Agnotology: The Surge - 4

"My daddy said there ain't no global warming."

In this series Dredd Blog has been looking at the social science called Agnotology, which seeks out then studies "ignorance generators" within current civilization.

The discipline is focused on "particularly the publication of inaccurate or misleading scientific data."

That may sound like an easy task at first blush, but as the post "What Is Pseudo Science?" shows, it really depends on the degree of the accuracy of available scientific knowledge at a given time in history.

I ran across some of that "holy ignorance Batman" yesterday concerning two recent posts here on Dredd Blog.

The frenetic and ignorant criticism which Dredd Blog received concerned the most recent posts in an ongoing series (Government Climate Change Report - 5 and Government Climate Change Report - 4) and a related series (On The Origin and Future of Nomads).

Some people just cannot do thought experiments in order to be able to figure out what is happening all around them, for instance, to solve this "mystery":

In a paper published June 7 in the journal Global Ecology and Biogeography, researchers present evidence that over the past century, vegetation has been gradually moving toward the poles and up mountain slopes, where temperatures are cooler, as well as toward the equator, where rainfall is greater.

Moreover, an estimated one-tenth to one-half of the land mass on Earth will be highly vulnerable to climate-related vegetation shifts by the end of this century ... according to the study.

The results came from a meta-analysis of hundreds of field studies and a spatial analysis of observed 20th century climate and projected 21st century vegetation.

The meta-analysis identified field studies that examined long-term vegetation shifts in which climate ... was the dominant influence. The researchers found 15 cases of biome shifts since the 18th century that are attributable to changes in temperature and precipitation.

(Major Vegetation Shifts Worldwide). There is no mystery to the reality that when the Earth's axial precession, which is the rotation of the Earth's axial tilt, is at 180 degree variance, the plants, animals, and the climate will all react.

Another post at the Ecocosmology Blog makes the long term impact of the Earth's axial precession reality quite stark and clear:

10,948 B.C. (0 degrees)
(Winter) June, July, August
(Spring) September, October, November
(Summer) December, January, February
(Autumn) March, April, May
...
==========================
2012 A.D. (180 degrees)
(Winter) December, January, February
(Spring) March, April, May
(Summer) June, July, August
(Autumn) September, October, November
==========================
...
14,972 A.D. (360 degrees)
(Winter) June, July, August
(Spring) September, October, November
(Summer) December, January, February
(Autumn) March, April, May

(A Savvy Ecocosmological Earth Calendar - 2). As the Earth's axial tilt causes the Northern Hemisphere to lean toward the Sun over a prolonged period, and then slowly changes the tilt another 180 degrees, to then cause the Northern Hemisphere to lean away from the Sun over another prolonged period, the weather characteristics of each month will gradually change.

And as shown by the quotes above, taken from scientific papers (e.g. "Major Vegetation Shifts Worldwide"), the species in the biosphere will naturally detect the change and then react accordingly.

Migration is one such reaction.

That scientific paper ("Major Vegetation Shifts Worldwide") concerns Anthropogenic Climate Change unnaturally brought on by civilization's use of fossil fuels.

Natural axial-precession-induced warming or cooling also has that effect, however, it is more gentle and is done over great spans of time so that adaptation can take place without extinction.

The point is that when civilization does not take this long term reality into consideration, as well as the anthropogenic counterpart, there will be consequences.

When civilization accelerates the natural climate change cycle with anthropogenic unnatural global warming, then the results occur thousands of years too early, occur out of sync, and occur catastrophically.

As was pointed out in the Dredd Blog post On The Glut of Superhero Movies, it is not a good thing when ignorance generators are working around the clock to make everyone unaware of this reality.

Scientists of the Agnotology discipline will continue to watch the surge of ignorance generators in our culture, as well as continuing to watch the catastrophes which ignorance is bringing on all of us:

“We’ve got the highest rate of sea level rise on the East Coast,” said Skip Stiles, executive director, Wetlands Watch, who will be making a presentation on the historic, current and future sea level changes and potential impact on the Eastern Shore.

Stiles said some of the evidence of sea level rise visible to people who spend time around the water include seeing wetlands disappear, ditches going tidal, backyard vegetation changes, and “ghost forests” — full grown trees that are dead along the shore because the water is “moving in underneath them.”

"As goes the N. Pole so goes the ..."

