WIP

No, they likely had no idea who Nate Silver was, nor cared! The info leaking out over the last few days from disgruntled Romney campaign staffers presents a picture of a man surrounded by lackies telling him what he wanted to hear, not what he needed to know. I am convinced that the overall Republican strategy was to marginalize non-white voters so that they would be less of a factor in the so called swing states. What they didn't foresee was the backlash against their voter suppression strategies, and did not make any necessary adjustments in rhetoric or practice....which may have been a little too late anyway! It also needs to be noted that many of these Republican operatives like Karl Rove....especially Karl Rove, are at heart, swindlers and liars, since they never deliver the money's worth from what they take from the super-rich. So, should we feel bad for the billionaires because they got so little for the 400 million dollars that Rove took from them? Looks good on them! The billionaires pay out a lot of money to support conservative think tanks, right wing media, and conservative strategists like Rove. It's a good thing that they don't get their money's worth! Otherwise, they would be winning every election considering the billions of dollars they toss in the air to serve up the propaganda they need to win their base of support among the non-rich class.

It should be made clear that the divisiveness was all from one side - the Republicans. The U.S. MSM is so flacid and intellectually lazy, they mostly label a dispute...any dispute....as caused by both sides in the conflict, so they can pretend to be perched on that fence and remain "bipartisan." The fallout from this election will be felt if, as I personally believe, the world is getting very close to the reasonable limits of resource extraction - especially oil! Oil and many other non-renewable resources are giving the appearance of being demand driven, as resource-rich nations either cannot or will not increase supplies enough to meet any increased demand. With that economic reality, the U.S. (an oil-dependent empire) has no more capacity to significantly increase economic growth...although it should be mentioned on this side that oil producing nations like Canada (if we count tar sands oil) are only one step ahead of the oil-dependent countries. The present drama about a "fiscal cliff" is something that has been looming and growing in size for years. Up till now, the assumption that undergirds all forms of capitalist economics (whether liberal or conservative) has been that economic growth is a natural state for an economy, and no regard is accorded for any hard obstacles to growth - like available arable land, non-renewable and renewable natural resources, or losses through environmental degradation. Everything is assumed to go up, because that's what people want and have come to expect over the last 150 years. The U.S. and eventually every other capitalist economy is going to plunge over that fiscal cliff because the costs and restructuring needs for any sort of steady state economy are not considered politically viable by either liberals or conservatives. So, it is very likely that Obama will not be able to juice the money supply and expand debt levels for another four years, and will end up being the unlucky leader as the ship of state plunges over the fiscal cliff. If Obama makes an expected turn to the left....which just means replacing supply side economists with Keynsian liberals of the Paul Krugman variety, they will call for trillions in more FDR type job creation programs, but this time the fundamentals underlying the U.S. economy are radically different than the 1930's, and those debts will never be payed back. I should add, that the reason I see any more stimulus spending as an increase in overall debt load, is because there doesn't seem to be the will or the means to check the growing expansion of the U.S. military budgets. If there is room to grow the economy...even modestly, over the next four years, Obama may have a chance to be the new FDR. But, if the Chinese and others will not or cannot buy more U.S. debt, then he will be the new Frederich von Schleicher -- the last German chancellor of the Weimar Republic before Hitler assumed control of the government. And yes, the Republicans do have a few people waiting in the wings who would turn into outright fascist leaders if provided such an opportunity!

I stopped following the election last weekend, and waited till Thursday before I started sifting through the wreckage again. After viewing some of the comical Republican and conservative pundit meltdown clips, I am thinking that the Republicans had no intentions of winning the majority in the first place! They were only concerned with winning the majority of the white vote....otherwise there is no logical explanation for their less than subtle race baiting this time around. Previously, they have made half-hearted attempts to win as much of the minority vote as possible....if we look back to 2004, George Bush won 44% of the latino vote. This time it was less than 20%....Romney even lost the majority of the Cubans according to exit polls in Florida...which is totally unprecedented. But the consensus among the Repugnants has been growing over the last 10 years that their future is with the money and a fanatical core base of support, roughly the equivalent of the brown shirts of the fascist movements of the 1930's Italy, Germany and Spain. The reason the strategy backfired so badly on them this time was that blacks and latinos...and women in general who represented a 18% gender gap....were so repulsed by the creeping fascism on the right, they organized for weeks to get registered and STAY registered - denying local level Repuplican attempts to cage their votes and knock them off the voter lists. In some areas of Ohio, Florida and other battleground states, there were constant problems inside the polling stations that didn't exist by coincidence in Republican strongholds. Surveys of polling sites on election night also indicated (no surprise) that over 80% of "poll watchers" were specifically "watching" or as it is otherwise known- attempting to obstruct or delay the vote in minority districts. So, the surprise is only in respects to how the Republicans, and in particular the operatives like Karl Rove, wasted so much money on a strategy that was so obvious that it motivated people to get out and stand in line for hours at the polls, who would have never done it this time around just to support Barack Obama. And if the Obama Team has any brains, they will realize that they did not win because of their virtues, but only because what the Republicans offered up was so repulsive! If the Democrats don't drop their DLC - Clinton - so called third way, and concentrate more on being the party of the common people like the glory days of FDR and actually stand for something, then they will be swept aside by the party that overtly caters to the rich and powerful.

