Daniel Pinchbeck, How Soon is Now, Heavy-Handed Climate Apocalypse Stuff |343|

Many philosophies and ideologies, including science, have been abused to the point of murder, oppression, and dehumanization. It is a result of human nature. And just because something may seem unpalatable, that doesn't make it false. You have to look at the evidence and decide from that.

Some of the evidence that there is a plan and everything is perfect comes from NDErs, evidential mediums, between-lives hypnotic regression and mystical experiences such as those produced by deep meditation. The plan seems to be to help us to develop spiritually. I am not really clear on whether or not perfecting human civilization is part of that. Each life seems to be pre-planned (and accepted by the individual before incarnation) to some extent but not in perfect detail - more like a syllabus where the student is left to decide how to respond.

And "perfect" might mean different things, It might mean the plan is defined in great and inflexible detail, or it might mean the system is so brilliantly designed that there are an infinite number of ways to get the desired result, that whatever can happen works to produce the desired result.
 
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The plan seems to be to help us to develop spiritually. I am not really clear on whether or not perfecting human civilization is part of that.

I agree Jim. Maybe we only get so far then some apocalypse overcomes us and the cycle starts again, like Atlantis and others that I can't remember. Some think that this time it is important that we develop our consciousness further along, but I just have to put those ideas in along with hundreds of others in my 'who knows' category.

And "perfect" might mean different things, It might mean the plan is defined in great and inflexible detail, or it might mean the system is so brilliantly designed that there are an infinite number of ways to get the desired result, that whatever can happen works to produce the desired result.

If such a thing does exist, is God 'perfect' ? According to how we answer this question we might assume that everything's perfect. IDK.
 
All of those things were held to be God's will, or the result of karma.

So devolving responsibility?

I see this as being yet another human weakness to complicate things. Eventually we evolve out of such thinking, its part of the game. Just to let you know that I'm not 100% into anything, I think that 'believing' too much in anything might be a mistake. Dare I say it, even believing in God might not be the thing to do! :eek:
 
Big oil makes money from oil Hurm. ...I don't know where you guys get the idea from the AGW is where the money is at, when all the information and evidence points the other way.

That's not an argument. You ignored my points about big oil actually creating cap and trade schemes to profit from them.

Companies make money from profit margins and speculation and through whatever scheme they can devise to manipulate things to put them inside the curve. Sometimes companies play the long game and cut margins to drive competition out of business so that they can gain market share and ultimately raise margins more later.

When those within the industry come up with complicated regulations and taxes, this is not self-flagellation for their own guilt in harming the environment. This is to gain market share and improve public sentiment. If you write the rules of the game and you are big enough to afford a fleet of lawyers, you can promote taxation and regulation to improve your PR image while driving out competition.

A great history lesson on How Big Oil Conquered the World

I don't think we're being lied to about climate change, you may believe that but I disagree with you.

It's not a matter of belief. You can go read the leaked emails where deliberate efforts were made to hide data that did not support the narrative.

Whenever governments throw billions of dollars into "scientific research" with an implicit foregone conclusion, the environment for corruption is created.

The truth is that there is a theoretical basis to support the claim that increasing CO2 to the max will slightly raise the earth's average temp as much as about 1 degree Celsius. It's not a linear effect. There is a saturation point beyond which more CO2 has no effect on radiative heat transfer. We were already just under this saturation point before the industrial revolution began which is why quadrupling the CO2 can only theoretically raise temps about 1 degree C.

This is a THEORY based on a very simplified analysis of radiative heat transfer from atmosphere to space. One key prediction of this theory - that heating would be observed at the altitudes at which the atmosphere ceases to be opaque to radiation in the CO2 absorptive wavelengths - has not been observed.

All the catastrophic AGW predictions were based on models of undamped water vapor and polar ice cap feedback loops that amplified this 1 C increase into 5 C or more increase. But these feedback loop models have so far failed to pan out. It could be that the feedback loops are actually over dampened and the 1 C increase will actually plateau at only 0.8 C, but no one on the IPCC will explore an over-dampened feedbackloop model because that wouldn't fit the narrative so there's no incentive.

And whilst we continue to not invest in renewable energy etc, people will continue to die from air pollution, fracking will cause more problems with water, and so on.

