Department of Inconvenient Truths
Indicium Parilis Facultas ne Necessarius Veritas

Downward Spiral of Society

15.08.2024 (9:47 am) – Filed under: Epic Failures,Humanity,Pro Bono Philosophy

Several months ago, perhaps as much as a year ago, I realized something. I already knew that we [Americans] as a society are living with our heads in the sand. What then, did I realize a year ago? It doesn’t matter what truth is revealed, it doesn’t matter who reveals that truth, it doesn’t matter the clout the influencer has, if what I consider to be “the truth” is ever proven and released to the general public that we as a society are heading toward a complete and total collapse of the American Way of Life® – nothing will ever be done. No words will reverse this trend. It’s going to happen and there’s no stopping it. There’s not enough backbone left in America to make it happen, which I believe stems from my theory that everything is corrupt, there’s no ethics left in society and morality is lost.

What’s caused this?

  • Greed
  • Gluttony
  • Envy
  • Lust
  • Vanity

Yes, this list has religious undertones, but they’re also a common problem with society, regardless of religious intent or not.

How is everything corrupt?

There’s not a single person that I know of, friend or otherwise, that are 100% ethical. That’s not to say it’s proof of my theory, however, when you can’t rely on anyone to not “use the buddy system” for favor, there’s a problem. Everyone, every person I know, do unethical things. Most people I know devoutly religious or not, are immoral to a certain degree. Cognitive biases disallow them the ability to see it.

I myself, have my own shortfalls, faults, immoral and unethical moments, but I do realize it and live with it. I don’t turn a blind eye to my own transgressions, I have plenty of faults. I am sure, others are knowingly doing the same thing – and living with it.

Until we can turn inwards and make changes to ourselves, no amount of pressure put forth from society will make those changes come to fruition.

#V4N1TY

15.08.2024 (9:13 am) – Filed under: Health,Humanity,Inductum Ego,Interesting Theories

This goes hand in hand with observations I’ve become obsessed with – Americans are becoming more and more deeply rooted in vanity. We have the inability to grasp the concept that a choice we make isn’t necessarily the best choice, but we want to try and influence others that our choice is the best. For some folks, good isn’t good enough. Everything needs to be perfect. I have made it a hobby to watch the actions of others, especially those that are hell-bent on making sure their $25,000 car is as perfect as a hand-built exotic. There can be no small blemish on any consumable. Blemished items are discarded as unwanted trash. A slightly miscolored kernel of corn ruins the entire can of corn. A single run on a paint job is a travesty and demands refunding or major discounts. “I PAID HARD EARNED MONEY [spoiler alert: they did not work hard] AND THIS HAS A (almost imperceptible) 1MM SCRATCH (that can only be seen with a flashlight and a magnifying glass) – I WANT 50% OF MY MONEY BACK!”

If you care to participate in my new found hobby, try to open up your mind and allow yourself to escape the clutches of vanity – then, start paying attention to everyone around you, everyone you come into contact with. Start counting the number of people that obsess over the smallest detail. You will have more jaw dropping moments than you could have ever expected.

I began this journey as a classic car buff back in the 80s. I was brought into it by my father and later, by friends. I kept up with the trends, becoming one of the first to enjoy the hobby of detailing (true detailing, not the joke that the industry’s become) my cars and doing cosmetic work. Custom car stereos, custom paint, avoiding cheap accessories. What it’s turned into is finding pure and pristine barn units, with extreme low miles, spending 2x what the car as originally worth to “restore” it, or, begin building a $40k engine and doing swaps with modern drive trains to make the vehicle as powerful as absolutely possible – which in turn drives these cars to take prizes in the car shows, which drives away the weekenders working on a budget.

We have went from being a society where only the 1% elite rich could afford perfection to the majority DEMANDING perfection at every turn. Buying “sub par” because that’s what we could afford and living with it has turned into buying sub par and demanding that perfection exist. Seeking the most economical (cheapest) contractor’s bid on a project, only to DEMAND perfection in their work.

