Government Climate Change Report - 10

History of U.S. Global Change Research Program

This report may be extinct since the Administration of Denial has pulled off a coup (A Tale of Coup Cities - 14).

By "this report" I mean the report required by Public Law 101-606, 104 Stat. 3096-3104 (PDF), passed by congress in 1990 then signed into law by President George H.W. Bush (Global Climate Change Research Act).

(The link under the graphic, above, details the history of that law.)

A copy of the latest draft version of the legally required report is now available (2017 US climate report,  PDF, final PDF).

Play it again Sam

This latest report may not see the light of day, because the Fake Based Administration is loony when it comes to Global Warming Induced Climate Change.

The one thing that denialists now in power do not want us to know is the truth that is based upon the facts (The Shapeshifters of Bullshitistan - 2, Agnotology: The Surge - 16).

I suppose we should read the report while we can ... so ... let's look at some of the content:

"CSSR TOD: DO NOT CITE, QUOTE, OR DISTRIBUTE
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About This Report

As a key input into the Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4), the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) oversaw the production of this special, stand-alone report of the state of science relating to climate change and its physical impacts. The Climate Science Special Report (CSSR) serves several purposes for NCA4, including providing 1) an updated detailed analysis of the findings of how climate change is affecting weather and climate across the United States, 2) an executive summary that will be used as the basis for the science summary of NCA4, and 3) foundational information and projections for climate change, including extremes, to improve “end-to-end” consistency in sectoral, regional, and resilience analyses for NCA4. This report allows NCA4 to focus more heavily on the human welfare, societal, and environmental elements of climate change, in particular with regard to observed and projected risks, impacts, adaptation options, regional analyses, and implications (such as avoided risks) of known mitigation actions.

Much of this report is intended for a scientific and technically savvy audience, though the Executive Summary is designed to be accessible to a broader audience."

(U.S. Global Change Research Program, p. 3, PDF). Why would the Fake Based Administration not want information about the United States to be available for use by the United States?

Would it really hurt us that "bigly" to prepare, like we do in any insurance policy risk management scenario, for some of this?

For example, sea level change:

3. Relative sea level (RSL) rise in this century will vary along U.S. coastlines due, in part, to: changes in Earth’s gravitational field and rotation from melting of land ice, changes in ocean circulation, and vertical land motion (very high confidence). For almost all future GMSL rise scenarios, RSL rise is likely to be greater than the global average in the U.S. Northeast and the western Gulf of Mexico. In intermediate and low GMSL rise scenarios, it is likely to be less than the global average in much of the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. For high GMSL rise scenarios, it is likely to be higher than the global average along all U.S. coastlines outside Alaska (high confidence).

4. The annual occurrences of daily tidal flooding—exceeding local thresholds for minor impacts to infrastructure—have increased 5- to 10 fold since the 1960s in several U.S. coastal cities (very high confidence). Rates of increase, which are accelerating in over 25 Atlantic and Gulf Coast cities, are fastest where elevation thresholds are lower, local RSL rise is higher, or extreme variability is less (very high confidence). Tidal flooding will continue increasing in depth and frequency in similar manners this century (very high confidence).

(ibid, p. 413, PDF). That sea level change section is bolstered by another report, from another source, that has already been released:

"Sea level rise caused by global warming is usually cast as a doomsday scenario that will play out so far into the future, it’s easy to ignore. Just ask anyone in South Florida, where new construction proceeds apace. Yet already, more than 90 coastal communities in the United States are battling chronic flooding, meaning the kind of flooding that’s so unmanageable it prompts people to move away.

That number is expected to roughly double to more than 170 communities in less than 20 years."

(National Geographic). Hey deniers, you can run but you can't hide, because you are in the same boat the rest of us are in.

Anyway, getting back to the U.S. Global Change Research Program Report, I was pleased to see that this report is more accurate and sophisticated than the most recent IPCC report (an international, rather than a national report).

The authors of this report understand that gravity is not a hoax, and even cite a paper by the professor who gives the presentation in the video below (Professor Mitrovica):

"Second, the location of land ice melting imparts distinct regional “static-equilibrium fingerprints” on sea level, based on gravitational, rotational, and crustal deformation effects (Mitrovica et al. 2011) (Figure 12.1a–d). For example, sea level falls near a melting ice sheet because of the resulting changes in the distribution of mass on the planet and thus in the planet’s gravitational field."

(ibid, p. 414, PDF, emphasis added). That is a very good development in the science of sea level change (The Gravity of Sea Level Change, 2, 3, 4), so don't give up hope that they will also pick up on "ghost water" (The Ghost-Water Constant, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9).

