Meet the Press Devotes Hour to Climate. Proof that Shame works?
December 30, 2018
Immediately after the dire National Climate Assessment projections were released a few weeks ago, NBC’s Chuck Todd gave his Meet the Press national forum to a climate denier – a choice so drearily sad and familiar that it awakened a sense of shame and outrage that was loud enough, and long enough – to bring about an attempt to make good.
Today’s MTP featured a full hour on climate.
20 years late, but it’s a start.
Below, putrid non-scientist denial shill.
Climate Denial Crock of the Week 
December 30, 2018 at 1:30 pm
Where the panelists weren’t completely mystified, they were so all over the place they were incomprehensible. And wrong-headed all the way through. How can supposedly educated, politically aware people others look to for information be so completely baffled and dunderheaded at the most important issue in human history, 49 years after we all should have understood it and had it sorted. At the end: “We want to get into some practical ideas including a bandaid for the avulsion of this limb. Is that the right way to go?”
NO. And no, Carlos; there are 3 halves to this: mitigation, adaptation, and suffering. So far we’ve almost exclusively chosen the third for ourselves, our children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren to the 50th generation.
We have very little times left to save anything. When are people who understand the science going to start calling the psychotic psychopaths what they are, and demand they resign and seek treatment?
December 30, 2018 at 2:56 pm
Treatment, yes. But only in an orange suit.
December 30, 2018 at 4:12 pm
I understand the sentiment. But without recognizing the psychological basis of all our problems we’ll continue to have them. By the time we solve the climate and larger ecological crisis, if we do, life on Earth is very likely to be on the brink of total extinction, and any more messing about is likely to tip it past that. We’ve seen the effects of both sides of resentment, dispossession, oppression, and other shattered relationships many times. The latest is the result of the Southern Strategy now being manipulated by the right to gain domination. And so on.
We can offer, through a truth and reconciliation process absolutely necessary to our survival, a way out of prison–confession to everything (lies, fraud, felony murders, bribes, gerrymandering, corruption, etc.) turning over of all documents and profits, agreement to never have another position of responsibility in government, business or non-profit, and…treatment.
The former Masters of the World are the future janitors in Atlantis.
December 30, 2018 at 5:24 pm
The “former masters” represent not even 5% of world’s population.
December 30, 2018 at 6:02 pm
How many janitors do we need in Atlantis? (aka Miami, Venice, and an expanding number of cities as we go further into the century.)
December 30, 2018 at 4:55 pm
For much of my life the biggest publicly known threat to our climate was nuclear war initiated by belligerent assholes.
Also, somehow we managed to deal with acid rain and the ozone hole without the fearmongering that the UN was using it to take over our governments.
December 30, 2018 at 5:28 pm
Well. There wasn’t that much money involved as in fossil fuels.
December 30, 2018 at 6:17 pm
Or as much symbolic importance; oil is included in the archetype of liquids-as-life/magic/medicine. Water, blood, and oil are all mixed up in the symbol that appears everywhere from the Bible to the Ring Cycle, to the motivations for invading Iraq when Saudis (who are the guardians of both Mecca and the sacred oil) are the ones who attacked. Coal, too is like the negative image of gold. Central to society, central to our psyches, and lotsandlotsa money. That’s why we’re having so much trouble. And the fact that the right is ascendant at this moment, although that’s related, too. The increasing viciousness of the right is partly in response to falling EROEI of oil…
December 30, 2018 at 6:49 pm
The falling EROEI is due to availability. Nowadays they’re squeezing out the tarsands and shale oil and gas.
January 2, 2019 at 10:44 am
Yes, oil’s EROEI has been falling since the 1930s; from about 100:1 then, to about 13:1 now—because we now have to go farther, deeper, explore spend more, use more for less.and dirtier oil, etc. (the less worse stuff having been used up). The increasing pressure of its drop has forced the elite, who because of their narcissism would rather sacrifice the entire world than lose their wealth and dominance, to increase their efforts to maintain their position–to the point of improving it relentlessly the past few decades as exponential concentration has intensified.
Of course there are other factors operating, but falling EROEI pushed inflation in the 60s and 70s, (which has since been controlled by the same dominance measures plus others—austerity, eg) and has lots of other subterranean effects. Tar sands, fracked oil and gas, corn ethanol, gasified coal, and other metapetrolic fuels are all attempts to stave off decline that haven’t worked; they all have worse EROEIs than today’s oil, even at or below 1:1, the point of pointlessness. Increasing system and end-use efficiency are also not fully making up for the drop and never can.
