Incorrigible Doomseekers Profit from Your Fears

In the late 1990s author James Howard Kunstler argued that Y2K would bring civilization to its knees. That didn’t happen, but that didn’t lead Kunstler to rethink his views on the end, just the means....Stanford biology professor Paul Ehrlich and his wife Anne, who in their 1968 book The Population Bomb predicted massive global starvation due to overpopulation in the 1970s and ’80s. Was there starvation in those decades? Yes [There always is _ed.]. Was it massive and global? No. Were the Ehrlichs chastened? Not so much. While they concede their scariest doomsday scenarios were “way off,” on the larger question of looming disaster they say they were “too optimistic.” _Cecil Adams @ CityPaper

Incorrigible doomers glom onto doom-causes du jour such as carbon hysteria, Y2K, overpopulation, peak oil, etc. The cause is not important, it is the hovering doom that counts.

A couple decades ago climatology consultant Iben Browning predicted a huge earthquake centered on New Madrid, Mo., a well-known earthquake zone where seismologists have long predicted a future cataclysm. However, they’ve never given an exact date, because to do so is beyond the grasp of current science. Public reaction to these open-ended prognostications: yawn. Browning’s innovation was to assert flat out that the earthquake would happen on Dec. 3, 1990, backing up his claim with a convincing pseudoscientific spiel. Result: a media frenzy, but no quake.

...How do doomsayers cope when their predictions go south? There’s a common thread regardless of how delusional they are. In When Prophecy Fails, a landmark 1956 study of cultists awaiting a world-ending flood, psychologist Leon Festinger proposed his theory of cognitive dissonance, which describes how people rationalize their continued adherence to disproven claims.

The shrewder doomsayers do this too, but their rationalizing is often something like: all in the service of the greater good. You can’t blame them, really. They’re just making practical use of the paradox known to every politician who ever walked the earth: people will listen when you lie to them, and ignore you when you tell the truth. _Cecil Adams

The hucksters of doom have learned how to profit from your fears and your gullibility. They always have a book, a seminar, a newsletter, or other means by which to transfer your wealth into their pockets.

But don't be too complacent. When your government is run by fools who disregard the well-known hazards of excessive debt and demographic decline, hard times are waiting right around the corner.

The pseudo-intellectual fools who currently run governments, academia, the media -- the parasitic classes -- have over the decades bred and trained a large following of drones unable to think or act for themselves. When the true catastrophes eventually come around, there will be fewer competent persons to deal with them than there should have been. Thanks to trumped up worries over fantasies, combined with the studious obfuscation of potential problems that have been steadily building in seriousness within populations of the advanced world, there is a real danger.

But you will have to face it alone, or with small groups of like-minded persons who took the trouble to prepare. Most important of all, you will need to learn to conceal your preparations from the parasitic classes while at the same time recruiting as many persons from among your friends and family as you can.

The pseudo-panics caused by grifting doomseekers are just part of the rampant parasitism that thrives under corrupt governments and decayed cultures. We must take them in stride along with the rest, while stocking up appropriately for what may truly come.

Debt, Power, and Revolution: In Media Res

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We are living in interesting times, and any attempt to predict exactly how our world dynamics will resolve is doomed to fail. Here are some things that are happening around the world.

The Western World

The western world is looking at massive and growing debt combined with an enormous demographic transition. That particular combination points to a coming of potentially cataclysmic change in the everyday existence of most of the region's residents.

...once the fatal spiral begins, how can a state escape disaster? There are only eight options: (1) higher taxes; (2) less spending; (3) more growth; (4) more lenient interest rates; (5) worse inflation; (6) war; (7) external aid; or (8) default. All eight options have been used in the past, but only one of them is both plausible and desirable today: growth. A growing economy (which raises tax revenue) permits the absorption of debt and restores sustainable public finances. Then borrowing can resume—if it will encourage further growth. Responsible governments do not finance their everyday expenses by borrowing, and they keep their investments at a level they can repay.

