Decline of the Empire

There Is No Bottom

In the last week I've written posts called Flatland Douchebags and It's Official, The United States Has Turned To Shit. I assume you agree with this view or are sympathetic to it. Otherwise, you wouldn't be reading here. 

So there's not a lot more to do along those lines and there's no need to repeat myself.

Let's get a little more abstract.

The Flatland model, by definition, says that humans are run by unconscious motivations. In so far as those motivations are hidden from them, broadly speaking, humans don't know what they're doing or why they're doing it. As I said in the first essay, humans are whistling in the dark.

That model makes broad albeit vague predictions about the future. Populations will grow, the human footprint will expand, there will be more environmental destruction, hierarchies are inescapable, etc.  That's the dark side, but there is a darker side, at least on shorter time scales.

If humans are whistling in the dark, Flatland also says that sociopolitical arrangements are inherently unstable. That is not to say that these arrangements might simply collapse at any moment. Instead, it means that there is always the possibility, however remote it might seem in "normal" times, that seemingly harmonious arrangements will transmogrify into something in accord with the baser aspects of human nature.

The United States today and for the last 40 years is a case in point.

Flatland Douchebags

Here we are 9 days away from the end of this seemingly endless election, and we discover that FBI chief James Comey, who already let Hillary off the hook back in July, is reopening the private e-mail server investigation.

And why?

Because in a separate investigation of this hot dog...

... the FBI found e-mails between Hillary and her constant companion Huma Abedin on the flasher's laptop. Maybe. And because I don't follow the goings-on of these Flatland fools, I find out that Huma is married to this douchebag. Jesus Fucking Christ!

Soybeans?

Wonders will never cease. After the Atlanta Fed forecast 3rd quarter GDP at 2.1%, and the New York Fed forecast it at 2.2%, the Commerce Department, which is entirely free of political influence and always has been, announced that GDP grew at an astounding 2.9% in the third quarter. It was merely a coincidence that the White House gets to crow about this phenomenal growth 11 days before the election.

But what did those Fed GDP watchers miss? MarketWatch has the answer.

The driving force behind the improved third-quarter performance was a 10% spike in exports, helped by a temporary boom in U.S. soybean shipments after a poor harvest in South America.

Soybeans may have accounted for one-third of GDP growth in the fall, estimates Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics.

In fact, according to the Commerce Department, exports boosted 3rd quarter GDP by 0.83% on an annual basis as reported by Bloomberg.

Net exports added 0.83 percentage points to GDP growth. Trade and inventories are two of the most volatile components in GDP calculations.

The Commerce Department said that the acceleration in overseas shipments was mostly attributable to an increase in exports of soybeans, indicating the pickup was probably temporary.

As Bloomberg notes, the GDP increase is "probably temporary" due to this one-time soybeans export boom. But temporary is good enough when you are 11 days out from an election which everyone in government and the media agrees must go one way and not the other.

Now, DOTE is not a conspiracy website, never has been and never will be. I just wanted to note that wonders never cease when there's so much at stake. Purely a coincidence, I'd say.

Have a nice weekend.

Humans Repeating Themselves, Endlessly

But at some point the earth is going to say ‘enough.’  And that’s going to be catastrophic
   — Colby Loucks, senior director for the WWF’s Wildlife Conservation Program

The big news today is the World Wildlife Fund's new Living Planet Report for 2016. I don't know why they bothered. First, and least, there's no new data for the species they track, so they're using the 2012 data, which indicates a 58% decline in these species populations since 1970. That puts us on track to lose 67% of these populations by 2020. We're losing about 2% of these populations every year.

Second, and more importantly, even if they had more current data, it almost certainly would have shown no change in the species population decline rate. In fact, the only reason this report was issued seems to be to remind us that we need to do something about these declines now.

But "now" keeps shifting because the arrow of time only goes one way—it moves forward toward eventual catastrophe.

I'll use the Deutsche Welle (German) article on the WWF report. It's called Living Planet Report 2016: Still not too late.

Before I get into this, we might ask "still not too late" for what, exactly?

The WWF's new Living Planet Report is ready for you to read — and for inspiring action. Its findings are heartbreaking, yet also encouraging. Its message is clear: the time to act is now.

There's that "now" word again. It's meaning changes every year. Hell, it's meaning changes every second.

