The Authoritarianism of Climate Change - 3

Putin on the Ritz

I. Background

So far in this series I have not addressed the question of the proper way to respond, in terms of considering multiple ways of responding, to the ramifications of global warming induced climate change (The Authoritarianism of Climate Change, 2).

In other words, what is the proper way to respond, on a local scale, to the global warming induced climate change induced changes in sea level?

Should a local community or a local seaport authority be dictated to ("You shall ignore sea level change because it is a hoax!" ... "You shall adapt to sea level change exactly in the manner we dictate!") or is another way better ("Each local coastal area shall respond to sea level change as their local governments determine based upon the votes of the people in that local area") ?

The stakes are quite high (Hansen et al, 2016).

It would seem, at first blush, that allowing local ways of resolving problems is a better approach:

"With such a serious sea-level rise on the horizon, experts are increasingly looking at its potential impacts on coasts to facilitate local adaptation planning. This is a more complex issue than one might think, because different stretches of coast can be affected in very different ways. First of all, the sea-level response to global warming will not be globally uniform, since factors like changes in ocean currents (Levermann et al 2005) and the changing gravitational pull of continental ice (Mitrovica et al 2001) affect the local rise. Secondly, superimposed on the climatic trend is natural variability in sea level, which regionally can be as large as the climatic signal on multi-decadal timescales. Over the past decades, sea level has dropped in sizable parts of the world ocean, although it has of course risen in global mean (IPCC 2007). Thirdly, local land uplift or subsidence affects the local sea-level change relative to the coast, both for natural reasons (post-glacial isostatic adjustment centred on regions that were covered by ice sheets during the last ice age) and artificial ones (e.g., extraction of water or oil as in the Gulf of Mexico). Finally, local vulnerability to sea-level rise depends on many factors." [cf. Tamisiea & Mitrovica]

(Sea-level Rise: Towards Understanding Local Vulnerability, emphasis added). But what if a local decision will result in negative impacts on an adjacent local area?

Would the proper response be to increase the decision making scope up to the next higher level (e.g. from city authority up to county authority, or from county authority up to state authority, or from state authority up to national authority, or finally, from national authority up to United Nations authority)?

Who would decide when the current authority should be replaced with a higher authority?

II. Back In The USA & "USSR"

The response in the USA, as in the USSR, is to dictate the response from the Administrative Branch of Government (e.g. Putin & Trump).

The U.S. President has ordered the military to stop saying that global warming induced climate change is a national security threat, his cabinet is doing the same, and more, in areas of their jurisdiction (even wiping official documents and websites clear of any mention of things relating to climate change).

At the same time, states are rejecting that federal approach saying they will have a different response.

Some lawsuits at the city level of governance have invoked the judicial branch (courts) of governance (Oilfluenza, Affluenza, and Disgorgement, 2, cf. JULIANA et al. v U.S.).

Russia has the same seemingly contradictory stance on the issue, which like in the USA, will have an impact on how the problem is handled:

"Many influential voices here routinely debunked climate change, and some Russian newspapers in recent years chalked up climate variability to a mythical U.S. weapon aimed at Russia, or as a foreign plot aimed at Russia's energy exports.
...
Earlier this month, Russia's government fired the head of its weather forecasting agency, the Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring, or Roshydromet. Alexander Frolov, 65, had surpassed the mandatory retirement age for civil servants, but the real reason he was forced out, observers say, was Roshydromet's failure to anticipate the late-May storm's intensity and warn Muscovites accordingly. His ousting also sent a message to the environment ministry, Roshydromet's overseer. The state prosecutor's office, according to the newspaper Kommersant, demanded that the ministry take steps to increase the accuracy of forecasts in light of a changing climate.

The new charge to the environment ministry reflects a sea change in Russia's views about climate change and how the nation must respond. Politicians have acknowledged that extreme weather events have doubled over the past 25 years, to 590 in 2016, and that average temperatures are rising, particularly in the Arctic. Yet until recently, tackling climate change was a low priority for the federal government. One reason is complacence, because Russia's greenhouse gas emissions have already plummeted since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Another is political: Russia's economy depends heavily on pumping oil and gas out of the ground."