Not only that, in another positive move, they are moving away from the "thermal expansion is the major cause of sea level rise in the 20th and 21st centuries" myth:

"Sea level change is driven by a variety of mechanisms operating at different spatial and temporal scales. Global mean sea level (GMSL) rise is primarily driven by two factors: 1) increased volume from thermal expansion of the ocean as it warms, and 2) increased mass from melt additions of ice locked in mountain glaciers and the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. Satellite (altimeter and GRACE) and in situ (Argo) measurements show that, since 2005, about one third of GMSL rise has been from steric changes (thermal expansion) and about two thirds from the addition of mass to the ocean, primarily from melting land-based ice (Llovel et al. 2014; Leuliette 2015; Merrifield et al. 2015; Chambers et al. 2016). The overall amount (mass) of ocean water, and thus sea level, is also affected to a lesser extent by changes in global land water storage associated with dams and reservoirs, groundwater extraction, and global precipitation anomalies (Reager et al. 2016; Rietbroek et al. 2016; Wada et al. 2016), such as associated with the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO)."

(ibid, p. 414, PDF, emphasis added). "One third" (thermal expansion) is not a major factor when compared to "two thirds" (ice melt water flowing into the oceans).

On that issue they are moving in the proper direction, however, they still have a ways to go, because "one third" is demonstrably in error, in terms of being way too high (On Thermal Expansion & Thermal Contraction - 21).

Now, go spread the good and bad news.

The previous post in this series is here.

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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.

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Global Warming Induced Climate Change Is A Matter of Law - 2

Fig. 1 Is Saturn's Hexagon defying the law?

Once upon a time scientists explored events and described "laws" (e.g. NASA Cassini).

The law of gravity, the laws of thermodynamics, and other natural laws were and still are within their province.

This concept was not altogether alien to the civil laws of cities, states, or nations.

That is known as comity.

As it turns out, one very basic reason for that comity is due to the common sense recognition that law was back then, and still is, a simple matter of sorting out who had or has "the say":

“The government of the United States has been emphatically termed a government of laws, and not of men. It will certainly cease to deserve this high appellation if the laws furnish no remedy for the violation of a vested legal right ... It is emphatically the province and duty of the Judicial Department [the judicial branch] to say what the law is. ”

(Marbury v Madison). That province of the judicial branch of the U.S. Government includes hearing the words and reading the works of professional scientists supplied as facts in various cases:

Based on respected scientific opinion that a well-documented rise in global temperatures and attendant climatological and environmental changes

Fig. 2 Thou shalt not have sharp edges @ 300 mph

have resulted from a significant increase in the atmospheric concentration of “greenhouse gases,” a group of private organizations petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to begin regulating the emissions of four such gases, including carbon dioxide, under §202(a)(1) of the Clean Air Act, which requires that the EPA “shall by regulation prescribe . . . standards applicable to the emission of any air pollutant from any class . . . of new motor vehicles . . . which in [the EPA Administrator’s] judgment cause[s], or contribute[s] to, air pollution . . . reasonably . . . anticipated to endanger public health or welfare,” 42 U. S. C. §7521(a)(1). The Act defines “air pollutant” to include “any air pollution agent . . . , including any physical, chemical . . . substance . . . emitted into . . . the ambient air.” §7602(g). EPA ultimately denied the petition, reasoning that (1) the Act does not authorize it to issue mandatory regulations to address global climate change, and (2) even if it had the authority to set greenhouse gas emission standards, it would have been unwise to do so at that time because a causal link between greenhouse gases and the increase in global surface air temperatures was not unequivocally established.
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Massachusetts and other state and local governments, sought review in the D. C. Circuit [... which held...] that the EPA Administrator properly exercised his discretion in denying the rulemaking petition.
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[Supreme Court Conclusion:] The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

(Global Warming Induced Climate Change Is A Matter of Law, quoting Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U.S. 497, 127 S. Ct. 1438 (2007), emphasis added).  That case was decided by seven Republican-appointed justices, and two Democrat-appointed justices.

As with cases involving speeding laws, when we are stopped for exceeding the speed limit, it is of no moment to tell the police officer that we do not believe in speeding laws.

Fig. 3 Downtown Deniersville

Nevertheless, there are various underpinnings of just that within the ongoing political discourse coming out of the new York White House (Fig. 3) following the coup parade (A Tale of Coup Cities, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13).

The Administrative Department has lost its way (You Are Here, "mad bull lost your way" - Rolling Stones @ Gimme Shelter), and in the tradition of the W Direction (The W Direction = The Perilous Path), now thinks it is the one with the say to make the laws rather than administer the laws.

They don't believe in any of that stinkin' clean air or stinkin' water jargon ("so what if I was exceeding the speed limit, I don't believe in speeding laws officer").

Not only that, they have even sent invaders into the realm of those who are required to enforce the law of the land.

Yes, and they are doing that nonsense even though the supreme law of the land (ruled as such by the Supreme Court) is contrary to their beliefs.

