The Daily Blog Open Mic – Thursday 22nd February 2018

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Announce protest actions, general chit chat or give your opinion on issues we haven’t covered for the day.

Moderation rules are more lenient for this section, but try and play nicely.

EDITORS NOTE: – By the way, here’s a list of shit that will get your comment dumped. Sexist language, homophobic language, racist language, anti-muslim hate, transphobic language, Chemtrails, 9/11 truthers, climate deniers, anti-fluoride fanatics, anti-vaxxer lunatics and ANYONE that links to fucking infowar.  

2 COMMENTS

  1. Not the mainstream media:

    ‘Epic media fail’

    https://www.rt.com/shows/crosstalk/419401-liberal-media-fake-scandal/

    “Is the day of reckoning coming? Will the liberal corporate media ever own up to their dismal and even dishonest coverage of what is called ‘Russiagate’? There is growing evidence the media are at the very center of this fake scandal.

    CrossTalking with Charles Ortel, Don DeBar, and Adam Garrie.”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mo0l8A66ILc

  2. We are dead: Climate change and Guy McPherson
    April 18, 2014 3:12 PM CST BY JONATHAN W. PRESSMAN

    http://www.peoplesworld.org/article/we-are-dead-climate-change-and-guy-mcpherson/

    We are dead: Climate change and Guy McPherson
    KINGSTON, R.I. – Climate change is the sickness of our civilization, and the prognosis is bleak. For a while, Dr. Guy McPherson, professor emeritus of natural resources and ecology & evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona, was relatively optimistic. There was a time when he believed that, if modern industrial society were to suddenly cease to operate, the planet could be saved. Not any more, he says. Planet Earth is now in hospice, nearing the end.

    Waiting to hear him speak, the atmosphere in the East Auditorium at the University of Rhode Island is festive, almost jubilant. Everyone is smiling and gregariously introducing themselves to me. Though most of us aren’t scientists, there is an unconscious letting down of our guard: we are among our own. No matter the origin of our disparate backgrounds, we all believe that climate change is real, and that human beings are the primary cause. There is electricity in the air and everyone is excited.

    I make the rounds and meet Patricia Hval, the humble curator of the Babcock-Smith House Museum in Westerly, R.I. Though not a URI faculty member, she is responsible for McPherson’s presence here tonight. She had originally invited him to speak in Westerly but couldn’t find a venue, so she organized a URI event along with Dr. Peter Nightingale, whom I finally meet in the flesh after some email correspondence.

    Peter is a slight, elderly Dutchman with quick vibrant movements and an infectious smile – like so many others tonight (including our speaker) he exudes charisma. He is a physicist, and though he doesn’t agree with McPherson’s specific prognosis, his views on climate change are uncompromising. In our telephone conversations, he voices frustration at the meager efforts of world governments to curb carbon emissions. He makes an apt analogy with Dick Cheney’s “one percent doctrine”: If there is even a 1 percent chance of a terrorist attack, then the United States must do everything in its power to stop it. Why then, Nightingale asks, is the same logic not applied to climate change, which has a statistically predictable trajectory and the potential to kill many more people than any other threat?

    Nightingale opens up the lecture with a song on his ukulele. The anthem is called “Fight For Fossil Free!” and we all have lyric sheets. Soon I am singing along with everyone else in the packed auditorium. The energy of the crowd is palpable. McPherson steps up to the podium and makes his case. He’d an odd duck, splendidly dressed, and it’s hard to take your eyes off him. He is dressed in well worn leather dress shoes, ’90s Carhart pants and a slick blazer, and has perhaps the goofiest haircut I’ve ever seen in my life. There is something strangely dashing about him, a streak of Indiana Jones. He is positively arresting.

    Guy McPherson believes that life on Earth will more or less be extinct by the year 2060, and the evidence he presents is compelling and well sourced. Of the creatures that may live, mankind is not among them. We’ll run out of food and water. We’ll be swept away by typhoons, and freeze in winter storms of unusual intensity. We’ll dry in the sun, and our mummified remains will break apart in sandstorms, our disintegrated body matter swirling around like dervishes of dust. Now, Guy didn’t actually use any of these morbid descriptions, but that is where my mind went after hearing the overwhelming amount of factual information that he presented. If he’s a flake, as some have accused him of being, then he is the most learned and exhaustively conclusive flake I’ve ever met.

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