That first graph (which once again you are posting graphs without including the context of what exactly is being measured) appears to be measuring storm frequency, which is not the topic of discussion. If the second one is not some mickey mouse playing with charts game, how do they explain the finding that Hurricane Sandy....a very late season hurricane I might add, was stronger in total kinetic energy than Hurricane Katrina, and the 2nd strongest storm ever measured? Will that be part of their next set of charts? Or will they try to marginalize it as an outlier? They could easily accomplish that by just measuring wind speed and ignoring a storm's total kinetic energy. The horrific storm surge flooding in New Jersey and New York caused by Sandy was almost perfectly predicted well in advance, but was more extreme than the average person might expect from a minimal hurricane. That’s where Sandy’s immense size comes into play. There is a metric that quantifies the energy of a storm based on how far out tropical-storm force winds extend from the center, known as Integrated Kinetic Energy or IKE*. In modern records, Sandy’s IKE ranks second among all hurricanes at landfall, higher than devastating storms like Hurricane Katrina, Andrew and Hugo, and second only to Hurricane Isabel in 2003. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/post/sandy-packed-more-total-energy-than-katrina-at-landfall/2012/11/02/baa4e3c4-24f4-11e2-ac85-e669876c6a24_blog.html

Yes, the computer model predictions for more than 10 years have generally agreed that although there may not be an increase in the actual number of storms, the increased heat energy in the oceans would cause some storms to be larger and occur later in the season than before. From following the weather blogs at Weather Underground over the last couple of years, I've learned a few of the details about why weather and climate is such a complicated subject. One of the key limiting factors of hurricanes and typhoons is that our increasingly volatile atmosphere has a tendency to increase wind shear....which tends to break up, or at least weaken a hurricane. So, not every hurricane is going to be stronger. But if wind shear is less of a factor, look out! A strong wind shear last year was the main factor in Hurricane Irene losing its strength before making landfall. Otherwise, the damage from Irene could have been worse than Sandy! But, instead of taking Irene as a shot across the bow, nothing was done in the past year to prepare residents along the more northerly coast for the fact that global warming was putting them at a greater risk of hurricanes, and they needed to think like those living from Florida to Virginia when it comes to preparing for storms. They knew the risks of storm surges and worried about the threat to the subways and underground substations, but did nothing to improve the levee systems. I don't know how verifiable the statements are, but some electrical engineers have claimed that if lower Manhattan and other areas were flooded for more than a day, the sea water could permanently damage all of the electrical systems. Imagine all of the trouble they would have then getting the subways running and the power back on! And the worst back page story of all is one that could have been the greatest disaster - most of nuclear power stations along the coast made no preparations for shut down, or take any precautions for operating on backup diesel generators for an extended period of time. At least two of the stations were made by G.E., and have the same design as the Fukushima reactors. They are disasters waiting to happen....just like Fukushima! The takeaway seems again to be that governments and corporations only see the future 3 months or maybe a year at a time. The concept of preparing long term just doesn't occur until the crisis happens and there is an immediate threat. And by that time, it may be too late to do anything about it! If more people can't be taught to think years, decades and even centuries into the future, there is no hope for the human race.

I'll try to get to it this weekend if I can, since I have touched on these issues in other threads regarding the reasons I withdrew from the atheist/humanist movement, and change my mind on the value of secular humanism as a grounding philosophy. Since there are a few people who seem interested in discussing basic philosophical ideas now, it might get a discussion going.