Ancient History

11.06.2024 (9:38 am) – Filed under: Humanity,Interesting Theories,Pro Bono Philosophy

I would like to postulate that studying ancient history, for the sake of “knowing about ancient history” is wasteful in that it takes away too much limited human resources (great minds) from areas better served by those minds, such as future tech research, medical research, economics, and an entire list of sciences that would be more beneficial to humanity. While we spend time researching when the horse became central to human civilization, while we study when farming began in Mesopotamia, while we search for the dagger of Brutus, other areas more important to human civilization are understaffed.

I am a history buff, I love ancient history, I love learning about it through books and documentaries (unbiased). I would be less fulfilled without the knowledge I have acquired concerning said topics. Even still, I realize that what I’ve learned is useless in the grand scheme of things. My admiration of Archimedes is without limits. I absolutely love learning more about Genghis Khan, Atilla the Hun, Plato, Socrates, The Books Thomas, Truth and Mary Magdalene. Such knowledge, while individually important, doesn’t help humanity to grow. One could argue that if all of society studied such, our civilization would benefit – but we know that only a small percentage of folks will delve into the classics (of anything, any specialty of society). And I am of around average intelligence (for human kind, not perhaps for certain groups).

We have a finite limit of genius level individuals capable of making the “next great leap” in _____insert any new innovation_____. Coupled with that, therein lies exceptionalism that is necessary for these individuals to take that step. Genius does  not beget accomplishment. It’s a well known fact that there are genius level intellects all around us (even though you may not be aware of this) – individuals that NEVER CONTRIBUTE TO SOCIETY in a meaningful way, due to a variety of reasons such as poor physical health, poor mental health, lack of ambition, lack of opportunity, abuse, neglect, simple unwillingness to participate (for a variety of reasons). Exceptionalism + intellect do not necessarily go hand-in-hand. Therefore, the number of genius level individuals capable of making that “next great leap” is further diluted by the lack of their ability to be exceptional. For instance, take High School Athletes, an individual may have the physical prowess to be break records running the 100 meter dash, however, if that person cannot keep their head straight, they’ll beat themselves before taking to the blocks. While their ability is still there, their lack of focus, drive, determination or mental stamina may preclude them from taking the record. Situations such as this takes these folks out of the running for the win. Same with academics. We place so much pressure on individuals with said genius, they may break before the final results are delivered.

By stopping with useless studies, how about we try to focus those that have the abilities and the exceptionalism to toward more important feats of study.

The U.S. military has certain job roles available at any given time. Recruiters are given lists of available slots. When someone tests for the military, only those roles that are needed are offered. If the recruit doesn’t want to do any of those things listed, that’s their choice, but no other offers are made outside of those roles the military needs. To a certain degree, the recruits have choices, but those choices are limited. Square peg, square hole. Everyone wants unlimited personal choices – even when their choices have no benefit what-so-ever to society. Therein lies the conundrum. Free will, liberty, freedom in general, vs. the good of society. Should society set rules governing what a person should be allowed to do with their intellect? No. Should society be manicured to push individuals along the path that benefits us more, without making these choices mandatory? Probably. How about, instead of telling folks “….you can be anything you want.” – we transform that by first stating, “…if we had more people like you working in experimental physics, exploration outside the solar system may be possible.” Folks want to believe that someone with the ability to do experimental physics will end up working in experimental physics, and that’s simply not the case. A few will, but some won’t. Some may in fact turn toward a career in archeology, perhaps specializing in the archeology of some mundane culture that ultimately did not contribute anything to civilization. While that may be important to a select few decedents of said culture, it’s a dead end that will never yield any benefits what-so-ever to society.

How many garage bands do we need that incorporates a child prodigy? How many mathematicians wind up becoming accountants, rather than theoretical physicists?

