Human arrogance toward Nature took another beating in the aftermath of Sandy, which caused widescale flooding and power outages in the New York City area. Predictably, many sought to link the "superstorm" to anthropogenic climate change, which gave the New Yorker's Elizabeth Kolbert another opportunity to skewer the candidates for not talking about global warming. Politicians ignoring science is nothing new, so I didn't expect much as I read Watching Sandy, Ignoring Climate Change. But then there was this—
Coming as it is just a week before Election Day, Sandy makes the fact
that climate change has been entirely ignored during this campaign seem
all the more grotesque. In a year of record-breaking temperatures across
the U.S., record drought conditions in the country’s corn belt, and now
a record storm affecting the nation’s most populous cities, neither
candidate found the issue to be worthy of discussion. Pressed about this
finally the other day on MTV, President Obama called climate change a
“critical issue” that he was “surprised” hadn’t come up during any of
the debates, a response that was at once completely accurate and totally
disingenuous.
As one commentator pointed out, he might have brought up this “critical” issue on his own since “he is the friggin’ POTUS.”
Oh, my! Just when we thought we'd heard everything the humans have to offer...
And then there are the people who never talk about anything else. They are every bit as clueless as the ones who don't talk about global warming, or deny it's happening. You regular readers will suspect that I am referring to "Wild Bill" McKibben, and indeed I am! We've got a recent quote from him demonstrating beyond all reasonable doubt that Wild Bill has abandoned Reality altogether to pursue his own special agenda, which is Saving The Earth. He is now officially deranged.
The crazy statement came up in an interview McKibben did with Salon's Andrew Leonard. If a baboon had joined the conversation, it would have raised the average IQ of the participants considerably. On Monday, October 29, 2012, as Sandy was bearing down on the east coast, Leonard wrote—
As a writer and activistBill McKibben
has devoted his life to tackling the threat posed by man-made climate
change. As Hurricane Sandy brought normal life on the East Coast to a
standstill, McKibben’sTwitter feedwent into overdrive — a veritable deluge of storm updates and political
commentary.
A few moments ago, he took some time out of a very busy day
to explain why climate change hasn’t been a bigger issue in the run-up
to the ongoing catastrophe:
Leonard — The candidates refused to talk about climate change during
the debates and the mainstream media hardly dares mention global warming
in the context of this storm. What’s going on here?
Wild Bill — What’s going on here is the astonishing power of the fossil fuel industry.
They have essentially bought one party and scared the other.
And they’ve
done the same thing all over the world. They’re the richest, most
powerful industry on earth and they are able to keep people from
questioning what’s become the most dangerous set of corporate practices
in history.
It may come as a Big Surprise to you that Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP and all the rest routinely tell the Russians, the Chinese, the Saudis, the Brazilians, and the other big oil producers what to do and what not to do. It certainly came as a Big Surprise to me because if Wild Bill thinks the oil companies have that kind of power, which he must think because his political position is incoherent otherwise, that means that Wild Bill and Reality have irrevocably parted ways, and will likely never meet up again.
All of those countries have state-owned oil companies in which the government (such as it is) tells the oil companies what to do, not the other way around. In fact, U.S. oil companies have been largely shut out of the post-war oil boom in Iraq. But in Wild Bill's feeble little brain, Exxon Mobil is a Planet Killer. Vladimir Putin is merely a tool of BP and Shell, carrying out their evil schemes.
Thus climate change did indeed come up in the wake of the Sandy disaster. And we're so glad it did
A new estimate of carbon release from Arctic permafrost surfaced late last week. I intend to write about it, but that also requires me to quote extensively from this post, which I published on December 1, 2011. So I've reprinted it today, with only a few small edits to bring it up to date. It's a bit technical, sorry about that — Dave
I hope you've got your thinking cap on today. Although this post appears to be about climate change, it is not. I am going to use a recent news report about carbon emissions from thawing permafrost as a jumping off point in a discussion of a much broader subject—how to think about the future. This too-brief presentation is a bit complicated, so I hope you will be able to follow the discussion.
A recent study called High risk of permafrost thaw appeared in the December 1 issue of the science journal Nature. As you're probably aware, the Arctic is warming much faster than the rest of the planet, and one of the effects of that warming is to cause the permafrost to melt and break-up, thus releasing the large amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) stored there. If you are awake, you also know that both are greenhouse gases. We are interested in this text from the study.
Our survey asks what percentage of the surface permafrost is likely to thaw, how much carbon will be released, and how much of that carbon will be CH4, for three time periods and under four warming scenarios that will be part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report.
The lowest warming scenario projects 1.5 °C Arctic warming over the 1985–2004 average by the year 2040, ramping up to 2 °C by 2100; the highest warming scenario considers 2.5 °C by 2040, and 7.5 °C by 2100. In all cases, we posited that the temperature would remain steady from 2100 to 2300 so that we could assess opinions about the time lag in the response of permafrost carbon to temperature change.
The survey was filled out this year by 41 international scientists, listed as authors here, who publish on various aspects of permafrost. The results are striking. Collectively, we hypothesize that the high warming scenario will degrade 9–15% of the top 3 metres of permafrost by 2040, increasing to 47–61% by 2100 and 67–79% by 2300 (these ranges are the 95% confidence intervals around the group’s mean estimate). The estimated carbon release from this degradation is 30 billion to 63 billion tonnes of carbon by 2040, reaching 232 billion to 380 billion tonnes by 2100 and 549 billion to 865 billion tonnes by 2300. These values, expressed in CO2 equivalents, combine the effect of carbon released as both CO2 and as CH4.