(Russia wants to protect itself from climate change?). Unfortunately Trump and Putin have yet another thing in common it would seem.

III. Conclusion

The issue, then, involves more than agreeing on the science, it also involves agreeing on the governmental dynamics to use while reacting to the problem.

IMO, that makes it a much more dangerous situation.

The previous post in this series is here.

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Civilization Not Busy Being Born is Busy Dying

The art of ice

One has to wonder how so many people saw civilization as a danger to the planet Earth.

How they saw that it was a danger to all life forms.

How they saw that the danger applied to the human species too.

It is not as difficult for "the many" who see that today even though the other "the many" do not see it.

Do you get miffed if people do not want to die the way you have heard is the proper way to die even though "nothing is certain except death and taxes" according to those possessed of the impulse to determine which is which?

Is death a tax or is a tax a death in the world of what you call life?

That debate is the basic McTell News rap of the past Ad Nauseum section of the current Anthropocene.

As regular readers know, I am fascinated with the prescience of those who see long into the future:

“One would say that [man] is destined to exterminate himself after having rendered the globe uninhabitable.” - Lamarck (1817)

“The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

"For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now — and never to be equaled again. If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive ..." - Jesus Christ (Matt. 24)

"Mayr, from the point of view of a biologist, argued that it's very unlikely that we'll find any [extraterrestrial intelligence]. And his reason was, he said, we have exactly one example: Earth. So let's take a look at Earth. And what he basically argued is that intelligence is a kind of lethal mutation ... you're just not going to find intelligent life elsewhere, and you probably won't find it here for very long either because it's just a lethal mutation" - Dr. Noam Chomsky paraphrasing Dr. Ernst Mayr

“Experience has shown that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.” – Thomas Jefferson

(On The Origin of the Crusader Pathogen - 2). Some do the same thing as an art form which includes more abstraction:

I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests,
I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans,
I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard,
...
I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin',
... the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world,
Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin',
Heard ten thousand whisperin' and nobody listenin',
Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin',
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter,
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley,
...
I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin',
I'll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest,
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty,
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters,
...
And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard,
And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

(Office of the Prescient of the U.S.). That even though there are those who argue that no one can see into the future.

Wrong ("he not busy being born is busy dying").

Civilization, in the form of society, habitually dies time and time again because of the myth that the future is unreachable by visionaries:

"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

(The Deceit Business - 3). The historians are loved as long as they flatter civilization, but fall into the darkness of civilization's ire when they do not.

Soon enough, thereafter, the society follows themselves into the darkness they were warned of.

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A Hard Rain ..., by Dylan (lyrics here)

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Hermeneutics For The Blogosphere

The definition of "hermeneutics" is "the theory and practice of interpretation" (Hermeneutics).

It is said that originally the notion of hermeneutics was a way to interpret scripture.

In the western world in general, that would mean interpreting the Bible (ibid).

In the realm of jurisprudence, lawyers and judges utilize "legal hermeneutics" when they analyze, for example statutes, and it has even been said by some writers that they have refined the practice of hermeneutics:

In the larger field of hermeneutics, legal hermeneutics is characteristically described as exemplary.

(SSRN, The Distinctiveness of Legal Hermeneutics). Notice that there is a "larger field of hermeneutics", and that the field of legal hermeneutics is "exemplary", that is, a good example for the other fields of hermeneutics.

I can think of one technique immediately that brings out one exemplary dynamic of legal hermeneutics:

... canons of construction are no more than rules of thumb that help courts determine the meaning of legislation, and in interpreting a statute a court should always turn first to one, cardinal canon before all others. We have stated time and again that courts must presume that a legislature says in a statute what it means and means in a statute what it says there ... When the words of a statute are unambiguous, then, this first canon is also the last: “judicial inquiry is complete.”

(Connecticut Nat. Bank v. Germain, 503 U.S. 249, 253-254, 1992). It seems like a "no brainer", after even minimal analysis, that if there is only one unambiguous meaning to a text, "interpretation" is not necessary.

But remember that the definition given in the first link in this post was that hermeneutics was all about "interpretation."

Still, "interpretation" would be perverse to meaning if there was nothing about the subject text that could be "interpreted".