By no means would I ever consider forcing someone to do something they don’t want to do. Never. I just think that more emphasis should be placed on certain fields of study in order to recruit more human resources to participate in these fields, rather than pointing toward a more open environment. Why not place a monetary interest in these fields, increasing funding for scholarships toward these fields and completely dropping scholarships for underwater basket weaving? If a person doesn’t want to study a field that’s backed by more scholarships, that’s still their choice, a choice that will ultimately cost them more money, because less scholarships will be available. Such a change would be a massive undertaking, perhaps impossible. The fact remains, more folks are needed to explore the possibilities of the future, rather than study what already occurred.

Life Lessons

07.05.2024 (12:40 pm) – Filed under: Health,Inductum Ego,Self Absorption

Here’s some life lesson’s I’ve learned. I’ll be adding to this list as I remember the more important lessons.

From the book/movie “1984”, when I first watched the movie back in high school (or maybe it was Jr. High?) – Never let them see your weakness(es). Winston let it be known that he was afraid of rats above all else, and that was used against him. To expand this, “…never let them know what you’re thinking.

From Sun Tsu and various other situations and people, my core belief is to “Never get bent out of shape over anything you cannot control.” If I didn’t cause the problem, or if I cannot control the problem or outcome, there’s no reason to get torn up over it, there’s nothing I can do. To paraphrase, “….it is, what it is.”

Be kind, also be prepared to kill every mother fucker in the room.

Always have a knife. (or multi-tool). The premise of this lesson is from the Boy Scouts: Be Prepared!

Education and intelligence do not necessarily have a symbiotic relationship. One can be educated. One can be intelligent. One can be educated and intelligent. One can also be educated and dumb as a bag of hammers.

The best times of your lives are hardly ever noticed while they’re being experienced.

Organized religion is the world’s way of controlling the masses. Some of the most corrupt people I’ve known kneel at the foot of the cross on Sundays after partying like rock stars on Saturdays. You cannot have hate in your heart and be Christian. You cannot be greedy and profess to be a Christian either. “A rich man cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.”

17 “Why do you ask me about what is good?” Jesus replied. “There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, keep the commandments.”

18 “Which ones?” he inquired.

Jesus replied, “‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, 19 honor your father and mother,’[a] and ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’[b]

20 “All these I have kept,” the young man said. “What do I still lack?”

21 Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

22 When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.

23 Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Truly I tell you, it is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. 24 Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

If the political scope of the United States is the Grand Canyon, the two major political parties are but a creek bed apart.

Always have a backup (plan).

To become “elite” at a particular skill, profession, game, etc. means you’re in the 1% – which is 99% better than anyone else. The stars must align to make everything come together. It’s not just experience, intelligence, education, or skill. It’s also health, mental well-being, preparation, desire, stamina, drive/ambition and an unmatched willingness to bounce back and try again and again.

Help someone with their job or task, you will learn something.

Pay attention to your surroundings, never get tunnel vision.

Sometimes the solution to the problem will present itself with patience. Many times, the solution is simple, overthinking is the majority of many problems.

Many problems persist because of (or lack of) friction. Either add friction or subtract friction and the problem can be easily resolved.

Never stand when you can sit, never sit when you can lay down.

Take naps.

Be kind to animals. Dogs especially. Your dog thinks you are his/her entire world, treat them accordingly. Never take them for granted.

Karma is real.

After a lifetime of friendships, there’s maybe one, or if you’re lucky, two people in the entire world that you can count on when the chips are down, and it’s not necessarily someone that’s related to you or someone you’ve considered “your best friend”. Sometimes, it’s just an acquaintance. More times than not, there’s no one that you can count on to help hide the evidence. Keep that shit to yourself.

It’s impossible to use alcohol to wash away bad memories.

The war on drugs was a sham and complete failure.

Keeping up with the Jones’ will keep you in debt.

Treat the Janitor with the same respect as the CEO: Pick up a broom and get to work.

Addresses in the Universe

07.08.2023 (12:01 pm) – Filed under: Interesting Theories

I am out of my league here. This isn’t a writing that professes in any way, shape or form to know what I am actually talking about. I don’t know the maths, I don’t know the physics involved to give anywhere near a complete and intelligent answer to the questions I propose. What I am doing is providing my observations and questions (and maybe an idea or two that hasn’t yet been touched on in the media I’ve studied) from the abundance of documents/books I’ve read and documentaries I’ve watched. I am also relieving myself of this burden that’s been in my head for weeks now. Thinking and rethinking the possibilities and problems. By writing this all down (and doing so on my blog was just a way to keep track of it in the future for my own use), I am able to get a better idea of where I am heading with this.

