Call for Emergency Action - 2

Downtown tomorrow

In the previous post of this series, I was reminded of the saying "every disaster movie begins with a media avoidance, government official denial, or general ignoring of a dire warning from a scientist".

In the case involved in the previous post of this Dredd Blog series, it was a warning from "233 [medical/scientific] journals ‘call for emergency action’ to limit global heating" (Medical News Today).

But 'disaster movies are so alarmist' we and our friends might be wont to say.

In the disaster movie they were talking about, the movie you and I are now appearing in, that "233 journals" is a record number of scientists to begin a movie.

Nevertheless, our 'movie' also contains (in real time) "233 [medical/scientific] journals ‘call for emergency action’ to limit global heating" and "media avoidance, government official denial, or general ignoring of a dire warning from a scientist".

The results are the same even when the warning is given under penalty of perjury (under oath) in a major federal court case in the United States (Case No. 18-36082, IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT):

"I, Dr. Eric Rignot, hereby declare and if called upon would testify as follows:..."

"1. I have been researching and studying ice sheets and climate change for nearly 30 years. I have spent decades on the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica, watching them transform and decay into rivers..."

"2. I am currently a Professor of Earth system science at the University of California, Irvine, and the principal scientist for the Radar Science and Engineering Section at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory..."

"4. I have authored over 385 publications in the area of glaciology and climate science and given dozens of talks on the subject. My research is highly-cited in the geosciences, with my work being cited over 3,100 times in 2018. I have extensively investigated the interactions of ice and climate, in particular to determine how the ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland will respond to climate change in the coming century and how they will affect global sea level, using satellite remote sensing techniques (imaging radar, laseraltimetry, radio echo sounding), airborne geophysical surveys (icebridge), field surveys (radar, GPS, bathymetry, CTD), and numerical modeling (ice sheet motion, ocean circulation near glaciers, coupled ocean/ice sheet models). I have particular expertise in glaciology, climate change, understanding the interactions of ice and climate, ice sheet mass balance, how ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland will respond to climate change, satellite remote sensing, ice-ocean interactions, and current/future contributions of ice sheets to sea level change. I have served on many national and international committees, including National Research Council/National Academy of Science committees, panels and/or boards..."

"5. I have been extensively involved in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (“IPCC”) scientific assessment activity, with a particular emphasis on cryosphere science. I was a Contributing Author of Chapter 4 and Expert Reviewer of Chapters 5 and 10, WG1, IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, which was attributed the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. I was a Lead Author of Chapter 4, Cryosphere, IPCC Fifth Assessment Report in 2013. I am currentlythe Lead Author of the IPCC “Special Report on Ocean and Cryosphere,”Chapter 3. In 2018, I was elected a Member of the National Academy of Sciences. In 2016, I was awarded the Louis Agassiz Medal for the Cryosphere Division of the European Geosciences Union. I was also elected a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union in 2013 and awarded NASA’s Outstanding Leadership Medal in 2012..."

"6. Ice melt from pole to pole is rising because of past and ongoing human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, which warm the air and the oceans and affect the wind regimes, storm tracks, and ocean circulation around the planet. The increasing surface temperatures melt the ice from above and the warming seas melt the ice from below, where the glaciers touch the sea. Sea levels are rising because of the increasing ice melt on land that discharges into the sea, primarily from Alaska, Canada, Greenland and Antarctica, but increasingly – and already dominantly - from Greenland and Antarctica..."

"7. One critical aspect of the process of ice sheet melt is its irreversible character. Irreversible means that it would take centuries to reverse the process and restore the system back to its initial state. We are in a situation where the extra heat from accumulated carbon dioxide (“CO 2 ”) concentrations has created a ticking time bomb for the planet’s ice sheets. Some of our ice sheets are already in an unstoppable melt and disintegration[state]... We are currently on a pathway that will almost certainly lead to 3 m sea level rise from Greenland if climate warming continues on its present path. The West Antarctic ice sheet is already in a state of collapse, committing us to 1 m sea level rise from the Amundsen Sea Embayment and possibly 3 m from the rest of the marine based sector of West Antarctica. Thus, between the irreversible melting of portions of Greenland’s and Antarctica’s ice sheets, humanity has already committed itself to a 3-6 m rise in sea level..."