So, in the practice of "exemplary" legal hermeneutics, the exercise is first called "statutory construction", rather than "statutory interpretation", because the first exercise is to determine whether or not any "interpretation" is necessary.

Remember the oft repeated statement "what is it about 'no' that you don't understand?"

The implication is that "interpretation" is unnecessary to determine what "no" means.

Those who can find their way around the blogosphere know that misunderstanding of both blog posts, and of comments on those blog posts, are regularly confused and/or conflated as to their meaning.

We bloggers would do well to follow good canons of textual inquiry, that is, good blogging hermeneutics.

Using good hermeneutics does not mean that we have to agree with any text, once it has been analyzed for meaning, but it does mean that we won't be arguing or debating incoherently over that text.

One has to wonder if improper hermeneutics could be the reason that some experts disagree on the same body of evidence --- they have not developed sound hermeneutics?

On The Origin of Leeks - 4

A year ago on this date we talked about the dripping faucet of truth.

The fertile ground of secrets about government, too evil for our sweet little ears to hear, still grows larger and larger leeks.

The garden of journalism, outside the Establishment 1% Media, where the free press of the 99% thrives, is ripe still.

Yes, the plumbing is still leaking in the Republic of Bullshitistan ruled by the 1% plutocracy.

That is good, so here is last year's post revisited:

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In the first episode of this series we talked about the ancient origin of leeks.

Oh those leeks, we discovered, are such good food for the people, but they are a poison for the elites, they are a risk to the warmonger, but above all they are for sure a perplexing problem to those vexed with the fog of nationalism that is founded on the exceptionalism of foolishness.

Those on the right, who feign "pragmatic constitutional understanding" when confronted with the Fourth Amendment, tend to say: "I have nothing to hide, so why should I care if 'they' search me or mine without a warrant ... I mean c'mon ... only criminals fear to be searched, besides it makes us safe and secure to give up the Fourth Amendment."

But those who officially preach that doctrine to the sleepy minions (e.g. T-Baggers) become hostile and vain when they are searched without a "warrant" by the CIA (Cosmic Intelligent Agents) of the people, and then have to "feast on leeks" when the rank lies and propaganda are exposed.

All of a sudden, they have no use for WiggyLeeks, the food of the common folk.

They become national security wonks all of a sudden when the tides turn upon them, failing to realize that a rogue government is not something that is safe and secure in the first place.

Why doesn't it occur to them that if those sworn not to do what they don't want out in the open didn't do those bad things they would have nothing to worry about?

Those who indoctrinated those lizard brain controlled minions tend to wilt like a leek in the desert without water when they have to endure violations of the principles of that "quaint writ" (Gonzales) because of the emergence of the truth about them.

Well, it is so close to thanksgiving time that we need to talk about that constitutional food of the people, the leeks of the people, from now until Pentagonia, Capitol of Bullshitistan is a democracy again.

After that we will celebrate the new era with some champagne and rejoicing while we sing "long live the leeks and long live the people".

As it turns out, a couple of media newspapers are leek eaters:

US embassy cables leak sparks global diplomatic crisis

• More than 250,000 dispatches reveal US foreign strategies
• Diplomats ordered to spy on allies as well as enemies
• Saudi king urged Washington to bomb Iran

"... cables date from 2007 or later — show American officials struggling with events whose
outcomes are far from sure. To read through them is to become a global voyeur, immersed in the jawboning, inducements and penalties the United States wields in trying to have its way with a recalcitrant world."

(Guardian, see also NY Times). Now go out into the garden, pick some leeks, and "boil them cabbage down" (the Guardian has a download mechanism).

We must not DeLay the rights of the people, we must resist the robber barons and the criminally insane, so that we preserve at least a chance that we or our children can dwell in the next civilization.

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For the children who carry on:



The previous post in this series is here.

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On The Origin of Leeks - 2

In the first episode of this series we talked about the ancient origin of leeks.

Oh those leeks, we discovered, are such good food for the people, but they are a poison for the elites, they are a risk to the warmonger, but above all they are for sure a perplexing problem to those vexed with the fog of nationalism that is founded on the exceptionalism of foolishness.

