He Who Pays the Piper (rev 8/31/23)

 

The defining essence of capitalism is the monetization of power. In capitalism, money is power, economic power in fluid form, the primary instrument of social control. To rephrase an old aphorism, in capitalism he who pays the piper doesn't need to call the tune because he will be surrounded by pipers seeking to play what they think he wants to hear in hopes of securing payment. Rewarding the astute piper(s) provides a learning experience for the other pipers who then on their own volition modify their behavior to improve their chance of success. It is a very effective means of behavior modification and control which, nonetheless, is seen as voluntary and natural. Those who earn their living as pundits or other aspects of opinion shaping are particularly vulnerable to having their opinions and analyses influenced more by the desire to obtain funding than by empirical reality. Notice also that many of these pundits may never actually obtain the funding they strive for, hence, can honestly say that they have never been paid to say what they say.

This modification of opinions and analyses has been distressingly evident on the Left dissident punditry. Prior to Covid, many dissident left websites remained consistent in their analyses of events, the "Russiagate" psyops called out for what it was. With the advent of Covid as the start-point for the global restructuring now underway, such lefty dissident stalwarts as Counterpunch have gotten on board with what can only be described as official wartime propaganda. The current struggle for global dominance involves the full spectrum of hard and soft power which includes media fealty to the official narrative with little or no deviation acceptable. President Clinton's decision to turn NATO into an imperial out-of-area strike force and move into Eastern Europe in an attempt to subjugate Russia is shamelessly presented as more-or-less benign, Russia's invasion of Ukraine unprovoked and unjustified. No reference is made to the American initiated intense global power struggle now underway. This is consistent with the reality that Counterpunch's funding base shares certain biases with the funding base of the Democratic Party. No longer the Party of Roosevelt, the Democrats have become the party of Clinton, Soros, the CIA and Wall Street. 

We have entered a period of transition where society is being restructured from consumptive capitalism towards a form of totalitarian neofeudalism in which energy intensive consumer capitalism is abandoned in favor of debt servitude, mass surveillance and other forms of coercive social control. Not only is our current energy intensive society no longer viable, but we have greatly exceeded the limits of growth and carbon emissions such that disaster is inevitable, hence, global society is being restructured to provide the elites with greatly enhanced security and social control to protect the elites from the chaos which will occur from the rapidly approaching climate catastrophe, assuming no nuclear war.

Other formerly lefty websites such as Global Research have modified their content to appeal to those with a Libertarian ideology and now provide nonsensical analyses about global warming/climate change as a hoax. Below is a quote from F. William Engdahl which appeared on Global Research on 6/21/23 which is so ludicrous to make me wonder why the author risked ridicule to post it and Global Research published it. This isn't a call for censorship but an attempt to come to grips with why a lot of pundits and commentators appear to have lost their minds. I will resume my commentary following the quote.

"What is almost never said is that CO2 cannot soar up into the atmosphere from car exhaust or coal plants or other man made origins. Carbon dioxide is not carbon or soot. It is an invisible, odorless gas essential to plant photosynthesis and all life forms on earth, including us. CO2 has a molecular weight of just over 44 while air (mainly oxygen and nitrogen) has a molecular weight of only 29." (F. William Engdahl) https://www.globalresearch.ca/great-zero-carbon-criminal-conspiracy/5736707    

The Earth's atmosphere is layered like a lasagna, F. William? The surface an unbreathable mixture of CO2 and Argon? Next comes pure oxygen followed by nitrogen? How dumb is that? And how disingenuous to treat CO2 separately while treating the other atmospheric gases as homogeneous "air." Isn't it self-evident that normal atmospheric dynamics mix these various gases so that a roughly "normal" mixture is found from sea level to the highest mountain tops and beyond? The CO2 doesn't hug the ground which is why folks at sea level can safely breath and trees and plants receive adequate CO2 above the CO2 layer postulated by F. William Engdahl. There is no atmospheric layering below 100 km which is why CO2 measurements from the Mauna Loa observatory (11,141 ft. elevation) have increased dramatically. Now, I don't believe that F. William is that stupid, nor that Global Research is that stupid. Rather, I believe that they are pandering to their funding sources. They are playing the tune that their niche group wants to hear. We have entered  a transition period where ideology and opportunism shape the discourse. As such, we need to rely upon common sense to analyze what data is available.

I am now going to provide a common sense analysis of the reality of anthropogenic climate change. I will begin by noting that, all things considered, climatologists have done a poor job of explaining what is happening. I will continue by noting that the reason they call greenhouse gases "greenhouse gases" is because they trap radiated solar energy as heat. Full stop. The amount of heat they trap is proportional to their concentration. 420 ppm CO2 traps 48% more heat that 284 ppm CO2. Period. Except for water vapor, greenhouse gases are a relatively small but extremely important part of Earth's atmosphere, essential for plant growth and moderate climate. It has only been recently that anthrogrogenic carbon release has become an issue due primarily to the burning of fossil fuels. If we go the co2levels.org ( https://www.co2levels.org/ ) we will observe that for the last 1000 years, CO2 has been between 275 ppm and 284 ppm until around 1850 (preindustrial) when it began to increase at an accelerating rate now reaching over 420 ppm in June of 2023. In the upper left corner of the graph is a time icon which we can click to observe 800,000 years of history. CO2 has fairly regular ups and downs (I assume more or less corresponding to some sort of solar cycle). The absolute low was 172 ppm with an average low about 190 ppm. The high reading prior to 1850 was 290 ppm, with an average somewhere between 240 ppm and 280 ppm. It should be obvious to all that the current concentration of 420 ppm is far outside the range of the natural cycles and represents a jarring break with these natural cycles. 