To get back on track, here’s a list of things that I am currently taking as truths, if you don’t already know these things, I suggest you looked into it more deeply AND you’re not the target for this paper:

  • E=MC^2 (This “general” relativity equation gives us a few things, such as:)
  • Note the term “relative”, this matters when discussing….
  • Time and Space are directly tied together, henceforth stated as “Space-Time”. Everything is relative to their respective “times” because:
  • Time isn’t a constant across the universe. Because of what E=MC^2 posits, it’s impossible to have the same “time” in all locations of the universe, in fact, time actually tallies itself differently on Earth, which has been proven through the use of experiments at different altitudes.
  • Einstein’s general theory of relatively opened up a multitude of other avenues (and questions) to explore, and answer (at some point) creating a stir after it’s original introduction to the world, including….
  • Schwarzschild’s Singularity, which eventually led to the discussion of….
  • Black Holes, which were later proven by Hawking and Penrose.
  • Einstein’s “Special” relativity.
  • Mass bends light.
  • (There’s lots more to add here, I am just including the three above for the purpose of getting started with this thought process)

The three items above will lend a little background to a couple of things I want to present, but first, I want to mention a piece of science-fiction, to which we all know the creators of science-fiction typically base some of their work on science-fact.

Stargate and their addressing system. Yes, the movie that brought us the television shows. Why won’t it work (as explained in the show)? Because of the first three things above. While using some of the work of Einstein and the general theory of relativity to make it more believable for us, digging deeper into astrophysics, there must be a must broader explanation than what the audience was given. If you recall the “ah ha!” moment from the movie, Dr. Daniel Jackson (James Spader) describes the method to find a location to a given place (in space) and that it takes six points of origin, plus to travel to that location, you need a seventh point, the starting location of your voyage. Based on Einstein’s, Schwarzschild’s, Penrose and Hawking’s (among many, many others) work, we know that to be false. Why? Because we must also calculate where that object is traveling (leading the target). Now, let’s give a little leeway to the writers on this one, they’re technically NOT giving exact coordinates for the destination or starting point, they’re representing where the destination is by symbol, without giving the audience the exact location (assuming the gates can do the calculations perhaps). My point is this:

Through the theory of general relativity, and the subsequent theories that are derived from it, we know that mass bends light and therefore, anything we observe in the universe has the potential to have a different set of coordinates because of the effects of space-time by mass and gravity. Also, because of the time that has passed since that light was produced (billions of years) and the constant shifting of objects, that particular object has moved locations in the universe since that light was originally produced. Not only is it in a different location than what we observe, the changes to the new location would need to be calculated based on all objects that have an effect on the light being bent a number of times over the billions of years it’s taken to arrive at our location. In other words, *IF* it were possible today to physically move in the known universe from point A to point B (that are separated by billions of miles) almost instantly, if one were simply to take locations at face value, ie. “planet 1 of star system X is located at coordinates XYX….”, if we pulled the trigger and in a blink of an eye arrive at planet 1, it would no longer be there, in fact, it would have traveled a vast distance away from where we witnessed it from Earth. What’s more, we would need to differentiate which objects could possibly cause a shift of light over that vast distance, which increases the potential objects exponentially, which at this point in our technological evolution (based on my extensive experience with computer technology) I would have to guess that it’s currently impossible to simulate everything involved to calculate all of the movements.  NOTE: I must give credit to some of our science fiction writers who undoubtedly thought of something similar to this because if you pay attention during some of their operations on their flight decks, they actually use the phrase “make calculations for jumping to _______”. 