First, I'm late responding here because I lost track of this thread. 2nd, I didn't buy the book, and most of my impressions about his new ideas on ethics come from a one hour lecture I watched back before the book was released. But it seems to me that the Moral Landscape wouldn't have stirred up controversy in philosophy and scientific circles if he was just advocating using new data from brain imaging and other scientific information to improve ethical theories. His bold claims in the lecture went beyond all that to claims that the scientific process itself could determine what the best, most optimal ethical choices on issues would be. He was not only kicking theology to the curb, he was saying that philosophy had no place either in ethics. For an example of what I consider to be a red flag, I took this from Russel Blackford's review, which agreed with his critiques of libertarian free will and moral relativism but contends that moral judgments are the equivalent of scientific facts: Here is how the picture looks if we go along with Harris. Ordinary factual claims are straightforwardly and determinately true or false, as are the theoretical claims made by science. So are moral judgments, and in much the same way. Indeed, moral judgments are simply claims about the well-being of conscious creatures – claims that may often depend on scientific evidence. Is Harris justified in saying that moral terms are most reasonably defined in reference to brain states? Why “wellbeing” and whose wellbeing are we talking about here? The moral philosopher - Peter Singer created a thought problem some years ago to advance the notion that every conscious human being has to show concern for all conscious beings...even higher functioning animals....but just focusing on conscious humans for the purpose of the exercise, he asks the subject if they would be willing to damage an expensive suit and wade into water if they saw a drowning child? Most people will at least claim to answer yes; but then the question is addressed to the multitude of starving children in Africa or any impoverished lands. And the perfect utilitarian response would be that one cannot enjoy any comfort if there is any suffering, anywhere in the world regardless of distance or whether we would ever have any personal relationship with them. Singer, who says he doesn't give everything to charity, but gives 20% of his income to charitable causes like famine relief, raises a big problem for any ethicist who thinks there is a straight line from scientific evidence to perfect moral judgments without confronting that Is/Ought dilemma. I was getting to that point of the difficulty in determining well being, let alone how to maximize well being above; but the next problem is should ethics be all about maximizing well being and happiness in the first place? A samurai warrior would have argued that perfecting ethics was a matter of perfecting one's self through effort. And the samurai's life goal would be perfecting his swordsmanship. But, who's to say the samurai warrior is wrong, and wasting his life on a trivial goal? And, if Harris believes that we should maximize human well being, that makes him a typical humanist; but the human race has pushed itself up against the threat of extinction in this age because our species attempts to use our ingenuity to maximize the planet's resources for our own benefit. For this reason, there are a number of ecologists who feel that humanism and the goals of the enlightenment to create new inventions to exploit nature have only enabled humans to "maximize" their wellbeing for a relatively brief period of time in terms of Earth's history. If there are no humans three centuries from now....or just a remnant of survivors struggling in a stone age, pre-industrial existence, how successful can we say that humanist and enlightenment goals have been?

Is Romney, the one-term Governor of Massechussets (which he will lose by a landslide today) really a secret moderate, or was Bishop Romney a worse social conservative than Rick Santorum Michele Bachmann or Rick Perry? Evidence: an interesting little blurb buried near the end of this long, boring article in the N.Y. Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/us/politics/for-romney-a-role-of-faith-and-authority.html?pagewanted=3&_r=1&ref=politics In 1990, Exponent II, a Mormon feminist magazine that Ms. Dushku, the Suffolk University professor, helped found, published an article by a married mother of four who recounted her own experience after doctors advised her to terminate her pregnancy when she was being treated for a potentially dangerous blood clot. Her bishop got wind of the situation, she wrote, and showed up unannounced at the hospital, warning her sternly not to go forward. The article did not identify Mr. Romney as the bishop, but Ms. Dushku later did. Now the woman has come forward, identifying herself in Mr. Scott’s book as Carrel Hilton Sheldon. (Through Ms. Dushku, she declined to be interviewed.) “Mitt has many, many winning qualities,” she is quoted as saying, “but at the time he was blind to me as a human being.” Ms. Dushku sees hypocrisy and callousness; Mr. Scott sees inexperience. One crucial little factoid omitted from the Times article which I heard in a radio interview with Judy Dushku, was that the woman seeking the abortion, who later came forward to reveal her identity, also claimed that she had authority from LDS church leadership in Salt Lake City to have the abortion prior to Bishop Romney's attempted intervention demanding that she roll the dice and continue the pregnancy! This story should also serve as a word of warning to all of the American women in the anti-abortion fundagelical movements, who think that they, or any woman would really have access to that life-saving abortion if a pregnancy went seriously bad. But, who is the real Mitt? Who will show up at the swearing in ceremony in January...if the Republicans are successful in their efforts today to steal the election through denying the vote to black Americans today? Will it be Moderate Mitt, who only pretended to be a conservative, but is really a mere socially liberal libertarian, who just wants gangster capitalism and to change a few laws to bring his hundreds of millions in offshore accounts back home? Or was "moderate Mitt" the real illusion, and he turns out to be more intrusive on social issues than any previous Republican? I don't think he's pretended on any of his economic goals, except for claiming that the results will improve the lives of average Americans!

Really! "Wattsup" is the source of truth again? But now they are talking like they acknowledge global warming, but want to claim it's a good thing. They're all over the map...just like creationists! Do they have any explanations for the negative effects on the jet stream over the past few winters attributed to the strengthening of the Polar Vortex and the North Atlantic Oscillation due to the increased melting of Arctic sea ice? But, the biggest question they would have to explain if they could theorize their way to a claim that global warming reduced the superstorm's impact is why hasn't it happened before? There are so many records broken here: the diameter of the storm, the record low pressure, the record storm surges....but instead of these being effects that have been aggravated by climate change, we're asked to believe that it would have been worse without global warming!

