the physics of CO2- the research of physicists like Richard Lindzen, William Happer, and others.
My argument here is, aside from presenting critical scientific research, to also go to the root ideas in human narratives in order to fully counter the themes that drive the madness of apocalyptic-type movements.
In the face of so much hysterical alarmism today, don’t be afraid of “climate doing what climate always does” (James Lovelock).
And again, remember the metaphysical speculation that points to the reality of love at the core of all, the same love that is our essential core, our truest self. A love closer than our own breath or atoms. Endless fear mongering distorts life and buries the evidence of the good that exists all through life.
Love drives out fear.
(As often repeated here- there are enough things to legitimately fear in an imperfect world. It is highly irresponsible to exaggerate problems, thereby distorting our understanding of the true state of things and hindering our ability to respond rationally to any given problem.)
And this good news:
Climate Crisis? Ever Fewer People Dying of Climate Disasters. There’s Hype, And There’s Reality
This from Jeff Jacoby at the Boston Globe (reported on Wattsupwiththat.com)
Monday July 25, 2022
“I hate hot weather. I’ve always hated hot weather. I’m quite sure that I always will hate hot weather. One of my children lives in Texas, and I have been monitoring with horror the heat wave that has sent temperatures in his city above 100 degrees every day for the last two weeks. It has been just as bad in much of Europe , where triple-digit temperatures have scorched England, France, and Spain. Then again, things aren’t much better in Boston, where the thermometer on Sunday afternoon officially reached 100 degrees.
“But there are two silver linings. One is that heat predictions for the United States are somewhat less dire than for other regions of the planet. The federal government’s latest National Climate Assessment points out that while the frequency of intense hot spells experienced by Americans since the 1960s has been increasing, we are still well below the records set nearly a century ago. “Heat wave magnitude reached a maximum in the 1930s,” the report says. “The Dust Bowl era of the 1930s remains the peak period for extreme heat.” (Note that this was before heat waves could be blamed on human fossil fuel use.)
“The other silver lining is considerably more encouraging: The decrease in extreme cold is saving many more lives than the increase in heat waves is costing. Worldwide, cold weather kills far more people than hot weather. A study published last summer in The Lancet found that between 2000 and 2019, there were nearly 5.1 million deaths caused by extreme temperatures. About 500,000 of those deaths were heat-related, while nearly 4.6 million were cold-related.”
Here’s an article on the Climate Intelligence network (CLINTEL)…
“CLINTEL was initiated by emeritus professor of geophysics Guus Berkhout with the objective to make the many critical climate organizations around the world combine forces and work closely together against one-sided information and false conclusions promoted in the news media…
“The Clintel mission is: “Bringing Climate Knowledge to the World”…
“CLINTEL’s climate vision can be simply summarized by: “There is no climate emergency”. We formulated the World Climate Declaration (WCD), a one-page summary of what scientific climate realists agree upon. In a few words, the WCD states that global warming is a fact but not a crisis, the cause of global warming has large natural components, more CO2 in the atmosphere is a blessing, and climate measures must be focused on adaptation. Currently, the WCD has been signed by more than thousand scientists and engineers…
“Surprisingly, we only hear doom and gloom from the media. According to them, the world is collapsing due to the influence of man. But hard facts show the opposite. Did you know that (i) in the past 100 years the number of people on our planet increased from 1.9 billion in 1922 to 7.9 billion in 2022, while global life expectation increased from 40 to 73 years, (ii) the number of people who died by natural catastrophes decreased by more than 90%, and (iii) there were never so many people taking care of the natural environment, etc., etc. What a hopeful perspective!…
“Today’s huge technological investments that try to stop climate change are a historical mistake. If we study the past and present, we see that the cause of climate change has large natural components, the combination of solar irradiation and oceanic behavior being by far the most important. Thinking that we can stop climate change by decreasing the CO2-concentration in the atmosphere is not only naive, but also an outrageous waste of money. The cost is huge, the benefit miniscule…
“What must be done is: 1) accept climate change as an unavoidable natural phenomenon, 2) better understand the climate system with truthful science and 3) adapt to its continuous changes by developing effective adaptation technologies…
“Today’s government policies are driven by computer models. However, the results of those models are completely determined by what the modelmakers put into them. Modelmakers can set up a model in such a way that it produces whatever the financier wants to see. Politicians are fond of models. In governmental research institutes, scientists follow instructions to set up ‘scientific’ models in such a way that the outcome favors the intended governmental policy. They then blatantly claim that the outcome is scientifically sound. My advice is to ban the use of politics-driven ‘scientific’ models all together. Those false models push us back into the dark times of superstition…
“Wind turbines and solar panels are not only extremely expensive and space intensive, but they are also unpredictable energy suppliers and, therefore, they require a huge back-up system. So, totally unsuitable to replace the current energy infrastructure (‘the old shoes’). Using hydrogen for storage purposes involves big energy losses and makes the renewable circus even more foolish. Did you know that in the current global energy mix, 80% is fossil fuels and only 2% is wind and solar?…
“The CO2-crisis is artificial, constructed by climate alarmists who, with their pitch-black scenarios, have Western governments and parliaments in their power. To formulate it nicely, Western administrators are naïve and do not (want to) realize how essential the role of CO2 is in nature. Bear in mind, climate change is much more than CO2, and CO2 is much more than climate change. Isn’t CO2 the raw material for all life on Earth? Looking at total costs and benefits, isn’t more CO2 in the atmosphere a blessing for mankind and nature?”