Now, I know I can’t be the only person that’s come up with this. After listening to an abundance of podcasts with Neil deGrasse-Tyson, Michio Kaku, reading docs, books and watching documentaries, no one has really mentioned this and I want to know more. I have seen some similar questions being asked online, with almost cookie-cutter responses (to some degree), but not as precisely as I would have liked. Even when the questions are asked, many times the enormity is left out of either the question or the answer.

We can take into consideration “leading the target”, whereby we observe the star on Date X and then later measure it after a given amount of time on Date Y, use that to estimate the travel to that distant system, point and shoot. It’s still a guess. Why? Again, we fall back to 1-3 above. Not only do these large mass objects have an effect on the light traveling TO us, they also have an effect on us and our equipment traveling toward our destination. Below, you will see the idea of shorter initial distance calculations, which would lessen the “leading the target” variances.

Our culture doesn’t like to use the phrase, “….it’s impossible to figure out.” I don’t like using that phrase for perhaps a different set of reasons, which primarily revolve around, “….I may be smart, but I know there’s a ton of more intelligent people in the world than I.” And hope that someone like Neil and Michio have the abilities to see through this problem and come to a resolution. To travel there? Well, we need to start somewhere and frankly, because the technology isn’t there to create the drive system to make it happen, the very least we can do is to try and come up with the methodology to navigate the way for when the transportation is available, I mean, math can happen well in advance of new technology, such as faster-than-light propulsion, in this case, we have enough info to get started on the nav.

Quantum computers could resolve this issue. If they’re everything they’re cracked up to be, this might be a great simulation to begin developing to see how they handle the calculations needed to make the leap.

Even if we came up with a method to develop an artificial worm hole, we would still need to come up with the destination address in which to punch in to the worm hole creation device.

Now, one way around this would be to calculate shorter waypoints from Point A to Point B, making a series of jumps from the closest star to the next, along our route (Waypoint A.1, A.2, A.3, etc. until you reach Point B). This would cut the initial calculation time down significantly by eliminating a vast number of objects that could not effect each individual (and smaller) leg of the journey, which may be the easiest way (for now) to make it happen. The end destination would not be known until we nearly reach the end of the journey. Such is the way of human kind. We didn’t know how to get the west coast until Lewis and Clark made the final choice of routes over the Sierra Nevada Range. Hard to imagine though, using the basis of the same type of exploration-navigation to get to a distant star system that Lewis and Clark used to get from the east coast of the United States to the west coast, one leg at a time. Even then, the onboard computer system would have to have other abilities, such as the ability to see the universe between the current location of our transport and the final destination, understand where that location is in relation to the end destination, in order to make the calculations for the next leg.

Shew. That’s a lot to think about. Why do I think of this stuff? I have no idea. But like I said above, I had to write it down – have an outlet, otherwise, I think it may have driven me half a bubble off level.

Why were we all so misled?

30.06.2020 (11:59 am) – Filed under: Escendo Transitus

The following is the full text of an opinion piece written by climate activist and energy expert Michael Shellenberger which was originally published by Forbes but pulled a few hours later. Shellenberger, a Time Magazine “Hero of the Environment” and Green Book Award Winner, told The Daily Wire in a statement hours after Forbes deactivated the piece, “I am grateful that Forbes has been so committed to publishing a range of viewpoints, including ones that challenge the conventional wisdom, and was thus disappointed my editors removed my piece from the web site. I believe Forbes is an important outlet for broadening environmental journalism beyond the overwhelmingly alarmist approach taken by most reporters, and look forward to contributing heterodoxical pieces on energy and the environment in the future.”

“….Why were we all so misled?

In the final three chapters of Apocalypse Never I expose the financial, political, and ideological motivations. Environmental groups have accepted hundreds of millions of dollars from fossil fuel interests. Groups motivated by anti-humanist beliefs forced the World Bank to stop trying to end poverty and instead make poverty “sustainable.” And status anxiety, depression, and hostility to modern civilization are behind much of the alarmism.”


On behalf of environmentalists everywhere, I would like to formally apologize for the climate scare we created over the last 30 years. Climate change is happening. It’s just not the end of the world. It’s not even our most serious environmental problem.