[blah, blah, blah] ... But instead of throwing our hands up in dismay, the overall conclusion is a push to take action. Whether it's ready to or not, humanity will have to manage its increasing population, an endangered nature and unexpected climate consequences that could be devastating.

But don't panic! According to the report, there is "plenty room for optimism."

"If we manage to undergo the critical transitions necessary, the reward will be immense," the report reads.

Don't panic! Hmmm....

Looks like panic time to me if you still care about our living planet, if your heart hasn't already been irrevocably broken.

And yet, there is Deutsche Welle telling us not to panic and of course only a relative handful of people on Earth are panicking. The ones panicking are certainly not those telling us there is plenty of room for optimism. Also, the latter get to keep their day jobs.

This "now" thing is slippery, isn't it? If I had written this in 2013, when the species population data for 2012 was already in, it would have been "now" then. But "now" it is 2016, and I am three years closer to inevitable death, and so, ceteris paribus human nature-wise, and mutatis mutandis species data-wise, is humankind.

(That's today's Latin lesson.)

DOTE Alert — It's Official, The United States Has Turned To Shit

DOTE Forecasting Center
October 25, 2016

The DOTE Forecasting Center announced today that the United States has turned to shit. Dave Cohen, managing director for the Pittsburgh-based think tank, said "well, after long and careful thought, we've concluded that the United States has nowhere to go but downhill."

Asked about people who have long believed that America had turned to shit, Cohen responded "yes, we're aware of those people. You might ask what special thing happened today which made our announcement necessary. Actually, nothing did. We're experiencing the same shit today as we did yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that, and so on. We just thought it time to make it official that America has turned to shit."

"That's what makes this announcement important. As far as we know, nobody else has done that," Cohen added.

Asked what this bodes for the future, Cohen said "The forecast calls for more shit like that we've experienced every day for years now. Although we can't predict the specific shit we will have to endure and the exact form our suffering will take, we can predict with considerable confidence that the type of shit we've had cope with up to now will continue."

"Oh, you know," Cohen explained, "more random gun violence by Americans whose big brains went haywire. Elites screwing us while telling us what to believe. More attempts to convince us that terrorism is the greatest threat to our mythological Way of Life. More unnecessary military "interventions" overseas to keep us distracted. More jobs shipped to Asia and Mexico. More student debt slavery. More police shootings of unarmed black people. A corrupt president who says we're "Stronger Together" but tracks the loyalty of others. I can't mention everything here. It's a long list."

"More abstractly," Cohen added, "there will be more delusional and self-serving elite rationalizing of the status quo. As things get shittier, the more you get that kind of thing by way of compensation. For example, you can expect more propaganda videos like the one accompanying this press release. And more elite dumbing down of Americans to get them to passively accept all this shit."

Asked what Americans should do now, Cohen said that staying alert while keeping your head down is always a good idea. "You know, duck and cover," Cohen concluded.

Election 2016 — Let's Sum Up

Brothers and sisters, this is the real world that we live in
  — Bernie Sanders, after being booed for urging supporters to vote for Clinton

The real world. Love that phrase. What does it mean to live in the real world in America in 2016?

I'm listening to the radio. The hacks on today's Diane Rehm Show just rationalized why they have hardly covered all those wiki-leaked Clinton campaign e-mails — there's just been too much news to cover, and Trump's "most difficult news cycle" (the sex stuff) didn't really permit them to cover the e-mails.

Now these hacks are rebutting Trump's contention that the media is in the tank for Hillary Clinton, which they see as ridiculous.

Diane's "guests" on this panel discussion are—

• Larry Sabato, founder and director, University of Virginia Center for Politics; author, "The Kennedy Half-Century"
• Katie Zezima, national political correspondent, The Washington Post; covering the 2016 presidential election
• Reid Wilson, national correspondent, The Hill
• Ryan Lizza, Washington correspondent, The New Yorker

You see the problem.

Lots Of Puppets, No Climate Change

Brad Plumer at Vox notes that there were no questions about global warming in four debates (including the vice-presidential debate).

There was however some talk about puppets.

As of right now, the countdown says there are only 17 days, 11 hours and 56 minutes until we are put out of our misery. This can't happen fast enough. Every passing minute is now a blessing.

Have a nice weekend.