To further demonstrate the unnaturalness of the situation along with a significant indication of potential catastrophe, let us look at the rate of change. The last full cycle began with a low of 190 ppm 138,200 years ago, with a high of 275 ppm 127,600 years ago for an increase of 85 ppm over 10,600 years (0.8 ppm/100 years). This is consistent with the other highs and lows over 800,000 years and indicates that the natural cycles occur slowly from a human perspective. For comparison, the 1000 year graph shows an increase from 304 ppm in 1923 to 422 ppm in 2023 (118 PPM/100 YEARS)with the rate increasing over time. This represents an increase 148 times faster than the natural buildup of CO2, hardly a continuation of the current formerly natural cycle. 

On the 800,000 years graph, click on the temperature icon in the upper left. You will observe a strong correlation between CO2 highs and lows with temperature highs and lows. Hopefully, we are all aware that, all things being equal, cold water absorbs more CO2 than warmer water, hence, a solar cycle which triggers a slight warming trend will result in slightly higher atmospheric CO2 which will amplify the effect causing yet more warming, etc., until the cycle reverses. What this suggests is that talking about a solar cycle as something distinct from greenhouse gas accumulation is nonsense. Greenhouse gases are an integral and essential part of the solar cycle. Furthermore, I have come to believe that greenhouse gases set in motion by the solar cycle provide the bulk of the warming attributed to the natural cycle. It is time to look at temperature over time. Scroll to the bottom of the CO2 graph and click on temperature record. The anamolies shown are for the 1951-1980 base period, not preindustrial.

The starting point for the last full cycle was about 141,000 years ago with a temperature anomalie of (2.72). There is a slight difference between the CO2 low point and the temperature low point, I assume do to other cyclical factors. Please note that the negative 2.72 anomalie is roughly 1.43 degrees C warmer than the (4.15) degree C anomalie at the start of our current cycle. This would seem to account for the relatively high 2.68 degree anomalie at 123,000 years, the highest in 800,000 years and well above our 1850 preindustrial reference point. Before one takes too much comfort in this high natural anomalie, one needs to take into account that the total temperature increase of 5.40 degrees C occurred over 18,000 years for an average of .03 degrees C per 100 years. 

Temperature data for our current industrial era can be found at  https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata_v4/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt The data indicates that for the 50 year period beginning 1960/69 and ending 2010/19 there was .836 degree C increase  which equates to 1.672 degrees C per century, 56 times the non-anthropogenic rate and accelerating. Also, with melting glaciers and melting sea ice the planetary surface is absorbing more solar energy. Plus, warming waters are causing more methane emissions as we enter a period of positive feed back loops. Finally, the burning of fossil fuels also emits particulate matter which slightly reduces the solar radiation striking the planet tending somewhat to offset the CO2 buildup. Eliminating the burning of fossil fuels will also rapidly eliminate these aerosols resulting in a rapid increase in surface temperature of up to 1 degree C. The bottom line is that we have entered a period of accelerating climate chaos which will likely result in some form of environmental collapse. Climatologists have done a poor job in highlighting the rapid and accelerating nature of the change (in geological time frames) which would demonstrate that current warming is not part of any natural cycle and that the impact will be strongly influenced by the rapid rate of change which renders adaptive change problematic. In my opinion, we will pass the 2 degree C prior to 2050. Assuming no nuclear war, by the end of the 21st century, we could be at about 5 to 6 degrees C above preindustrial. This is much warmer than official estimates.

What about net carbon zero, won't that help? No, net carbon zero is a total fraud relying upon accounting gimmickry to pretend to offset fossil fuel emissions without any significant reduction in actual fossil fuel emissions. The looming climate catastrophe is being used to justify actions designed primarily to establish a form of totalitarian social control to protect the elites from the social chaos likely to follow. It is not surprising that the elites would use the unfolding climate crisis as a pretext for increasing social control as a means to protect themselves from the environmental consequences of elite policies. This is particularly true in view of the fact that at this stage of the game there is virtually nothing which can be done to effectively mitigate the catastrophic level of global warming already baked in. On the local level, however, individuals can adopt their own survival strategies. But not if they think global warming/climate change is a hoax. Volcanic CO2 emissions are part of the natural cycle. Current annual anthropogenic CO2 emissions are at least 60 times the average volcanic activity. If you think that anthropogenic CO2 emissions equivalent to a 60x increase in average volcanic activity is no big deal, what can I say? The era of massive fossil fuel burning is at an end and there is no going back. Yet, many (most?) pundits and other commentators have abandoned rational analyses of empirical reality in favor of pandering to funding sources. It is easy to believe what is convenient to believe and the need to obtain money to survive is a powerful motivator. People can convince themselves of all manner of nonsense when it suits them to do so. This is particularly true during periods of rapid change and chaos where power relations are in a state of flux. Add to this the inevitable confusion caused by the electronic dissemination of propaganda by the competing global factions. The end result is that empirical reality is pushed aside in a desperate attempt to align with those deemed likely to prevail in the current power struggle.