Did you miss the memo? Not everyone gets the same page results from a google search. A recent WSJ article informs us on how to turn off Google's personalizing algorithm....and downplays the potential harms of skewing information that could be available for the world's largest search engine, but to me, the mere fact that you have to make a special effort to prevent Google profiling is part of the greater web of deceit which favours large players with lots of money, and will increasingly marginalize the lowly blogger or reporter on the fringes.....and I haven't even mentioned the impact net neutrality plays in this issue: How to Turn off Google’s Personalized Search Results But, you didn't comment on the National Archives banning of Wikileaks searches. That is clear, overt censorship, no different than what the Chinese Government does in controlling information available for their people.

I consider what you just wrote here about my post to be outright slander! If you have a brain in your head you should be able to figure out that I am warning that our economic system and nationalism will lead to bloody and possibly apocalyptic battles for what's left....not advocating them!

It's true that the world is overpopulated, no matter how you want to look at the numbers! Our present 7 billion population is already 3 times what the planet can permanently support, even by the most generous measurements (which assume a reversal of present increases in energy and resource exploitation) The U.N. released a report two years ago stating that the world population would level out and plateau around 9 or 10 billion around the middle of this century. But that report isn't even worth the paper it was written on because they could have cross-referenced their findings with environmental data provide by another U.N. agency - the FAO - which released a report showing that an increase in population to 10 billion would require doubling the present world food production totals, because of declining arable lands. They advise a policy of factory farming the oceans....which also would not be sustainable because it's the dying of ocean life which is likely the most serious environmental crisis we are facing today. But, the problems of sustainability are more closely correlated to resource and energy use, than they are with population totals! That's why there is such a wide range of numbers for trying to determine maximum sustainable population. The gradual declines in birth rates afforded by declines in childhood mortality and improved access for women to birth control, seem to indicate that the population aspect of the sustainability problem would take care of itself over a century or two, if not for deliberate interference from religious reactionaries. The BIG problem is our way of life and the economic system we are enmeshed with, which demands constant increases in economic output. There is no way to increase GDP without increasing energy and resource consumption! The big question for the near future is whether the world will develop a new outlook, or maybe re-adopt the attitudes prior to the Enlightenment Age, and settle in to living in the new era of scarcity.....or whether greed will prevail, and their will be a suicidal fight for control of the resources that are left.

Technically yes! There have been hurricanes in 1851 and 1903 hit the New York/New Jersey area http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2283 But, that one in 1903 called the Vagabond Hurricane was in September, not late October. A late season hurricane with this much power (total energy was greater than Katrina, but less concentrated) and traveling this far north, are both unprecedented. Usually, an October hurricane loses power fast as it moves north that late in the season (like last year's Irene) because the north Atlantic waters have already started cooling and wind shear caused by late summer turbulence breaks up the eyewall of the hurricane and prevents it from reforming. This was the major reason why Irene dropped so fast from a category 4 hurricane to a mere tropical storm by the time it reached the New England coast. Unfortunately, the waters were still warm enough to keep Tropical Storm Irene swirling for an extended period and dumping massive amounts of rain in Vermont and the nearby areas. I heard a lot of people in Vermont, who had bridges and roads washed out were really pissed about the way New York media acted when they called the storm a "near miss" and treated the damage in Vermont as a backstory. But, Hurricane Sandy is clear systemic evidence of global warming whether the major news networks are willing to mention that fact or not! Just like last year, the Gulf Stream was 5 degrees warmer than normal - and allowed the storm to keep gaining energy much further north than any October hurricane or tropical storm would have been able to previously. Bad luck for New York and the Jersey Coast that wind shear was relatively low and allowed the eyewall of the hurricane to almost completely reform prior to landfall....and of course the other bad luck factor was arriving on the coast during a full moon high tide! But, the biggest change in recent years which is unprecedented is that normally the jet stream would be moving to lower latitude in late October, so any storms coming up the coast would be pushed out to sea. But, as Jeff Master's article notes, this new phenomena of high pressure blocking fronts coming off the North Atlantic, prevented the storm from going out to sea, and forced it into a sharp left turn for the coast...a far more damaging phenomena compared to the usual direction that would be traveling up the coast prior to landfall. These blocking fronts correlate with the much warmer temperatures in the far north thanks to the record sea ice melt. So, this sort of superstorm - combined with an early winter storm that was also pushed in the path of Sandy, is new and unprecedented, and cannot occur without the rising ocean temperatures allowing it to come together. The takeaway for anyone living in New York or New Jersey, or New England, is that you are going to be at the same risk of hurricanes as Virginia, the Carolinas and Florida! Don't think Sandy was a fluke, and look back centuries for evidence of a prior, similar storm. Sandy is a sign that New York should have long ago started building real flood barriers to protect the Subway and underground systems, and protect coastal areas from storm damage. It's been noted already that many areas along the Jersey Coast look much different after the storm from the aerial photos. It's likely that there have been permanent changes, and some areas of the coast should not be abandoned and not rebuilt....as their big fat governor wants to do. Some areas should be abandoned because they will eventually be permanently washed away. Well, let's say that Romney was already the President, or go ahead a few years in the future when President Romney fulfilled his campaign promise to abolish FEMA and turn all the funding over to the state governments. It's a nobrainer that some states are richer than others, and there will be obvious winners and losers from such a policy, as poor states like Louisiana and Mississippi, would never be able to afford to rebuild after a major storm, or more importantly - get relief to people stranded by the storm. I think Chris Christie is the poster boy for how self-centered conservatives change their tune about government when they find themselves in over their heads and need outside help. It's easy to by greedy and complain that a federal agency might redistribute some of your tax funds to other, poorer states until your state needs help from the Federal Government - i.e. the collective tax base of all Americans.