This sounds pretty terrifying, and it is scary when viewed over long periods (centuries) on the human timescale. (On the geological timescale, a few centuries amounts to no time at all.) These scientists are talking about the years 2040, 2100, and 2300! Let's disregard the far-flung future and focus on the predicted carbon release by 2040.
Any such survey of expert views is only as good as the assumptions underlying those views. Notice that estimates of greenhouse gas release from thawing permafrost are based on the four warming scenarios which will be part of the IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report (AR5). These scenarios are unnamed in the Nature article, but a little digging helped me identify them. (Google is your friend.) Here they are.
Click on the image to enlarge it. On the left, radiative forcing (heating of the Earth's surface) in watts/m2. On the right, anthropogenic emissions scenarios. It is highly likely that the four scenarios used in the Nature study were MESSAGE 8.5, AIM 6.0, MiniCAM 4.5 and IMAGE 2.6. Here's my source, which is corroborated here.
If you look closely at the right panel, you will see the four emissons pathways corresponding to the scenarios. Let's throw out the high case (MESSAGE 8.5) and the low case (IMAGE 2.6). In the former, anthropogenic emissions just rise and rise, eventually reaching 100 billion tons (gigatons, gt) per year. In the latter, which may appeal to some Doomers in the audience, emissions rise only a little from their current level of 33 gigatons per year and fall off sharply after 2020. No doubt the people who created this scenario were not considering a possible collapse of industrial civilization. They were thinking instead that humankind made a concerted effort to reduce emissions, which appears to be more and more unlikely.
As we consider the middle scenarios AIM 6.0 and MiniCAM 4.5, we must bear in mind this very important point:
All other things being equal, anthropogenic CO2 emissions are a proxy for economic growth*
*"a proxy for" in this context means "provide an alternative measurement of", or "stand in for"
OK, let's return to the two middle scenarios. In MiniCAM 4.5, annual emissions grow slowly from the current level to about 38-39 gigatons in 2050, which is a mere 39 years from now. In the AIM 6.0 scenario, annual emissions grow to about 53-54 gigatons in 2050. We are thus entitled to conclude that both scenarios assume the global economy will continue to grow for the next 39 years. Let's split the difference between the two. Let's create a scenario called DAVE 1.0 in which emissions grow to about 45-46 gigatons per year by 2050. Let's take that as the default scenario assumed by the IPCC and the authors of the Nature study.
Getting back to thawing permafrost, the survey results published in Nature assume that emissions from the frozen tundra will be anywhere from 30 gigatons of CO2-equivalent (the low-end IMAGE 2.6 scenario) to 63 gigatons (the high end MESSAGE 8.5 scenario). Let's split the difference again, and assume that emissions will be about 45-46 gigatons from thawing permafrost by 2040 according to the DAVE 1.0 scenario. (I am simplifying here by assuming a linear relationship, but that really doesn't matter much.)
And now we are finally ready to ask the crucial questions all of this discussion has led up to.
How likely is it that we will follow an economic growth path where the cumulative total emissions from thawing permafrost are about 45-46 gigatons by 2040? And annual anthropogenic emissions are 45-46 gigatons by 2050?
Relatively speaking, how important is it that all emissions from thawing permafrost will total 45-46 gigatons by 2040, which is about 140% of total anthropogenic emissions in 2010? (Of course, emissions from permafrost will grow for a long time after 2040.)
In short, do you find it plausible that the global economy will grow and grow for the next 39 years? If you think this likely, or even possible, you should worry about CO2 emissions from thawing permafrost. If you don't find DAVE 1.0 plausible, and regular DOTE readers know I don't, you're likely to shrug off this Nature survey about future emissions from thawing permafrost, reasoning that there are plenty of other things to worry about; this is only one of them.
For example, what will global oil production be in 2040? What will it be in 2050? In my view, it's not only likely, it's almost a certainty that global oil production will be considerably lower in three or four decades than it is right now. Perhaps you think that makes no difference to future economic growth. I beg to differ.
Now you can see, perhaps with new eyes, that scary scenarios about emissions from thawing permafrost (and the like) are predicated on what I call Dumb Extrapolation of 20th century economic growth trends well into the 21st century. We also see this in Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reports on future deficits. Future deficits are estimated to be far smaller than they likely to be based on highly unrealistic future economic growth rates which, all other things being equal, boost government revenues. When officials representing large human institutions like the IPCC or the CBO talk about the future, you will invariably find Dumb Extrapolation.
I hope you've followed this complex argument and have learned something about how to think about the future. By definition, Dumb Extrapolation excludes the possibility of radical discontinuities in all areas of study—the climate, the oil supply, the coal supply, the world economy, the American economy, CO2 emissions from thawing permafrost, future government revenues and so on.
Truth be told, I have been forced to use a form of dumb extrapolation today with respect to future permafrost emissions to make a larger point.
One such "radical discontinuity" (i.e. a non-linear event in the economy) occurred in 2008. It is three four years later, and we in the United States are all still paying the price. Europe is (still) teetering on the edge of economic castastrophe. China appears to be is in big trouble, given their failing export model and bursting real estate (housing) bubble. Thinking about what the world will look like in 2040 is sufficiently mind-boggling, let alone thinking about what might happen by 2100 or 2300.
This choice quotation from the great Yankee catcher and sage Yogi Berra seems apropos here.
The future ain't what it used to be
Bonus video — Peter Gabriel's end theme Down To Earth, from the movie Wall-E
As we near the end of one of the most glorious outbursts of insanity in human history, aka. the 2012 election, a giant "superstorm" called Sandy is threatening to wipe out ... New Jersey? What did those poor people do? If we thought the current hysteria could get no worse, we were wrong. Now we've got Sandy hysteria piled up on election hysteria, which can only mean one thing — Widespread Panic!
