Nut Nut's Attempt At A Book About Politics & Society

You had lots of interest in engaging with me with the intention of condemnation. And then you proved yourself to be dishonest.

I don't take it personally. I think you're learning something here. I see that you are recommending ubi in another thread.

As far as my sanity is concerned .... I originated this thread for the purpose of expressing my myself authentically at a variety of levels. Logical, emotional, political and primitive. I have done what I set out to do. I can breathe better when I am not holding on to a lot of unexpressed energy.

I don't expect to get a better result with people than Moses got with Raamses. Moses had no leverage and Raamses was stubborn and arrogant. God has all the leverage and will deliver the plagues that bring people to heel.

I think one of things which is unique about my upbringing is being a Jewish child in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Seeing all those concentration camp tattoos of the survivors forced me to investigate.

I've always been a curious child and I didn't shy away from learning about the Holocaust. To grapple as a young child with the latent brutality that lurks in most of us and is there to be unleashed when the circumstances summon our darkness.

What happened in Europe and in other places was much more just a mechanical process of making an extermination assembly line. It involved a mass psychological event in which the public was somehow conditioned to emotionally disconnect themselves from the persecuted class. They gave the Nazi's free reign to do whatever they wanted. They were obedient sheep.

Of course, I didn't experience that first hand. I was born in 1962. So, I wondered how it could happen.

I don't have to wonder any more. I see it happening now.

I'm a disobedient sheep. And that's scary. So no one is going to agree with me because they are scared to. Fear paralyzes us.

Isaiah 41:10 - Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

No. Despair does.

You know our evolutionary history from the primordial soup. A lot of stuff had to go right for 8 billion of us to be here. But all those earlier forms of life until humans just got lucky. That luck ran out for humans during the last ice age.

You know the numbers that made it through and you know what they were up against. They persevered. But that wasn't enough. I believe the sole reason they made it through - and the sole reason we're here is because they had intelligence.

Animals know fear but not despair. They just keep going and going until they drop dead. They don't know life and death. They don't make things prettier or create any sort of art to show it matters to them like humans have. That apprecation for the conscious experience of existence is why they fought off the despair no matter how bleak things got for them.

From that little sapling of people came a forest of 8 billion people who got to experience joy and sorrow, laughter and crying intellectual satisfaction and frustration and love. All that because they found a why for us. I wish we could thank them personally but in lieu of that all we can do to express that gratitude is pay it forward no matter how bleak it gets just like they did.

As I alluded to earlier: it's a whole lot easier and a lot less frustrating to find 10 people who agree with you out of 1,000 randos, than 10 out of 10. There's a law of numbers. Then again, I once sent out 50k direct response mailers for an alarm company and didn't get one response. "Do you have a moat?" wtf was I thinking.

For many people, despair is a phase that they must go through in life. Sometimes the way to become most grateful for life is to look death straight in the eye and feel that survival energy emerge.

Somewhere in the universe, an invisible tribal drum is vibrating out a signal to move in the direction of survival. We have to figure out how to amplify the signal .... to get the sheep marching in a different direction.

Sheppards ring a bell, sing or whatnot to keep the sheep calm and compliant. Someone is looking out for the wolves, so they can relax and graze.

I actually have a paradigm which combines a flock of sheep, a pack of wolves and the recurring cycles in human history.

In a standard formation, the sheep in the center of the pack are more protected from an attack by the wolves on a flank. So, the sheep compete for the center position and the sheep most capable of winning that competition get preferred real estate.

Evertually the wolves come and the pack contracts inwardly toward an increasingly dense center. At some point the density of the pack is so great that it has exhausted the grazing capacity of the earth beneath it.

This is the moment when chaos erupts, when the sheep are trapped between two different survival impulses .... the need to eat and the wish to avoid the wolves. The pack explodes, the wolves get their fill, and the survivors gather in a new patch of pasture.

The critical failure in human civilization is the absence of cross-tribal cooperation. We have a media hell bent on dividing the working class into social factions with utter contempt for each other. They spin some nonsense about left and right and people believe it.

Like they say people are sheeple. That’s not derogatory, it's just how people are. But others get them to do what they want by taking their nature into account and providing conditions or incentives to them, which coupled with their nature produces the desired outcomes.

If you're not willing to put the effort in or change your tactic of beating sheep for being sheep, then that’s on you not them. How you behave or act, or what you do is the variable in the equation, not them.

It's like with science. There’s nature that gave us certain conditions. If we dont like those conditions we don't try to change the laws of nature or curse them over and over to get nature to do what we want. Instead - either theoretically or through trial and error - we learn how nature behaves, provide conditions that don't spontaneously occur in nature to get our desired outcomes.

This isn't that complicated. If you are using one tactic to get people to join you and it repeatedly fails to get the outcome you want, change your tactics. What's that definition of insanity?

It's not on me if people like you choose to end human civilization. Your effort to blame my style falls flat when no human being on Earth is successfully leading us on this issue. Every style available is being tried and failing.

You identified the conditions in which you would change your mind. I feel like I've shared information which satisfies those conditions beyond a reasonable doubt and you acted as if your representation was no longer relevant.