History offers one final lesson. The power of sovereign states can foster a sense of impunity that encourages excessive debt. In the past, sovereign states have sometimes rid themselves of creditors by simply driving them out (as they did repeatedly with Europe’s Jews), by tormenting them, or by simply refusing to pay. When modern states borrow from a range of anonymous investors on global markets, sovereign immunity protects their assets against seizure—China cannot seize the White House as collateral for U.S. Treasury debt. But creditors can still negotiate, even with sovereign debtors. When a state loses the market’s confidence, the threat of a financial cutoff is a jolt back to reality. Just ask Greece, as its leaders scramble to reduce its public deficit as quickly as possible. The West needs to wake up now, shake off the yoke of public debt, and take the path of liberty. That path is long and difficult. It means balancing budgets and stabilizing the financial sector. But the great reward will be a return to confidence and growth—for those who put in the effort, and for those with the audacity to see it through. _Newsweek

Russia

The recent second conviction of former Yukos head Khodorkovsky opens a window on what may be one of many potentially fatal dynamics at the core of Russian power.

the real meaning of the Khodorkovsky case is that the authorities are weak, and scared. If the first trial of Khodorkovsky was a kind of perverse victory for Putin over the once-powerful oligarchs, the second trial shows that the Kremlin is afraid of showing what it sees as weakness. More, the ham-handedness of the charges themselves, and the heavy police presence and mass arrests at the trial today, betrays a dangerous amateurishness. Totalitarianism is scary. Incompetent totalitarianism is actually scarier.

For evidence of just how totalitarian – and now incompetent – Russia’s authorities are, look no further than the desperately eloquent scene in the courtroom during the trial, day in, day out. On one side sat the state prosecutors in their 1980s-style uniforms, surrounded by stacks of paper bulging out of Victorian-style ledgers. They mumbled their evidence in a monotone. At several points in the trial their accusations were so absurd that even the judge burst into laughter (my favorite prosecution malapropism – “The defendant is doing an excellent impression of being a normal person.”) On the other side sat the Khodorkovsky defense team, smartly dressed, each with a laptop. In a glass cage behind them, looking more at ease and in a strange way freer than anyone in the room, sat Khodorkovsky and Lebedev, taking turns to follow the documentary evidence on a large Mac screen set up in front of their box while the other made notes. It was as though two Russias were sparring in the courtroom, one mediocre, nervous and browbeaten, the other smart, modern and surprisingly relaxed. As Khodorkovsky himself said last year, a country that plunders its best companies and jails its brightest businessmen and instead puts its trust in the secret police and bureaucrats has its priorities seriously wrong.

The oligarchs were, unarguably, bad for Russia. They used their money to buy political power, and in the process corrupted the Duma, the press and the government. But the bureaucrat-kleptocrats who succeeded them are far worse. Khodorkovsky, in his years of incarceration in a Siberian labor camp, has transformed himself from a symbol of the hated oligarchy into a bellwether for a different sort of Russian rottenness. The oligarchs abused their money, the Kremlin now abuses power to silence opposition and to cover up the mass theft by the bureaucratic class of what has been estimated as a third of Russia’s GDP, annually. Medvedev is right that Russia is rotting from within; he’s even put his finger on exactly how. But the second conviction of Khodorkovsky shows that Medvedev, with all his brains and talk of reform, hasn’t made a whit of difference. _Newsweek

China

China is widely celebrated as the economic success story for the 21st century. The rapid growth of China's economic and military power suggests that the world may be approaching a change of hegemons. But is it possible that both China's military power, and its economic prospects, may be somewhat overstated?

When a government loses control of monetary policy, inflation follows. A few months ago, only the scariest "China bears" predicted 6% inflation for next year; now the People's Daily is admitting it may reach those levels "in some months."

The nonindependent People's Bank of China, staffed by reform-oriented technocrats, is being allowed to raise interest rates a few basis points. But allocating credit on the basis of its cost threatens the whole political economy. The state-owned companies have become accustomed to negative real interest rates. If the price of capital rises, many of the Communist Party elite will face a crunch. _WSJ

When one looks beneath China's Potemkin facade, one is apt to see enormous corruption, infrastructure overbuild, massive misallocation of resources, and a shockingly shoddy level of construction and impending collapse of poorly-built structure.

Emerging Markets

There is a lot of money to be made in emerging markets, if one understands some of the hazards involved.

...there is evidence of growing state involvement in both the economy and corporate sector across many emerging markets. This could hurt investors in a number of ways, most notably by governments forcing companies to prioritise social or geopolitical objectives over economic returns.

From an economic perspective, the main issue facing investors in emerging market equities is currently the degree of overheating, which is evident across a number of economies in the form of rising inflation and/or current account deficits.

Commodity price increases in particular have had a more inflationary impact on emerging than developed economies, because of their higher weightings in price indices and – more importantly – the narrower output gaps. _FT

There are more reasons for caution in the linked FT article.

One Ring to Bind Them, ... To Rule Them All
The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) aims to write the rules and set the standards which the entire world will live and work under. The goals of the IPCC are ambitious: a massive transfer of resources from the developed world to the undeveloped world. As justification for this resource transfer, the IPCC claims to be saving the world from a cataclysmic collapse resulting from anthropogenic greenhouse gas-caused climate change. How good is the IPCC's record?