There's some good news: the Federal government has shut down and we could get some serious flooding in the low-lying financial district in lower Manhattan. Unfortunately, Nature does not act with the precision we might wish for, selectively targeting Bankers, Private Equity Capitalists, Hedge Funders, Politicians, Think-Tankers, Lobbyists and Bureaucrats. Innocent civilians are also threatened. That's a shame.
Sandy is a Category 1 hurricane with wind speeds topping out at about 85 90 miles per hour. Wind speed-wise, that's nothing to write home about, as any Gulf Coast resident can tell you. However, the Important People and Media Personalities living in the overpopulated corridor which stretches from Washington D.C. to New York City up to Boston only recently found out there are other humans living on the Gulf Coast, and thus have no way of judging just how large a disaster Sandy actually is.
Some intrepid researchers are asking for Federal government funding so they can dispatch a crack team of curious anthropologists down to the Gulf Coast, a place which Civilized People have never explored, to study how these alleged humans eke out an existence in Godforsaken Places with exotic names like "Corpus Christi", "Mississippi", "Louisiana" and "The Yucatan".
Although the storm's wind speeds are relatively benign, the storm surge from Sandy is expected to be pretty severe. It will be worst in New York City, Long Island and northern New Jersey (and see the map below).
KENSINGTON, Md. (AP) — The projected storm surge from Hurricane Sandy
is a "worst case scenario" with devastating waves and tides predicted
for the highly populated New York City metro area, government
forecasters said Sunday.
The more they observe it, the more the
experts worry about the water — which usually kills and does more damage
than winds in hurricanes.
In this case, seas will be amped up by
giant waves and full-moon-powered high tides. That will combine with
drenching rains, triggering inland flooding as the hurricane merges with
a winter storm system that will worsen it and hold it in place for
days.
Louis Uccellini, environmental prediction chief for the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration [NOAA], told the Associated
Press that given Sandy's due east-to-west track into New Jersey, that
puts the worst of the storm surge just north in New York City, Long
Island and northern New Jersey. "Yes, this is the worst case scenario,"
he said.
In a measurement of pure kinetic energy, NOAA's hurricane
research division on Sunday ranked the surge and wave "destruction
potential" for Sandy — just the hurricane, not the hybrid storm it will
eventually become — at 5.8 on a 0 to 6 scale. The damage expected from
winds will be far less, experts said. Weather Underground meteorologist
Jeff Masters says that surge destruction potential number is a record
and it's due to the storm's massive size.
"You have a lot of wind
acting over a long distance of water for hundreds of miles" and that
piles the storm surge up when it finally comes ashore, Masters said.
Even though it doesn't pack much power in maximum wind speed, the
tremendous size of Sandy — more than 1,000 miles across with tropical
storm force winds — adds to the pummelling power when it comes ashore,
he said.
There will no doubt be some large-scale power outages as well.
I should also add that this diaster will be a great boon to Barack Obama—what disaster is not?—who will get to look Very Presidential in the days preceding the election.
Some powerful Americans have been very naughty these past 30 years. Many of them live in areas lying directly in the storm's path. Is Sandy the Wrath of God?
Certainly not, but a little Wrath of God falling upon various Unrepentent Sinners would be very welcome right about now.
Unfortunately for us, to quote Kurt Vonnegut, God is the laziest man in town.
I read some Schopenhauer about seven years ago, but those years are a blur now; my life had fallen apart. My interest in Arthur was rekindled recently when a reader (on another blog) explained why he thought I was the Schopenhauer of our times. And then political philosopher John Gray praised Schopenhauer in his book Straw Dogs, which I recently read.
However, I was prompted to write this post when I ran across an article called Schopenhauer’s Extreme Self-Help for Pessimists. I thought that article was very funny in a dark kind of way, but for those of you who yearn for something serious, I promise you this post does have a point, although some of you will think me extremely arrogant for making it. Let's take that potential criticism off the table right now. I am extremely arrogant, case closed
German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer was such an extreme pessimist
that he thought we live in the worst of all possible worlds and
happiness is an illusion. This is what makes it surprising that he wrote
a best-selling book containing a self-help section. And yet he did.
Although calling it self-help is somewhat misleading; the main aim of
his advice was really reducing misery...
Schalkx and Bergsma, in an article [2008] published in the
Journal of Happiness Studies, argue that it is possible to evaluate
Schopenhauer's advice by comparing it with modern psychological findings
on life satisfaction.
To do this they first examine Schopenhauer's advice, which can be
split into three parts. First are his general rules for life, second,
how we should manage our relationship with ourselves and, third, how to
manage our relationships with other...
The Journal of Happiness Studies. Oh, my! Schalkx and Bergsman believe they can evaluate Arthur Schopenhauer's advice. Perhaps you can start to see where this going. Let's start with Arthur's advice.
General rules for life
In short, the key to making life bearable for Schopenhauer was simply this: extremely low expectations.
Here I did Arthur one better. Actually, two better. About a decade ago, I was striving to have no expectations of life and other people. It was surprising how hard this was to achieve, for the Hope is buried very deep within us. Just as I was on the verge of achieving no expectations, I realized the situation was even worse than I thought—I would need to have negative expectations.
Happily, I now achieve this realistic state of mind on occasion. The advantages are obvious: 1) if other people exceed those negative expectations, I can be pleased; and 2) people sometimes do meet my negative expectations, for example in the outrageous comments they make on this blog. On the other hand, Paul Krugman always meets my expectations
We live, thought Schopenhauer, in the worst of all possible worlds,
constantly on the brink of destruction. Our will, or our desires, are
continually demanding things from the world that cannot always be
satisfied. And so we are continually frustrated.