Those on the right, who feign "pragmatic constitutional understanding" when confronted with the Fourth Amendment, tend to say: "I have nothing to hide, so why should I care if 'they' search me or mine without a warrant ... I mean c'mon ... only criminals fear to be searched, besides it makes us safe and secure to give up the Fourth Amendment."

But those who officially preach that doctrine to the sleepy minions (e.g. T-Baggers) become hostile and vain when they are searched without a "warrant" by the CIA (Cosmic Intelligent Agents) of the people, and then have to "feast on leeks" when the rank lies and propaganda are exposed.

All of a sudden, they have no use for WiggyLeeks, the food of the common folk.

They become national security wonks all of a sudden when the tides turn upon them, failing to realize that a rogue government is not something that is safe and secure in the first place.

Why doesn't it occur to them that if those sworn not to do what they don't want out in the open didn't do those bad things they would have nothing to worry about?

Those who indoctrinated those lizard brain controlled minions tend to wilt like a leek in the desert without water when they have to endure violations of the principles of that "quaint writ" (Gonzales) because of the emergence of the truth about them.

Well, it is so close to thanksgiving time that we need to talk about that constitutional food of the people, the leeks of the people, from now until Pentagonia, Capitol of Bullshitistan is a democracy again.

After that we will celebrate the new era with some champagne and rejoicing while we sing "long live the leeks and long live the people".

As it turns out, a couple of media newspapers are leek eaters:

US embassy cables leak sparks global diplomatic crisis

• More than 250,000 dispatches reveal US foreign strategies
• Diplomats ordered to spy on allies as well as enemies
• Saudi king urged Washington to bomb Iran

"... cables date from 2007 or later — show American officials struggling with events whose outcomes are far from sure. To read through them is to become a global voyeur, immersed in the jawboning, inducements and penalties the United States wields in trying to have its way with a recalcitrant world."

(Guardian, see also NY Times). Now go out into the garden, pick some leeks, and "boil them cabbage down" (the Guardian has a download mechanism).

We must not DeLay the rights of the people, we must resist the robber barons and the criminally insane, so that we preserve at least a chance that we or our children can dwell in the next civilization.

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

On The Origin of Leeks

We all know that Joe The Plumber hates leeks about as much as Todd Palin does, or about as much as Poppy does.

There are many large businesses who pay their people well to suppress leeks in many ways, including programs using large volumes of music, video, comforting desserts, authorities, and the like, to draw attention away from the food value of the lowly leek.

Some serious, concerned professionals who have looked into the leek problem, are now revealing much we did not know about leeks:

"The leek probably has been cultivated throughout history. As for the Mediterranean origin of the leek, this does not seem true to the nature of the plant.

Leeks are one of the hardiest vegetables. They can be left in the ground all winter as long as the temperature does not drop below 10 degrees. Leeks also are less resistant to heat.

In colder climates leek seeds can be planted in autumn or early winter. They will survive the cold and grow in the spring. Leek plants can be put in the ground two months before the normal date of the last spring frost.

Leeks often are planted in shallow trenches, like asparagus, and the soil is heaped up around them to blanch the long root — its most delicious part. However, if they are buried too deep where it is warm, they may rot.

With all of that information, it is readily assumed that leeks did not originate in the warm Mediterranean climate. But where did the leek come from?

There is an Irish legend about its origin. St. Patrick was consoling a dying woman. She told him that in a vision she had seen an herb floating in the air, and that it had been revealed to her that unless she ate it she would die. The saint asked her what kind of herb it was. She told him that it looked like rushes. Thus St. Patrick transformed some rushes into leeks; she ate them and was cured.

You might not want to believe this legend, but the Irish regard leeks as their own vegetable. However, on the opposite shore of the Irish Sea, the leek is the national emblem of Wales. On St. David’s Day, Welshmen wear bits of leek in their buttonholes in memory of the victory of King Caldwallader over the Saxons in 640 A.D. In this battle the Welsh avoided striking the wrong fighters by wearing leeks in their caps as an identifying badge.

The cult of the leek in Wales also goes back to the annual spring plowing festival. On this occasion each participant contributes a leek to the communal stew, which is served at the festival."