Remember all the media brouhaha about global warming causing hurricanes that commenced following the devastating U.S. 2004 season? Opportunities to capitalize on those disasters were certainly not lost on some U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change officials. A special press conference called by IPCC spokesman Kevin Trenberth announced "Experts warn global warming likely to continue spurring more outbreaks of intense activity."

But there was a problem. Christopher Landsea, a top U.S. expert on the subject, repeatedly notified the IPCC that no research had been conducted to support that claim--not in the Atlantic basin, or in any other basin. After receiving no replies, he publicly resigned from all IPCC activities. And while the press conference received tumultuous global media coverage, Mother Nature didn't pay much attention. Subsequent hurricane seasons returned to average patterns noted historically over the past 150 years, before exhibiting recent record lows with no 2010 U.S. landfalls.

Much global warming alarm centers upon concerns that melting glaciers will cause a disastrous sea level rise. A globally viewed December 2005 BBC feature alarmingly reported that two massive glaciers in eastern Greenland, Kangderlugssuaq and Helheim, were melting, with water "racing to the sea." Commentators urgently warned that continued recession would be catastrophic.

Helheim's "erratic" behavior reported then was recently recounted again in a dramatic Nov. 13 New York Times article titled "As Glaciers Melt, Science Seeks Data on Rising Seas." Reporters somehow failed to notice that only 18 months later, and despite slightly warmer temperatures, the melting rate of both glaciers not only slowed down and stopped, but actually reversed. Satellite images revealed that by August 2006 Helheim had advanced beyond its 1933 boundary.

According to two separate NASA studies, one conducted by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the other by the Langley Research Center, the oceans now appear to be heading into another natural periodic cooling phase within a typical 55- to 70-year dipolar warm/cool pattern. Although Greenland has recently been experiencing a slight warming trend, satellite measurements show that the ice cap has been accumulating snow growth at a rate of about 2.1 inches per year. Temperatures only recently began to exceed those of the 1930s and 1940s when many glaciers were probably smaller than now. (We can't be certain, because satellites didn't exist to measure them.)

A recent study conducted by U.S. and Dutch scientists that appeared in the journal Nature Geoscience concluded that previous estimates of Greenland and West Antarctica ice melt rate losses may have been exaggerated by double. Earlier projections apparently failed to account for rebounding changes in the Earth's crust following the last Ice Age (referred to as "glacial isostatic adjustment").

Nils-Axel Morner, head of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics department at Stockholm University in Sweden, argues that any concerns regarding rising sea levels are unfounded. _Forbes

The same abysmally misleading alarmism as was applied to glacier melting and sea level rise has been applied to "ocean acidification" and "polar bear extinction". Polar bears are thriving, and ocean pH continues within normal historical ranges -- except in specific third world harbour and river delta areas where dumping of waste will continue regardless of what the IPCC says or does.

It is time for thoughtful humans to understand that they must use their own judgment when evaluating the future prospects of nations, regions, and intergovernmental alliances. Everything is now in a state of flux, due to the collapse of leadership in much of the Anglosphere and in the EU. Debt and demography are combining and building to a coming chaos.

The forces of dissolution have been loosed, consequently. Temptation to revolution, secession, and violence on national & international scales will grow as economic and social conditions deteriorate.

The one counter-trend which can be glimpsed across Europe and the Anglosphere are the popular and grassroots movements -- still small and in minority status -- which are opposing the damning trends of debt and demography. It is possible that these groups will provide a mitigating force, at least in particular regions and countries.

Locate the islands of stability which will provide the safest harbours for you and your families. Hope for the best. Prepare for the worst.

Optimism vs Pessimism: Which is More Rational?

Matt Ridley's latest book, "The Rational Optimist," highlights the deep vein of pessimism flowing through the modern human heart. The video above is from a May, 2010, presentation at Cato. More recently, David Boaz takes a brief look at The Rational Optimist, and how its main themes are viewed by various persons.

One of the most striking images from the video above is a graphic image comparing the areas of land required to support a single human under various regimes of food production. Hunter gatherers, for example, required about 1,000 hectares of land to feed each person. The use of slash and burn agriculture reduced that area to roughly 10 hectares of land per person. Agricultural methods of the 1950s reduced the area further to about 4,000 sq metres (0.4 ha) per person. Modern agriculture of the 2000s needs only 1250 sq metres to feed each person. And so it goes.

