Bill McKibben: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet

Thanks nice surprise Bill was here in CANCUN, recently for climate change conference, also 7 months ago I too got bit by DENGUE Fever, struck me behind the knee, blew up like a balloon, lost some tissue, could not eat, or sleep properly, 2 weeks in the house,took six months to get back the tissue I lost. Yes the bugs are getting more aggressive. Ocean lice, stingrays etc. all are more agitated. Climate instability has many diverse manifestations, including the HUMAN is changing.

Quote: Originally Posted by Eric25001 Please explain how CO2 levels go up from 1940 to 1970 while temperatures drop! Are you seriously interested in an answer? We'll see. Carbon dioxide forcing was not enough to overcome the drop in solar irradiance in those years; what is significant in the 1970's is that solar irradiance continued to drop while surface temperatures began to rise again, as they have continued to do. This is one of many pieces of evidence that point to the dramatic rise of the past decades being linked to human activity. Quote: Originally Posted by Eric25001 Also 2000 to 2010! Simply not true (you can't include 2010 anyway since it is not over yet); but even if it were true, the long-term trend, which is more indicative of the change in climate, is up, and dramatically up; indeed, the period you mention was the hottest decade in the history of recorded temperatures. The measurements we are discussing are for surface temperatures only, and it is worth mentioning that the oceans necessarily absorb far more of the heat we've been accumulating than shows on the surface. As you continue to educate yourself about climate science, I recommend you next consider the important distinction between weather and climate. Quote: Originally Posted by Eric25001 Feedback models that claimed to use conservative estimates of CO2 temperature feedback loop were WRONG. Sorry, can't understand what you're talking about. Quote: Originally Posted by Eric25001 Is there any evidence that would convince you that man made CO2 aka Anthropogenic Global Warming is at best way over stated (WRONG)? Well, what have you got? Quote: Originally Posted by Eric25001 If nothing then you are a joke! Science is always open to the evidence! Are you just a fearmonger? True Believer no better than the zealots who burned witches and hearatics? In this case the heretics and the true believers are going to burn about equally, I think. You seem pretty confident, but I'm not persuaded by either your "facts" or your attitude. You can't believe that anyone will take this stuff seriously, do you? Quote: Originally Posted by Eric25001 To quote Castro Historia Absolva. What he actually said was, "La historia me absolverá." Your version has a kind of hieratic Latin vibe that's kind of cool (or, if you prefer, "hearatic"), although it doesn't make sense in either Spanish or Latin... or English... You can use it to name your research vessel, the one that you're going to sail through the Northwest Passage, proving that Arctic sea ice is increasing. :

America is stupid because its foundations since the beginning- just a few generations ago compared to Europe and Chine and India and Africa and the Near East and on and on - are predicated on - progress meaning growth. The unlimited, free right to an EXTERNAL idea of growth or progress. Why? Because the market has over time replaced the INTERNALLY heard human 'voice' of value, with the material 'voice' of the market. It is now the needs of global businesses and people playing with global currencies and other globally scaled financial projects, which drive the market and what IT alone means by growth and progress - of course setting aside the "interference" of governments offering oil subsidies, cultural subsidies, infrastructure subsidies, farming subsidies. That market's voice of materialism is not the voice of moral human beings imagining how to build a just, vital and sustainable creative society. It's the voice of business bound hand and foot to concrete, money making more money. Capital as the goal. And once capital is elevated in this way to being now the vision, the goal and the means, everything else becomes instrumental to it. Human beings labour, the energy creted from resources of the earth, and all our creative imaginations of what is possible. There is no longer an equal relationship of money with society, morality, creativity, or imagination. Not one iota of one. Never mind the earth. Never mind dissenting opinions. The voice that imagines that capital should be instrumental to human values, is a quiet, private, internal, human, and personal voice. At first. The market is an external concrete voice and it says "more money now to make more money now". Without a 'please and thank you', or a 'when you can' or an I Thou. It demands and it breaks your knees if you don't give. So now, even as the earth burns and as we burn too, the market's voice is a past voice with no future vision or memory, and it's pulling Americans and their financial empire away from a present need. It still says "Grow more money now. You cannot do without external GDP growth. Growth only means an increase in capital. There is no other value on the earth. There is only one world-wide market exchange. There are no countries. There is no justice apart from what the market determines." Meanwhile, in other parts of the world, some states still uphold other values. Human ones, ones about nature, ones about culture. Other nations also use the word progress and growth, but they use the words in a biospheric, post empire sense. Growth means expansion into complexity, into more depth, into more personal ownership distributed to other persons, into solving more problems, into revealing more vision, and into freeing more voiceless creatures into representation and greater life. I think Americans are still romantically attached to the old meaning of capital and its purposes, and do not realize still, even now after the 2008 market collapse, that capital has long since run from those goals and is now using human beings as capital. Slavery, by an other name.