You allude to incentives which combine with your nature to get a desired outcome. What incentives could I possibly provide you or others when the survival prospects of children and grandchildren don't do the trick ?

☐: Yes, I choose to end human civilization.

☑: No, I do not choose to end human civilization. Tell me what to do next.

Step 1 might be to acknowledge that the scientific consensus has us on a trajectory toward the collapse of the current version of human civilization. The current version being characterized by the liberty to add unlimited GHG's to the shared atmosphere.

The scientific consensus is embodied in the following which I have shared with you.

1) IPCC statements from the 2023 AR6 indicating the actions necessary to remain below 2C.

2) Actual GHG emissions in response to the IPCC warning demonstrating that no material action is taking place.

3) Vast majority of scientists believe we will surpass 2.5C this century.

The next steps I would ask you to engage in would be political and advance an agenda which removes the liberty to add unlimited GHG's to the atmosphere. These restrictions would be parallel to restrictions already in place related to the freedom to build weapons of mass destruction. We would need to acknowledge that excessive GHG's are a weapon of mass destruction.

Okay, I "acknowledge that." Might not use you're exact phrasing but whatever, I'm not going to get caught up over a word.

Okay, now that we got the pledge of allegiance out of the way, we now have something actually actionable.

Like what? I’m not into pep rallies and all that stuff. So what should I do to advance that agenda?

I think you underestimate the importance of what you've just done.

You've joined me in expressing the wish for curbing the liberty to add GHG's to the atmosphere.

We went from 1 person to 2. From me to we. That's the hardest step. Now we continue to spread the evidence and go to 3,4 and grow the group.

You set a good example here of someone willing to learn. That's a story you can share with others.

I told you I'm not into that as that sort of door to door stuff. Ben Franklin's printing press is more up my alley.

Since you seem to know this stuff off the top of your head, can you give me some mainstream climatologists who are saying or supporting the gist of that claim?

I'm sorry, I don't know what claim you are referring to.

I need quotes from some prestigious / reputable climatologists to support the gist of the claim in the call-to-action for the petition.

Are you saying that you need proof that scientists believe that humans are materially altering the climate ?

I've given you the statement from the IPCC AR6 released in 2023 which stated that we needed deep and immediate emission cuts this decade in order to have a chance of not exceeding 2C.

If its prestige you're asking for, the IPCC consensus is as prestigious as it gets. My take is that they are too conservative as do many climate scientists like Hansen.

In addition to the IPCC statement, I've shared data with you which shows we are not making any cuts whatsoever (in the aggregate), much less the deep and immediate cuts the IPCC said we needed.

I'm not a mind reader John.

I'm not in a position to know why you are articulating a position which casts doubt on both overwhelming scientic consensus and a simple common sense interpretation of that consensus.

The end result is that your credibility as a competent evaluator regarding this topic is non existent. There are a multitude of potential reasons for that.

"You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink".

I told you, I’m not into the door-to-door or pep-rally stuff. I’m building a funnel: something like the “Meet the Reason You Exist” social media post that leads to a petition, with the goal of getting people to share it, sign, and opt in.

I’m just looking for quotes like the ones I found below to add credibility to the petition. I’m not putting any science debates in there or framing it in the negative doomer style.

So if you have anything along the lines of these quotes, I’m just asking for them:

Here's a good quote from Hansen ..... about 15 years ago.

If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilisation developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO₂ will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm [parts per million] to at most 350 ppm... If the present overshoot of this target CO₂ is not brief, there is a possibility of seeding irreversible catastrophic effects.

When Hansen wrote that, CO2 levels were at 385 ppm and increasing by 2-2.5 ppm per year. He was imploring the world to reduce CO2 concentrations by 35 ppm from 385 back down to 350.

Instead .... we're on schedule to exceed 430 ppm in the coming spring. Instead of a decrease as Hansen implored, we've increased the concentration dramatically.

Research showing that plastic interferes with plant photosynthesis .... the metabolism of our food supply is in jeopardy.

https://www.ehn.org/microplastics-may-wo...

Perfect, that's what I was looking for. Here’s a draft of the petition:

This is not a call for awareness. The world is already aware.

This is a call for accountability — for the scientific community to reckon with its role in creating and sustaining the systems that drive greenhouse gas emissions.

History will remember not only those who denied the truth, but those who saw it, measured it, published it and carried on as if warning were enough or all they could have done.

In 2010, Dr. James Hansen, one of the world’s most respected climate scientists and former director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, warned:

“If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilisation developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO₂ will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm... If the present overshoot of this target CO₂ is not brief, there is a possibility of seeding irreversible catastrophic effects.”

Thirteen years later, his warning had grown more urgent. In 2023, Hansen stated:

“There’s a lot more in the pipeline, unless we reduce the greenhouse gas amounts… These superstorms are a taste of the storms of my grandchildren.”

Over the last 15 years has Dr. James Hansen ever once called out his own scientific colleagues who had and still have a hand in causing GHG emissions?

And we're led to believe that the same scientists who either directly through their actions or complicit through silence are the ones we should trust with our children's future.

We have power. Let's use it:

We, the undersigned, call on the scientific community to confront its own part in creating and sustaining greenhouse gas emissions.

To anyone looking for cliff notes on this thread: