Saturday, December 24, 2016

Friday, December 23, 2016

We Hold These Truths to be Self-Evident - 2

Dr. Mann
I. Background

The first post in this series focused on a lawsuit by climate scientists in a federal court in the state of Oregon.

They had broken through the first obstacles thrown at them by climate change deniers in cahoots with the Obama Administration.

At some coming phase, they will have to face the Trumposphere denialism, in a sicker, less kind, nation.

II. Foreground

In today's post, I want to talk about another lawsuit brought by another climate scientist that was not brought in a federal court, but rather was filed in the Superior Court for the District of Columbia (Complaint).

That libel complaint was filed by plaintiff Dr. Michael Mann against defendants The National Review, Inc., The Competitive Enterprise Institute, bloggers Rand Simberg and Mark Steyn.

Oh how, when served with the complaint, they scorned the case at The Lettuce & Bacon Talk (BLT) and The Volkswagen Conspiracy blogs (VW I, VW II).

The defendants, evidently encouraged by the blogging bloviators' refusal to retract their libelous writings, moved to dismiss the complaint as an infringement of their First Amendment rights.

They evidently do not understand that, outside the Trumposphere, the First Amendment does not protect low energy brain waves that take the form of libel or slander.

Nor do they appear to understand that, as a matter of law and fact, global warming induced climate change is not a hoax ... it is serious as a lawsuit (Global Warming Induced Climate Change Is A Matter of Law).

III. Reality Cookies For Kookies

When the appellate court ruled yesterday, it said that Dr. Mann can take his case to the jury:
Dr. Mann has supplied sufficient evidence for a reasonable jury to find, by a preponderance of the evidence, that statements in the articles written by Mr. Simberg and Mr. Steyn were false, defamatory, and published by appellants to third parties, and, by clear and convincing evidence, that appellants did so with actual malice. We, therefore, affirm the trial court’s denial of the special motions to dismiss the defamation claims based on those articles and remand the case for additional proceedings in the trial court with respect to these claims.
(Appellate Court Decision, p. 105). First will be the discovery phase of the litigation, which will bring their libelous brain waves into the under oath zone, which changes one's countenance.

IV. Conclusion

Congratulations to Dr. Mann and his competent lawyers, and may the jury sock it to the bloviating climate change deniers !

Their Agnotology work is a shame on humanity (Agnotology: The Surge, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17).

The previous post in this series is here.




Thursday, December 22, 2016

Is A New Age Of Pressure Upon Us? - 11

Fig. 1 Less than 4.5
I have updated the earthquake database to now include 49,718 quakes.
Fig. 2 4.5 - 5.5

Fig. 3 5.5 - 6.5
It is still lite on the end (2016 is not all in yet, and the past few years also seem somewhat lacking in some categories).
Fig. 4  6.5 - 8.0

I am still seeking recent data.

The video at the bottom of the post indicates that more data from recent years is available, but evidently I haven't found it all yet.

So, in the graphs I went up to the year 2015 with what I had so far.

The hypothesis that sea level change is causing some quakes to take place in areas where there are "hair triggers" at some fault lines seems quite plausible now, especially with the confirmation by Dr. McGuire in the previous post of this series (Is A New Age Of Pressure Upon Us? - 10).

After the year-end, I will seek the remaining 2016 data, as well as any other recent years (e.g. 2000 on).

Other datasets will also be updated, such as the WOD database and the PSMSL database.

One thing I want to do is map the fault zones shown in the video to WOD and PSMSL zones so as to compare ocean water activities above and below the ocean surface with Earthquake activity.

That is, unless the anti-science brigade of the Trumposphere destroys it all first.

U.S. scientists might do well to locate their data with scientists in other countries where Ludites and Know-nothings are still the fringe rather than having widespread power as they now have in the U.S.eh?

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.