...
Stiles said all of the Virginia tide gage measurements are showing about the same rise of a foot and a half over the last 100 years.
...
Mann says the Pacific islands, which are only 4.6 metres above sea level at their highest point, are facing the imminent prospect of flooding, with salt water intrusion destroying fresh water supplies and increased erosion.

Suggesting evacuations would accelerate a change in public consciousness around the issue of climate change, he said: "Thousands of years of culture is at risk of disappearing as the populations of vulnerable island states have no place to go.

"For these people, current sea levels are already representative of dangerous anthropogenic interference because they will lose their world far before the rest of us suffer.

"I think it is an example, one of a number, where the impacts are playing out in real time. It is not an abstract prediction about the future or about far off exotic creatures like polar bears. We are talking about people potentially having to evacuate from places like Tvulu or the Arctic's Kivalina, another low lying island which is already feeling the detrimental impacts of sea level rise."
...
Rising seas, caused by global warming, have for the first time washed an inhabited island off the face of the Earth. The obliteration of Lohachara island, in India's part of the Sundarbans where the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal, marks the moment when one of the most apocalyptic predictions of environmentalists and climate scientists has started coming true.
...
Some of the earliest climate change refugees are those that must relocate due to rising sea levels. A threat to people living around the world, from northern Canada to the Maldives, those in Panama are currently feeling the crush of closer waves. Thousands of native Panama Islanders are being forced to move away from their ancestral homes and relocate to the mainland as sea levels rise ...
...
Climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future, has moved firmly into the present.
...
Many more impacts of human-caused climate change have now been observed.
...
Americans are noticing changes all around them.
...
Residents of some coastal cities see their streets flood more regularly during storms and high tides. Inland cities near large rivers also experience more flooding, especially in the Midwest and Northeast. Hotter and drier weather and earlier snow melt mean that wildfires in the West start earlier in the year, last later into the fall, threaten more homes, cause more evacuations, and burn more acreage. In Alaska, the summer sea ice that once protected the coasts has receded, and fall storms now cause more erosion and damage that is severe enough that some communities are already facing relocation.

(Government Climate Change Report - 4). Stay tuned-in to the reality while you stay tuned-out of the ignorance based denial.

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

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NASA video of projected warming:

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The Stupidest Law In The Nation? - 2

The issue of the military becoming the national police force crops up from time to time (Will The Military Become The Police - 3, Will The Military Become The Police - 2, Will The Military Become The Police).

Now the issue is quite serious, because the military is wiretapping all Americans - like the Orwellian police force of "1984" infamy was doing.

We first discussed the issue on this date in 2009:

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Evidently the bushies had a discussion about whether the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 was the stupidest law on the books, as they wrestled with the idea of sending the army into Buffalo, NY to arrest some "neer-do-well turrissstttsss" during 2002.

Now that Professor Gates has been falsely arrested, a Massachusetts lawyer who has bemoaned the statute which was used to charge and arrest Professor Gates, offers that statute as the most stupid in the land.

Lawyer Matthew S. Cameron has a series of posts concerning the history of the law that the Cambridge Police used to arrest Professor Gates, beginning with Part I:

But, like the man said, the past isn’t dead … it isn’t even past. For as much as there is to love about having a constitution and an attorney’s oath that are at least twice as old as most American states, it also means that we sometimes have to live with statutes that are just as old–or older.

Our legislature’s woeful failure to update some of our creakiest and most ancient statutes seems to be driven by the same philosophy that has kept the cult of King James going in certain Christian circles: If it was good enough in 1620, it’s good enough for 2008.

Take G.L.c. 272 Sec. 53 (…please!). Although it’s usually referenced as the “disorderly conduct” statute, it is actually a tasty smorgasbord of old-timey criminality.

(An Idle And Disorderly Statute, Part I). Matthew also bemoans the breadth of a statute that covers anything from Professors in their own home to romantics out in public parks:

The accosting and annoying provision of [Sec. 53] as it now reads is impermissibly and unconstitutionally underinclusive, in that it excuses an entire potential class of perpetrators while concurrently failing to protect their victims solely on the basis of their respective genders. As such, this provision’s strikingly anachronistic, unmistakably paternalistic, and quintessentially Puritanical language and intent are outshone only by the luminous glare of its arrant unconstitutionality.

(An Idle And Disorderly Statute, Part II). Matthew sums it up and gets to the gravamen of the matter when he concludes, in 2008 well before the false arrest of Professor Gates, that:

... this may well be one of the stupidest criminal charges in the Mass. General Laws—if not any state criminal code—now in regular active use.