But, ignoring the legislative law of the congress, and the case law of the judicial branch of U.S. Government, they hazard this:

President-elect Donald Trump's Energy Department transition team sent the agency a memo this week asking for the names of people who have worked on climate change and the professional society memberships of lab workers, alarming employees and advisors.

The memo sent to the Energy Department on Tuesday and seen by Reuters on Friday, contains 74 questions including a request for a list of all department employees and contractors who attended the annual global climate talks hosted by the United Nations within the last five years.

(Trump Team Alarms Energy Department, emphasis added). They are alarmists of the authoritarian sort (The Authoritarianism of Climate Change). 

UPDATE: The McCarthyite request was rescinded after the DOI refused the request and congress members wrote them to say it was an abuse of authority (NewsMax).


To the contrary, I am an alarmist of the Paul Revere sort, holding two lanterns aloft while exclaiming "one if by land, two if by sea".

Anyway, it boils down to them wanting a list of the names of government employees who obey the law in "a government of laws, and not of men" so that those obedient government employees can be punished (The Queens of Stalingrad - 2).

Trust trumps paranoia.

The previous post in this series is here.

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The Pillars of Knowledge: Faith and Trust?

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The Common Good - 10

Some of those who focus a very accurate eye upon the economic dynamics of American culture use the word "oligarchy" to describe those dynamics (dynamics which actually constitute what is technically a "plutocracy"). 

The use of "oligarchy" is a ~2,300 year old mistake commenced by Aristotle (Wikipedia: Oligarchy), but it is still in use by a lot of people in the alternate media who contemplate the structures of our "economy."

As the video at the bottom of this post shows, Chris Hedges uses the word "oligarchy" tens of times, as Aristotle was wont to do, in order to describe what is technically a plutocracy (Wikipedia, Plutocracy), not an oligarchy.

The improper use of the term, however, does no damage to his understanding of the Ferengi system (Life In The Ferengi Home World - 3) he is describing.

Truth be known, the economic system is complex, so, analyzing it is somewhat akin to the ancient story of the blind men describing an elephant.

The economic system looks and feels a bit different, depending on the part of it that one uses for an analysis.

For example, I have used the terms "plutocracy", "plutonomy", "wartocracy", "military-oil-media-complex", and "American Feudalism" to describe "it."

IMO, the main thing, in any valid analysis of "it," is to determine what is being done, in terms of doing the common good v. doing the common bad (The Common Good, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9).

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

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Interview of Chris Hedges:

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Interview of John Perkins (reformed economic hit-man) ...

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Agnotology: The Surge - 15

I. Introduction

The king of American Agnotology, as it regards climate change (Senator Inhofe), informed us that global warming is the "greatest hoax" ever.

In the previous post of this series, Dredd Blog pointed out that people voted king Inhofe's assertion to be the biggest lie of 2014.

The democrats in the Senate forced a vote on these issues, using several amendments to a bill working its way through the legislative process:

It is nearly 27 years now since a Nasa scientist testified before the US Senate that the agency was 99% certain that rising global [average temperatures] were caused by the burning of fossil fuels.

And the Senate still has not got it – based on the results of three symbolic climate change votes on Wednesday night.

The Senate voted virtually unanimously that climate change is occurring and not, as some Republicans have said, a hoax – but it defeated two measures attributing its causes to human activity.
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Unless Senators are prepared to acknowledge the causes of climate change, it is likely they will remain unable and unwilling to do anything about it.

Democrats had planned the symbolic, “sense of the Senate” votes as a way of exposing the Republicans’ increasingly embarrassing climate change denial.

(Guardian, emphasis added). Thus, the Republicans in control in the U.S. Senate ignorantly hold that there is nothing we humans can do, one way or another, about global warming induced climate change, so "move along, nothing to see here folks."

II. The Agnotology of It All

Agnotology is the study of ignorance generators within a society, the study of entities which misinform, propagandize, or otherwise generate ignorance in the public consciousness and/or the public subconsciousness.

The Senate is now part of those ignorance generating institutions in American culture, and is fully teamed up with Oil-Qaeda.

The Democrats are also generating ignorance, because they know that being number one in very crude oil extraction is an imminent danger to society (Government Climate Change Report, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9).

Yet, democrats brag about being number one in the crude oil extraction business that is bringing danger to all living things on this planet we find ourselves on (You Are Here).

III. How Come Dis?

"How could this happen?" must be on a lot of people's minds, because what has been touted as the greatest debating institution of all governing bodies on Earth is becoming daft and absurd.

IV. The Snaky Trail of Oil-Qaeda

Regular readers know that Dredd Blog has chronicled and tracked the snaky trail of Oil-Qaeda, a criminal enterprise that created this lethal legacy over a century or so span of time (e.g. Civilization Is Now On Suicide Watch, 2, 3, 4).

