Opinion Piece

Opinion Piece

Discussing 

Thom Hartmann

by Seemorerocks

Thom Hartmann, in his introduction to his movie "Last Hours", comes as close as anyone in the mainstream with access to a wide audience, to telling us how things are. 

And he puts a date on irreversible climate change - 2047

On watching it I could immediately find reasons to fault it.

It is, for example, still couched in terms of “COULD',.

It still ignores the 20 + positive feedbacks that are ALREADY unleashed.

Yes, folk that means what it says – IRREVERSIBLE feedbacks. 

I could say he is off with his date - 2030 is the real date.

Actually the date is not his. He is referring to the findings of the authors of a publication published recently in Nature, Climate change gets clocked

He quotes the authors of the Nature article as saying that we can push this 2047 date back by immediately adopting alternative energy. However, he then qualifies this by posing the question "can we avoid passing the climate threshold?"

But he then becomes perhaps the first television presenter to mention the 'E' word - extinction. He proceeds to go into more detail about the Permian extinction and how the release of methane caused most of life on earth to disappear.

He has also carried out more detailed interviews with climate scientists and other experts such as Michael Mann, Dr Paul Wignall, Prof. Benjaman Black, Dr. Charles Miller, Prof Gerrald Dickens and Dr. Charles Miller.

You would think that this should bring some degree of recognition.

Yet, on his Facebook page this video comes with this assessment by Mike Ruppert:

“BRILLIANT AND DEVASTATING CLIP from Thom Hartmann. But hugely, hugely flawed.

“What Thom suggests here does not solve the problem in any way, shape or form. And, presented as a false/incomplete solution, it is extremely dangerous and ill-considered.”

"Solve the problem"?!

"Hugely, hugely flawed"

Here are Mike Ruppert's Facebook comments (repeated on today's Lifeboat Hour):

"BRILLIANT AND DEVASTATING CLIP from Thom Hartmann. But hugely, hugely flawed.

"What Thom suggests here does not solve the problem in any way, shape or form. And, presented as a false/incomplete solution, it is extremely dangerous and ill-considered.

"-- One day an alcoholic walks into a doctor's office. (Alcoholics are not known for rational behavior.) His head is bandaged. He's bleeding. He's carrying a bloody hammer.

"He says to the doctor, "Doctor, it hurts when I hit myself in the head with this hammer. Can you help me?"

"The doctor looks at him and says, "Stop hitting yourself in the head with a hammer."

"The alcoholic walks out of the office shaking his head and takes another whack saying, "There's got to be another way..."

"The cause of runaway global warming is the EMISSION and RELEASE of carbon into the atmosphere. The largest cause of that release is first and foremost the Human Industrial Paradigm of Infinite Growth. Therefore, if we want to survive, the FIRST imperative is to halt all industrial activity right now. Stop hitting ourselves in the head with the hammer. Shut down the factories. Shut down the coal mines. Shut down the agribiz corporations that feed us using ten calories of hydrocarbon energy for every calorie of (junk) food produced on our planet. Shut down everything (or almost everything) that emits or releases carbon on an industrial scale. Your Priuses mean NOTHING. Your bumper stickers mean nothing. Your solar panels mean just a little. Your wind means just a little. They do not confront the CAUSE of climate change which is emitting MORE AND MORE CARBON EVERY YEAR into the atmosphere than ever in history because HUMAN POPULATION IS STILL GROWING EXPONENTIALLY...

"Because that's what the INFINITE GROWTH MONETARY PARADIGM demands.

"Focusing all attention on conversion to alternative energies is FUTILE unless we first stop hitting ourselves in the head with the hammer, unless we stop exponential growth. All that would do -- according to laws like Jevon's Paradox -- is permit us to hit ourselves on the head with the hammer just a little while longer.

"There are one billion-plus internal combustion powered vehicles on the planet. Their use needs to be immediately and rapidly curtailed. Air traffic needs to be reduced by 90% or so. Rail traffic must be cut to absolute essentials. All mining and fracking operations must be stopped immediately. Industrial cattle ranching must be stopped since cow farts are the second-highest producer of methane known after rice paddies. (I think methane release from frozen tundra and seabeds may have blown these two out of the water now.) Coal-fired plants must be shut down. Uranium enrichment (a prolific emitter of carbon) must be stopped immediately... It's a very long list.

"To take any other approach is to condemn us all to extinction because we will NEVER have addressed the cause of the problem. As great people like Robert Hirsch have shown, humans have passed every opportunity to make a painless (or less painful) switch. You seem to be implying that we have the 30-40 years needed to make a conversion without dislocation.

"BULLSHIT! And if you cannot see that you are more dangerous that Barack Obama, Jaime Daimon or the Koch brothers. You pose as our friend. You are an alcoholic looking for a way to keep drinking and you are telling us it's OK to do that.

"So Thom, as much respect as I had for you, you just gave us a death sentence until you acknowledge that the first priority is the immediate cessation of industrial civilization.