I'm with you: we need to invest in renewable energy. I put solar panels on my house and led lights in. Oil and gas needs to play a far less critical role in our infrastructure and industry. But we won't get there solely through top down controlling regulations and taxes (that can be manipulated by the biggest players to their benefit) on the very air we exhale to a global government which were sold to us with untruthful narratives and forced upon us with threats of Soviet-style violence (arrest the climate change deniers!).

The risks of inaction are massive, the benefits of action are massive, on this issue I know where my cards lie.

Your cards lie to you.
 
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I think it is useless to try and put Alex or even Daniel into either/or, denial/proponent, capitalist-pig/treehugger or whatever forced dichotomy camps.

I think why there was so much derision or argumentation, was because (imho, ymmv), both of them are trying to find a third way or a fourth way, but perhaps from slightly different POVs. Alex sees problems with some positions (or even camps) and Daniel sees some same, some different issues from a different POV. Both want change to something else, both want to get beyond this/that false-dichotomy. Neither has the final answer, both are trying to imagine steps or even ideals about direction.

I sense much more common ground than actual strong disagreements on fundamental issues.

Personally I agree with a lot of what both say and on other things I disagree. It doesn't matter. I'm happy both are doing what their own internal sense of direction calls for.

As gnostics supposedly said: Life is for experience, everything else is commentary.

It is better to live your own life, from your own pursuit, than merely just comment on that of others.

Bravo Alex, Bravo Daniel!
 
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/39957-release-of-arctic-methane-may-be-apocalyptic-study-warns
What says everyone about this latest article? I followed the writer during the Iraq war, which he covered as an independent journalist. He is now in Alaska and places north covering climate change, as an independent journalist.

Sounds like apocalyptic fear mongering to me (and I'm a big advocate of apocalyptic fear mongering so I know it when I see it).

I thought methane clathrates (or hydrates) only formed under high pressure and low temperatures like at the bottom of oceans (1000 ft or deeper) or hundreds of feet down in the earth - not at atmospheric pressures? And those methane clathrates would not be affected by surface temps - only geological disruptions like earthquakes and volcanism. There probably is a lot of methane potential in permafrost because it is essentially a frozen bog... we have bogs and swamps all over the earth releasing methane right now. So maybe the article is conflating deep sea methane clathrates with normal surface methane production? Anyway, there is a lot of speculation there and not a lot of data to go on there although in fairness it is just an article about a scientific paper and not the paper itself.

The climate and the ecological systems around us are highly complex chaotic systems. I'm sure that there are some positive feedback loops that can kick in, but there are probably also some dampeners that we don't waste any time writing speculative articles like this one about because there's no money in speculating that nothing will happen, and there's no righteous opportunity to save the world.

The Earth has warmed up nicely since the last ice age, and that wasn't our fault.
 
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/b...-exxon-mobil-secretary-of-state-a7628611.html
^ I guess we'll get to see behind the scenes soon of what Exxon thinks of climate change?

I mean, I know that just having a lot of people in my house generates a ton of heat. I tried to look up climategate, but all I could find was debunking of the claims after the fact. I'll go back and read the rest of this thread when I get a minute. I enjoyed the battle with Daniel! Great fun, and I kind of agree with both parties. It's always such a rush listening to Skeptiko cause I never know if I'm going to agree with Alex, but I usually do.
 
My hub was a PHD wildlife biologist, wrote four books, and many of his friends are/were scientists. He did a lot of work in the arctic and actually co-authored a book entitled Natural History of an Arctic Oil Field (https://www.amazon.com/Natural-Hist...ywords=Natural+history+of+an+arctic+oil+field). The arctic methane thing was long ago recognized as a possible problem by one of his friends and he was talking about it 15 years ago. Incidentally, the hub was always thinking outside of the box.
 
Looks like the list of one million and one things global warming, ahem "climate change", is supposedly responsible for just increased by one. Just saw this linked at Drudge Report:
'Climate change helped cause Brexit, says Al Gore'
http://www.independent.co.uk/enviro...ing-syria-war-helped-leave-vote-a7645866.html

Stupid headline for what has been determined already..... severe flooding, storms, droughts, etc, etc, due to warming climate is going to cause
massive disruptions in many parts of the globe as millions seek to 'get outta dodge'
 
Many philosophies and ideologies, including science, have been abused to the point of murder, oppression, and dehumanization. It is a result of human nature.

Or at least in some people's nature, such as psychopaths. And on that subject, does anybody know what NDEs etc. indicate about such people (i.e. those who lack empathy)? Are they spiritually this way somehow? Maybe they have a role to cause suffering in the world in order for others to learn from this? As the ancient Greek tragedian Aeschylus said, only through suffering do people gain wisdom.