Some good links on climate alarmism:
The Green objective to price gas out of reach of Canadians…
https://financialpost.com/opinion/john-williamson-high-gas-prices-have-been-the-plan-all-along
https://financialpost.com/opinion/gwyn-morgan-the-disastrous-consequences-of-the-green-movement
And “The West’s climate policy debacle” (Wall Street Journal):
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-wests-climate-policy-debacle-global-warming-energy-putin-russia-fossil-fuel-power-summer-heat-11658084481
Quote from Wall Street Journal article…
“It’s time for political leaders to recognize this manifest debacle and admit that, short of a technological breakthrough, the world will need an ample supply of fossil fuels for decades to remain prosperous and free.
“Soaring oil and natural gas prices. Electricity grids on the brink of failure. Energy shortages in Europe, with worse to come. The free world’s growing strategic vulnerability to Vladimir Putin and other dictators.”
See full article on Net Zero Watch newsletter at Global Warming Policy Forum site… or perhaps this link…
The West’s Climate Policy Debacle – WSJ
This Wall Street Journal article by Bjorn Lomborg, posted at https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/07/22/how-the-climate-elite-spread-misery/
How the Climate Elite Spread Misery (Most people are more worried about high gas prices and food prices, which green policies make worse.)
Bjorn Lomborg writes in the Wall Street Journal,
“The chattering classes who jet to conferences at Davos or Aspen have for years been telling the rest of us that our biggest immediate threats are climate change, environmental disasters and biodiversity loss. They point to the current heat waves killing thousands across Europe as the latest reason to change our societies and economies radically by switching to renewables.
“Such arguments are misleading. It’s true that as temperatures rise the world will experience more heat waves, but humans also adapt to such things. In Spain, for example, rising temperatures have actually led to fewer heat deaths, because people have adapted faster than temperatures have gone up. It simply took air conditioning, public cooling centers and better treatment of maladies that are caused or aggravated by heat, such as heatstroke and heart disease.
“The exclusive focus on heat deaths is also misleading. Across the world, low temperatures are much more dangerous than high ones: Half a million people die each year from heat, but more than 4.5 million die from cold. While rising temperatures will increase heat deaths, they will also decrease cold deaths. A recent Lancet study found that rising temperatures since 2000 have on net reduced the number of temperature-related deaths. Researchers concluded that by the end of the 2010s, rising temperatures globally were causing 116,000 more heat deaths annually, but also leading to 283,000 fewer cold deaths a year.
“Moreover, politicians’ singular focus on climate change ignores that people are much more worried about rampant inflation, especially rising food and energy prices. And climate policies are making those problems worse.”
Lomborg cites Sri Lanka as the latest best example.
“Sri Lanka is the epitome of elite environmentalism gone wrong. Pushed to go organic by activists and the World Economic Forum, the government banned synthetic fertilizers in April 2021. Food production collapsed and the currency defaulted. Hungry and outraged citizens launched protests, overran the presidential palace, and forced the government to resign en masse and the president to flee the country.”
Lomborg concludes.
“It’s starting to dawn on some elites that their policies are creating political dangers. Frans Timmermans, the European Commission’s vice president, has said that many millions of Europeans may not be able to heat their homes this winter. This, he concludes, could lead to “very, very strong conflict and strife.”
“He’s right. When people are cold, hungry and broke, they rebel. If the elites continue pushing incredibly expensive policies that are disconnected from the urgent challenges facing most people, we need to brace for chaos.
“Mr. Lomborg is president of the Copenhagen Consensus and visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. His latest book is “False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet.”
It’s a good commentary and well worth reading at the WSJ. It’s pay-walled, but I read it with a free subscription.
“UN health agency chief declares monkeypox a global emergency”
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/lifestyle/smart-living/un-health-agency-chief-declares-monkeypox-a-global-emergency/ar-AAZTi5W?li=AAggNb9
Watch this sort of declaration that has become all too repetitively persistent in our modern era- the declaration of “emergencies… crisis… catastrophes… and existential threats”, among other apocalyptic-scale terms. Note the media obsession with such language (sociologist David Altheide’s “Creating Fear: News and the construction of crisis”) and the politician’s love of such threat to cow and control populations according to political agendas. We saw this irresponsible panic-mongering erupting with the Covid threat and have observed it for decades now with climate alarmism.