Ridley also looks closely at the marvelous economies that are possible from both trade, and division of labour. It is clear that over the long run, the plight of most living persons on Earth has gotten "better." More quantity and variety of foods to eat, longer lives, better treatments for disease, etc.

But life does not proceed along a monotonic curve. No doubt life was getting better in many ways in Pompei, just before Vesuvius uncorked itself. Not long before the eruption of Hitler's wehrmacht in Europe, there were many reasons for Europeans to believe that things were getting better, in recovering from economic devastation.

The point being that there are trends of varying duration. If you see that a short term trend appears to be aligned with a long-term trend, you may feel that you understand how things are going. But between the short and the long terms, the medium term trend can be a killer.

The actual texture of most trends is more like a fractal curve -- like the shoreline of Britain, rough and uneven at any scale of observation. Step back far enough and you can "fuzz out" most of the detail, leaving something like a simple trend. Zoom in closely enough at the right point and you may achieve the appearance of a simple trend -- perhaps in alignment with the long-term view, by chance.

We see this phenomenon of selective focus in various extrapolative dooms such as peak oil DOOM! and carbon hysteria DOOM!. Predictions of climate catastrophe depend upon the timescale selected, and selective omission of important details and uncertainties. Predictions of peak oil DOOM! depend upon timescale, ignorance of actual resource (see recent shock of shale oil bonanza) and a strict avoidance of the reality that the debate is not at its essence about oil, but is about useful energy.

Recent trends of debt and demography in Europe and the Anglosphere suggest that an economic retrenchment of very serious proportions is likely to occur within the next 1 or 2 decades. Such economic retrenchments have often been accompanied by wars, historically. I am not certain how to phrase an optimistic viewpoint of that reality.

But long-term trends in technology suggest that even cyclic problems which derive directly from innate human stupidity may be soluble within a century or two. Al Fin cognitive scientists and cognitive sociologists believe that correcting human stupidity itself would be a worthy goal.

It is important to maintain an open mind toward possible catastrophes, golden ages, and utopias. Many would-be utopians are not afraid to crack a large number of eggs to cook their golden omelettes. Likewise, many doomers are quite willing to be the instruments of the doom and dieoff which they so loudly predict.

Hope for the best. Prepare for the worst.

Would the World End if We Became More Optimistic?

We are living in an apocalyptic age. We have been living in the apocalyptic age for many decades -- even centuries and more. Humans are strangely attracted to the apocalyptic mindset. Perhaps the doomer mentality is an intentional but subconscious talisman, meant to protect against genuine doom. But what would happen if the media, academia, politicians, big environmental lobbies, NGOs, and the rest of the doom industry were to take a break every now and then? At least on topics such as carbon hysteria, peak oil doom, overpopulation apocalypse, and the other faux dooms that line so many pocketbooks?

Indur M. Goklany has taken a look at the state of the world, and has come to the conclusion that, overall, things are improving.

**Key points from the book** * The rates at which hunger and malnutrition have been decreasing in India since 1950 and in China since 1961 are striking. By 2002 China’s food supply had gone up 80%, and India’s increased by 50%.

Overall, these types of increases in the food supply have reduced chronic undernourishment in developing countries from 37 to 17%, despite an overall 83% growth in their populations. * Economic freedom has increased in 102 of the 113 countries for which data is available for both 1990 and 2000. * Disability in the older population of such developed countries as the U.S., Canada, France, are in decline. In the U.S. for example, the disability rate dropped 1.3 % each year between 1982 and 1994 for persons aged 65 and over. * Between 1970 and the early 2000s, the global illiteracy rated dropped from 46 to 18 percent. * Much of the improvements in the United States for the air and water quality indicators preceded the enactment of stringent national environmental laws as the Clean Air Act of 1970, Clean Water Act of 1972, and the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974. * Between 1897-1902 and 1992-1994, the U.S. retail prices of flour, bacon and potatoes relative to per capita income, dropped by 92, 85, and 82 percent respectively. And, the real global price of food commodities has declined 75% since 1950. _WUWT

Matt Ridley's recent book, The Rational Optimist, dares to contradict most of the modern "dooms du jour" of modern media, academia, faux environmentalism, and popular culture.

Julian Simon was the ultimate optimist, and his most famous book -- Ultimate Resource II -- is available to read free online.

Bjorn Lomborg's The Skeptical Environmentalist, was far too optimistic for the taste of faux environmentalists and the corrupt scientific : faux environmental industrial complex. Rather than jumping on the bandwagon of the popular and mythical dooms favoured by the media, academia, and politicians, Lomborg calmly and rationally looked at the real problems of the environment -- and finds them soluble.