I may seem like a strange person to be saying all of this. I have been a climate activist for 20 years and an environmentalist for 30.

But as an energy expert asked by Congress to provide objective expert testimony, and invited by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to serve as Expert Reviewer of its next Assessment Report, I feel an obligation to apologize for how badly we environmentalists have misled the public.

Here are some facts few people know:

  • Humans are not causing a “sixth mass extinction”
  • The Amazon is not “the lungs of the world”
  • Climate change is not making natural disasters worse
  • Fires have declined 25% around the world since 2003
  • The amount of land we use for meat — humankind’s biggest use of land — has declined by an area nearly as large as Alaska
  • The build-up of wood fuel and more houses near forests, not climate change, explain why there are more, and more dangerous, fires in Australia and California
  • Carbon emissions have been declining in rich nations including Britain, Germany and France since the mid-seventies
  • Adapting to life below sea level made the Netherlands rich not poor
  • We produce 25% more food than we need and food surpluses will continue to rise as the world gets hotter
  • Habitat loss and the direct killing of wild animals are bigger threats to species than climate change
  • Wood fuel is far worse for people and wildlife than fossil fuels
  • Preventing future pandemics requires more not less “industrial” agriculture

I know that the above facts will sound like “climate denialism” to many people. But that just shows the power of climate alarmism.

In reality, the above facts come from the best-available scientific studies, including those conducted by or accepted by the IPCC, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and other leading scientific bodies.

Some people will, when they read this imagine that I’m some right-wing anti-environmentalist. I’m not. At 17, I lived in Nicaragua to show solidarity with the Sandinista socialist revolution. At 23 I raised money for Guatemalan women’s cooperatives. In my early 20s I lived in the semi-Amazon doing research with small farmers fighting land invasions. At 26 I helped expose poor conditions at Nike factories in Asia.

I became an environmentalist at 16 when I threw a fundraiser for Rainforest Action Network. At 27 I helped save the last unprotected ancient redwoods in California.

In my 30s I advocated renewables and successfully helped persuade the Obama administration to invest $90 billion into them. Over the last few years I helped save enough nuclear plants from being replaced by fossil fuels to prevent a sharp increase in emissions.

Until last year, I mostly avoided speaking out against the climate scare. Partly that’s because I was embarrassed. After all, I am as guilty of alarmism as any other environmentalist. For years, I referred to climate change as an “existential” threat to human civilization, and called it a “crisis.”

But mostly I was scared. I remained quiet about the climate disinformation campaign because I was afraid of losing friends and funding. The few times I summoned the courage to defend climate science from those who misrepresent it I suffered harsh consequences. And so I mostly stood by and did next to nothing as my fellow environmentalists terrified the public.

I even stood by as people in the White House and many in the news media tried to destroy the reputation and career of an outstanding scientist, good man, and friend of mine, Roger Pielke, Jr., a lifelong progressive Democrat and environmentalist who testified in favor of carbon regulations. Why did they do that? Because his research proves natural disasters aren’t getting worse.

But then, last year, things spiraled out of control.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said “The world is going to end in twelve years if we don’t address climate change.” Britain’s most high-profile environmental group claimed “Climate Change Kills Children.”

The world’s most influential green journalist, Bill McKibben, called climate change the “greatest challenge humans have ever faced” and said it would “wipe out civilizations.”

Mainstream journalists reported, repeatedly, that the Amazon was “the lungs of the world,” and that deforestation was like a nuclear bomb going off.

As a result, half of the people surveyed around the world last year said they thought climate change would make humanity extinct. And in January, one out of five British children told pollsters they were having nightmares about climate change.

Whether or not you have children you must see how wrong this is. I admit I may be sensitive because I have a teenage daughter. After we talked about the science she was reassured. But her friends are deeply misinformed and thus, understandably, frightened.

I thus decided I had to speak out. I knew that writing a few articles wouldn’t be enough. I needed a book to properly lay out all of the evidence.

And so my formal apology for our fear-mongering comes in the form of my new book, Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All.