That Dredd Blog tracking includes how Oil-Qaeda misled government, how it caused civilization to put fossil fuels into its "lifeblood" --thereby becoming Petroleum Civilization (e.g. The Universal Smedley - 2, Viva Egypt - 2, The Peak Of The Oil Wars - 10, The Fleets & Terrorism Follow The Oil, The Peak of Sanity - 3).

V. End of The Trail: @The Doors of Epigovernment/Private Empire

The trail ends in our day and age, our time, with the saga of how Oil-Qaeda teamed up with vehicle manufacturers, banksters, and military oriented industry to become the Epigovernment (e.g. Epigovernment: The New Model, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10), a.k.a. The Private Empire (MOMCOM: The Private Parts, 2, 3, 4, 5), a.k.a. the corporate monster (e.g. Corp Germ > Corp Seed > Corp Monster, 2, 3, 4), and finally, according to the Supreme Five, a "person" with more right to impact public elections and debates than you or me (Citizens United v FEC).

VI. The Impact of Oil-Qaeda on Governance

The chief spokesperson for the Epigovernment is the U.S. President, because, at this time the mainstay strategy of Oil-Qaeda is to substantially harbor its vast power in the "United States."

In the most recent State of the Union Message, the president summed up that reality:

"The United States is on top of the world in terms of energy production, President Barack Obama said during his sixth State of the Union ... “We believed we could reduce our dependence on foreign oil and protect our planet,” he said during his Jan. 20 address. “And today, America is number one in oil and gas" ...

(Petroleum Civilization: The Final Chapter ..., emphasis added). The cultural trance created by oil addiction clearly emerged in the SOTU for all to see (Comparing a Group-Mind Trance to a Cultural Amygdala).

That cultural trance (which leads one to believe that it is cool to be the number one polluter and to be a prime leader in Oil-Qaeda, while destroying the basis of civilization, and all that without negative consequences) is psychotic (Choose Your Trances Carefully, 2).

The U.S. has become a plutocracy, with a plutonomy instead of a democratic economy (The Homeland: Big Brother Plutonomy, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9).

That we practice the dynamics of a feudal society is of no moment to them either (American Feudalism, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11).

VII. Conclusion: Dissent Will Not Shake Us From The Trance

No amount of dissent is a cure for psychopathy, no, it takes professional psychoanalysis followed with professional psychotherapy / treatment.

Unfortunately, there is no such treatment available, or in existence, for groups of this sort, as Freud intimated:

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]
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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, S. Freud, 1929, emphasis added). Thus, we are left to watch the catastrophe unfold, emanating from this lethal trance.

We are left to watch the political pundits, in their own well-honed trance, think and say that politics can cure these psychopaths.

We are left to watch other intellectuals, academics, activists, together with all manner of other well meaning individuals, labor under the illusion that current civilization is exceptional, unlike those that went down before us:

"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). Meanwhile, the reality is that long ago Oil-Qaeda chose a trance recklessly, a trance that only a catastrophe it can't handle can shake it out of.

In other words, too little and too late is the nature of its fate.

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

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"No Time", by Guess Who (lyrics here)

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Agnotology: The Surge - 14

The Making and Unmaking of Ignorance

The greatest ignorance took the form of a grandiose lie in the year 2014.

Voters identified this bit of ignorance as “Climate change is a hoax” (The People Have Spoken: This Is The Most Brazen Lie of 2014).

This lie is fostered by Oil-Qaeda, the criminal enterprise that kills more people than any other (Oil-Qaeda: The Indictment).

Oil-Qaeda has convinced those in the most powerful seats of the U.S. Congress that this lie is the truth.

You may be wondering "how in the world could that happen?"

More on that shortly.

When governments become criminally insane, as NAZI Germany did for a few years long ago, ignorance in many formats arises.

Eventually this type of wide-spread ignorance gave rise to the discipline of Agnotology, which Dredd Blog introduced in the first post of this series (Agnotology: The Surge, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13).

If you are not yet convinced of the long overdue need for such a discipline, take note that

King Denial I

the première climate change denier is now the chair of a relevant Senate Committee:

This year [Jim Inhofe] takes over the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee — the panel most associated with climate policy oversight — and says he plans to continue his role as a “one-man truth squad” on the issue.

(Washington Post, emphasis added). This Oil-Qaeda operative, "King Denial I", is financed with big dirty oil bucks, and is backed up by probably the largest propaganda campaign of recent history:

Around the world, carbon-based fuels are under attack. Increasingly grim economic pressures, growing popular resistance, and the efforts of government regulators have all shocked the energy industry. Oil prices are falling, colleges and universities are divesting from their carbon stocks, voters are instituting curbs on hydro-fracking, and delegates at the U.N. climate conference in Peru have agreed to impose substantial restrictions on global carbon emissions at a conference in Paris later in the year. All this has been accompanied by what might be viewed as a moral assault on the very act of extracting carbon-based fuels from the earth, in which the major oil, gas, and coal companies find themselves portrayed as the enemies of humankind.