(ibid, emphasis added). Thus, when President Obama said the Cambridge Police acted stupidly in arresting Professor Gates, we know of one Massachusetts expert lawyer who whole heartedly agrees (and even agreed way before the President said it!).

It seems to be axiomatic that if a law is stupid, then enforcement of that law is also stupid. If a law is the stupidest, then enforcement of that law is also the stupidest.

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The previous post in this series is here.

Government Climate Change Report - 5

Yesterday's post in this series discussed the transition that takes place in the global climate system during the axial precession cycle of about 26,000 years.

The change in long-term tilt toward or away from the Sun causes a morph of global climate --a morph which Dredd Blog argues is significant enough that it must be considered when looking at the geological record for clues concerning the history of climate or weather at a given time.

This is especially so when the geological record is being used as a way of validating computer models of historical climate and weather --as a paper cited to in yesterday's post has done (The Multimillennial Sea-level Commitment of Global Warming).

The graphic of three globes above (mouse click to enlarge) helps to illustrate the point by showing that during each ~13,000 years of the axial precession cycle the Winter months become Summer months (and vice versa), Spring months become Autumn months (and vice versa).

This means that if in 13,000 B.C. July was a Summer month, then 13,000 years later in 1 A.D. July will have naturally morphed into a Winter month.

Then, when the axial precession cycle "resets" an additional 13,000 years later, (in 13,000 A.D.) to the axial precession cycle's beginning place (0/360 degrees), the month of July will have morphed back into a Summer month (as it once was in 13,000 B.C.).

This is because the ~26,000 year rotation is a typical 360 degree rotation (see A Savvy Ecocosmological Earth Calendar - 2).

The cycle repeats itself ad infinitum over eons of time as the tilted axis of the Earth moves in its slow circle of rotation (see video below).

Notice that the globes in the graphic above lean so as to emphasize the axial tilt's particular location at that given time around the circle (0 degrees, 180 degrees, and 360 degrees).

This is done to show that about each 13,000 years the tilt is at an an opposite tilt position (180 degrees away), with respect to the Sun, from what it was 13,000 years earlier.

That part is easy to conceive in the abstract, however, the impact it has on the global climate system, the biosphere, the environment, and human civilization is more complex and therefore more difficult to envision.

We know that the natural climate morph would cause plants and animals to have to migrate to and fro, would cause sea levels to rise and then fall, would cause ocean currents to change direction, and in general would cause a radical transition to eventually take place. 

But note emphatically that this discussion assumes no anthropogenic interference in the natural cycle caused by various types of pollution now going on (we are talking about a natural, long term process, not man-made global warming).

And note especially that this climate system morph is a very slow process of change that allows the flora and fauna in the Earth's ecosystem to slowly and naturally adjust and adapt.

Additionally, remember that some locations will experience greater degrees of change depending on their latitude, but this post is intended only to set forth a generalization, using the general climate of the mid-latitudes of the U.S.A. for the general concept and general location.

Other locations such as Australia, have opposite months in the Winter column now (U.S.A. Summer months equate to Australian winter months).

Thus, during the morph we are talking about, Australian Winter months will change to Summer months, during the example cycle shown, while U.S.A. months do the opposite.

As a final thought for today, consider that the following quote from a related post (concerning use of the Mayan Long Count Calendar that also has a ~26,000 year cycle) highlights the incredible importance of the information being conveyed:

Thus, the Long Range Calendar would divide the 26,000 Tuns into five segments of 5,200 Tuns each, which would give such a calendar the utility to help civilizations determine when and how ecocosmological climate change, i.e., natural cosmic climate change would take place in the different hemispheres of the Earth.

Why is that important?

Climate System Nomads

Because it would tell, among other things, when polar ice caps would naturally melt to cause natural sea level rise that would flood coastal areas, when the poles would naturally ice over to again cause natural sea level drop once again, how the flora and fauna would begin to adapt as those climate changes gently and slowly began to take place, as well as many other fundamental things civilizations need to know to happily survive on a planet like the Earth (see e.g. this and this).

Wise civilizations would use a long term calendar for long term planning in terms of zoning, when and where to build, when and where not to build, how to build for the current and next cycle, and therefore how to avoid a lot of waste, destruction, loss of life, as well as avoiding great, unnecessary expense.

[This all assumes that any Earth civilizations would not cause anthropogenic global warming induced climate change, as current civilization already has done, to a very reasonably predictable Earth environment.]