Even when our desires are satisfied it will only be brief. This
satisfaction will then lead to an increase in our desires and,
ultimately, to boredom when our desires are finally exhausted.
Life, then, is suffering (an idea well-known to Buddhists). The
answer for Schopenhauer was not to seek happiness, but to try and get
through life with the minimum of suffering. His goal was for a bearable
life.
Happily, that is now my goal also—a minimum of suffering. Even then, I fail to achieve it most days.
Our relationship with ourselves
Here are some practical suggestions Schopenhauer put forward for managing ourselves:
Live in the present, making it as painless as possible.
Make good use of the only thing we can control, our own minds.
Our personality is central to our level of happiness.
Set limits everywhere: limits on anger, desires, wealth and power. Limitations lead to something like happiness.
Accept misfortunes: only dwell on them if we're responsible.
Seek out solitude, other people rob us of our identities.
Keep busy.
This is all excellent advice. I still have trouble accepting misfortune for which I am not responsible.
Our relationship with others
For Schopenhauer relationships with others are mainly sources of
stress and hurt. As far as he was concerned true friendship is a near
impossibility. As a result his advice is mostly aimed at protecting us
from the inevitable damage other people will cause us:
People are selfish: they are easily flattered and easily offended.
Their opinions can be bought and sold for the right price. Because of
this friendship is usually motivated by self-interest.
Behaving with kindness towards others causes them to be arrogant: therefore other people must be treated with some disregard.
My natural impulse is to treat others with kindness, but Arthur's observation is true in my experience as well. I've often seen others assume an obnoxious, unwarranted arrogance with me as a result of my kindness toward them, which then sometimes compels me to tell them what I actually think of their foolish, uninformed, corn-pone or crazy opinions about various things. Relations become strained after that
Displaying your intelligence makes you incredibly unpopular: people don't like to be reminded of their inferiority.
This goes without saying.
Truly exceptional people prefer to be on their own because ordinary people are annoying.
Yes, they are. In my experience, ordinary people can be extremely annoying, when they are not simply annoying.
Accept that the world is filled with fools, they cannot change and neither can you.
I'm trying. I don't always succeed.
But now things take a different turn, as the psychologists attempt to separate what Schopenhauer got right from what he got wrong.
What Schopenhauer got right
Nowadays, of course, psychological research tells us a lot more about
the conditions of happiness in the modern world. So how does
Schopenhauer's advice stack up? Schalkx and Bergsma (in press) argue
that a couple of Schopenhauer's self-help principles do indeed stand the
test of time.
I'll skip directly to what Arthur allegedly got wrong, making comments along the way. This list is not complete.
1. Don't seek status — Probably wrong.
Studies often find correlations between higher status and higher levels of happiness.
God damn! What if you seek status and do not achieve it? I guess you're pretty fucked then. This is also a rejection of Buddhism. If you seek status, and do achieve it, congratulations! — you are now a satisfied monkey in the Monkey Hierarchy. Good job! Let the suffering continue!
And seeking status means endless involvement with other people, which leads to Arthur's second piece of "bad" advice—
JFC! What if you find ordinary people annoying as Arthur and I do? The wretched fact is that we find (or found) them annoying because they are annoying. Wasn't it that hosebag Jean-Paul Sartre who wrote Hell is other people? Schopenhauer is turning over in his grave.
4. Avoid problems — Mostly wrong.
Setting goals and following our dreams both involve
dealing with the world and overcoming problems.
Having very low
expectations and avoiding trouble probably result in failing to achieve.
Research finds that goal-setting and facing and overcoming problems are
associated with happiness.
For once, I am speechless. Go ahead, follow your dreams. Go ahead, "overcome" some problems. Why don't you start with something easy? Like corrupt governance and social inequality in the United States? After you fix those, why don't you solve our global warming problem? Please do! After you fix that, you can tackle human-caused degradation of the oceans.
Make it so!
Now we get to the heart of the matter.
Does Schopenhauer's advice benefit the extreme pessimist?
As you'll have gathered, Schopenhauer was the kind of chap who always
thought the glass was half-empty.
Rather than delay your gratification any longer, I will state the fundamental difficulty (and astonishing stupidity) of this nonsensical "evaluation" of Schopenhauer's advice.
Schopenhauer was writing the rules for people like him and me. I don't know why he bothered. There are very few people in the world like Schopenhauer and me. I guess he was keeping busy. Good advice!
These psychologists are defining the rules of happiness for ordinary people, people who Schopenhauer and I find annoying. As such, they do not and can not understand what Schopenhauer is talking about because these psychologists are also ordinary people who study ordinary people. As such, they are clueless.
Imagine the unwarranted, blind arrogance of saying that modern psychological research can tell us what Schopenhauer got right and what he got wrong. Jesus wept.
Ordinary (dumb or unconscious) people will never figure out what exceptional (smart or conscious) people are up to. I see that everyday.
That is the bottom line. And on that cheerful note, I will conclude this Sunday post.
The incomparable Joni Mitchell needs no introduction here. More than any other singer, as I attended various universities doing as little as possible in the 1970s, Joni Mitchell defines that period musically for me. We've got some excellent stuff today. Here's the playlist.