Well, in face of the fact that i'm by far not the only one giving this talk five stars, i'd expect more than scientific nonsense and hobby-psychoanalysis of myself thank you very much! I know that overpopulation of any species in any given environment will affect the system, possibly even destroy it. I don't know about Earth Day, but I do feel responsible about my "foot-print". How that could make someone feel good and warm and fuzzy - in face of the destruction and killing we institutionalized - is that USA-hypocracy? Well, I'm not from the US, and my rethorical question might give you a hint about what my feelings are towards those cultural and social developments... Why are you so hung up on the things that *weren't* in the talk? The title of it simply wasn't: "Making a Life on a Crowded New Planet" !!! There are good talks about overpopulation here on FORA, you know? ;-) I don't know about Pew Polls either, but i suspect that *in the US* much more influencial people than Bill are responsible for the spread of misinformation which leads to less support of global-warming-issues - and i'm not only talking about Fox and Limbaugh. And your fuzz about simple slogans, well, that's a cheap shot - and a red hering... I'm not going into that, because it makes me sad and angry. Did you by any chance go to a good university that made you feel warm and fuzzy about your intellectualism? Actually, I did :-) I'd never call myself a big fan of "slogans" or whatever you wanna call it, but you cannot argue with the fact that they are powerful. If you saw the pictures in his talk and realize how many people he reached, then you should be amazed. Compare that to your pee polls and the question you should be asking is this: why are people in the USA so f*°k!n& $t00p!d?!?

Shake your head? Are you so easily snowed by this kind of feel good nonsense? Don't you agree that uncontrolled population growth is the major issue driving resource consumption and global climate change? How can you possibly not detest an indefensible, doctrine that enslaves women by prohibiting birth control and abortion rights? Not attacking this doctrine is like lecturing at Chevron and pretending that burning of fosil fuels have no affect on climate change. I'm glad that this talk made you feel so warm and fuzzy - because that's all it does. Attitudes like yours remind me of a typical Earth Day celebration - the morning after all you see is trash, designer water bottles and all the detritus of the conspicuous consumption that drives the problem. But everyone felt so good the day before. Look at the Pew Poll and explain to me why it isn't the fault of vacuous light weight clowns like Bill McKibben and Al Gore that the support of global warming issues has dramatically dropped in the last two years. Simple minded slogans like "350 PPM" are for simple minded cheer leaders who haven't taken the trouble to education themselves on the complex and serious issues. James Lovelock would laugh in this pathetic pretenders face. So, you don't know who James Lovelock is? Then you don't deserve to have an opinion on climate change.

I can only shake my head at the previous comments... It got five stars from me :-)

Bill McKibben embodies everything that is wrong with the climate change movement. During the part of his talk that touched upon the issue of Earth’s out-of-control population growth being a major contributing factor to anthropogenic caused climate change, he failed to point out that population growth is significantly being driven by the Vatican’s indefensible prohibitions of birth control and abortion which are mainly imposed on the poor and uneducated in sub-Saharan Africa and Central/South American. Apparently he didn’t have the courage to offend his fawning hosts at a Catholic University. He failed in the first commandment of sincere political speak: he refused to speak truth to power. Egos amuck are painful to watch – ridiculous sloganeering with the “350 PPM” message accomplishes nothing because it is not accepted by the mainstream nor do the majority of the protesters have an inkling of the complex issues driving the climate change debate. Read the chapter on sloganeering in Neil Postman’s classic text, “Crazy Talk, Stupid Talk” to get an idea why reducing a complex debate to a bump sticker always has a negative impact. Wake up and view the 2009 Pew Poll ( http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1386/cap...-opinion)which shows that the number of anthropogenic climate change believes has tumbled across all demographics in the last few years. If you believe that global climate change is an imminent threat to all life on Earth, then you should understand that the likes of Al Gore and Bill McKibben are our worst enemies.

Please explain how CO2 levels go up from 1940 to 1970 while temperatures drop! Also 2000 to 2010! Feedback models that claimed to use conservative estimates of CO2 temperature feedback loop were WRONG. Is there any evidence that would convince you that man made CO2 aka Anthropogenic Global Warming is at best way over stated (WRONG)? If nothing then you are a joke! Science is always open to the evidence! Are you just a fearmonger? True Believer no better than the zealots who burned witches and hearatics? To quote Castro Historia Absolva. Eric

Agent McKibben: Sooo sen globocorp, you have a choice. You can go back to your desk and continue writing the legislation you always have and watch your species be forced underground by giant robotic mosquitoes charged by an acidic sky, or you can go outside, look around you, and decide that you want to live on a green planet with trees and tree rings and rabbits and rabbit holes. One of these courses action has a future here in this world, the other does not.