(A Savvy Ecocosmological Earth Calendar). Well, there you have it --another reason to notice that there is a natural bias on this planet.

A bias that informs us that civilization must seriously think about natural nomadic behavior from time to time (On The Origin and Future of Nomads).

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

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The Earth's axial precession:

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Government Climate Change Report - 4

Global Tilt Is Built Into The System

The history of science records many instances where scientists have been unimaginably wrong about the real world around us (What Is Pseudo Science?).

One of the reasons for failures of scientific awareness from time to time is that sometimes a lack of cross-discipline discussion between or among scientists becomes a serious deficit.

Today's post in this series focuses on what is happening concerning The Global Climate System, as well as what is not yet happening in scientific discussions about that global system (see Government Climate Change Report - 3).

Further, today's post focuses on the ongoing scientific dialogue which does not have sufficient cross-communication among Astronomers, Microbiologists, and Climate Scientists.

Today, Dredd Blog focuses on that lack of cross-discipline discussion because that lack could cost many lives as well as the loss of large amounts of property and/or property value.

You may be thinking: "Dredd, what do Microbiologists or Astronomers have to do with climate?", which is a fair enough question, so consider this:

A major question in ecology has centered on the role of microbes in regulating ecosystem function. Now, in research published ahead of print in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology, Brajesh Singh of the University of Western Sydney, Australia, and collaborators show how changes in the populations of methanotrophic bacteria can have consequences for methane mitigation at ecosystem levels.
...
The selection hypothesis states that a small number of key species, rather than all species present determine key functions in ecosystems.
...
There are an estimated 10³¹ viruses on Earth. That is to say: there may be a hundred million times more viruses on Earth than there are stars in the universe. The majority of these viruses infect microbes, including bacteria, archaea, and microeukaryotes, all of which are vital players in the global fixation and cycling of key elements such as carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus. These two facts combined—the sheer number of viruses and their intimate relationship with microbial life—suggest that viruses, too, play a critical role in the planet’s biosphere.

(Weekend Rebel Science Excursion - 19, emphasis added). Add to that the fact that the biosphere and the climate system have interaction with each other:

The climate system is the highly complex system consisting of five major components: the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, the cryosphere, the land surface and the biosphere, and the interactions between them.

(On The Origin and Future of Nomads, emphasis added). Ok, consideration of the Global Biosphere naturally relates to the Global Climate System in relevant ways.

Let's now include the Astronomer's discipline too, by considering this:

Why does any of this matter, and what does it have to do with a good or bad calendar, in terms of long range planning by civilizations?

The first factor to consider is the axial tilt:

The Earth's axis remains tilted in the same direction with reference to the background stars throughout a year (throughout its entire orbit).

This means that one pole (and the associated hemisphere of the Earth) will be directed away from the Sun at one side of the orbit, and half an orbit later (half a year later) this pole will be directed towards the Sun.

This is the cause of the Earth's seasons.

(Wikipedia, Axial Tilt). Next consider what happens when the axial tilt rotates during the cycle of axial precession:

Variations in Earth's axial tilt can influence the seasons and is likely a factor in long-term [non-anthropogenic] climate change.

(ibid). Thus, the Long Range Calendar would divide the 26,000 Tuns into five segments of 5,200 Tuns each, which would give such a calendar the utility to help civilizations determine when and how ecocosmological climate change, i.e., natural cosmic climate change would take place in the different hemispheres of the Earth.

Why is that important?

Because it would tell, among other things, when polar ice caps would naturally melt to cause natural sea level rise that would flood coastal areas, when the poles would naturally ice over to again cause natural sea level drop once again, how the flora and fauna would begin to adapt as those climate changes gently and slowly began to take place, as well as many other fundamental things civilizations need to know to happily survive on a planet like the Earth (see e.g. this and this).

(A Savvy Ecocosmological Earth Calendar). Ok, so the axial tilt causes the seasons of normal annual [non-anthropogenic] climate change, but the axial precession (~26,000 year rotation of the axial tilt) causes long-term (~26,000 year cycle) normal [non-anthropogenic] climate change.

So, there is the reason Astronomers, Microbiologists, and Climate Scientists need to collaborate to consider each other's scientific papers and what not, because there are factors in all three disciplines that impact, in varying degrees, the global climate system.

The Astronomers study axial tilt and axial precession, Microbiologists study the way microbes, including viruses, impact the flora, fauna, and the ecosystems in the biosphere, while Climate Scientists primarily study the five major components of the climate system (atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, land surface, and biosphere).