Fortunately we have hydro up to about 40:1, wind about 30, (meaning 2 of the top 3 are renewable.) Other renewables are in the same range as fossil fuels now but are improving as fossils fall. Improvements in offshore wind, especially, are keeping the energy system’s EROEI up; if the right wing and the oiligarchy had any brains they’d thank the heavens for clean safe
January 2, 2019 at 10:48 am
(continuing…)
…renewable energy because it means the erosion of their ability to hold on is slowing and will stop. So why aren’t they? Renewables aren’t destructive enough to express their fear- and disconnection-caused rage. So they’re ditching standards to allow more destruction (mercury, carbon…) and to increase profits at everyone else’s expense (thinking they’re invulnerable.)
January 2, 2019 at 11:52 am
Jeffy, Jeffy, Jeffy…..you were doing pretty well until you allowed your meds to be overwhelmed by your id and started ranting.
“Renewables aren’t destructive enough to express their fear- and disconnection-caused rage. So they’re ditching standards to allow more destruction (mercury, carbon…) and to increase profits at everyone else’s expense (thinking they’re invulnerable.)”, you said.
You got the profit part right, but I think you went too far with them doing it because of “fear and disconnect caused rage”. For one thing, they’re too freaking lazy to bother (and also too tired from counting their money and figuring out ways to avoid paying taxes on it).
December 30, 2018 at 2:55 pm
As I said, time that the millennials are taking over the country. Nothing but old fools up in the WH and the parliament.
December 30, 2018 at 5:50 pm
Thank you, Sir Charles! I have always liked Michael Moore’s documentaries.
December 30, 2018 at 3:42 pm
Going Nowhere Fast on Climate, Year After Year
Three decades after a top climate scientist warned Congress of the dangers of global warming, greenhouse gas emissions keep rising and so do global temperatures.
December 30, 2018 at 5:26 pm
This here was also in the press:
In the 1980s, big oil companies carried out internal assessments of how their products’ emissions might affect the planet. Despite findings linking fossil fuels to ecological damage and global warming, the industry kept their data secret, and then lied about it, potentially dooming the rest of us as a result.
=> Shell and Exxon’s secret 1980s climate change warnings
December 30, 2018 at 6:51 pm
Even Forbes seem to have changed their attitude towards AGW.
Did the world wake up to climate change in 2018? Or are we falling deeper into ignorance about the environmental changes happening all around us? Looking at the events and trends of 2018 demonstrate that we are at a climate change tipping point. Will the world wake up and take action in time?
=> 2018: A Tipping Point for Climate Change
December 30, 2018 at 9:39 pm
People. Learn. The. Hard. Way.
I’ve taught this simple truth to my classes for 30 years, and see no reason to change it.
As a civilization of individuals, we’ll learn. It’ll be very hard.
December 31, 2018 at 3:08 pm
Seems to be a part of the American Dream. Till the most bizarre End.
December 31, 2018 at 3:09 pm
Next.
January 1, 2019 at 2:14 am
Can’t believe no one mentioned HR 7173 & S 3791 as good — bipartisan — 1st step.
January 1, 2019 at 11:18 am
Chicago Tribune
Letters
Voice of the People
Climate change should be on everyone’s top 10
You could contact your representatives and senators, and express your support for the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act
=> Climate change should be on everyone’s top 10
January 1, 2019 at 11:19 am
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/letters/ct-vp-voice-letters-010219-story.html
Happy New Year! BTW 🙂
January 2, 2019 at 10:51 am
Even better, express support for something that will make a difference in our survival: a climate mobilization aka a strong comprehensive Green New Deal. It should probably include an inclusive carbon price of some kind but a price alone won’t do it and if we do all the things we need to a price is probably superfluous.
Carbon price bills constantly get touted as bipartisan, but the Republicans aren’t interested in helping the bioosphere or the Democrats—especially on a Democratic project that means admitting they were both wrong and lying for the last 20+ years. Only destroying both planet and party will adequately express their fear and rage. They’ll say anything to further delay real action to avoid catastrophic climate change, and expressing support for a carbon price is the most credible and most fudgeable way to do it. It has nothing to do with voting for a strong carbon bill—which they’ll never do—or stopping the flow of tens of milions of dollars they spend defeating them; those come from parts of the right while the other parts say ”sure, let’s have us a carbon price. (Not one that will do anything or change anything or threaten any profits or admit the real problem, but sure, let’s have a really weak price and then we can go to work on it as soon as no ones’ paying attention, to make it pay for us and our friends while doing less than nothing about uh, what was it again.…oh yeah, the weather thing…er whatever.)” It’s flabbergasting that after all this time and all those lies, anyone can be suckered by that move yet again. Put your effort toward a solution, not a dead end. Insist your representatives at every level and all branches of government pledge to support a massive, immediate climate mobilization—a full green new deal.
David Roberts has written several good articles on carbon price bills.
”Why conservatives keep gaslighting the nation about climate change”
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/10/22/18007922/climate-change-republicans-denial-marco-rubio-trump