It is based on two decades of research and three decades of environmental activism. At 400 pages, with 100 of them endnotes, Apocalypse Never covers climate change, deforestation, plastic waste, species extinction, industrialization, meat, nuclear energy, and renewables.

Some highlights from the book:

  • Factories and modern farming are the keys to human liberation and environmental progress
  • The most important thing for saving the environment is producing more food, particularly meat, on less land
  • The most important thing for reducing air pollution and carbon emissions is moving from wood to coal to petroleum to natural gas to uranium
  • 100% renewables would require increasing the land used for energy from today’s 0.5% to 50%
  • We should want cities, farms, and power plants to have higher, not lower, power densities
  • Vegetarianism reduces one’s emissions by less than 4%
  • Greenpeace didn’t save the whales, switching from whale oil to petroleum and palm oil did
  • “Free-range” beef would require 20 times more land and produce 300% more emissions
  • Greenpeace dogmatism worsened forest fragmentation of the Amazon
  • The colonialist approach to gorilla conservation in the Congo produced a backlash that may have resulted in the killing of 250 elephants

Why were we all so misled?

In the final three chapters of Apocalypse Never I expose the financial, political, and ideological motivations. Environmental groups have accepted hundreds of millions of dollars from fossil fuel interests. Groups motivated by anti-humanist beliefs forced the World Bank to stop trying to end poverty and instead make poverty “sustainable.” And status anxiety, depression, and hostility to modern civilization are behind much of the alarmism

Once you realize just how badly misinformed we have been, often by people with plainly unsavory or unhealthy motivations, it is hard not to feel duped.

Will Apocalypse Never make any difference? There are certainly reasons to doubt it.

The news media have been making apocalyptic pronouncements about climate change since the late 1980s, and do not seem disposed to stop.

The ideology behind environmental alarmsim — Malthusianism — has been repeatedly debunked for 200 years and yet is more powerful than ever.

But there are also reasons to believe that environmental alarmism will, if not come to an end, have diminishing cultural power.

The coronavirus pandemic is an actual crisis that puts the climate “crisis” into perspective. Even if you think we have overreacted, Covid-19 has killed nearly 500,000 people and shattered economies around the globe.

Scientific institutions including WHO and IPCC have undermined their credibility through the repeated politicization of science. Their future existence and relevance depends on new leadership and serious reform.

Facts still matter, and social media is allowing for a wider range of new and independent voices to outcompete alarmist environmental journalists at legacy publications.

Nations are reorienting toward the national interest and away from Malthusianism and neoliberalism, which is good for nuclear and bad for renewables.

The evidence is overwhelming that our high-energy civilization is better for people and nature than the low-energy civilization that climate alarmists would return us to.

And the invitations I received from IPCC and Congress late last year, after I published a series of criticisms of climate alarmism, are signs of a growing openness to new thinking about climate change and the environment.

Another sign is the response to my book from climate scientists, conservationists, and environmental scholars. “Apocalypse Never is an extremely important book,” writes Richard Rhodes, the Pulitzer-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb. “This may be the most important book on the environment ever written,” says one of the fathers of modern climate science Tom Wigley.

“We environmentalists condemn those with antithetical views of being ignorant of science and susceptible to confirmation bias,” wrote the former head of The Nature Conservancy, Steve McCormick. “But too often we are guilty of the same.  Shellenberger offers ‘tough love:’ a challenge to entrenched orthodoxies and rigid, self-defeating mindsets.  Apocalypse Never serves up occasionally stinging, but always well-crafted, evidence-based points of view that will help develop the ‘mental muscle’ we need to envision and design not only a hopeful, but an attainable, future.”

That is all I that I had hoped for in writing it. If you’ve made it this far, I hope you’ll agree that it’s perhaps not as strange as it seems that a lifelong environmentalist, progressive, and climate activist felt the need to speak out against the alarmism.

I further hope that you’ll accept my apology.