Concert video, live at London's Wembly Arena in 1983, excellent quality, includes —
Free Man In Paris (0:47)
Song for Sharon (4:23)
God Must Be A Boogie Man (11:35)
Big Yellow Taxi (15:54)
A Case Of You (19:24)
Carey (24:19)
Hejira — the title song from the 1976 album, live in Japan
Coyote — two album versions, from the live album Miles of Aisles, 1974, and the studio version from Don Juan's Reckless Daughter, 1977
You Turn Me On (I'm A Radio) — from Miles Of Aisles, originally from For The Roses, 1972
Because governance of the United States is dysfunctional and corrupt, and has been for as long as most people can remember, America lurches from crisis to crisis with no good outcome in sight. So much money has been doled out to special interests over the years (e.g. in defense or health care) that the U.S. now runs huge annual deficits and must borrow or print money (via Fed bond buying) to meet its obligations.
One result is that the U.S. economy is now very dependent on government spending. That situation will only get worse in the future as Medicare and other spending bankrupts the nation.
The latest crisis comes after we've finally finished up this exercise in futility called the 2012 Election. It is called the fiscal cliff.
The economy is highly dependent on government spending, but the government's ability to increase revenues has been impaired primarily by the Bush tax cuts, the poor economy, and foreign wars according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. If Congress does not act before 2013, government spending will be slashed and the Bush tax cuts will expire. That is the cliff we will allegedly fall off if Congress fails to do their duty.
But when has Congress ever failed us?
As a result of the fiscal cliff, the conventional "thinking" goes, the United States economy will go down the tubes in 2013. In fact, we've already started to see some damage according to the National Association of Manufacturers.
The “fiscal cliff” is still two months off, but the scheduled blast
of tax hikes and spending cuts is already reverberating through the U.S.
economy, hampering growth and, according to a new study, wiping out
nearly 1 million jobs this year alone.
The report ... predicts that the economic damage would
deepen considerably if Congress fails to avert the cliff, destroying
nearly 6 million jobs through 2014 and sending the unemployment rate
soaring to near 12 percent.
Note the jobs miracle which occurs in 2016-18 and the GDP miracle which precedes it in 2014-2016. Source: Fiscal Shock: America’s Economic Crisis report prepared for the National Association of Manufacturers and The Washington Post
To sum up, we note without irony, given that the government itself created this mess, that—
The U.S. economy is highly dependent on government spending.
Unless the government increases revenues, total U.S. debt held by the public will reach 100% of GDP in 2020. The debt held by the public stands at $11.3 trillion right now. That number does not include the IOUs the U.S. Treasury has written to the social security and medicare trust funds, which amount to another $5 trillion. There is little doubt that future GDP as estimated by the Congressional Budget Office has been overstated, so public debt equaling only 100% of GDP in 2020 is a very conservative estimate.
The only way the government can raise revenues is to take large amounts of money out of the economy, assuming that curtailing foreign wars and other measures are off the table (but see directly below).
Since the U.S. economy seems incapable of organic growth fueled by the private sector in the foreseeable future, it will thus remain dependent on government spending for many years to come. But the government will face utter bankuptcy by 2020, or it will print money and devalue the currency to pay its bills, or it must take large amounts of money out of the economy to make ends meet.
I know what a no-win situation looks like, and I am looking at one right now.
The only good thing about the seemingly endless election is that, mercifully, it will end on November 6. But perhaps the rug will pulled out from under us. Maybe, just maybe, our long national nightmare will simply go on and on after the votes are cast. This terrifying prospect came to mind when I read Maureen Dowd's latest New York Times column, which was re-named Mitt's mind-boggling phoniness in my local "newspaper" the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
While I was watching Mitt Romney make up fantasy positions in the
foreign policy debate, I had a fantasy of my own. And given the
electoral isthmus the two men are wrestling on, it doesn't seem like
such a wild one. There is growing buzz that the dead heat could slide
into a deadlock.
If Mr. Romney does suspend voter disbelief enough
to tie President Barack Obama, with each getting 269 Electoral College
votes, the Republican-controlled House would determine the president —
and give it to Mitt. And the (presumably) Democratic-controlled Senate
would determine the vice president — and give it to Joe Biden.
The nightmare is not that the Bane Capitalist will defeat Hopey-Changey—clearly that's a possibility—it's that the election will end up a tie in the electoral college. I don't know how that wouild work exactly, but the Constitution dictates that the House of Representatives would thereby select the next President, which presumably would be the Mittster, on the assumption that the House goes Republican. The election would not end until the House votes! Can you imagine the chaos which would ensue after November 6?
Are you enjoying this election? If so, I have some good news: We as a
nation will definitely continue arguing about it long after it finishes
in two weeks. (If it manages to finish in one night!)
... No matter the results of the election, I can guarantee one thing: The
winner will be widely considered to be completely illegitimate by the
losing side.
... If, in other words, Romney manages to make his difficult electoral
math work out, and he wins in Ohio, I guarantee we’ll be hearing horror
stories about suppression and “lost” votes for the next year. (Lest
anyone accuse me of false equivalence here, I should point out that
conservatives are worried about a made-up thing and liberals are worried
about a whole series of things that actually happen fairly regularly,
at least on the voter suppression side.)
So no matter who wins,
the endless partisan arguments are going to continue.
And hell, the
campaign might continue for a while, too: There is also a chance that
the winner of the popular vote loses the Electoral College this year,
again, and if Obama ends up the Electoral College winner I bet Romney
and the GOP don’t concede quite as politely as the Democrats did in
2000.
If Romney wins the Electoral College but loses the popular vote,
he will be our next president. In the unlikely event of an Electoral
College tie, Romney will again probably be our next president. But we
might get to keep Biden.