The plan seems to be to help us to develop spiritually. I am not really clear on whether or not perfecting human civilization is part of that.

I'd be interested to hear more about this too. Do NDEs etc. shed light on this? The ancient sources, such as from Greece and India, tell of a Golden Age, and that the epochs have been becoming worse to live in, that the quality of people has been decreasing. So a devolution. One can see this in what Homer writes of how people were physically stronger in previous generations, and Hesiod writes of this phenomena at length in Works and Days: the progression of golden people, to silver, to bronze, and finally to iron people. In India it was described as the progression of Yugas. Kali Yuga, the dark age, what we are living in now.

Each life seems to be pre-planned (and accepted by the individual before incarnation) to some extent but not in perfect detail - more like a syllabus where the student is left to decide how to respond.

Fascinating. That fits to what Plato wrote of a man called Er in the Republic. According to mainstream academia the story of Er is just a "myth" (i.e. made up). But the story fits what you just described, about this fellow called Er having an NDE, and Er saw others choosing a life before being born physically into the world.
 
I'm interested how those things were justified by thinking there is a plan, something behind it all Sci.

off wikipedia
It has also been argued that Karma has a role in Hindu society as a whole. When one abides by their caste duty good Karma is earned and vice versa; and the Karma one collects is reflected in the next life as movement within the Caste system. The promise of upward mobility appealed to people, and was made plausible through Karma. This effectively "tamed" the lower castes into passive acceptance of the status quo. Thus, the Karma doctrine discouraged actual social mobility.

I've also seen it argued that many Hindus refuse to help those who are suffering because its part of their karma, I don't remember the source exactly but I believe it was the Dalai Lama who decried this aspect of cultures that believe in Karma as a gross distortion.

Are they spiritually this way somehow? Maybe they have a role to cause suffering in the world in order for others to learn from this?

from memory, theres at least 2 mediums transcripts I've read where they describe how Hitler was an angel sent to do just that, heres one which caused some consternation from the skeptikrew - http://www.channelingerik.com/best-of-erik-channeling-adolph-hitler/
 
Thanks for the response, LetsEat. It reminds me of a few things and I just want to throw them out there to see what people think.

Considering the gods correspond to the stars and planets as David Mathisen compellingly shows, could it be that the ancient myths are correct that the stars and planets are sentient and do things to our planet... Rupert Sheldrake talked about this too, and had a discussion about what our Sun could be "thinking" about.
Maybe that sounds far-fetched, but the Sun seems to be the main driver of the climate. In that connection, in the year 1941 the temperature in Europe suddenly dropped, and it stayed cool for some time, such that scientists started to fear a new Ice Age. What's interesting about the date 1941 is that it corresponds to WWII and Operation Barbarossa. So maybe the Sun intervened in history to push outcomes a certain way? Note also that such speculation is not unprecedented: for those who've played Rome Total War, you may recognize the quote from Plutarch: "Extraordinary rains pretty generally fall after great battles"... It seems in the 19th century of our time of reckoning, this sort of speculation about the weather was also relatively common; among other things, a journal article on this from the 19th century: Battles and Rain
https://archive.org/stream/jstor-1766995/1766995_djvu.txt
 
it might mean the system is so brilliantly designed that there are an infinite number of ways to get the desired result, that whatever can happen works to produce the desired result.

This could be achieved by a system based on principles (natural laws) rather than on intricate preordination. An example of this kind of principle is the law of karma: each person experiences the consequences of his action, good actions have good consequences, bad actions have bad consequences. Eventually, we learn from experiencing the consequences of our actions no matter what we do or how badly we might screw up. Whatever happens, we learn and progress toward the end goal.

That could help explain why the physical universe was created, to provide a reality governed by the natural laws needed to produce the desired result.
 
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Communism comes in stages, the early stage of Communism is an authoritarian state while the late stage of Communism requires no state at all (according to Marx), while I haven't seen anything in Marx's writings that say a dictatorship is integral it certainly lays the grounds for a dictatorship in its massive centralization of power in the ever nebulous state.

from https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm

The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.

Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.

These measures will, of course, be different in different countries.

Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.

1) So we agree there's never been anything approaching or any movement toward late stage Communism?

2) When's the proletariat even been organised as the ruling class?
 
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