Wednesday, December 21, 2016

Once Upon A Time In The West - 2

"But fact is." - Rush Rimbaud

Make Flatulence Great Again
by D. Blog

Once upon a time
the Earth was flat,
causing the stars and planets to orbit
around it,
because it was also
the center of the universe.

Weather on the flat Earth was stable,
in that,
it was always either
winter,
summer,
fall,
or spring
at the same time on the vast flatness.

Then the Earth was changed
into a globe
by librul scientists.

So, all those planets
went into orbit around stars
like our Sun,
and now
even the stars
are no longer orbiting
the Earth.

Additionally,
ever since
the Earth became no longer flat,
instead becoming a globe
orbiting the Sun,
there has been both
summer and winter
at the same time
on Earth.

For example, now
as we speak
“it” has been threatening
to become
122 deg. F. (50 deg. C)
in Australia
,
while “it” is super cold
at the very same time
in the flat lands
  of the U.S. Midwest,
which is the country
Bob Dylan comes from.

Libruls have made it
difficult for some
to “get it” now,
because “it” is
summer near Antarctica
and “it” is winter
in Kansas
at the same time.





The previous post in this series is here.

Tuesday, December 20, 2016

Etiology of Social Dementia - 16

Fig. 1 Great book !
One goal of this series has been to put the blame for denial of global warming where it belongs (Etiology of Social Dementia, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14).

Not on the masses, the victims, but on the few who plant and grow madness in the manner that corporate farmers grow wheat (The Ways of Bernays).

The book "The Madhouse Effect" is a succinct way of saying it (Fig. 1).

Our culture promotes dementia through the various processes of 'normalizing' cultural madness.

As a result, there is insane and there is criminally insane (The Criminally Insane Epoch Arises).

In some respects, ours is not a unique case of this social phenomenon:
"In other words, a society does not ever die 'from natural causes', but always dies from suicide or murder --- and nearly always from the former, as this chapter has shown."
(A Study of History, by Arnold J. Toynbee). In other respects, our civilization is a unique case,  because it purposefully manufactures deceit and ignorance (The Deceit Business; Agnotology: The Surge, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17).

Our uniqueness is also because our resulting social dementia infection threatens to murder many other species, as we collectively commit suicide.

It is so bad that, to a degree which no other civilization has or even could, ours fits the description of a one-of-a-kind mass-murder-suicide (MOMCOM's Mass Suicide & Murder Pact, 2, 3, 4, 5).

Since civilizations (ours included) have tended to be suicidal, the children of civilizations are given strong doses of propaganda, which not only alters cognition, but even alters brain and cranial structures (Hypothesis: The Cultural Amygdala, 2, 4; The Skulls They Are A Changin').

One of the major signs of 'losing it' is that we treat the propensity for cultural suicide as a political problem, instead of treating it as a psychological problem:
If the evolution of civilization has such a far reaching similarity with the development of an individual, and if the same methods are employed in both, would not the diagnosis be justified that many systems of civilization——or epochs of it——possibly even the whole of humanity——have become neurotic under the pressure of the civilizing trends? To analytic dissection of these neuroses, therapeutic recommendations might follow which could claim a great practical interest. I would not say that such an attempt to apply psychoanalysis to civilized society would be fanciful or doomed to fruitlessness. But it behooves us to be very careful, not to forget that after all we are dealing only with analogies, and that it is dangerous, not only with men but also with concepts, to drag them out of the region where they originated and have matured. The diagnosis of collective neuroses, moreover, will be confronted by a special difficulty. In the neurosis of an individual we can use as a starting point the contrast presented to us between the patient and his environment which we assume to be normal. No such background as this would be available for any society similarly affected; it would have to be supplied in some other way. And with regard to any therapeutic application of our knowledge, what would be the use of the most acute analysis of social neuroses, since no one possesses power to compel the community to adopt the therapy? In spite of all these difficulties, we may expect that one day someone will venture upon this research into the pathology of civilized communities. [p. 39]
...
Men have brought their powers of subduing the forces of nature
to such a pitch that by using them they could now very easily exterminate one another to the last man. They know this——hence arises a great part of their current unrest, their dejection, their mood of apprehension. [p. 40]
(Civilization Is Now On Suicide Watch - 5, quoting Freud). Mis-diagnosis is one of the last things that fading civilizations tend to do.

