In the aftermath of the struggle to compose yesterday's post on Climate Change, I sat up late watching TeeVee and fell into a fitful sleep around midnight. I often dream of a dystopian universe in which I wander aimlessly through settings large and small in search of anyone who is not too busy to talk to me or point to a path out of the endless succession of mazes that my brain creates.
Last night was different. The world of last night's dream was one of a purpose driven quest for purity of purpose and rejection of Human Supremacy as the heritage of humanity. In that world hunting for sport had been outlawed as well eating the meat of murdered animals. President Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes had led the way in a national movement for choosing sterilization as a way of life for both sexes as a road to redemption for past human crimes. The population was shrinking steadily especially among Whites who generally acknowledged that they and their kind had nearly destroyed the planet's inner being and soul. The Electoral College was but a bitter memory for a country now ruled by the Ecological Salvation Party.
Far from being ignored I found in the dream that I had been convicted of Eco-Holocaust Denial, a statutory crime that protected the clarity of thought of the masses. The archives of the recidivist blog I had once shamelessly edited, were sufficient evidence of the evil views I had once spread across the land and I was easily convicted by the judge ruling alone in camera. Even in my dream I remembered the reality of having those archives read to me in court by prosecutors seeking to impeach my testimony.
At my trial the judge, (someone I knew) explained that I would be evaluated to determine the degree of my culpability. She said that she remembered me from the times I had testified before her and that she had some doubt as to my sanity.
In the end I was judged sane and sentenced to prison in a Club Fed place that looked a lot like Lompoc in California. My parents once lived in the town nearby and the prison looked familiar,
The Assistant Warden interviewed me on arrival . I had my stack of prison garments, bedding and issued sundries in my lap as I sat listening to her lecture. I asked when she thought I might be released. She changed the subject.
I awoke while listening to her description of the work I would be assigned in the prison garden, pl
Sir,
Frau. Merkel in a standing ovation speech to the Bundestag said that freedom of expression has limits. Of course implying that she would be the arbiter of what those limits would be.
https://twitter.com/benjaminaboyce/status/1200435438231515136?s=21
She is an excellent example of a Climate hysteric who is progressively shutting down German nuclear power plants which have no carbon emissions to substantially increase the price of electric power for German industry and consumers.
I posted on another thread that we have over a century of weather data at our ranch including temperature and precipitation. The data shows no trends. What it shows is randomness of extremes. The glaciers that formed the Yosemite Valley melted some 10-20,000 years ago. Was that part of climate change too?
Ah, guilty conscience for your Armageddon denial. Were the four horsemen there?
Relax, California will most likely have broken away from the US, so Lompoc will have already been closed down. Plus by the time Cortez becomes President, it would have to happen over my own dead body. And that is still a long way off. Suspect she will be a one and done Congressperson.
Worry instead that Lompoc has already become the meth capital the state, and the county flower growing industry has rapidly converted to become the largest pot growing acreage in the state. Dystopia has already arrived. We only wish it was a bad dream. Who knew term limits would work out so badly for us out West.
jjackson
You are funny, funny in the head.
“to substantially increase the price of electric power for German industry and consumers.”
Not just that, it’s also steadily increasing the risk of a major, nation-wide blackout which could easily kill hundreds or even thousands. It’s a grotesquely irresponsible policy based on wishful thinking.
Re Merkel’s speech about freedom of expression: It’s terrible (and the woman is authoritarian to the core, real product of East Germany), but tbh the outrage by Twitter users from countries like Britain, Canada etc. (“Germans at it again”) is just silly, their own countries are no different with their draconian “hate speech” laws. It’s not Germany that is exceptional, but the US with its constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech (and who knows how lang that will last, US millenials don’t seem to be in favour of it according to some polls).
TI
” how lang that will last,” Unfortunately, that was probably a typo. Merkel does not seem to have learned much from her experience of the STASI.
factotum
“a one and done Congressperson” Like Lincoln? Too bad about Lompoc. I remember it around 1960 as a bucolic little place.
The writings of Paul Ehrlich were required reading when I was in school. He’s an over-population doomsayer whose dire predictions of starvation have failed come true, yet he was nevertheless the recipient of a MacArthur genius grant. Go figure.
Academics and others have been trying to scare the bejesus out of me since my girlhood. I pleaded with my father to build a fallout shelter in our yard but he declined, agreeing only to keep a vast stock of canned goods in the basement in case predictions of a nuclear holocaust came true. Then in college, zero population growth was promoted in order to avoid human extinction, but to my knowledge only the Chinese adopted the premise on a large scale. Shortly thereafter, a neo-Ice Age was predicted, later to transform into Global Warming, later to transform into to Climate Change.
Every time California burns, which parts of are predisposed to dryness, or lagoon-foundationed Venice floods, there are those who quickly point to man-made climate change rather than man-made land mismanagement.
After so much off-the-mark fear-mongering, it’s only natural that one may choose to cast a skeptical eye on dystopian predictions. That professional-entertainer-parents now promote their young autistic daughter into the spotlight to preach paranoia and scold non-paranoids is beyond farcical, it’s perverse. We don’t have to be asleep to experience nightmares.