As I said, the only good thing about this nightmarish election is that it has an expiration date! On November 6 you get an opportunity to vote for one of two loosely aligned groups of special interests seeking to divvy up the spoils, or, as the elites who bribe the politicians would put it, reap their just rewards.
Consequently, this demented delirium we call the 2012 election represents a serious departure from Reality. America is experiencing a Psychotic Episode here, a really long one.
In the political world of 2012, what we fondly refer to as Reality has not simply been distorted or ignored; it has been obliterated. On DOTE, the rule of thumb says the more divorced from Reality you are, the crazier you've become. By this solid measure, this never-ending campaign is totally nuts, unalleviated lunacy, unmitigated insanity—I'm talking batshit crazy.
Power-crazed Monkeys. I mean, just take a good hard look at these guys. They're totally nuts! They've lost their grip! No grip! I recently used this image in my post The Best Election Money Can Buy.
The United States has gone round the bend, become totally unglued, completely unhinged. America is beyond the pale. And by "America" I mean the elites and the sock puppets who rule it.
Is there some authority which can institutionalize those who run the United States? Put them out of our misery? Shoot them up with thorazine and confine them to a padded cell?
Sadly, there is not, but that's what needs to happen because those running the United States clearly pose an enormous danger to its citizens and, more importantly for those outside the asylum, to all humans complex life forms on this planet.
Can humankind afford to coutenance this kind of risk? I think not
And now these pundits are telling us that this crazy nightmare may not end on schedule! These are terrifying prospects.
Here we go again, another Planet Stupid update. All posts like this one have a predictable structure. Some egregious bullshit is put out by a propaganda organization like Reuters, the Associated Press, CBS, NPR, etc. This bullshit demands a refutation, which I supply. What's different today is that I will let Brad Plumer of the Wonk Blog do the debunking.
Here's the bullshit, from the AP. The author is one Jonathan Fahey, who one presumes is a member in good standing of our species Homo sapiens, also known as Homo laeviculus.
NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. oil output is surging so fast that the United
States could soon overtake Saudi Arabia as the world's biggest producer.
Driven by high prices and new drilling methods, U.S. production of
crude and other liquid hydrocarbons is on track to rise 7 percent this
year to an average of 10.9 million barrels per day. This will be the
fourth straight year of crude increases and the biggest single-year gain
since 1951.
The boom has surprised even the experts.
Experts?
"Five years ago, if I or anyone had predicted today's production
growth, people would have thought we were crazy," says Jim Burkhard,
head of oil markets research at IHS CERA, an energy consulting firm.
Ah! The Usual Suspects. And the "experts" at Citigroup also get a mention.
The Energy Department forecasts that U.S. production of crude and
other liquid hydrocarbons, which includes biofuels, will average 11.4
million barrels per day next year. That would be a record for the U.S.
and just below Saudi Arabia's output of 11.6 million barrels. Citibank
forecasts U.S. production could reach 13 million to 15 million barrels
per day by 2020, helping to make North America "the new Middle East."
There's more, but why bother to repeat it? Here's how the bullshit (audio) was reported by the amateurish but enthusiastic propagandists at NPR. Bold italics indicate emphasis in the reporter's voice.
NPR's business news begins with an American oil boom. [happy theme music - duh, da duh duh da, da duh duh da...]
The United States could soon overtake Saudi Arabia as the world's biggest oil producer. The Associated Press reports new drilling methods have boosted U.S. oil production 7% this year alone.
And next year, the energy department sees American output falling just shy of Saudi Arabia's 11.6 million barrels per day. Industry analysts predict that by 2020 North America could be the New Middle East.
Do you see how the propaganda works? I assume you do, it couldn't be any more fucking obvious.
Here’s an eye-catching lead from
the AP’s Jonathan Fahey: “U.S. oil output is surging so fast that the
United States could soon overtake Saudi Arabia as the world’s biggest
producer.”
It’s a great story, but it could use a bit of dissecting. There’s no
question that U.S. oil output has surged in recent years. But we’re not quite ready to catch up with Saudi Arabia just yet. There’s a tiny asterisk in here that warrants a fuller explanation.
First, here’s a chart
(pdf) from the Energy Information Administration looking at crude oil
production around the world. Notice that United States is still far
below Saudi Arabia:
U.S. crude oil production has increased dramatically in the past
year, thanks to a drilling boom in places like North Dakota. That’s
helped the U.S. reduce its imports. But we’re not likely to catch up to
Saudi Arabia anytime soon. What’s more, Saudi crude is generally cheaper
and easier to produce than America’s “unconventional” oil from shale
rock. That gives the Saudis enormous sway over oil markets.
So what is the AP referring to? The trick is to look at what the EIA
calls “total oil supply.” This isn’t just crude oil. It also includes
natural gas liquids, biofuels, and the processing gains from
refineries. On this score, yes, the United States is catching up with
Saudi Arabia. Here’s a chart from James Hamilton:
Components
of total U.S. oil supply, monthly, January 2000 to March 2012, in
millions of barrels per day. Blue: crude oil including lease
condensates; purple: refinery processing gain; brick: natural gas plant
liquids; yellow: other liquids, including corn ethanol. Data source: EIA.
The EIA forecasts that the United States will produce an average of
11.4 million barrels per day of “crude oil and other hydrocarbons” next
year. That’s compared with 11.6 million barrels per day of “crude oil
and other hydrocarbons” from Saudi Arabia.
So which metric should we care about? Some energy experts, like Chris Nelder, argue
that we should mainly focus on crude oil, since that’s by far the most
important energy source for powering the global economy. Most of our
cars still run on gasoline. And gasoline depends on crude oil.