Mis-diagnose this:
"In less than two weeks, 2016 will officially be the hottest year on the books in more than 120 years of record keeping by U.S. agencies.

It will be the third straight record-setting year — and of the 17 hottest years, 16 have been [during 2000 - 2016]" -
(Climate Central).

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

"Who knew?" (Humble Oil-Qaeda)





Monday, December 19, 2016

Watch The Ice Shelves - 4

[photo missing here is the caption: "What was the real danger then and still is now? When a nation is invaded by an exterior force, there are areas which tend to be invaded first."]

That is also true when our civilization invades the natural global climate system by damaging it with pollution; it inevitably turns on us (The Damaged Global Climate System, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6).

Concerning the reaction to our attack on it, one subsystem which we call "the Cryosphere" (the realm of ice) in the polar regions, in effect is automatically turned against us in response the growing anthropogenic warming.

This warming, of course, causes the ice there to melt, which in general ends up being a counter-invasion (Greenland & Antarctica Invade The United States, 2, 3, 4).

So, in this series I have been pointing out that the first wave of the counter-invasion will be caused by the impact on the ice shelves (Watch The Ice Shelves, 2, 3).

The ice shelves are robust impediments to the ice sheets' ability to freely flow into the oceans unabated.

But, once those ice shelves are weakened during attacks by warmer waters and warmer winds, they will melt to the point of becoming structurally unsound.

Eventually, in addition to melting, they will also break up into icebergs which will float away to later melt elsewhere.

The main invasion damage then abruptly takes place, which is that the ice sheets will then accelerate their invasive flow into the oceans.

That will continually accelerate rising sea levels, which is the main wave of the natural counter invasion to our damage we have done to the global climate system  (Why Sea Level Rise May Be The Greatest Threat To Civilization, 2, 3, 4, 5).

Typically, there are no class preferences to such invasions, which tends to be equal-opportunity destruction taking place first in coastal regions (The 1% May Face The Wrath of Sea Level Rise First).

There are no military means which can resist such an invasion (Why The Military Can't Defend Against The Invasion).

We do see cognitive "defenses" developing, however, (as a response to the global climate system's counter-invasion) such as the spread of mass denial:
"In 1973, Ernest Becker, a cultural anthropologist cross-trained in philosophy, sociology, and psychiatry, invoked consciousness of self and the inevitability of death as the primary sources of human anxiety and repression. He proposed that the psychological basis of cooperation, competition, and emotional and mental health is a tendency to hold tightly to anxiety-buffering cultural world views or "immortality projects" that serve as the basis for self-esteem and meaning. Although he focused mainly on social and political outcomes like war, torture, and genocide, he was increasingly aware that materialism, denial of nature, and immortality-striving efforts to control, rather than sanctify, the natural world were problems whose severity was increasing. In this paper I review Becker's ideas and suggest ways in which they illuminate human response to global climate change. Because immortality projects range from belief in technology and materialism to reverence for nature or belief in a celestial god, they act both as barriers to and facilitators of sustainable practices. I propose that Becker’s cross-disciplinary "science of man," and the predictions it generates for proximate-level determinants of social behavior, add significantly to our understanding of and potential for managing the people paradox, i.e., that the very things that bring us symbolic immortality often conflict with our prospects for survival. Analysis of immortality projects as one of the proximate barriers to addressing climate change is both cautionary and hopeful, providing insights that should be included in the cross-disciplinary quest to uncover new pathways toward rational, social change."
(Dickinson, J. L. 2009). This type of response to a counter-invasion is ill advised and ineffective, according to military and psychology experts (Will Elections Cure The Disease? - 3).