Under such pressures, you might assume that Big Energy would react defensively, perhaps apologizing for its role in spurring climate change while assuming a leadership position in planning for the transition to a post-carbon economy. But you would be wrong: instead of retreating, the major [Oil-Qaeda] companies have gone on the offensive ... minimizing the potential for renewables to replace fossil fuels in just about any imaginable future.

(Carbon Counterattack, How Big Oil Is Responding, emphasis added). This type of doubling down is the signature psychopathology of Oil-Qaeda and its operatives.

Regular readers know that Dredd Blog has noted this cultural disorder in previous posts:

Therefore, both psychopaths and sociopaths are capable of committing heinous crimes; however, the psychopath would commit crimes against family members or “friends” (as well as strangers) and feel little to no remorse.
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The last main difference between psychopathy and sociopathy is in the presentation. The psychopath is callous, yet charming. He or she will con and manipulate others with charisma and intimidation and can effectively mimic feelings to present as “normal” to society. The psychopath is organized in their criminal thinking and behavior, and can maintain good emotional and physical control, displaying little to no emotional or autonomic arousal, even under situations that most would find threatening or horrifying. The psychopath is keenly aware that what he or she is doing is wrong, but does not care.

(When You Are Governed By Psychopaths - 2, cf. The Peak of Sanity - 5). Regular readers also know that Dredd Blog has often identified this problem as being psychological.

But more than that, it has been identified as an episode of an ongoing mass-murder-suicide (MOMCOM's Mass Suicide & Murder Pact - 5).

The serious danger is quite real, and it is well beyond the time to begin to try to do something about it.

Something besides deluding ourselves that elections alone are a sufficient cure for these psychological problems.

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

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Take heed ...

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Arcade Fire, Rebellion (Lies); lyrics here

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Epigovernment: The New Model - 10

Tu no lo sabes

Many people feel that the officials in political government are merely fronts that do the bidding of some unseen group.

That thought occurs so often because those politicians are not seen as working for the betterment of the citizenry (the 99%); but, at the same time, "this could not be the reality" the citizenry also surmises, even though the father of public relations (spin & propaganda) declared that to be the true case (The Ways of Bernays).

I feel a bit playful today, so I thought I would do a parody of a once-popular song's lyrics to 'splain some of these things (the actual lyrics and the actual song are at the bottom of today's parody format):

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I Write The Wrongs

I've been alive forever
And I scripted the very first wrong
I put the words and the policies together
I am epigovernment and I write the wrongs

I write the wrongs to make the whole world cling
I write the wrongs of Rove and political queens
I write the songs that make the young girls cry
I write the songs, I write the wrongs

My home lies deep within you
And I've got my own place in your soul
Now when I look out through your eyes
I'm young again, even though I'm very old

I write the wrongs to make the whole world cling
I write the wrongs of rove and political queens
I write the songs that make the young girls cry
I write the songs, I write the wrongs

Oh, my script makes you dance
And gives you spirit to risk a chance
And I prepared lock 'n' load so you can reprove
Dogma fills all thought, well, that's my place to start

It's from us, it's for you
It's from you, it's for us
It's an empire's symphony

I write the wrongs to make the whole world cling
I write the wrongs of Rove and political queens
I write the songs that make the young girls cry
I write the songs, I write the wrongs

I write the wrongs to make the whole world cling
I write the wrongs of Rove and political queens
I write the songs that make the young girls cry
I write the songs, I write the wrongs

I am epigovernment and I write the wrongs

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I Write The Songs
(written by Bruce Johnston)
(lyrics link)

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The Barry Manilow version

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

Ministry of Truth

"Are you ready for some truth?"

Unlike the current species of The Ministry of Truth (MOT), which covers up its real nature with a fabricated public patina, the original MOT was not so inclined.

On the outside wall of the original MOT, described in the book 1984, are three of the slogans of the Tea of Truth Party (TOTP): "WAR IS PEACE," "FREEDOM IS SLAVERY," "IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH."

When the Authoritarian Type B members of the Tea of Truth Party get together for tea, they talk about supporting Authoritarian Type A members absolutely, unequivocally, and resolutely.

It is a matter of honor for TOTP, who love the "good side" of the Type A member, but who fear the "bad side" of the Type A member, thus, their favorite brain food is ignorance, which they call "the strength of the party" (Agnotology: The Surge).