Follow me on Twitter. Check out my website or some of my other work here

***

Michael Shellenberger is a Time Magazine “Hero of the Environment,” Green Book Award Winner, and author of Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All (Harper Collins, June 30, 2020). He is a frequent contributor to The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, and other publications. His TED talks have been viewed over five million times.

Brian Keith

15.10.2018 (8:57 am) – Filed under: Berenst#in Bears

My father passed away in 1998. Brian Keith’s Wiki is showing him as dying in 1997, self inflicted gunshot wound.

Prior to Brian Keith starring in Hardcastle and McCormick, circa 1985 or so, my father made a statement out of the blue one day, while “Family Affair” was on the television in the house “…Brian Keith committed suicide with a gun.” I can remember that I was very young and those are my father’s exact words. I cannot remember exactly how old I was or exactly when dad said such, but I do remember it was prior to the days of Hardcastle and McCormick.

Is this another case of the berenst#inbears problem? Well before either the berenst#inbears or mandele effect existed?

X-Files Season 11 Episode 4: The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat

02.02.2018 (2:06 pm) – Filed under: Berenst#in Bears

Mengele Effect

Mandela Effect

The Berenst#in Bears Problem

You can’t imagine the excitement I felt when I watched this week’s episode of the X-Files. Once I figured out the context of the script, my mind went into overload. This is the first time I’ve ever seen anything on prime time or in a movie that dealt with the Berenst#in Bears Problem (aka Mengele Effect, Mandela Effect). Sure, there’s books on the subject. And maybe, there just may be a movie out there that deals with this, but I haven’t seen it. To see it on a prime time drama, especially one of my all time favs, and this being a conspiracy theory (or an unexplained phenomenon) that I truly believe in (one of the very few), really set me back.

Sure, the episode, when considered with all X-Files episode, probably sucked. It was full of cheesy alien special effects, circa 1960’s television. But the subject matter, even though they took a light-hearted approach (or did they? with Skinner’s question at the end) to the subject matter, it made it into the mainstream.

Perhaps you’ve landed here, because of that episode!

One thing they could have added, was a mention of the actual Berenst#in Bears Problem, that would have been icing on the cake!

And for those sites referring to this episode as “The funniest” X-Files episode, shame on you! We should not be promoting such things! The X-Files should NEVER be considered “funny”. Sure, there may be some funny things that occur here and there, but to consider an entire episode as “FUNNY”???? The writers have lost their f’in minds! Stop that!

But alas, at least it made it into the minds of some of the average people that don’t normally believe in such things.

Cascada?

25.10.2017 (8:20 am) – Filed under: Berenst#in Bears

WTF? This “band” just popped into my life. “Voice of a Generation” was how it was referred. Really? WTF is Cascada I asked, researched, found and realized yet another thing that just “happened”, or has been happening, for like a long time…..

#berenst#inbears

Ion Engines

24.10.2017 (12:31 pm) – Filed under: Berenst#in Bears

So now we have Ion Engines? This just magically occurred in my universe. Three years ago, I read an article about an engine some lay-person had built that was being “analyzed by NASA” and they “could not dispute” the output of this “Ion Driven Engine”. How this new invention would revolutionize space travel, once they got a handle on it and did the work on reverse engineering it.

There’s never been a single mention that I recall reading, and I read everything that comes across the news concerning big physics and space travel announcements, that had anything to do with satellites having Ion Engines as far back as 1999 or 2001, which is referred to in this article:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/moon-mars/news/a28754/new-ion-thruster-breaks-records-power-thrust/?src=socialflowFB

Ion thrusters already have a proven track record in space, most notably on the Deep Space 1 craft that flew by the asteroid Braille and the comet Borrelly in 1999 and 2001, respectively, becoming the first spacecraft to rely primarily on ion propulsion. The Dawn spacecraft used ion propulsion to become the first spacecraft to orbit two celestial bodies: the large asteroid Vesta in 2011 and the dwarf planet Ceres in 2015, where the spacecraft is still at work today. In addition, more than 100 communications satellites use small ion thrusters to correct their orbital positions.

 

Damn those Pesky Berenst#in Bears!