"8. Enormous irreparable damage has already been done, but there is even greater damage that is still preventable if we act swiftly. The only way to prevent additional ice sheet disintegration is to prevent further build up of human-caused CO 2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and ultimately to facilitate the drawdown through land-based sequestration of the overaccumulation of CO 2 that is heating the planet. There is only one effective way to stop future planetary heating, and to do it quickly..."

"9. What we do today will influence the stability of ice sheets for the next 30-40 years with enormous consequences for the nation’s shorelines and marine resources. Presently, we are on course to launch the ice sheets of Greenlandand Antarctica into multi-meter sea level rise. While we have passed the point of return for some of these ice sheets, we cannot afford for others, like the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, to follow the same fate..."

(Dr. Rignot Under Oath). Our movie, like the science fiction movies, does not end well either.

The previous post in this series is here.

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Will Elections Cure The Disease? - 6

"Just have an election"

The 'main stream' news media is abuzz with harangues about elections purportedly being agents for saving or destroying 'our democracy'.

Another intense subject which gives new meaning to the term 'breaking news' is the Covid-19 pandemic.

Together, with the response to the pandemic (many people do not think that the pandemic really exists), those two things are breaking more than just the news.

Both sides of these reactionary groups (in the sense of not having seen it coming) seem to think that elections are a cure for these problems.

This Dredd Blog series has discussed the "elections are a cure" notion for quite some time (2010-2021: Will Elections Cure The Disease?, 2, 3, 4, 5).

A recent article by Robert Kagan says that we are in a constitutional crisis:

“The United States is heading into its greatest political and constitutional crisis since the Civil War, with a reasonable chance over the next three to four years of incidents of mass violence, a breakdown of federal authority, and the division of the country into warring red and blue enclaves. The warning signs may be obscured by the distractions of politics, the pandemic, the economy and global crises, and by wishful thinking and denial. But about these things there should be no doubt: First, Donald Trump will be the Republican candidate for president in 2024. The hope and expectation that he would fade in visibility and influence have been delusional. He enjoys mammoth leads in the polls; he is building a massive campaign war chest; and at this moment the Democratic ticket looks vulnerable. Barring health problems, he is running. Second, Trump and his Republican allies are actively preparing to ensure his victory by whatever means necessary."

(Our Constitutional Crisis Is Already Here,Washington Post; Wayback Machine; or Bespacific).

This Dredd Blog series has specifically mentioned this type of problem, (historically and herstorically); pointing out that the subject matter is composed of:

"This series assumes, for the purpose of discussion, that civilizations can become sick.

I am not referring to a pandemic composed of physical conditions that render the populace physically sick, such as Covid-19. 

Instead, I am referring to psychological sickness such as denial, depression, mania, and psychosis that isn't physically apparent (in the pandemic sense).

It's a mental realm type of discussion.

A historian who was at one time the most often quoted historian, alluded to this type of sickness:

"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). Mass psychosis is involved when a large group either kills itself, or kills another group."

(Will Elections Cure The Disease? - 5). Likewise, in that post Dredd Blog pointed out that the "father of psychoanalysis" saw these things coming and warned that a new type of therapy (not politics) must be brought forth:

"Another famous "old timer", who is called the "father of psychoanalysis", was on to this phenomenon:

"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 and Its Discontents, Sigmund Freud, 1929, emphasis added). The gist of it is that "group psychology" of the type we have developed nowadays is not what Freud had in mind."

(ibid). While another 'seer' did not have a degree in psychoanalysis, it does not take a degree to note that SUICIDE IS A MENTAL DISEASE RATHER THAN A POLITICAL PROBLEM (see the quote from "A Study of History" by historian Toynbee above).

One of the psychoses which both historian Toynbee and the Founders of the USA mentioned as a 'show stopper' was addiction to war, i.e warmongering (How To Identify The Despotic Minority).

The previous post in this series is here.

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"We spend more on national security than the rest of the world combined ..."

"The Military is the lead federal agency on climate change ... and that is ... extremely dangerous ... we may lose the republic ..." - Professor Wilkerson (video)

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