Defining "Wicked" Problems

As time goes on, humanity's big, self-created problems (e.g., global inequality/poverty, climate change) are going to get worse. Progress is an illusion, despite the heroic and delusional efforts of elites and intellectuals to convince us otherwise.

I've been thinking about how humans will rationalize their increasingly obvious failures over time. If you read and understood the Flatland essays, you will see this statement as axiomatic:

(1) Regarding these big, self-created problems, humans do not have the capacity to pin the blame on themselves (i.e., on their own nature) because they do not have the capacity to understand themselves.

(This should not be misconstrued with one group of humans blaming another group of humans for causing some problem, which is typical political behavior.)

In this context, I've been reading about so-called "wicked" problems lately. Here's a definition by example from The Conversation website.

We live in a world burdened by large-scale problems that refuse to go away: the refugee crisis; terrorism; rising sea levels; frequent floods, droughts and wildfires; not to mention persistent inequality and violation of basic human rights across the world.

What do these problems have in common? They resist any simple solution. In policy research they are called “wicked.” This is because cause-effect relations are complex and solutions unclear; many of these problems are urgent, yet there is no central authority to solve them; their magnitude is often hard to estimate; and those trying to solve them may even contribute to causing them.

The EU refugee crisis, the topic of a recent U.N. summit, is a good example: Driven by regional conflicts and poverty, and assisted by trafficking networks, people from Africa and the Middle East continue to take enormous risks to enter EU territory by land or sea. For several years now, thousands of refugees have died on this journey each year and no solution is in sight. EU member countries continue to blame their neighbors for either taking in too many refugees or for refusing to help, while there is little shared interest and limited capacity for actually addressing the sources of the problem.

What’s the best way to effectively address these types of wicked problems?

Wicked problems are problems that 1) refuse to go away; and 2) resist any simple solution. Moreover, "cause and effect relations are complex" and solutions are "unclear." There is no central authority to solve them and those trying to solve them may in fact be making the problems worse.

Well! That sounds like the characteristic behavior of a species I know.

Hydrofluorocarbons And CO2-Equivalence

A much-ballyhooed agreement was reached this week in Kigali to phase out hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs).  Here's The Guardian's first paragraph.

They went to Kigali to eliminate hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) and take 0.5C out of future global warming, and the 170 countries that successfully negotiated an amendment to the Montreal protocol treaty agreed to get rid of 90% of them. Not bad for four days and three long nights of hard work.

Here's Brad Plumer's take at Vox.

Finally, on October 15, 197 countries agreed to phase out hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), an incredibly potent greenhouse gas used in refrigerators and air conditioners. While this sounds obscure, it was probably the most important climate policy taken to date; by one estimate, it will prevent between 0.2°C and 0.44°C of warming by the end of the century. If ratified, this treaty will be legally binding and enforceable through trade sanctions.

Here at DOTE we know that the human capacity for self-deception is effectively unbounded. I'm going to demonstrate that again today.

With respect to greenhouse gases, do you know what CO₂-equivalence is?

Because you're about to find out.

The GBR — A Trivial Difference Between Dead And Dying

Let's start with CNN's The Great Barrier Reef is not actually dead (October 14, 2016). 

There is a big difference between dead and dying.

Outside Magazine published a somewhat tongue-in-cheek obituary for the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) earlier this week, citing its lifespan from 25 million BC-2016. The article detailed the life of the reef, its active membership in the ecological community, its worldwide fame and the coral bleaching that has led to its deteriorating health. "The Great Barrier Reef of Australia passed away in 2016 after a long illness. It was 25 million years old," read the article.

The fake obituary went viral.

The obituary was met with horror and disbelief, both by scientists and social media users alike. Russell Brainard, chief of the Coral Reef Ecosystem Program at NOAA's Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center, told HuffPost that he believes the article was highlighting the urgency of the situation, but that those who don't have any context "are going to take it at face value that the Great Barrier Reef is dead."

Many people on social media are indeed taking it at face value.

Of course they are. More on Russell Brainard's views below.

Twitter users have been grieving the loss of the reef and urging followers to pay serious attention to the consequences. Many are spreading false information entirely. Rowan Jacobsen, the writer of the obituary, is a food and environmental writer, not a scientist. But the article has led some outlets to claim that scientists have declared the reef officially dead, further spreading the exaggeration...

Here are some quotes from The Huffington Post (linked-in above).