I'm generally a half full glass type of person, but have you ever

[Javaman]

read the head lines in this forum sometimes and said to yourself, "we are so screwed"?

I try and keep the faith and continue with my environmental ways, but sometimes when I read stories coming out of china stating that their gas consumption will increase by 24% by 2010 or that car purchases there will sky rocket or that the coral reefs are going to be all but dead in 30 years, etc (you get the picture) I find it hard to justify why I still conserve, recycle, reuse, compost, etc.

It just gets to me sometimes, you know?

:(

[Flarney]

1. It's ok, the glass is just too big.

Seriously though, this is how I see it: We're only screwed if * attacks Iran (or anyone else) before we impeach him or before his term ends. As long as nothing too drastic happens, we have enough scandals to investigate and expose to discredit the conservative ideology for the next 20 years... so, the measure of how fucked up things are could be the measure by which we can discredit their whole party. Edit: But yeah, if Bush reaches for the nukes, we're probably screwed, one way or another.

[maddezmom]

2. I'm a half glass empty type a person

but I always have hope that humanity will prove me wrong. I guess we're actually kind of the same people just label ourselves differently. :hug: I'm a news junkie and the news is depressing, but the more people get informed about different issues the more they, you and I can try to make a difference. :)
Lots of times and on many different issues, I'm a lone voice but I still speak out just in case someone is listening.

[redqueen]

3. I know exactly what you mean.

It's hard not to despair... especially reading this forum. But that won't get us anywhere.

All we can do is all we can do... and with more and more people waking up to the dangers of unchecked climate change, I dare say there is reason to hope. Or hell, even if there's not... what choice have we got but to do the best we can for future generations, and just get on with it?

:hug:

[phantom power]

4. Who, me? I'm a pollyanna.

:hide:

[donco6]

5. I know what you mean.

But can you honestly tell yourself you'd not feel bad if you gave up recycling? I just don't think I could now - been doing it too long.

[Javaman]

7. I know that's the problem...

I feel guilty when I don't recycle.

I don't want to be in a position 40 years from now, explaining to some kid why I didn't do my part.

We all walk this earth, we all breath the air, we all drink the water, why is that so hard for some people to understand that? (more a rhetorical question than anything)

[Kolesar]

6. I have always been a pessimist about "everything"

Negative messages seem to ring loudly in my head.

My big thesis now is that we need a real, *brave* leader to prepare America for oil price shocks like 1973 and 1979. Put in a structure for rationing and no Sunday sales of gasoline.

[Delphinus]

8. I know, Javaman.

I had my meltdown last week. :hug:

[Dead_Parrot]

9. Also, the glass has a hole in the bottom.

We're certainly screwed, but how screwed we are is still very much in our hands, so no giving up yet. :) I want to be able to get some sleep at night, so I'll keep doing what I can...

[bloom]

10. The thing is that people from other countries look at what Americans do...

and they are more likely to take the attitude of "what does it matter what We do as long as the Americans are being a bunch of wasteful, greedy, assholes."

I've seen that at other country's newspapers - like Spiegel.

I've thought about that with China, also. So now more fish are being depleted because people in China have more buying power and X type of fish is what they will buy if they can. It's not reasonable to figure people in China (or anywhere) are just going to eat beans and rice while Americans eat whatever.

I expect that you realize this - but the way it pans out is that Americans need to lead the conservation movement - because we as a nation have the farthest to go - per capita, etc. We can't expect more of people from any other country than what we are willing to do ourselves.

[Eclipsenow]

11. When's the tipping point?

I've been researching peak oil now for about 2.5 years, organized Sydney Peak Oil to do a presentation for some Senators in NSW Parliament, etc... and the thing that drives me nuts is the question, where the heck is that TIPPING POINT!

The ABC has run peak oil stories on Catalyst (our science show) and 4 Corners (our doco), and still only about 1% of people know what I mean when I say "peak oil".

Maybe they'll finally get it when the rationing kicks in.

[Eclipsenow]

12. Whoops...

I meant, where is the public awareness tipping point, not where is the peak oil tipping point. In other words, I'm frustrated that the whole world seems to "get" Global Warming but hardly anyone seems to understand peak oil.

[GliderGuider]

15. This year is the tipping point.

The signals are getting too strong to ignore. I'm already seeing a lot of awareness in the blogosphere, and that's usually a good sign - the same thing happened with GW two years ago.

If I had to put a stake in the ground, I'd say the dam will break in the second half of this year. The alarm bells will be triggered by a further decline in Saudi output (possibly to below 8 MBPD), a possible decline in Russian output, a decline in global output of 1 MBPD or a bit more, a decline in imports into the US and the start of another round of bidding that will stabilize the price of oil at about $80/bbl by the second half of 2008.