You may be surprised to learn that the authoritarian TOTP is a two-headed entity:

You never would have heard of my research if [John Dean] had not recently plowed through my studies, trying to understand, first, various people he knew in the Nixon White House, and then some leading figures of the Republican

Party of 2004. [p. 4]
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Authoritarianism is something authoritarian followers and authoritarian leaders cook up between themselves. It happens when the followers submit too much to the leaders, trust them too much, and give them too much leeway to do whatever they want -- which often is something undemocratic, tyrannical and brutal. In my day, authoritarian fascist and authoritarian communist dictatorships posed the biggest threats to democracies, and eventually lost to them in wars both hot and cold. But authoritarianism itself has not disappeared, and I'm going to present the case in this book that the greatest threat to American democracy today arises from a militant authoritarianism that has become a cancer upon the nation. [p. 8]

(The Authoritarians, by professor Bob Altemeyer, emphasis added). It may help to think of type B as enablers, and type A as bullies.

The interactions between bullies and enablers has led to an evolution from left to right, which includes torture, as the torture report being released today (information that we already knew) confirms.

President Ronald Reagan would be considered a RINO by today's evolved republicans, and would be considered left of center by the evolved democrats (President Reagan Puts Cheney In Jail).

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Some art of 9/11 ...

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Agnotology: The Surge - 14

A captive, not captivated, audience

Any subtitle for today's post is directed to the U.S. House of Republican Representatives who now function as the House of Reprehensible members.

They seem to think that "bi-Cameral" is a sexual term ("two bi's do it in front of a camera"), thus, they settled on the attorney who handled the polygamy case in Utah (Brown v. Buhman, Sister Wives).

I say that because the Senate is not involved in the lawsuit (House v HEW & Treasury, PDF) as it should be if bicameral legislative agreement was the reality on this issue.

So, the bottom line is that the lawsuit is not a bi-cameral lawsuit, it is unilateral.

Nor is it a lawsuit against President Obama as touted in the McTell News ("House sues Obama");  rather, it is a lawsuit against Secretary Burwell and Secretary Lew as defendants (see link to complaint above, PDF).

It is a unilateral case rather than a bicameral case involving both houses, because the Senate wanted nothing to do with it, and thus the Senate is not a party to the lawsuit.

In that light, some of the Republican House's allegations seem to be a bit hypocritical (no surprise there):

This legislative power may be exercised only through the “single, finely wrought, and exhaustively considered process,” Clinton v. City of New York, 524 U.S. 417, 439-40 (1998), that is familiar to us all, namely, the passage of identical bills by the House of Representatives and the Senate (bicameralism), followed by delivery to the President for his signature or veto (presentment). U.S. Const. art. I, § 7, cl. 2 (“Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the United States . . . .”). Beyond the President’s role in the presentment process, the Constitution does not permit the Executive Branch to enact laws, or to amend or repeal duly enacted laws, including by adopting rules or taking other unilateral actions that have such an effect.

(ibid, House Complaint, p. 2, emphasis added). The Republican House leaders forgot that their unilateral action, without the Senate, is not bicameralism, it is unilateralism.

In general, it takes tricameralism to make law (the president must agree to and sign legislation passed by both the Senate and the House before it becomes law).

It only takes bicameralism to pass legislation then put it on the President's desk (legislation is not law just because the House and/or the Senate pass it).

This Republican House-only case is headed for discussion in another chapter of the Agnotology textbooks, especially since the Republican House has ongoing agnotological troubles (evidently they think that "Republican House + a Court = bicameral legislation").

Troubles conceiving a mere three numerals (they also have trouble with "uni-", "bi-", and "tri-").

The previous post in this series is here.

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Proof that the public is smarter than the House: [Justice Souter indicates that only two-thirds of Americans do not know that there are three branches in their own government] (@1:27):

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Agnotology: The Surge - 13

Denial Divide

In this series we have been observing how ignorance is generated within a society (Agnotology: The Surge, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12).

We have done so by looking at both the corporate as well as the political entities that engender and use various devious machinations to render Americans ignorant of or in denial of scientific facts.

Politically oriented denial in the U.S. government  stands out starkly in the world's governments, because traditionally the U.S. has been oriented toward an acceptance of scientific discoveries, yet, about 97% of Republican politicians now in the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives are in denial of what 99% of scientists say about global warming induced climate change:

More than 1,500 wildfires have ravaged California so far in 2014, more than twice the state sees in an average year. On ABC’s This Week, Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, cited scientific research that links the increased number of fires to the state’s changing climate.

Host George Stephanopoulos asked Brown how he’d adapt to the future, given skepticism among Republicans in Washington. Short answer: not easily.

"That's a challenge," Brown said. "It is true that there's virtually no Republican who accepts the science that virtually is unanimous. I mean there is no scientific question. There's just political denial for various reasons, best known to those people who are in denial."
...
[Research shows that] eight [Republican congress members] out of 278, or about 3 percent [are not deniers ... hence ... 97% of Republican congress members are in denial].