(Plugging the leaks about leeks). Who knew, especially since even Google Scholar sometimes has them in its midst?

The next post in this series is here.

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Eat more chickin leeks:

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Robin Hood <-- Stabbed In The Back

The movie "Robin Hood", starring Russell Crowe & Cate Blanchett (2010), is a classic portrayal of a society back-stabbed by its government.

You know the story of Robin Hood? I have noticed that the establishment reviewers do not like this version very much.

As the story goes, promises are made in public by the sovereign to the entire nation promising them more freedoms in order to garner their support; then a blatant and open repudiation of those promises takes place once the danger passes.

Movie Poster - Wikipedia

The heroes who saved the establishment are then declared outlaws to be hunted down along with any of their supporters.

It was a one-time occurrence in the movie, but when we think about it, our political system has become the institutionalization of that very infidelity.

For example, it is a regular business for politicians to take the money of MOMCOM while promising the voters their needs will be taken care of, not MOMCOM's.

Then once in office they back-stab the public in the form of opening the people's Treasury to MOMCOM while closing it to the people (except for deposits).

See the movie whether or not you see the reality yet.

You will.

2 4 U 1 4 me - Isn't That Tax Special?

The politicians who have been banksters are treated like royalty.

The people are treated like the subclasses when it comes to taxes sometimes.

Professor Caron notes:

This provision was extraordinarily valuable to Robert Rubin and Henry Paulson, both of whom had hundreds of millions of dollars in unrealized capital gains in Goldman Sachs stock. When they were appointed secretary of the Treasury, they were able to realize all the gains on their stock shares, saving them tens of millions of dollars in taxes, and diversify their portfolios at the same time.

What I have always found interesting about this obscure provision of the tax law is that it recognizes a principle that ought to apply to all taxpayers.

(TaxProf Blog, italics added). What, the tax laws are not even handed? Banksters are special? No way, not in my country!?

Urgent Letter From Planned Parenthood

Guest Post from Christie Mills

It concerns a letter she received from Cecile Richards, President
Planned Parenthood Federation of America


Dear Christie,

They just won't stop. Yesterday, I wrote to you with breaking news about an attempt to strip Title X funding for Planned Parenthood from the Appropriations Act — now anti-choice senators are pushing a new amendment to undermine access to birth control.

The debate is happening today in the Senate. We need you to call your senators right now and tell them to vote "NO" on the DeMint Amendment to strip affordable birth control provisions from the Appropriations Act. Call the Senate switchboard at 202-224-3121 to contact your senators.

Planned Parenthood has been working to restore access to affordable birth control since 2007, when a legislative error caused the price of birth control to skyrocket by up to 900 percent for low-income women and college students. The no-cost fix to this problem has passed in the House of Representatives, and it's strongly supported by President Obama — but anti-choice senators are making one last effort to derail the affordable birth control fix.

Call 202-224-3121 and make sure your senators know: The affordable birth control fix is not an earmark. It's a vital piece of legislation that will expand access to family planning services for thousands of low-income women and college students and help them prevent unintended pregnancies at no cost to the federal government or to tax payers.

Senator DeMint, a long-time opponent of family planning, has submitted an amendment to remove affordable birth control provisions from the bill, claiming that the vital legislation is nothing but an earmark for Planned Parenthood. But here are the facts: this fix does not provide funding to Planned Parenthood — or anyone else! It simply fixes a mistake in the law that put up a roadblock for pharmaceutical companies who wanted to offer cheaper drugs to health clinics.

In these economic times, government should be removing unnecessary barriers like this one — and supporting common sense policies that give women the ability to plan their families and their futures.

I know we've been asking a lot of you recently, and I want you to know that your support is making a huge difference in Congress. It's so important for those of us who support family planning and expanding health care access to speak out, loud and clear.

Call your senators at 202-224-3121 and tell them to keep affordable birth control provisions in the Appropriations Act.

I've had enough of anti-choice politicians hiding their opposition to family planning behind claims of fiscal responsibility. Don't let them get away with it. Please, call your senators now and help us pass the affordable birth control fix once and for all.

Thank you for standing with us as we work to secure an important victory for family planning and women across the country.

Cecile Richards, President
Planned Parenthood Federation of America