Two problems with generating Peak Oil awareness compared to Global Warming are that PO is a more technical subject and the people who have the keenest understanding of it are limited to a small and obscure segment of the professional population. With Global Warming, besides the climatologists and atmospheric physicists we also had biologists and botanists, glaciologists, paleontologists, hydrologists, farmers and historians involved in the analysis and discussion. In addition the effects could be made visible and understandable to the layman with relative ease.

The Peak Oil constituency, on the other hand, consists largely of petrogeologists, petrochemists, a few oil industry analysts and a bunch of technical wonks of various stripes (i.e. lots of guys like me). It's not a community that can trumpet its findings in catchy non-technical ways that fire the public imagination. We have no drowning polar bears. Those of us who do communicate well (guys like Kunstler) tend to focus on consequences rather than the actual analysis. Since the consequences will be so dire, this automatically causes them to be branded as Chicken Littles.

What makes it worse as far as public awareness goes is that there is massive corporate interest in keeping the message out of the public consciousness. While ExxonMobil did a lot of damage to the Global Warming cause, they have even more handmaidens working with them to obscure the Peak Oil message - CERA, the EIA, the CEI and AEI etc. The fact that no overt shortages have shown up yet in developed nations, as well as the fact that oil prices are still a small fraction of the American and European cost of living has enabled them to paint guys like me as scare-mongers. They can claim that "technology improvements and new discoveries" will keep pushing back the peak (which isn't here yet) well into the future, and support it by saying, "We're on the inside, we have access to information these guys don't have." Peak Oilers' relative inexperience with media and the fact that some of our evidence has to come from forensic analysis keeps us from effectively countering that message. Peak Oil does not have a VP of Communications (yet).

But when the production declines become undeniable and the price hits a new (inflation-adjusted) record, the tip will occur. We'll have a lot more people having their "Javaman moment" as they realize just how screwn we are. As I said, look for this to start happening sometime around September.

[Delphinus]

14. Welcome, Eclipsenow!

Have you checked out the Peak Oil forum here on DU? There's tons of resources over there.

[Vulture]

23. In fairness, that's what you get for reading European news

"I've seen that at other country's newspapers - like Spiegel."

As a kind of tangent, it never ceases to amaze me how perverse and distorted the European news media is, doubly so when reporting on the US. There are things they will report on that I have first-hand knowledge of that are so unrealistic that it takes me a while to recognize what they are talking about. China actually has more accurate reporting of the US in that regard, if you ignore the very obvious political propaganda.

I've always been fascinated at how other countries and governments frame the US, and how accurate their portrayal is. When I travel around the world, I always flip on the news or pick up a newspaper to see what is going on (fortunately, you can peruse much of the world's news on only a handful of languages and I am literate in a few in addition to my native). The most interesting result of this experiment: Hardline communist countries, the kind where the "news" is supplied by a government mouthpiece and is laden with overt propaganda, have the most consistently accurate representation of the US abroad. They editorialize the hell out of it, but they generally distort the presentation very little -- it is easy to ignore the insane editorializing to get at the reality. European media is by far the least accurate news media in the world on average in my experience, being horrifically manipulative of framing, reporting, and perspective, so much so that I really don't recognize the US half the time. They make the US media spin look like it was done by amateurs. Ironically, the US news media seems to split the middle somewhere.


BTW, American fish has been exported en masse to Asia for decades; it is the why we get so much crap Atlantic fish on the west coast when superior Alaskan fish is so close by. Outside of Seattle, all that fish goes straight to Asia. Fortunately, the US and Canada have had strict fishery controls for some time in an effort to maintain one of the few pristine fisheries left in the world (the Gulf of Alaska). It is seriously pushing the price up though, since Asia will pay top dollar for that fish and the demand is growing. Asia completely destroyed and polluted their own fisheries decades ago.

[Nihil]

24. And if you believe that ...

> European media is by far the least accurate news media in the world

... all I can say is :wow:

[Dogmudgeon]

25. Sounds like a Libertarian "Dangerous Thinker"

On Edit: Changed title.

The Club For Growth talking points have been consistently argued; in a literate fashion, politely, and certainly without Freeper bile, but still following the script rather closely.

It's like when conservatives talk about the attorney firings and make sure to say that "they serve at the pleasure of the President" -- or always, when talking about the war, call Bush "the Commander In Chief".

We lefties have our own talking points, too, but the conversation here often strays from the script (recalling Will Rogers' statement that "I'm not a member of any organized political party; I'm a Democrat"). I've made strong arguments FOR natural global warming, but I do not consider it to be a "natural-vs-anthropogenic" problem; I consider it to be a "natural-AND-anthropogenic" problem.