That's very true! This BS about Google and Yahoo "personalizing" their search engines in the interest of sales & marketing alone is just that - bullshit! If they can filter out the information we are searching for in a similar manner that Google admits to applying in China as per their agreement with the Government, then there is no reason why western governments and the very large commercial interests aren't extending favours to Google to apply the same rules with us. I'm surprised that the story of the U.S. National Archive banning Wikileaks made the news....it must have been a slow news day because they will go to whatever the latest stupid story is about the Kardashians before they cover a story on censorship. But, if Google is "personalizing" your searches to leave unfavoured websites and authors off the first page, then they are accomplishing their objective of misinforming 99% of the low-info public without having to cross that line into overt, outright censorship. The main strategy against Wikileaks was to threaten every company that was forwarding online credit card donations to Wikileaks. That totally illegal action would have taken them completely offline if Wikileaks didn't have supporters in foreign countries and a few millionaires who are interested in keeping the site operating. But this is a precarious situation nonetheless to be beholden to one or a handful of big money donors, rather than the broader world public. It has been noted from many sides previously that the increasingly concentrated U.S. news media is slowly turning into the equivalent national news TV and newspapers that you find in the average dictatorship. Supposedly, at least as far back as the "special relationship" that the late Sunday morning news anchor Tim Russert had with the power players in Washington, the excuse has been that if they are mean and ask a few questions that politicians aren't prepared for and don't want to answer, they will lose access to them. So, the useless Sunday morning shows, which have almost no public audience, are only on and earn undeservedly large salaries for their hosts because the major sponsors like G.E., Lockheed Martin etc. want to set the pattern for the rest of the network drones to follow throughout the week and base their questions and their phony concerns on (Social Security going broke, the Federal deficit etc.) The American reporters who want to be millionaires, like the Russerts - Sr. and Jr., David Gregory etc. etc. are stenographers, not reporters! Any reporter on a network show or at a major newspaper who makes a politician or a major financial player on Wall Street work up a sweat, is soon out of a job. The best they can do after that is to get a show on one of the cable news channels where they only have access to either the Republican or the Democratic politicos -- and they may be able to sound off there about the other party, but if they criticize their own leaders or worse - criticize the very institutions of power themselves, they are out the door and shut off from having any access to any major U.S. media including PBS and NPR. They only people they can talk to after going rogue, are some foreign press and small fringe, alternative media within the country. In a sense, the mainstream media is already acting in the manner described by former correspondents of Pravda after the fall of the Soviet Union -- most said there were no clear written rules for what they could discuss or the questions they could ask, but they soon learned to adopt a policy of self-censorship and learn what the red lines were before they crossed the line and got fired or worse. The only thing we have going in our favour today in access to real information is that the U.S. (and Canada of course) have foreign enemies with their own news channels that will highlight those stories that the media over here either ignore or bury. So, I may not hear the bad stuff about Gazprom and the Russian oligarchs if I watch a newscast on RT, but I will hear about the ones on Wall Street, and even stories like the Occupy Wall Street movement starting a relief effort dubbed 'Occupy Sandy' and getting some aid to some of the poorer zones in New York like Staten Island, which FEMA and other relief agencies didn't seem to have at the top of their priority lists. And, without fail, none of the major networks or the New York flagship stations mentioned OWS, because they try to avoid any positive stories about the movement at all costs. As long as commercial media and corporate-funded public media are in the business of self-censorship, whatever they say about the upcoming U.S. Election and related major issues is about as worthy as commentaries on state television in China!