That they each have key information to share with one another, so as to help grasp the entire picture of sea-level rise, will be shown below.

A recent paper relies on computer models over centuries of time matched with the geological records concerning eons of time:

Sea-level projections show a robust, albeit highly uncertain, increase by the end of this century...

Uncertainties in the paleo-reconstructions, however, necessitate additional strategies to better constrain the sea-level commitment. Here we combine paleo-evidence with simulations from physical models to estimate the future sea-level commitment on a multi-millennial time scale and compute associated regional sea-level patterns.

(The Multimillennial Sea-level Commitment of Global Warming). The scientist used the jargon "to better constrain the sea-level commitment", which simply means to get a better handle on expected or predicted sea-level rise in terms of more accurate and consistent numbers.

In today's post Dredd Blog criticizes the study (and those similar to it) because there was no consideration whatsoever, in that study, as to where the axial precession position was at any given time, nor therefore what the degree of tilt away from or toward the Sun was at the particular geographical location where the geological data they used in the study was taken from.

This even though those facts could have significant bearing on the global climate system at that, or any other, given time in history.

Thus, with a cafeteria style data gathering technique, a scientist chooses and interprets the data without applying the science of other disciplines that have a substantial bearing on the matter.

This results in a wide range of expectations and predictions of future global climate system events, from sea-level rates of rise to storm frequencies.

Likewise, it is not the proper scientific way "to better constrain the sea-level commitment."

As an example of the paper's lack of practicality ("2,000" years from now), notice current sea-level rise realities that are zero years from now:

“We’ve got the highest rate of sea level rise on the East Coast,” said Skip Stiles, executive director, Wetlands Watch, who will be making a presentation on the historic, current and future sea level changes and potential impact on the Eastern Shore.

Stiles said some of the evidence of sea level rise visible to people who spend time around the water include seeing wetlands disappear, ditches going tidal, backyard vegetation changes, and “ghost forests” — full grown trees that are dead along the shore because the water is “moving in underneath them.”
...
Stiles said all of the Virginia tide gage measurements are showing about the same rise of a foot and a half over the last 100 years.

(Social Dementia Causes Heated Misunderestimations - 2). The same is real now, in other parts of the globe:

Mann says the Pacific islands, which are only 4.6 metres above sea level at their highest point, are facing the imminent prospect of flooding, with salt water intrusion destroying fresh water supplies and increased erosion.

Suggesting evacuations would accelerate a change in public consciousness around the issue of climate change, he said: "Thousands of years of culture is at risk of disappearing as the populations of vulnerable island states have no place to go.

"For these people, current sea levels are already representative of dangerous anthropogenic interference because they will lose their world far before the rest of us suffer.

"I think it is an example, one of a number, where the impacts are playing out in real time. It is not an abstract prediction about the future or about far off exotic creatures like polar bears. We are talking about people potentially having to evacuate from places like Tvulu or the Arctic's Kivalina, another low lying island which is already feeling the detrimental impacts of sea level rise."

(Perfect Storm: New Global Ground Zero). And this is also quite real, not abstract future math:

Rising seas, caused by global warming, have for the first time washed an inhabited island off the face of the Earth. The obliteration of Lohachara island, in India's part of the Sundarbans where the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal, marks the moment when one of the most apocalyptic predictions of environmentalists and climate scientists has started coming true.

(Will This Float Your Boat?). On the other side of the globe, other island peoples suffer the same fate:

Some of the earliest climate change refugees are those that must relocate due to rising sea levels. A threat to people living around the world, from northern Canada to the Maldives, those in Panama are currently feeling the crush of closer waves. Thousands of native Panama Islanders are being forced to move away from their ancestral homes and relocate to the mainland as sea levels rise ...

(Sea Level Rise Forces Panama Islanders to Relocate). There is little reason to wonder why Dredd Blog quoted the more practical government report which this series is about:

Climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future, has moved firmly into the present.
...
Many more impacts of human-caused climate change have now been observed.
...
Americans are noticing changes all around them.
...
Residents of some coastal cities see their streets flood more regularly during storms and high tides. Inland cities near large rivers also experience more flooding, especially in the Midwest and Northeast. Hotter and drier weather and earlier snow melt mean that wildfires in the West start earlier in the year, last later into the fall, threaten more homes, cause more evacuations, and burn more acreage. In Alaska, the summer sea ice that once protected the coasts has receded, and fall storms now cause more erosion and damage that is severe enough that some communities are already facing relocation.