In all political tribes, the titles of "Curmudgeon" and "Dangerous Thinker" are coveted by all. I don't think I've ever met a single blogger who does not crave the mantle of HL Mencken. But the inevitable outcome of Dangerous Thinking is that the Dangerous Thinker joins the choir of wise-asses, membership compulsory. It has long plagued leftists, but today it's pandemic on the Right.

And, unfortunately, it provides nothing of value in dealing with issues that are fundamentally apolitical. The atmosphere is unconcerned with who serves at the pleasure of the Commander-In-Chief, and sweet light crude is oblivious to speaking truth to power. Anyone, from whatever tribe, who takes a serious interest in these global and trans-historical issues quickly leaves the chorus of clichés. Conservatives may reflect that Matthew Simmons is a Friend Of Dubya, and tremble. Politics serves no useful purpose in dealing with the reality of nature. It may guide our decisions on how we respond to reality, but reality does what it will.

The Dangerous Thinkers and Curmudgeons, of course, argue that they are the only ones who see reality for what it is. Experience argues otherwise.

The triflers are easy to spot. They lose sleep over the rhetorical arguments, which they strive to get precisely worded; the implications of the problems don't trouble them one whit.

--p!

[Vulture]

26. Is it really so hard to believe?

All news media is heavily doctored and spun, what is fascinating from a kind of scientific perspective is the differing methods used in different parts of the world to do the doctoring and spinning. I actually expected the hardline communists, and I've been to a few such (usually very unpleasant) countries to brazenly fabricate the truth, but they do not to my surprise. My primary concern is that they honestly and accurately report at least some of the underlying facts; editorializing and analysis can be ignored, but you'll basically be ignorant if you are not exposed to the actual facts. Even if facts are selectively omitted, you can compensate by gleaning multiple sources.

There are a few basic methods used. Accurately show the facts exactly as they are and then provide strongly biased analysis, accurately show some facts but omit important germane facts (US media does this a lot), grossly distort or misrepresent the underlying facts and provide unbiased analysis of those distorted facts (common in European news media). On some level, I assume that the chosen methods reflect some cultural characteristic otherwise you would expect uniform technique throughout the world.

This is more of an observation and curiosity than a criticism of any particular news media. If you think a news source is unbiased, all it really means is that they share your bias. You can find something resembling unbiased news media in the same country Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy live in, which should not be surprising to anybody.

[GliderGuider]

27. Please provide some examples.

You're asserting that European media are more biased than American media. You'd need to provide some evidence for a claim that is so at odds with the general perception of the rest of the world. Certainly speaking as a Canadian with a foot in each camp I'd be far more comfortable trusting AFP, der Spiegel, the Guardian or the BBC than I would be with most mainstream American media.

All media have some biases, but that's not your claim. Your claim appears to be that European media is in general more biased than media elsewhere in the world, presumably including the USA. Back it up.

[Vulture]

28. You misunderstood

"You're asserting that European media are more biased than American media. You'd need to provide some evidence for a claim that is so at odds with the general perception of the rest of the world."


I did not assert that the European media are more biased than American media -- I am under no such delusions. I made the observation that the mechanisms by which bias is injected into the news is different, and I do find the mechanisms common in the European media to be the most insidious with respect to representing the US because it is the least transparent. I would also add that my comment was US centric insofar as it was about how news about the US is portrayed. The US news media manages to pretty badly distort and misrepresent news in other countries too. When we observe that the media manages to routinely butcher things we have a lot of specific knowledge about, should it surprise anyone that they butcher things we do not have specific knowledge about?

And it is "at odds with the general perception of the rest of the world" (by which you mean Europe) for the same reason that Americans believe the same thing about their own media: myopia. The rest of the world (e.g. not Europe and not US) harbor plenty of skepticism about the supposed unbiased-ness of both European and US news media. And rightly so. Do you actually think the coverage of Asian news is accurate or representative in the European news media?

[GliderGuider]

29. I don't just mean Europe

I include Asia, Australia and Canada in the areas where I thing peoples' general perception is that American self-analysis is hopelessly contaminated by the circular argumentation of self-reference. I think people like Gwynne Dyer and Robert Fisk have a much better handle on "American issues" than most American commentators. I further think the bias that American media inject into their analysis is anything but "insidious" (whatever that means), rather it is so blatant that anyone with a shred of outside perspective cannot help but see it, while Americans seem peculiarly blind to it.

[Vulture]

30. That is a completely different point

What you keep asserting is orthogonal to anything I am saying, and not particularly relevant. I do not disagree or even particularly care that Americans are viewed that way in some parts of the world; it is hardly universal and in some parts of the world I would be viewed more positively if I was an American citizen rather than a German one.