Yes, there are threats to health and life that must be taken seriously but exaggeration of those threats distorts the true nature of any problem, incites public panic, and too often results in people becoming susceptible to “salvation” responses that cause far more harm than the original problem (note the decarbonization crusade in this regard). Note that others in the link above are questioning the declaration that the UN chief made- without “expert” opinion. Note also that there have been only 5 confirmed deaths so far from monkeypox.
The UN chief’s intentions may be good, but careful about endlessly alarming people without including the full picture on any given problem. People have been too alarmed over past decades from “environmental crisis” exaggerations and public consciousness has now become traumatized from such panic-mongering that good follow-up science has repeatedly shown to be excessive and often politically/ideologically motivated.
(“Traumatized”? Yes, the world surveys showing that majorities in countries believe “the world is becoming worse” when overwhelming evidence shows that life continues to improve across many important indicators/resources. See “Humanprogress.org” and other sources. Also note the growth of “eco-anxiety” among children.)
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary” (H. L. Mencken, “In Defense of Women”).
A more rational response to apparent “emergencies”? When any problem emerges in life, seek immediately for the fullest picture of the issue- including contrary fact, all the information related to the problem/issue. Especially include skeptical information. This will help counter personal confirmation bias and the tendency to exaggeration of the problem. On issues like climate change- include the longest possible trends in relation to the problem. That will provide a more balanced context in which to evaluate the problem.
And like Forrest Gump, that is all I have to say on two important factors that help get us to good science. (1) Fullest picture and (2) longest-term trends. The climate alarm movement fails on the second with its endless mantra of “hottest on record”, referring only to past decades or the past century.
Note the long-term graphs provided by meteorologist Anthony Watts in his recent article at
Wrong, Legacy Media, Climate Change Is Not Causing Summer Heatwaves in the U.S. and Europe
The wonder of being human
With the singularly unique consciousness that defines us as human beings, there is something profoundly and cosmically wondrous about being human. See neuroscientist and Nobel laureate John Eccles books along this line (i.e. “The Self and Its Brain”, “The Human Mystery”, “The Wonder of Being Human”, and “Evolution of the Brain, Creation of the Self”). And as Near-Death Experience people tell us, we are essentially beings of love.
Unconditional love is the essential nature of our human spirit, our authentic or most real self. This ought to inspire us to “tower in stature as maturely human”, to become the heroes of our stories, as measured by our ultimate human ideal- universal love (Joseph Campbell). Yet we too often descend into such subhuman pettiness when we focus on the faults of others, obsessing over their failures, and then condemning, vilifying, humiliating, and even trying to destroy them (e.g. cancel culture madness). Public media re-enforce this ugly retaliatory impulse in our societies.
A re-orientation to the generosity of love is a re-affirming of our true selves.
This report on extreme weather claims and actual trends according to latest data
President Biden’s False Claims About Extreme Weather Get Ignored by the Corporate Media
Quotes from above link:
“Biden claimed that climate change had made hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, and wildfires worse. Data proves each of these assertions is false… Each of Biden’s claims about the worsening of extreme weather events is refuted by real world data collected by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the U.S. government’s own agencies.
“… as the Earth has modestly warmed, the number of hurricanes and their intensity have either remained flat or actually declined.
“Data show the present drought waxing and waning across much of the Western United States is nowhere near as severe or long-lasting as those experienced with some regularity in America’s past. Indeed, as recently as 2017 and again in 2019, the US set records for having its smallest percentage of land area experiencing drought conditions.
“Hard data thoroughly debunks Biden’s claims that climate change is causing worse wildfires, as well. Data on wildfires presented in “Climate at a Glance: Wildfires”, from the U.S. National Interagency Fire Center from as far back as 1926 show current acres burned in the United States, are approximately 1/4th to 1/5th of the amount burned annually in the 1930s…
“The climate science falsehoods Biden made in his speech were not so innocent, rather they were direct statements contained in his official speech. Unfortunately for the propagandists, Biden’s denial of science on the issue of climate is testable. Data proves that the President was wrong to assert that extreme weather is becoming more common and severe. Contrary to his statement, climate change is no “Code Red for Humanity.”
A primary project of this site– To liberate people from unnecessary fear, unwarranted fear; to re-assure everyone that, despite the suffering and pain of existence in this imperfect world, ultimately there is a stunning love at the core of reality and life.
I “speculate” on the fundamental nature of the creating Consciousness (i.e. my regular forays here into theological or ultimate meaning issues) because past fallacies about deities are the foundational roots of many other human fears- i.e. myths of deities punishing people through the harshness of the natural world, through disasters, disease, or predatory cruelty. (Note the persistence of punitive deity in “angry Planet/Mother Earth, retaliatory Universe, vengeful Gaia, and payback karma” myths.)
The ideas that we have inherited regarding these things (both religious and “secular”) have too long promoted unnecessary fear, adding an extra psychic burden to already intolerable human fears over life.
And regarding the more “here and now” issues like climate alarmism- the motivation to liberate from fear drives my search for evidence that gives us a more clear understanding of the true state of life on Earth, evidence that affirms the natural human orientation to hope and love.