Ironically, our invasion against nature began with the belief that an industrial revolution was a savior of sorts, but that has ended up being the beginning of The 6th Mass Extinction, an extinction scenario that now includes human vertebrates (Vertebrate Extinction Began @ Industrial Revolution).

That development is Earth-shaking news in more ways than one (Climate change will shake the Earth, Waking The Sleeping Giant - by Professor McGuire).

BTW, Dr. McGuire's Waking The Sleeping Giant, made #5 on one journalist's top-10-best eco-books list:
5. Waking the Giant by Bill McGuire

Just out, and dreadfully alarming. Bill McGuire, a distinguished geologist and brilliant science writer, charts how changing climate may trigger not just wild weather but also volcanoes, earthquakes and tsunamis. Perhaps it already is. The last time that ice caps were melting and sea levels were rising, geology was in overdrive. Faults shuddered, magma melted and mayhem followed. As McGuire persuasively shows, it could be kicking off again. This is science so scary that even the climate scientists widely dismissed as alarmists do not dare speak of it.
(Fred Pierce's Top Ten). The increase in that type of earthquake has been covered by Dredd Blog for several years (Is A New Age Of Pressure Upon Us?, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8).

If that is not enough evidence for you, also check out "The biggest threat to the world is still ourselves", also by Prof. McGuire, which reminds us that we are the alien aggressors who invaded the Earth' Global Climate System first.

The state of the global climate system's counter-invasion, as it turns out, is getting more and more dire, even as the denial does the same (When You Are Governed By Psychopaths - 6).

For example:
The Totten Glacier drains more ice than any other glacier in the EAIS and contains a volume of marine-based ice above flotation equivalent to at least 3.5 m [equivalent to ~11.5 ft.] of global sea-level rise.
...
Several approaches have been used to estimate basal melt rates at the Totten Glacier. Flux gate calculations using satellite data indicated steady-state net basal melt rates ... equivalent to area-average melt rates of 10.5 ± 0.7 and 9.89 ± 1.92 m year−1, respectively [9 - 10.5 m yr is equivalent to about 29 - 34 ft. of ice shelf height melting away each year].
(Totten Glacier Ice Shelf Melting, Science Advances, 12/16/2016). That would seem to be a clear signal for civilization to get with the program.

If nothing else, just to see just what our civilization and all the nations within it really are facing now.

Nevertheless, the U.S. government has seemingly gone from bad to worse on this issue (Trump Declares All-Out War on Environment).

This official denialism may very well further threaten the fate and future of scientists who are already under siege:
My Penn State colleagues looked with horror at the police tape across my office door.

I had been opening mail at my desk that afternoon in August 2010 when a dusting of white powder fell from the folds of a letter. I dropped the letter, held my breath and slipped out the door as swiftly as I could, shutting it behind me. First I went to the bathroom to scrub my hands. Then I called the police.

It turned out to be only cornstarch. And it was just one in a long series of threats I've received since the late 1990s, when my research illustrated the unprecedented nature of global warming, producing an upward-trending temperature

I've faced hostile investigations by politicians, demands for me to be fired from my job, threats against my life and even threats against my family. Those threats have diminished in recent years, as man-made climate change has become recognized as the overwhelming scientific consensus and as climate science has received the support of the federal government. But with the coming Trump administration, my colleagues and I are bracing for a renewed onslaught of intimidation, from inside and outside government. It would be bad for our work and bad for our planet.
(Scientific Freedom). Denial can be a deadly disease, yes, an extinction-event causing disease.

To conclude this episode with a surprise, this attitude of civilization is shocking --but typical of those civilizations that went down prior to ours (Civilization Is Now On Suicide Watch, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8).

The previous post in this series is here.

This is not fringe science that I am talking about ... - Dr. Rob Davies