(Government Climate Change Report). The "2,000 y" numbers in the "The Multimillennial Sea-level Commitment" scientific report mentioned above will not change the reality going on before our eyes now.

But better numbers, based on all relevant and practical factors mentioned above, will help the coastal cities prepare to do the same thing that those people, whose land has been inundated by sea-level rise, have had to do.

That is, to begin to think about the way to migrate to higher ground (Has The Navy Fallen For The Greatest Hoax?), which is better than gathering courage from fantasy movies (On The Glut of Superhero Movies).

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

On The Glut of Superhero Movies

"Big We"

If there is one thing the establishment press does not like it is the appearance of helplessness.

Here, I am speaking of a particular helplessness --pabulum preaching helplessness.

The mainstream press has existed, as far back as we can readily know in one post, to do one thing always.

That staple of pressdom is to tell us "everything is fine", and that this is so because the "Big We" did it, and the "Big We" is still doing it.

Yes, that means the exceptional "Big We", which has brought us security, prosperity, freedoms, rights, and all things cultural (On The Origin of Nanny Statesmen).

But while those presstitutes are slaving away in the vast propaganda pabulum trade, they can't handle a problem they can't brush off with quickie McPabulum.

Which is any problem which would require something that takes substance (something beyond sound-bites, beyond jingoism, and beyond bumper-stickers) to forge a solution (Blind Willie McTell News).

They seem to think that even admitting of a real problem, admitting to a real threat to civilization, is tantamount to admitting their own failure.

Possibly it even requires them to admit that they have been super wrong, blinded by their own headlights, while majoring in the minors.

Hence, a plethora of superhero movies injected into the media world to wash away all these blues.

A perceptive fellow, who is a movie director/producer, said what the plastic pabulum presstitutes can't seem to say, or to see:

"Glut of superhero movies is because of 2 things

1. We sense impending eco-catastrophe
2. We seem unable to alter course to save ourselves"

(Twitter Tweet by Peter Webber). It is interesting that Sigmund Freud, and other luminaries, also picked up on this reality long ago:

"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." - Sigmund Freud
...
“The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
...
“One would say that [man] is destined to exterminate himself after having rendered the globe uninhabitable.” - Lamarck (1817)

(Quotes Tab). These luminaries saw long ago what the establishment press does not want to talk about as mature adults or mature leaders would.

Thus, they do not hold the government to the task or to the purpose of government, which is The Common Good.

So here we are, continuing down Highway 61 toward The Sixth Mass Extinction, a.k.a., the common bad:

Climate scientist James Hansen has said that it is "game over" for the climate if the Keystone XL pipeline is allowed to be built as it would lock us into unsustainable use of the dirty tar sands crude for the foreseeable future. And climate activist and author Bill McKibben has written about Global Warming's Terrifying New Math which states that we must leave the oil industries massive oil reserves in the ground if we are to have a chance at mitigating climate change.

(State Department Corruption - Keystone). What could be more Earth shaking than "game over" for establishment news media to report on?

What could be more difficult to accomplish than "we must leave the oil industries' massive oil reserves in the ground" (see The Peak of The Oil Lies - 6)?

Thus, in this vacuum of journalistic integrity, superhero movies have popped up.

Yes, talking about the death of civilization is psychologically taboo, it is voodoo to McTell News, because if they report that story it will apply to us as individuals, as consumers:

A recent paper by the biologist Janis L Dickinson, published in the journal Ecology and Society, proposes that constant news and discussion about global warming makes it difficult for people to repress thoughts of death, and that they might respond to the terrifying prospect of climate breakdown in ways that strengthen their character armour but diminish our chances of survival. There is already experimental evidence suggesting that some people respond to reminders of death by increasing consumption. Dickinson proposes that growing evidence of climate change might boost this tendency, as well as raising antagonism towards scientists and environmentalists. Our message, after all, presents a lethal threat to the central immortality project of Western society: perpetual economic growth, supported by an ideology of entitlement and exceptionalism.

(Convergence - Fear of Death Syndrome). That could mean less hot dog sales, so as the President said as one response to 9/11, "go shopping."

Which illustrates the point very well:

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.

(MOMCOM's Mass Suicide & Murder Pact - 5). In conclusion, the establishment press does what it sees as its duty, which is to be a sort of Dr. Death, feeding us the pabulum of denial.

They do the denial rap so we don't have to face up to the growing insanity in our civilization (The Peak of Sanity - 3).