"And what about the 25 positive feedback loops that have already been triggered and documented by Guy McPherson? You didn't mention those, or the really more scientifically precise and valid date for human Near Term Extinction of 2030?

"Until you change the way money works, you change nothing. The way money works is to place infinite growth and profit as the supreme commandment, the Prime Directive, overriding all other issues. If we keep doing what we're doing, we'll keep getting what we're getting.

"So, Thom you get a solid "B" for reaching people who might be waking up. Yet you are just as dangerous as Alex Jones. You get an "F--" for offering us any real solution that might save our lives by itself. You are a deceiver. If human industrial activity is the hammer we are killing ourselves with, you will not serve your fellow man until you find the courage and honor and integrity to tell us that we have to put down the hammer FIRST, at the same time as we convert to alternatives as quickly as possible. Because by offering just the second half we are going to not become 50% dead and 50% alive.

"Half measures avail us NOTHING" -- They do not avail us 50% benefits. You can do so much better Thom Hartmann."

Find your balls. Or does your paycheck depend on you not telling the truth and telling us it's OK to continue the binge of Infinite Growth?


Here is a transcription of the offending comments: 

"Of course this doesn't have to happen. The scientists who worked on the Nature study estimated that we cut our CO2 emissions by just a little bit we can put off that 2047 bit by 22 years, to 2069.


"We may be able to prevent permanent damage to the planet if we press for renewable energy, right now.  

"In that case can we avoid passing the climate threshold?   Can we? "(emphasis)


He then goes on to discuss mass extinction.


That doesn't sound (if taken in context) like a very wholehearted advocacy of alternative energy as a way to 'save' the planet, especially in the context of what follows.

In fact he doesn't sound as if he is advocating  at all.

Quite clearly Mike Ruppert in his rush to get a comment out hasn't listened properly to what Thom Hartman actually says.

What he puts forward is a straw man argument.and as such, the comments, as well as being inaccurate, are unjustifiably hostile and abusive.


Comment

I first became aware of climate change after reading an article in the Bangkok Post while overseas in 1988 and from pioneers like Teddy Goldsmith.

Mike is, I have to point out,  a relatively recent convert to anthropogenic global warming: I can remember when he largely dismissed it and said that the jury was 'still out' as to whether it was caused by humans or not.

To his credit, he has listened to Guy McPherson and now sees it as center-staged, along with Fukushima and nuclear power.

However (unlike with questions of industrial growth and Peak Oil), he is no expert, and I do not believe he has the god- given right to condemn well-meaning people based on a quick (and inaccurate) listening to the video.

I agree with him that Guy's assessment of the current state of scientific knowledge is probably pretty accurate and healthy devoid of the usual habit of somehow finding hope that we are going to solve that and other myriad problems that can be, at root, taken back to the impossibility of infinite growth on a finite planet.

I am convinced by the evidence that hope for reversing climate change lies in the past. 

Perhaps COP15 at Copenhagen in 2009 was the last opportunity to do anything to cut back emissions and reverse the process. 

We'll never know, and still don't know for sure yet – but the actual observed processes indicate that it is too late, we're done, we're f...ked - (whichever way you want to put it).

The point-of-view that I heard from Guy McPherson when he visited NZ about 2 years ago - that the only way to save humanity ("for a generation or two") was the immediate collapse of the economy along with the whole paradigm of infinite growth appealed to me,

Subsequently, Guy has reassessed the situation and concluded that things have gone too far, irreversible positive feedbacks have been unleashed - in short, that we are looking down the barrel of  near-term extinction within a human lifetime.

Listen to Guy's latest assessment from the beginning of October - 

 
.

He is not saying that we will be saved if we bring infinite growth to an immediate end (and that raises the thorny issue that he himself has mentioned on innumerable occasions of what you do with 400 nuclear power station) - let alone if we turn to renewable energy -  or if we find the 100th monkey.


He is saying 'we are in hospice'.  No amount of denial or bargaining can get around it.

Near-term extinction within a generation.

In the context of 20+ positive feedbacks and runaway climate change - in addition to Fukushima - talk of an end to industrial growth begins to me to sound like false hope.

.....

A change in consciousness is not going to change the physical reality on the ground.

It is simply too late.

The question becomes how we find the strength within ourselves the spiritual strength to find acceptance and make the time that we have on the planet worthwhile.

Every minute of it.

The Dalai Lama begins every day of his life with a contemplation on death - and he's hardly the most morose person on the planet!

Now we are presented with the same opportunity.
....

Thom Hartmann's video is the closest thing we'll find to an admission that this pessimistic assessment by Guy McPherson - one that has been subject to constant attack -  is accurate.

For that, in my opinion, we should be grateful.

AFTERWORD


I have written this as my own reflections, and beyond the facts of rapid climate change (which I regard as beyond debate) my own views are worth as much, or as little, as anybody else's.


I would therefore welcome your comments or any contribution to the conversation that you would like to make.

No one is going to be 'defriended' or boycotted for venturing their own opinion or feelings.