If President Gabbard is in office perhaps sanctions might include karma demerits involving future reincarnations. Rather like the postliminal adjustments the Romans used to make after the release of long-held captives or hostages, but effective in the afterlife.
I ought to have explained that a postliminal adjustment affected the status of high-ranking quality citizens and would involve disentangling the mess created by the absence and presumed legal death of the captives or hostages on their return or liberation.
Jack,
beyond the benefits of generating electricity and not emitting CO2 nuclear power plants have some disadvantages too – radioactive waste, storing that radioactive weaste, radiation per se (Tschernobyl rests can still me measured in mushrooms in our forests today) etc pp
In that sense there is a point in trying to get rid of these things.
The Belgians have two particularly rotten examples (Tihange and Doel, with series of mishaps) which, when they blow up, would make a many many many many square kilometers in Belgium and Germany de facto uninhabitable – of course only for those who don’t like … shelters, protective suits, geiger counters, breathing masks and/or radiation indicators.
CO2 emitting coal power plants, and the coal mining, are not so marvellous either, and I am not talking about fortunately formerly EPA boss Mr. Pruitt’s demented fairy tale that US coal is different from coal in the rest of the world because burning it doesn’t cause CO2. I wonder if he was smoking a joint when telling that.
Near my place there was the Goldenbergwerk which is now closed. It was one of the largest brown coal power plants in Germany. When you went there it would realiably greet you with a headache. It was so bad that people moved away quickly if they could.
Around the plant there were bigger brown coal mines, with side effects: When you had linnen on the line outside having the wrong wind direction meant it would be heavily grayed thanks to coal dust from the open mines.
When I was a child groundwater was as low as just 10 cm. Today it has been pumped down to 600 m or so for deeper coalmines, with the wider consequence that the dutch now need to get much deeper water supply wells. Also, some houses here break thanks to the resulting earth shifting.
An aunt told me that the air in the Ruhrpott industry areas in the 50s and 60s was so acidic that it disolved her nylons. Enviromental regulations for filters and the like stopped that. Now we’re even having some salmons living again in the Rhein.
I’m hip-deep in deep liberal here, I don’t fear them nearly as much. “Mostly Harmless”. The pattern is the Great Plans exist in contact with reality for only a very small time. The leaders are as addicted to money as the next guy, as money is power, and “money” tends strongly towards reality.
The things they say can be disconcerting but it’s also true that the dreamers and naifs have the microphone most of the time.
Mark Logan
You don’t fear them? Do you fear termites?
I don’t fear the…as much as some. Recently they tried to put a head tax on Amazon employees. Amazon would be on the hook to pay the City of Seattle a few hundred bucks a year for each employee, this was to fund various projects. Lasted about a week and a half. Amazon simply said “good bye”, the constrution workers marched on city hall, and presto, no more tax. Torn up before the ink was dry.
I don’t fear termites much. Keeping wood dry is a simple matter in these parts, off the ground and out of the rain suffices. Humidity is pretty low much of the time, so wood not in contact with the ground or otherwise constantly wet is safe from the critters.
You may want to read more about the GE-Hitachi PRISM reactor which could use nuclear fuel waste as the fuel. Of course with most technologies there are risks. However nuclear provides base load power with no carbon emissions. There’s a lot of unnecessary hysteria against nuclear power.
https://nuclear.gepower.com/build-a-plant/products/nuclear-power-plants-overview/prism1
There are also environmental issues with photovoltaics as the manufacturing process and disposal are toxic.
https://sciencing.com/toxic-chemicals-solar-panels-18393.html
akapatience: exactly. Nice dream, but why does the colonel not think he won’t be executed post haste by the green Reich? He willl be Soylent Green as an eco holocasut denialist. A federal prison, pfftt.
And weren’t there a lot of jokes in West Berlin about the famed ‘Berliner Luft’, which had become polluted by the use of brown coal by the GDR? Though now the Berlin air is the worst in Europe?
ChrisS
Do you know the difference between a dream and a forecast? When they get control I am dead meat.
Mark Logan
The termites were a metaphor. Who will play the role of Amazon at the national level. We have a leftist government here in Alexandria and nothing seems to dissuade them except budget realities. Amazon’s involvement with the city will be residential. We have a lot of streets named for Confederates, a relic of a previous population. The City Council wanted to change all the names last year but learned that this would cost $400 K. They gave that up for the moment.
re the Street names: Task the Committee of Correspondence to flood the City Council with letters recommending names.
Way too many MLKs. How about, Mary Queen of Peace Blvd? Dante Circle? Antizionist Bypass?
—
What did you plant in the garden?
well a dream is kind of a forecast, I had a dream AOC held Nancy Pelosi’s head on the senate floor, but their was such mayhem, that no one noticed.
artemesia
My wife is the gardener. She has made an English style cottage garden all around the house. People often stop to admire it. I prefer the confederate names.
I can honestly not see what the problem is? She is only reiterating what has been normal practice in Germany for decades.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_the_Federal_Republic_of_Germany
Americans should remember that you have greater freedom to express non-consensus and extreme opinions than in most European countries. Unfortunately that could change if you not careful.