Unfortunately, religious affiliation becomes a convenient handle for anyone who doesn't want to delve into the complexities of modern life. A few years ago, Robert Wright took on the grand, expansive project of trying to use game theory to analyze and describe the origins and progressions of religion over the ages.....and it's a project that may have been too ambitious even for a large book, but there are some interesting findings in his analysis of the development of the major monotheisms. One of note, is that the books of the Old Testament, such as Jonah - which present a concern for the wellbeing of foreigners, were written at times when Israel was at times of relative peace and prosperity, and had more to gain through cooperative relationships with neighbours; while the many 'slay thine enemies and dash the heads of infants on the rocks' warfaring books were written during the times when Israel was engaged in either bloody wars of expansion, or desperately defending their own territories. Anyone who takes a naturalistic look at Judaism, Christianity and Islam, is aware that they present different and conflicting themes and even moral values in their pages.....which have kept modern fundamentalists continuously busy coming up with new ways to spin the stories and make excuses for contradictions. My takeaway is that people can use these religions to be at their best, or use them to excuse warfare, genocides, and persecuting all perceived enemies. The big mistake of modern antitheists is that they think there is nothing of value contained in centuries old religious traditions, while engaging in the hubristic assumption that their modern scientific humanistic theories provide all that's needed to create paradise on Earth. Just judging from the number of atheists who line up behind extreme nationalistic causes and even the most ruthless economic theories, I would say that there is no guarantee that Stalin and Mao were mere anomalies, and the same thing couldn't happen all over again under a political movement that made replacing religion with scientific humanism one of its grand goals.

Exactly! Externalizing carbon and other negative costs of hydrocarbons to the commons, has been a major reason why there has been no realistic competitive energy sources until now. If all of the costs of carbon fuel extraction and use had to be payed up front, we would not have such a badly degraded environment today.....of course we would also never have had the huge expansion in related resource extraction.....we use something like 100X the nonrenewable resources on a per capita basis compared to people living 150 years ago during early part of the Industrial Revolution. Your wrong here! Either the world is just not big enough, or modern growth-dependent capitalist economics just drove the expansion of resource development too fast....because we are already staring into an abyss, with rising atmospheric carbon levels that most of us are well aware of; but there are other issues less well known, such as declining freshwater availability in the major food-growing regions and declining arable land because of erosion and topsoil loss. And then there is the least mentioned, but likely most crucial issue facing modern civilization -- it's not just oil, but most non-renewable natural resources are already past peak availability - Global NNR Scarcity By the year 2008, 63 of the 89 NNRs (71%) that enable our modern industrial existence—including coal, chromium, cobalt, copper, iron/steel, magnesium, manganese, natural gas, oil, phosphate rock, potash, rare earth minerals, titanium, uranium, and zinc—were scarce globally. Note that global NNR scarcity does not involve “running out” of any NNR, it involves “running short” of many. That is, for an increasing number of NNRs, while there will always be plenty of resources in the ground, there are*not enough economically viable* resources in the ground to perpetuate our industrial lifestyle paradigm going forward.** NNR Scarcity is a Permanent Phenomenon With the seemingly continuous emergence of newly industrializing nations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, global NNR requirements have increased meteorically since the beginning of the 21^st century. Whereas approximately 1.5 billion people occupied industrialized and industrializing nations in the late 20^th century, that number currently exceeds 5 billion, most of whom have yet to even remotely approach their full NNR utilization potential. Unfortunately, humanity’s ever-increasing global NNR requirements are manifesting themselves within the context of increasingly-constrained—i.e., increasingly expensive, lower quality—NNR supplies. That is, the cost reductions associated with our ongoing improvements in NNR exploration, extraction, production, and processing technologies are insufficient to offset the cost increases associated with newly discovered NNR deposits, which are fewer, smaller, less accessible, and of lower grade and purity. The consequence associated with this “demand/supply imbalance” is that the earth cannot physically support our current—much less continuously increasing—NNR requirements. In fact, NNR scarcity had become sufficiently pervasive by the onset of the Great Recession to permanently depress future economic growth trajectories and societal wellbeing trajectories at both the domestic and global levels. *Continuously Less and Less—America’s New Reality* http://peakoil.com/generalideas/peak-us-societal-wellbeing-there-can-be-no-recovery-this-time/ This is why I rarely bother in the food fights between conservatives and liberals on economic theories and policies! They're both wrong! And the theories of the supply siders and the Keynsians are both worthless today, because they depend on that cornucopia interpretation of history -- that the Earth is a giant candy factory that will just keep supplying us with more and more of what we want to meet our desires. And it boils down to hubris alone that virtually all economists and theorists from all political sides share an unwarranted optimism that human ingenuity will keep pulling rabbits out of the hat, and keep the expansion going indefinitely. Now that governments and the corporations behind them are making a rush and intend to go to war if necessary over the last untapped resources in the newly melting Arctic, it's high time to develop a new mindset: that we can either share what's left, or risk nuclear annihilation in bloody genocides to control the available resources as they become increasingly scarce. So which future awaits us in the coming decades? ----- But both policies are only stopgap measures at best! Unless something is done to address the fact that capitalist economics spurs exponential energy demands to match its needs for continuous growth, carbon taxes, cap n' trades, windmills, solar panels etc. won't be enough to stop the increase in carbon output into the atmosphere and the world's oceans.

Is that what this babbling about Obama turning the U.S. into a Muslim nation is all about?

