Tag: climate

C’mon, Noam, Worse Than Hitler?!

The most respected modern far-leftist intellectual is Noam Chomsky. Chomsky is Institute Professor (emeritus) in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Laureate Professor of Linguistics and Agnese Nelms Haury Chair in the Program in Environment and Social Justice at the University of Arizona. He is also a historian, a social critic, and an activist, amongst many other important things. Chomsky completely rearranged my world view with a collection of his transcripts compiled from several of his talks entitled Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky . And I once felt that I could rely on him for infallible guidance as a radical leftist thinker. But I just recently found an interview Chomsky did with Canada’s National Observer published June 15th, 2020 that features a zoom call interview where he is described as proclaiming,

Voting for U.S. President Donald Trump is worse than voting for Hitler, Chomsky affirmed to interviewer Linda Solomon Wood, during a Canada’s National Observer-sponsored webinar in April. “Hitler was maybe the worst criminal in human history.” He wanted to murder millions of Jews, Slavs, Roma, homosexuals, others. “But what does Trump want to do? He wants to destroy the prospects for organized human life.”

Chomsky then explains that Trump is doing this horrible thing by destroying the environment with his policies, and that is what makes him worse than Hitler. (Check from minutes 9:32 to 14:00)

How can anyone possibly think that anyone in our modern age, much less former Pres. Donald J. Trump, rivalled Hitler’s criminality? That is the most insane argument I have ever heard. Yes, Trump will probably go down in history as the worst president the U.S. has ever had. And, yes, he tried to overturn Obamacare, gave huge tax cuts to corporations, and ripped kids from their parent’s arms and put them in cages. But Hitler? The Holocaust? The 25 million dead Russians? The destruction of Europe???

Chomsky then goes on to try and support his absurd claim by laying out an historical anecdote where he describes a document by the Nazi regime that was found. It read that even the Germans knew they had to stop the emission of greenhouse gases to protect the planet from overheating. And that is shocking. But worse than Hitler???

Sorry, Noam, Trump and the GOP do not want to intentionally destroy the entire system of organized life. They just have their heads completely in the sand about the global climate crisis due to business interests. The GOP takes three tracks in their thinking on the enviroment, either, A. climate change is not real, or, B. it is not a result of manmade greenhouse gas emissions, or, C. technology will provide us with a solution to the problem once the situation gets what they consider as out of hand. This is simple ignorance and a complete disregard for people’s lives in the interest of wealthy donors. And I am not absolving them from blame for future catastrophes. But it is not the killing of millions in an attempt to lord over the entirety of Europe!

Let it be said that even as enthusiastic radical leftists we cannot fall into the same trap Chomsky has. Sometimes we need to tone down the rhetoric, if you can believe I am saying that. Lenin and the other Bolsheviks were as radical as they come, yet they maintained reality. If not, they never would have kept the Revolution alive. And Marxism is a theoretical framework we believe in, and over-exaggerating does nothing to further the mechanics of it. Nor does it help the movement. Do you think most proletarians would think Chomsky is a complete kook if they heard the above claim? I am sure they would.

Climate change: Scientists now 95 percent certain we are mostly to blame – CSMonitor.com

Climate change: Scientists now 95 percent certain we are mostly to blame – CSMonitor.com.

A few key points from the piece:

Certainty over the human role has increase from “very likely” to “extremely likely,” a verbal shift representing 90 percent certainly in 2007 to 95 percent for this round of reports.

Another factor that should be kept in mind is the caution climate scientists typically have when reporting their findings.  It should always be noted and those of us who aren’t climate scientists should realize the findings they do release are more scrutinized than we probably think:

For instance, when the first working group’s volume was released in 2007, researchers criticized it for failing to include in its sea-level projections the contributions from melting ice sheets in West Antarctica and Greenland. The working group didn’t include those because they weren’t well understood. Yet research published after the deadline for that report indicated that the melting appeared to be increasing.

And one last point of interest relating to the sun and ongoing research:

Solar physicists have been looking at trends in sun-spot behavior and characteristics over the past decade and have raised the possibility that when the current sun-spot cycle peaks in the next few months, the sun could enter an unusually long period where it generates few, if any sunspots.

Some climate scientists have looked at the potential impact of such an event and concluded that it likely would delay additional global warming – but only until the sun returned to more-normal swings in sun-spot activity.

 

American Still Not Listening to Experts on Climate Change

A new study of over four thousand academic papers taking a position on climate change found the same results that were published in a similar study nearly ten years ago: over 97% of academic climate researchers believe climate change is man-made.  Only 0.7% disputed the idea.  Yet, as noted in the article, a recent Pew poll found only %42 of Americans agree with the science.

Yes, you are, big guy…

The reasons for this disparity are numerous but one of the obvious parties due blame is the media and its attempt to be objective on the subject.  If they put on one of the 97% of scientists believing the truth, they feel the need to put on one of the 0.7% in an effort to show no favoritism.  The time has come for this to stop.  The most glaring problem with this action is how dangerous the situation is and how much its worsening, as the Earth reached its recent carbon dioxide milestone which hasn’t been seen in 3 million years.

This begs the question: if over 97% of experts in a field told you something where your life was at stake and less than 1% told you something different, who would you believe?  Let’s take some random examples:

  • If you were jumping out of a plane and 97% of sky diving instructors told you your chute was not packed right and wouldn’t open on the way down, would you jump?
  • If you were riding down a winding mountain road and 97% of mechanics told you your brakes would fail halfway down, would you drive?
  • If you were running from a giant boulder after stealing an ancient artifact from a temple in Peru and 97% of boulder dodgers told you to keep running instead of trying to use a whip to split the boulder in half, would you keep running?
  • If you were trying to kick a football being held by a “friend” when 97% of your real friends told you the ball would be taken away as you tried to kick it and you would land on your head, would you still try to boot it?
  • If you were interacting with a doctor about a rash of stomach viruses and 97% of people informed you his name was not Shirley, surely you would not call him by that name, right?

The point being rational people pretty much never go against these types of percentages when it comes to their personal health yet we seem to be doing it when it comes to the long-term health of everyone.  It’s time to change our collective tune on climate change and accept the consensus of the 97% over the seemingly wild ramblings of the less than 1%.

Chomsky On The Elite & Their Assault On The Common Good

230px-ChomskyA good, 2-part transcript from Noam Chomsky on Alternet in which he critically analyzes elite thinking and the resulting societal ills.

Read Here

Romney-Ryan’s Medicaid, Not Medicare, Cuts Kept Hidden

A great Post op-ed by Ezra Klein (his are always good) on how Romney-Ryan maintain that Medicare won’t be touched for people over 55, but they fail to outline how Medicaid will be cut. These Medicaid cuts will effect parents of handicapped children and people with disability benefits to a great degree, but they cleverly avoid stating that fact.

Read Here.

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