Regardless, rest assured that Asia and some other parts of the world view Europe in the same way as you (correctly) assert Europeans view America. It is part of the human condition.

[Nihil]

31. *cough*

You just said:
> I did not assert that the European media are more biased than American
> media -- I am under no such delusions.

but you'd previously said (in your .23):
>> European media is by far the least accurate news media in the world
>> on average in my experience

Hmmm ...?

[Vulture]

33. Nuance

Not only did you pull that quote out of context a bit, those two statements are not necessarily at odds with each other. Distinctions were made that make a difference.

European media has the least accurate representation of the US in my experience, inclusive of police-state news agencies in countries that are overtly unfriendly to the US government. Grossly distorted facts do not bias make (ignorance can easily play a part), and there are many ways to both subtly and brazenly bias news without distorting the underlying facts. That said, if I wanted the underlying facts of US news then the European news media is the last place I would go regardless of any bias -- it could just as easily be explained with shoddy journalism. I can get heavily biased news about the US in a lot of places in the world, but if the facts that are being reported are accurate at least it still has some utility as a news source regardless of bias.

European news is no more or less biased on average than the news anywhere else. This is orthogonal to the fact that they manage to routinely misrepresent the facts of US news moreso than just about anywhere else. Similarily, the US news media misrepresents the facts of European news pretty badly too, but that was not what the discussion was about. Bias != Accuracy.

[The2ndWheel]

13. No

I was like that well before I started reading this forum.

The only thing I know is that whatever we do, there will be consequences. The whole equal and opposite reaction thing. We could completely stop using energy today, and we'll have massive problems. We could find another magical energy source yesterday, and we'll have massive problems. We'll never catch up to any of those problems, we'll always be reacting to them. Our reaction will only create more problems to react to later.

[Vulture]

22. Good post, right to the point. n/t

[ramapo]

16. I was an optimistic pessimist

Now I am just a pessimist. We ARE so screwed. The window of opportunity has slammed shut. The warnings were all there 30 years ago. These were dismissed in favor of "Morning in America". Events are now out of control on many fronts. Sit back and 'enjoy' the show.

[phantom power]

17. red lenses

It seems like everything old is new again to me, lately.

I see red
And it hurts my head
Guess it must be something
That I read

It's the color of your heartbeat
A rising summer sun
The battle lost or won
The flash to fashion
And the pulse to passion
Feels red
Inside my head
And truth is often bitter
Left unsaid
Said red, red
Thinking about the overhead
The underfed

Couldn't we talk about something else instead?

We've got mars on the horizon
Says the national midnight star
(It's true)
What you believe is what you are
A pair of dancing shoes
The soviets are the blues
The reds
Under your bed
Lying in the darkness
Dead ahead

And the mercury is rising
Barometer starts to fall
You know it gets to us all
The pain that is learning
And the rain that is burning
Feel red
Still...go ahead
You see black and white
And I see red
Red
(Not blue)

--Rush, "red lenses"

[GliderGuider]

18. Let your conscience lead you through

I think many of us have had our moments of despair, our "long dark nights of the soul". I still get waves of it, but I try to keep three things in mind when that feeling hits:

1. Despair is an even bigger threat to an individual than the looming calamity. It paralyzes you, and even if there are useful things to be done despair will keep you from doing them.

2. Whatever is coming won't get all of us. We may behave like yeast, but we have much in common with cockroaches too - many of us will survive just fine. We have a responsibility to those who will be born into this mess to maximize their chances for happiness. There are things we must do now to ensure that, even if we can do nothing to save those who may get caught in the decline.

3. We must be able to live with ourselves, now and later. If someone thirty years from now asks me what I did about it I want to be able to say something besides, "I stared out the window and said 'Oh shit!' a lot". I'll do some of that, of course, but I've discovered that complete despair is a pretty self-indulgent luxury that can make those you love look on you with disdain...

[BeFree]

19. Yeah

It's tough. But in some shape or form the irth will still be here spinning in space. Life will go on. There just won't be so many of us parading around.

So live, love, and laugh, for after lunch we'll all die!

[JohnWxy]

20. The U.S. will never have any influence on China until we start to take steps to reduce our GHG

emmisions. If we ever start to implement a carbon tax that will be a big start. Then, (in time) there is a chance we can influence China. Also, China is beginning to see the costs of their polllution in terms of health problems in China. I am cautiously hopeful that China will start employing green technologies. Of course, how soon this will be is problematic. ... but we are not helping any (thank you GOP) by pretending the problem will somehow solve itself. We NEED A CARBON TAX.

My thoughts anyway.

[XemaSab]

21. Yup, we're screwed.

Pass the popcorn. :popcorn:

[progressoid]

32. Yep - all the time