This isn't my high priority issue, but it seems to me that when Israel decided to become a permanent occupier of the West Bank and turn Gaza into a giant prison camp, that they were the ones who took on the responsibility to "make things right." Earlier this year we learned that the Gaza Strip will completely exhaust their underground water supplies by the year 2020.....that's only 7 years away! What do the Israelis intend to do with Gaza? Keep them boxed in until everyone's dead. Such are the costs of empire! Maybe Israel is now trapped in a prison of their own making: spending money they don't have on constantly growing military budgets to maintain the empire....that sounds familiar, come to think of it!

Harris goes beyond using science to find solutions to moral quandaries, to claiming that all moral questions can be answered through the scientific process. He would qualify as a believer in what is loosely referred to as scientism, since he regards science as the sum total of all rational inquiry, rather than a method to inform us about the world and the choices we should make. Harris claims that moral judgments are....or at least could be in theory - scientific facts. There may be some overlap between science and philosophy, but Harris claims that science - and neuroscience in particular, can, at least in theory, answer a question such as: when does a fetus feel pain, and that knowing the answer will determine whether an abortion should be permissible or not. But, before we can even start that scientific process we have to make that judgment call that pain should be the determining factor. So we begin with the obvious starting point that Harris's scientific morality is grounded in consequentialism (maximizing happiness and minimizing pain and suffering etc.). There may be great value in using consequences of actions as a determining factor in judging the merits of rules and actions, but who says our life's goal should be all about acquiring as much happiness as possible? If that's what it's all about, we could just take drugs that stimulate endorphin levels 24/7 and feel happy all the time. I'm not a moral relativist myself, but neither do I believe that there is some linear moral progress towards a perfect world....which seems to be the point of Harris and evolutionary psychologists like Stephen Pinker. When I have the time, I've been wanting to start a thread on the whole subject of progress in all its forms, because I believe that the source of modern malaise in its entirety cannot be separated from our unqualified faith in technological progress and belief in linear progress of history. It might be more satisfying to believe that the future will be better and brighter than the present (especially for secular humanists), but faith in progress is ironically, the core religion that binds atheists and fundamentalist Christians alike these days. The Christian fundamentalist may hate scientific facts that contradict literal interpretation of their religious treasures, while embracing the advantages of technology and new invention that creates more wealth....but so does the typical atheist humanist these days who is not as rational as he or she believes and also ignores the obvious facts that we live in a finite world, and unless we can actually escape the bounds of this planet, we are constrained by finite capacity of resources to build with. Whether we accept it or not, history will turn out to be circular, not linear, and a much smaller human population will be forced by the constraints of this world to re-adopt most of the patterns of life that humans followed for thousands of years. And, the question then will be how will the crises and pressures of life in the coming generations inform moral choices? Throughout modern history, religions have been created and developed that contain explanatory myths of the world and rules for the society. We don't need to go in to all of the mistakes and problems created for adherents when they are faced with the dilemma of choosing between a rule created thousands of years ago in a different time and different living conditions, and the arduous task of reforming or reinterpreting the rules, without making them irrelevant completely.....yes, I agree the world's religions are chock full of problems and that's why I don't belong to one! But, antitheists like Harris, claim that there is nothing of value to be found in the past, and the new religion of science will lead the way to a perfect future on earth.....I guess I would fall into the skeptic category on that one.

If she is explaining why a one foot increase in sea level over the last hundred years, the 7% increase in atmospheric moisture levels, a five degree temperature increase in the Gulf Stream waters, and the increase in North Atlantic high pressure blocking fronts have nothing to do with a late October hurricane being spawned and deflected right back into the Atlantic coast, then I won't bother reading her research. There are enough propagandists working on behalf of the oil companies out there without adding more excuses and propaganda to the list!

s.