(PolitiFacts, cf. Meet the Congressional Republicans in Denial). This is greatly at odds with the bulk of the world as well as most of the U.S. public (Wikipedia).

The loss of accountability (When Accountability Is A Plague) that results in immediate damage to democratic institutions (witness congress), renders the scenario into one of Big Brother Oil-Qaeda calling the shots (MOMCOM: The Private Parts).

Which means that we are rushing headlong into a catastrophe of epic proportions against the will of the people of the U.S. and of the world at large.

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

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H/T to Tom ...

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The Common Good - 9

A heart grown cold.

In this series we have been reviewing the seemingly extinct concept of the common good, a.k.a. the public good (The Common Good, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8).

Meanwhile, the number of homeless children in the U.S. is at a high (Number Of Homeless Children In America Surges To All-Time High) and military corruption climbs way high too (Prosecutors Troubled By Extent Of Military Fraud).

In today's post we will discuss that concept of the common or public good in the context of "The Public Trust Doctrine", specifically focused on the question of whether or not the doctrine applies to the federal government.

The vehicle for the discussion is a federal lawsuit involving a recent petition to the U.S. Supreme Court:

Today prominent national leaders, including legal scholars, economic and national security experts, religious groups, climate scientists, conservation and social justice organizations, native communities, business and government leaders, and cities filed amicus briefs with the United States Supreme Court in a major climate change case. The case, Alec L. v. McCarthy, Supreme Court Case No. 14-405, seeks a decision that the federal government has public trust obligations to protect essential national natural resources for present and future generations. The three amicus briefs, representing scientists, legal scholars, and diverse national interests, displayed resounding legal support for an October 2014 Petition for Writ of Certiorari filed on behalf of group of young Americans with the United States Supreme Court.

 (Our Children's Trust, cf. Alec L. v McCarthy Main Docket, Supp. Docket; Alec L. v McCarthy, Petition, PDF). The issue is "does the public trust doctrine, a facet of the notion of the common good, compel the government to be trustworthy in terms of the well being of future generations?"

It would seem to be a no-brainer, however, our nation has some severe mental problems whereby we project our self-generated cultural aggressions against each other into other nations and places:

The "foreigner" is, moreover, outside the principal immediate system of law and order; hence aggression toward him does not carry the same opprobrium or immediate danger of reprisal that it does toward one's "fellow-citizen." Hostility to the foreigner has thus furnished a means of transcending the principal, immediately threatening group conflicts, of achieving "unity" —but at the expense of a less immediate but in fact more dangerous threat to security, since national states now command such destructive weapons that war between them is approaching suicidal significance.

Thus the immense reservoir of aggression in Western society is sharply inhibited from direct expression within the smaller groups in which it is primarily generated. The structure of the society in which it produced contains a strong predisposition for it to be channeled into group antagonisms. The significance of the nation-state is, however, such that there is a strong pressure to internal unity within each such unit and therefore a tendency to focus aggression on the potential conflicts between nation-state units. In addition to the existence of a plurality of such units, each a potential target of the focused aggression from all the others, the situation is particularly unstable because of the endemic tendency to define their relations in the manner least calculated to build an effectively solidary international order. Each state is, namely, highly ambivalent about the superiority-inferiority question. Each tends to have a deep-seated presumption of its own superiority and a corresponding resentment against any other's corresponding presumption. Each at the same time tends to feel that it has been unfairly treated in the past and is ready on the slightest provocation to assume that the others are ready to plot new outrages in the immediate future. Each tends to be easily convinced of the righteousness of its own policy while at the same time it is overready to suspect the motives of all others. In short, the "jungle philosophy"-which corresponds to a larger element in the real sentiments of all of us than can readily be admitted, even to ourselves-tends to be projected onto the relations of nation-states at precisely the point where, under the technological and organizational situation of the modern world, it can do the most harm.

(Comparing a Group-Mind Trance to a Cultural Amygdala). One result of this madness is that our concept of "the common good" could morph to eventually mean "what is good for my group" and "to hell with your group."

So, we have 2.5 million homeless children in our country while we spend an estimated 10 trillion dollars subsidizing Oil-Qaeda in the middle east oil war zone (The Peak Of The Oil Wars, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11) as our infrastructure crumbles (Mega Infrastructure Bill To Make Jobs? - 2, A Decline Of The American Republic - 4).

The answer to today's question is a resounding "yes, the public trust doctrine applies to the 2.5 million homeless children in the U.S. and to our future children too."

Yet, the 2.5 million homeless children among us now is a witness against whether or not we still have our traditional concept of the common good.