Natural gas liquids, by contrast, largely consist of propane and
ethane. Those are quite useful for the petrochemical industry and for
home heating. But we can’t really fuel our cars with natural gas
liquids. They don’t have nearly the same importance as crude oil in that
regard. (Technically, we couldrun our cars on propane,
but the infrastructure isn’t in place.) Biofuels, meanwhile, are useful
but fairly energy-intensive to produce. They don’t pack nearly the same
punch as oil.
The "trick" which gives legs to the propaganda is to use what oil analysts call the "all liquids" tally (Hamilton's chart above). But if you look at crude oil alone, which gives us gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and other products when refined, you see that production is just nosing up above 6 million barrels-per-day (the EIA chart above). And to put that in historical context, I'll throw in the long EIA graph which I used in Where Is American Oil Production Going? (January 26, 2012).
Source. October, 2011 crude oil production (average) was 5.784 million barrels per day (b/d).
If you're going to use all liquids, why not throw in cooking grease? Some enterprising Americans have gotten their vehicles to run on it, and to make that unsavory fact more palatable, they call it biodiesel. I'll bet the United States generates way more cooking grease every day than Saudi Arabia does.
At the end of the day, the United States is indeed the world's leading producer of an important commodity, a commodity which is highly valued here in the The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. On a daily basis, by any measure you care to use, the United States produces more bullshit than any other nation on Earth. Way more. It's no contest. No other nation even comes close.
Makes you proud, doesn't it?
Bonus Video — requires no explanation in this context
Close to half have no cash savings and are living on the edge of
financial disaster, according to a recent CreditDonkey.com survey. While
59% of respondents reported having more than $500 in savings, the other
41% do not have a cash safety net.
Well, no surprise there, although there is a definitely possibility that many of these Americans do indeed have over $500 available in case of an emergency—they have 573 dollars and 49 cents. Of course, if you lose your job, or your car breaks down in a serious way, or you have a medical emergency, and you don't have insurance or you've got a high deductible, you are still screwed. $573.49 doesn't go quite as far as it used to
But Credit Donkey emphasizes that it's not what you may think.
It’s not what you may think: this 41% is made up not only of people
living at or below the poverty line. They are also dual-income earners
with nice homes, nice cars, nice toys, a 401K retirement savings plan,
big mortgages. and big credit card bills. But if they ever get into a
bind and need some quick cash — say, because of a car breakdown or an
unexpected doctor visit — they don’t have it.
While this group may be rich in home equity and other investments,
their assets are not liquid. In other words, none of those items
converts easily into cash in an emergency. People in this situation even have their own name — the "liquid asset poor" — a term coined by the
Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group Corporation for Enterprise
Development.
With no cash reserves, they are just one paycheck away from
financial ruin should an emergency or a job loss happen because they cannot easily access cash on a moment’s notice.
Sadly, the CreditDonkey.com survey also found that more than half of
respondents (54%) said they may be stuck in this situation for the
foreseeable future. They have not set up an emergency cash savings
strategy.
That was a new one for me — the "liquid asset" poor. 54% of respondents don't even have a strategy for saving some cash, although we don't know how many have spent every dime they make to finance nice homes, nice cars, nice toys, a 401K retirement savings plan, big mortgages. and big credit card bills. It would have been nice if respondents had been classified according to income.
No doubt many poll respondents could not possibly have a strategy for saving money because they're spending everything they have to make essential ends meet (food, gas, rent/mortgage, utilities). When I last checked, approximately 146 million Americans were living within 200% of the poverty line.
Nevertheless, we must acknowledge the existence of the "liquid asset" poor. Some unhappy thoughts came to mind as I considered them.
If you live in a society in which you have been called a "consumer" in the media and by economists for as long as you can remember, you might conclude (albeit unconsciously) that I Consume, Therefore I Am. That's not quite what René Descartes had in mind, although it is still hard to determine what exactly René did have in mind. If one's existence follows from being a subject ("I") who thinks—cogito ergo sum—and many lives are lived devoid of thought, as with these "liquid asset" poor, we are forced to conclude that these people do not exist. But these "consumers" demonstrably do exist—somebody is buying all that Stuff. Therefore we definitely have a philosophical riddle to solve
If these "uber-consumers" do indeed exist, and I think we can agree they do, some of them may not exist for long if an unforeseen emergency presents itself. Such an emergency would necessarily be unforeseen because, as just noted, such people apparently live in the absence of something we might call actual thought.
The "liquid asset" poor are doing precisely what Ben Bernanke and Paul
Krugman want them to do: they spend all their income and more—they have big credit
card bills—on Stuff. This is the essence of neo-Keynesian economics as it has come down to us in the early 21st century. I hope we can agree that this "economic theory" has been a most unhappy development.
If I can be serious for a moment—on second thought, when I am not serious?
—there is always a trade-off in life between risk and security. The "economic theory" which has governed our lives, and which economists like Ben Bernanke and Paul Krugman still push, like crack dealers to the blind, has tilted very far toward the risk side of life. Interest earnings on cash savings is basically zero.
We are entitled to conclude that neo-Keynesian "economic theory" gives us an unbalanced view of life, a stance which is potentially very self-destructive, because of its extraordinary slant toward risk. You might well ask when did skydiving become a model for living?
Needless to say, any sense of security ordinary (i.e. non-wealthy) Americans might have in 2012 is illusory. One might think that the events of 2008 and subsequent developments would have tipped off Americans that the rules of consumption they had lived by no longer apply. Sadly, as Credit Donkey says, the "liquid asset" poor have not gotten the message.