Stewart Brand is the grand old man of 60s environmentalism, whose basic wisdom and honesty have led him to reject the doomerism of the faux environmentalists and the modern media. Brand has not escaped the dogmas of faux environmentalism entirely -- he lives in the San Francisco bay area -- but he promotes nuclear energy and other scientific and technological solutions to the problems that do exist.

Full disclosure: Genuine dooms exist. The Earth has suffered through several extinction episodes where life was nearly wiped out -- and perhaps events where life actually was wiped out and had to re-start from scratch.

But we need to focus on the real problems which need solutions, and do it in a systematic and dispassionate manner.

Doomers, with their constant full-volume blare of apocalypse, do not deserve to monopolize our time.

If the Power Grid Were to Die Tomorrow

The trailer above is from the film "One Hundred Mornings." It follows two couples hunkered down by a lake in Ireland, while society is falling apart around them -- and supplies are running out.

What would you do if the electric grid went dead tomorrow? If grocery stores shut down because trucks no longer had gas to make food deliveries? Self-sufficiency and food security are popular topics...

...And now, a film called "One Hundred Mornings" takes a look at the kind of life we might have in a post-petroleum scenario, when society breaks down and people have to quickly learn to fend for themselves.

This film isn’t a doom-and-gloom documentary like "Crude Impact", nor an overly dramatized action thriller like "The Day After Tomorrow". Instead, "One Hundred Mornings" focuses on two couples hiding out at a lakeside cabin in Ireland, 10 weeks after all the lights have gone out. In addition to the stress of dwindling supplies and social unrest enter both a self-sufficient hippie neighbor and suspicions of infidelity!

The first screenings will happen in Los Angeles at the Downtown Independent Theatre starting Sept. 16, after which the film will travel to Northern California for the San Francisco Irish Film Festival, happening Sept. 23-25. _mnn

If anyone were to film an accurate portrayal of what were to happen during a long-term collapse of the power grid and fuel supplies, they would not be allowed to show it in theatres. A graphic, realistic portrayal of how quickly civilised human society can degenerate into a lawless battleground of immediate appetites and primal fears, would not appeal to anyone except the morbid -- who enjoy watching the "death films," where people actually die.

The film discussed above deals with a society crashing when petroleum supplies run short, but there are dozens of ways that the power grid could be brought to its knees for a prolonged period of time. Very few communities are prepared for such an event. Individual families and groups of families could survive in the midst of such unprepared communities, but they would need to keep a low profile, and turn a blind eye to what their neighbors were enduring. How many can do that? Much easier if you can find a remote cabin, far away from the breakdown of polite society, and wait for things to settle out.

If you are a physician, a fireman, a policeman, an EMS worker, etc., could you do that? Could you turn your back and walk away, if your family were at risk?

Singularity Dreams, Reality's Idiocratic Nightmare

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Brian Wang was busy liveblogging the Singularity Summit this past weekend in San Francisco. Here is a short excerpt from Brian's weekend work:

The best of the 2010Singularity Summit

Shane legg has developed a formula and program that generates a continuous intelligence measurement for rating algorithms and systems This has the potential to more objectively guide the improvement of AI and algorithms.

Goertzel is using AI techniques to figure out useful things about the Genescient long lived flies.

Lance Becker on using cold and chemical cocktails to enable you to survive having no oxygen to your brain for hours instead of four minutes

The talk was not good but the work has big potential. Anita Goel is harnessing DNA polymerase in devices for rapid sequencing and as actuators.

The interesting inventions of Steve mann.

Details on brain computer interfaces

Combining neuroscience and machine learning as a hybrid approach to AGI _SingularitySummit_via_BrianWang

The rest of the coverage is available at the link above.

The amount of mental effort devoted to laying the groundwork for "The Singularity" is impressive, and not likely to have been wasted in the long run. Yet it can be somewhat depressing to contrast such astounding plans and dreams for the future with the sad economic, societal, and political realities of an encroaching Idiocracy of perverse "leadership" around the world.

From the university to the economy to the moral and political leadership of society -- the dregs and the offal have emerged to convene the prelude to the Idiocracy.

Many eyes are looking to dreams of the singularity in hopes of finding salvation from the entropic reality on almost every front. We will learn over the next decade or two how effective a well planned and executed future can be as an antidote to popular ideological poisons that have penetrated to the heart and soul of a corrupt society.

Wise persons will prepare for the possibility of extreme hardship between now and then.

More: Is it possible that the west has laid the groundwork of a marvelous future only to see other emerging cultures build the final structures?