Interesting link! I'll watch the complete video later - I didn't see anything I wasn't aware of in the first 5 minutes. Your point about engaging in warfare while having no skin in the game...or personal risk should be underlined, because the most dangerous aspect of drone warfare is that it completely eliminates the risk of death, injury or capture by the aggressor, and this makes going to war much too easy! Personally, I see technology designed for warmaking as the greatest source of evil in itself. Right now, Obama can check names that are given to him on a kill list, and they are assassinated without trial or any due process of any kind. And all this can happen now without the risk of having a plane shot down and a pilot captured. But, drone warfare is only a step above bombing with fighter jets! I recall reading about prototype drones and future proposals back in the 70's. For the longest time it was an unwritten rule that pilotless aircraft should not be armed, and that was the reason for the long delay before the modern warfare reality....which will be engaged in by others now that the U.S. is making widespread use of airborne assassination....there was already a realization that pilotless warplanes would be no different than having robot soldiers on a battlefield....by taking away any personal risk and also to make the killing even more remote, it makes aggression easier and more common. Looking back in recent history, Bush 1 started the Gulf War only after assurance from his military planners that Iraq didn't have sophisticated radar and antiaircraft technology capable of shooting down the latest generation of American planes; same with Clinton going to war with Yugoslavia! Rather than risk a handful of U.S. casualties, Clinton authorized an indiscriminate bombing campaign against Yugoslavia rather than put a few troops on the ground to drive the Serbians out of Kosovo. Little is said about war crimes of Democratic presidents in the U.S. because Republicans always have that kneejerk need to be more extreme and further to the right than whatever the Democrat is doing! Since I am old enough to remember Daniel Ellesberg's release of the Pentagon Papers and the media attention the book received when released to the public; the biggest shock to me about Wikileaks is the virtual blackout on U.S. mainstream media and corresponding lack of interest among the public! Everywhere else in the world, they are aware of the key findings. The so called "Arab Spring" uprisings got their start when some of the cables revealed to Tunisians the extent of the looting of the public treasury that their longtime dictator had been carrying out for decades. In this age, most impoverished third world citizens are better informed, and take greater interest in what's going on than the average American! I've heard BBC investigate reporter - Greg Palast comment a number of times on alternative media that the only place in the world where his reports are not heard regarding: BP's previous oil rig blowout in the Caspian Sea, theft of international aid funds by U.S. hedge fund billionaires, and his most recent report on voting list "caging" is in his home country! They have all been big stories in England, the rest of Europe, and he gets calls from media in Africa, the Middle East and Latin America...but not from the Big U.S. newspapers and news networks.

Some idiotic fundamentalist Christians here have been under the impression that they can point a finger at this Muslim cleric without having three fingers pointing back at themselves (or their own faith leaders in this case). Here's one: Anti-LGBT Minister: Sandy is God’s Judgment on Gays Here's another: Religious Right Rabbi Blames Hurricane Sandy on Gays, Marriage Equality That's from a quick term search, feel free to add more to the list. I'm sure that old Pat is just waiting to burst out with his latest theory linking hurricanes, homosexuals and black presidents! Maybe one of his sons put duct tape over his mouth....or maybe he got scared by one of the early hurricane tracks that could sent it right into Virginia Beach...who knows! But, it's the height of hypocrisy for fundamentalist Christians and Jews to be pointing fingers at a Muslim cleric who links a natural disaster in America with American foreign policy.

That would depend whether you accept this puff piece that the New York Times wrote to present 'tough guy' Obama: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-in-war-on-al-qaeda.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 It is also because Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.

Making morality "universal" has been an intended and unintended goal of human society ever since the first farming communities forced unrelated strangers to live and work together thousands of years ago. Before then, moral norms developed right along with human evolution and helped small extended family tribes to live in harmony. The morality we are hardwired for is based on the principle of kin altruism, and does not extend to strangers...that has to be taught and learned. Hunter/gatherer tribes were not necessarily hostile to other tribal groups; alot would depend on the availability of food and whether another tribe had artifacts to trade....so we have obvious signs of reciprocal altruism had been well developed thousands of years ago, from the evidence found in many archaeological digs all across Europe, Asia and Africa, that found mammoth ivory beads that would have had their origins with mammoth hunters in Siberia. So, in that long era when everyone lived off the land, they traded luxury items with no intrinsic value. The challenge for human societies over the last 6000 years or so is how to motivate people to extend moral principles beyond family and friends. This is where religion and nationalism comes in, but in today's overcrowded world, nations fighting over declining natural resources and sectarian religions that teach followers to disregard others, or even to go to war against those who believe differently could sow the seeds of our extinction. Getting all that out of the way, the problem for Sam Harris and many other humanist philosophers before him, is how to derive universal moral principles from facts of human evolution and knowledge gained through neuroscience in particular. But, that is exactly what he is claiming in his latest book: The Moral Landscape. He claims that science and an understanding of evolutionary principles can resolve David Hume's "Is/ Ought Paradox wherein Hume claimed that you cannot derive solutions or 'oughts' from mere facts alone. Harris has gained a lot of praise from people who were already his fans in the first place, but I don't think he has made fans among the people he should have been talking with in the first place - philosophers! The problem is that, unless someone is a creative evolutionist like Francis Collins or Michael Behe (who accepts common origins of life), there is no way to get moral principles from natural selection processes that guide evolution. They may provide the facts, but deciding right from wrong is still a judgment call that can be informed by the facts, but not derived from them. I would further add that Harris himself does special pleading many times in his talks when he will make a statement like:'surely we all agree that slavery is immoral,' and that may be true today, but it wasn't during earlier times and the institution of slavery did not end for altruistic, enlightened reasons primarily --- it ended mostly for economic reasons - because slaveholders in the South wanted to expand to putting slaves in factories and taking away the already meager wages that low paid workers were earning. And, for someone claiming to have found a way to universal morality, Harris himself has made some astonishing statements in the past, like justifying the use of torture on prisoners and dropping a nuclear bomb on Mecca. In reality, Harris is just one more theorist trying to make his own ideas universal...no different than Catholic theologians, politicians or many philosophers that he disregards.