Before I talk about America as a failed society, I want to follow up on yesterday's post about student debt while the subject is still fresh. I believe this material perfectly illustrates what a failed society looks like. Let's start with CNN Money'sThe other reason grads are drowning in debt. The standard story of woe the article leads with is worth reading.
The first in her family to go to college, Alicia Aiello wanted more
than anything to study at Syracuse University. But tuition was
expensive, her parents couldn't help much with the then-$46,000-plus in
tuition and expenses, and she didn't get enough financial aid to bridge
the gap.
So during her first semester, Aiello found herself taking out an $18,000 bank loan, on which she'd owe $6,000 worth of interest before she paid back even a penny of it.
"[W]hen I found out someone would give me $18,000 without a
co-signer, I was really excited — until later down the line, when I
found out how much I was going to owe," Aiello says. "That was probably the biggest mistake I ever made."
Many students are making mistakes like this. America's student
debt crisis is not only being fueled by skyrocketing tuition and a weak
job market, but also by students' ignorance about financial matters in a
system that makes it surprisingly easy for them to attain a loan. In
many cases, students barely understand the obligations they're assuming.
"A lot of us don't have parents who went to college or who
understand anything about this process," Aiello says. "I have a lot of
friends who just signed those loans without any idea what was going on."
... American university and college students graduated with an average of $26,600 of combined government-subsidized and private loan debt in 2011, according to figures released this month by the nonprofit Institute for College Access and Success' Project on Student Debt. More than 9% of new graduates default within two years, and 13.4% within three, the U.S. Department of Education reported last month.
Feeding this rising sea of red ink are loans from private lenders like banks, which typically charge more than federally-guaranteed loans
administered by financial aid offices.
While federal loans have fixed interest rates and flexible
repayment terms, private student loans carry variable interest rates
that are usually higher, and while they sometimes are given without any
co-signer, they often require parents or others to become responsible if
the loan is not repaid.
All this is clear. We're dealing with student loan sharks. There is an obvious comparison: student loans = subprime mortgages. Either way, we have predatory lending. Only the loan type has changed. But it was this next paragraph that caught my eye.
A report this month by the government's Consumer Financial Protection
Bureau [CFPB] found that private loans now account for $150 billion of total
student debt, and at least $8 billion worth of these are in default. The
agency said students who have borrowed from private lenders complain
not only about confusing terms, rates, marketing, and sales tactics, but
also about difficulties negotiating repayment plans or refinancing.
A report? Whadduya mean the CFPB issued a report? After the Dodd-Frank financial "reform" bill was passed by Congress and signed into law by Obama, for many months on end we heard that the CFPB was going to—
Stop predatory lending of all kinds as described by CNN Money above (the liberal political story);
or
Put a monkey wrench in the wheels of economic progress by hampering bank lending (the conservative political story).
The private student loan industry smells a lot like the subprime mortgage industry: Dead ends, runarounds and few live customer service representatives to speak with. The same tactics that mortgage borrowers have faced are now happening for student loan borrowers, according to a new report from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The government watchdog on Tuesday released its annual report on student loans, including details from a database of complaints that opened to student loan borrowers in March.
Watchdog!
“Student loan borrower stories of detours and dead ends with their
servicers bear an uncanny resemblance to problematic practices uncovered
in the mortgage servicing business,” CFPB student loan ombudsman Rohit
Chopra said in a statement...
The report highlighted three servicing issues of particular concern:
Surprises in loan terms and conditions; the runaround from servicers and
difficulty contacting a person; and problems refinancing loans to take
advantage of historically low interest rates.
Chopra called Tuesday's report an "early warning" for servicing problems [which] may hurt borrowers' ability to repay.
The CFPB over the summer compared loan servicing problems in the student loan industry with the subprime mortgage industry...
The report included the CFPB's recommendations for policy changes to
help borrowers manage their debt. Recommendations include helping more
borrowers refinance to lower rates and creating incentives for
income-based repayment programs.
An early warning! Recommendations for policy changes! But it's far too late for poor Alicia Aiello and her friends as detailed in the CNN Money story. Now we can talk about what a failed society looks like.
In a failed society, the Evil which lives within flawed humanity has become free to do what it will. Here it takes the form of predatory lending to naive young people. Once Pandora's Box is open, there is no putting the Evil back in the box.
Therefore, a failed society talks endlessly about its problems without ever doing anything about them. You see lots of reports. You see lots of warnings, a lot of recommendations for policy changes. You get lots of false hope, but nothing substantive ever happens. You get lots of lip-service, which is bullshit by definition. There are many complex variations on this bullshit, but the bottom line never changes. The bottom line is No Meaningful Change. Such change is no longer possible.
In the general experience of humankind, there is little new here except insofar as America is in many ways a historically unique nation. Certainly for Americans this nation's failure is indeed new, and it has obviously been very hard for them to swallow. Speaking for myself, having grown up in the 1950's and 60's, I can say that nothing in my personal experience prepared me for the sort of America we have in 2012.
Being a historically unique nation, and the greatest military power the world has ever seen, America will no doubt (ultimately) fail uniquely and spectacularly.
The interesting questions now are when does all this end? How does it end? If we accept the premise that no meaningful change is possible, a premise which is supported by countless observations of what actually happens in America—nothing—we are forced to conclude that, sooner or later, America's story ends in tears for most of its citizens. On the other hand, America's manifest failure can probably go on for many years in its current form.
Beyond this point I don't want to go today. What I've said is already depressing enough.
As a writer and activist Bill McKibben has devoted his life to tackling the threat posed by man-made climate change. As Hurricane Sandy brought normal life on the East Coast to a standstill, McKibben’s Twitter feed went into overdrive — a veritable deluge of storm updates and political commentary.