The infiltration of every group and movement, including environmental groups, by Oil-Qaeda is another indicator that "the common good" now has the look of a game board to the powers that be:

Klein goes so far as to argue that the environmental movement has itself become little more than an arm (or perhaps one should say a column) of the fossil fuel industry. Her proof here is that several major environmental groups have received sizable donations from fossil fuel companies or their affiliated foundations, and some, like the Nature Conservancy, have executives (or former executives) of utility companies on their boards. “A painful reality behind the environmental movement’s catastrophic failure to effectively battle the economic interests behind our soaring emissions,” she writes, is that “large parts of the movement aren’t actually fighting those interests—they have merged with them.”

(NY Books, emphasis added). The toxins of power, in a toxic form of emergence, have occasion to build fences around elitist conclaves where they ought not be.

Anyway, in the case we are contemplating, the lower courts ruled that the public trust doctrine does not apply to the federal government, it only applies to the state governments.

Let's hope that the increasingly brain-locked supreme court holds to its past cases that came to the opposite conclusion - the federal government is also subject to "the public trust doctrine."

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

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How unlikely it is for reality to make news (click the youtube button bottom right) ...

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Everybody's Got A Holder Heart - 3

"Some bankers are too big to fail or jail"

This series began in 2009 with a post about the intervention of A.G. Holder on behalf of a criminal politician who had been convicted by a jury.

He dropped the case in an unusual manner ... keeping the appellate courts out of it (Everybody's Got A Holder Heart, 2).

Keeping the courts out of it has been his mantra on everything (Follow The Immunity, 2, 3).

"Immunity" of various sorts ("too big to ...") has been protecting everyone from those who committed war crimes to the banks who intentionally committed history's greatest financial and banking fraud on the American public (Banker Jekyll Will Hyde Your Money, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11).

Matt Taibi is on the case with new revelations from a competent whistle blower:

She tried to stay quiet, she really did. But after eight years of keeping a heavy secret, the day came when Alayne Fleischmann couldn't take it anymore.

"It was like watching an old lady get mugged on the street," she says. "I thought, 'I can't sit by any longer.'"
...
Back in 2006, as a deal manager at the gigantic bank, Fleischmann first witnessed, then tried to stop, what she describes as "massive criminal securities fraud" in the bank's mortgage operations.

Thanks to a confidentiality agreement, she's kept her mouth shut since then. "My closest family and friends don't know what I've been living with," she says. "Even my brother will only find out for the first time when he sees this interview."

Six years after the crisis that cratered the global economy, it's not exactly news that the country's biggest banks stole on a grand scale. That's why the more important part of Fleischmann's story is in the pains Chase and the Justice Department took to silence her.

She was blocked at every turn: by asleep-on-the-job regulators like the Securities and Exchange Commission, by a court system that allowed Chase to use its billions to bury her evidence, and, finally, by officials like outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder, the chief architect of the crazily elaborate government policy of surrender, secrecy and cover-up. "Every time I had a chance to talk, something always got in the way," Fleischmann says.

This past year she watched as Holder's Justice Department struck a series of historic settlement deals with Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America. The root bargain in these deals was cash for secrecy. The banks paid big fines, without trials or even judges – only secret negotiations that typically ended with the public shown nothing but vague, quasi-official papers called "statements of facts," which were conveniently devoid of anything like actual facts.
...
In today's America, someone like Fleischmann – an honest person caught for a little while in the wrong place at the wrong time – has to be willing to live through an epic ordeal just to get to the point of being able to open her mouth and tell a truth or two. And when she finally gets there, she still has to risk everything to take that last step. "The assumption they make is that I won't blow up my life to do it," Fleischmann says. "But they're wrong about that."

Good for her, and great for her that it's finally out. But the big-picture ending still stings. She hopes otherwise, but the likely final verdict is a Pyrrhic victory.

(The $9 Billion Witness, emphasis added). What is being revealed over a span of two administrations during these past 14 years is an epigovernment (Epigovernment: The New Model, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9).

It is a secret layer of control by criminal minds which our chief propagandists once bragged about out in the open:

THE conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.

Our invisible governors are, in many cases, unaware of the identity of their fellow members in the inner cabinet.

They govern us by their qualities of natural leadership, their ability to supply needed ideas and by their key position in the social structure. Whatever attitude one chooses to take toward this condition, it remains a fact that in almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons — a trifling fraction of our hundred and twenty [now 320] million — who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world.
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It is the purpose of this book to explain the structure of the mechanism which controls the public mind, and to tell how it is manipulated by the special pleader who seeks to create public acceptance for a particular idea or commodity. It will attempt at the same time to find the due place in the modern democratic scheme for this new propaganda and to suggest its gradually evolving code of ethics and practice.

(Epigovernment: The New Model, quoting from "Propaganda" by Bernays). The game plan now, since criminal minds are known to have taken over the epigovernment, is to cover it all up, hang on for dear life, and "hopium" for the best.

The previous post in this series is here.

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Desolation Row, Dylan

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