Jack,
perhaps I have become rotten by NBC detect and decontamination training in the army.
As for the N part I have my memories of the sound of the geiger and decontaminating cars and trucks in the Zodiac (max protection ruber suit). As part of the training we were also went to a nearby fire brigade next to a local nuclear power plant.
The latter gave us the cunning tip that mounting the geiger detector on a stick helps because doubling the distance to a radiaction source means you only get a quarter of the radiation. Cunning but probably not so helping with a … 2 megaton problem – and then, 300 km sticks are simply impractical.
As for the B part, I am happy to say that that was so far (and may it stay so) limited to nasty flu.
As for the C part, I was ordered to be ready to go during Aktion Lindwurm, or for the US, Operation Steel Box. I am very happy that it was a quiet weekend when VX and Sarin were transported to the Johnston Atoll.
Tidewater,
I don’t know. But Berliner Luft is iirc the name of a local peppermint booze. Perhaps the Berliners drink the bad air away?
Excellent Orwellian dream Colonel. A lapse caught my attention, the president in your dream is not Osorio but Ocasio. Osorio is the second family name of Arana, a Guatemalan military strong man during the late 60’s and president during the early 70’s. Maybe it rang a bell on your dream, from cold war days. Taking the lapse a step forward let us change just one letter and it becomes Osario, that is Ossuary in english, a bone repository mountain sized with the countless victims of Carlos Manuel Arana Osorio. Bitter harvest half a century later for the unfortunate Central Americans.
paco
Thanks. Laziness on my part. I was in Central America in the 60s and remember how appallingly the government behaved toward rural Indians.
poul
I suppose that was my point?
Colonel,
How far do you think that the SB64 bucket of worms will get in your state’s legislature? Do you think that the state government will allow Senator Louise Lucas’s bill to become law? If so, then a lot of Virginians will become ‘criminals’ because of their knowledge of firearms and the martial arts.
How did Lucas manage to get elected? She sounds as bad if not worse than Maxine Waters (D-CA).
Mark,
And who is going to stop the tax on 401k assets? All the retirees are going to say goodbye and move elsewhere?
Artemesia,
What is needed is a statue to Travon Martin. Role model for what can be. Even Barack said he could have been Travon. It would be fitting in a lefty paradise.
CP,
“when they blow up” What year is that going to be and how will that happen? Tihange nuclear power station is not a graphite moderated design like Chernobyl. I certainly agree on coal ash, the coal fired plant in Norfolk used to leave flakes all across the base. Coal ash problems, though on a much smaller scale, existed on the site in Crystal River, with 4 coal plants near to the nuclear plant I worked in. SO2 scrubbers work wonders.
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=4410
https://www.duke-energy.com/our-company/environment/air-quality/sulfur-dioxide-scrubbers
J
IMO there will at least initially be an all out press on the part of a radicalized General Assembly for cultural annihilation That will be resisted in the federal courts with unknowable results. There will also be a lot of resistance at the local level to things like gun confiscation, name changes, monument removal, etc.
I was there in 2006 and didn’t notice it. Wish I had been there in the 1980’s when it was like ‘Paris in the Twenties’, though I didn’t know about that either. There is an encore on YouTube of the famous Romy Haag who started out in Holland as an Edouard, singing an encore to ‘her’ passionate ‘Liber-tey, Egali-tey, Pfeffermintzee.’ (Peppermint tea.) Short and kinda droll.
I understood the termites as a metaphor, my reply was a metaphor too, albeit a clumsy one. My point was intended to be that the base condition is everybody needs to pay their bills, so there is an existential limit to the danger presented by their rhetoric.
Roughly the same thing is happening there that happened here, looks like. I think these Young Trotskyites are becoming acquainted to reality by means of trial and error. Hope so, anyway.
Fred,
as far as the two plants in Belgium, it likely is just a matter of time, not an if but a when.
There have been two incidents of level 2 severity on the International Nuclear Event Scale.
On November 22, 2002 a pressure relief valve on the pressurizer inadvertedly opened while Tihange 2 was shut down. The reactor was being prepared to be restarted after a planned revision and refuel. While the pressure in the primary circuit was being increased to 155 bar one of the safety valves on the pressurizer inadvertedly opened leading to a quick decrease in pressure in the primary circuit.[27] The safety injection system activated as designed and injected cold water ending the transient.
On July 5, 2005 a relay of one of the six diesel generators of Tihange 2 was replaced. The device was not correctly tuned which meant that it would not be available during an accident, resulting in less redundancy.[28]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tihange_Nuclear_Power_Station
What went wrong there didn’t need a Chernobyl type graphite moderation to get to level 2. Local irradiation nastiness is level 4. Level 3 is already “Near-accident at a nuclear power plant with no safety provisions remaining“.
Level 4 means: “… At least one death from radiation … Fuel melt or damage to fuel resulting in more than 0.1% release of core inventory … Release of significant quantities of radioactive material within an installation with a high probability of significant public exposure.”
Sellafield had some level 4 nastinesses. Neither level 2, level 3 let alone level 4+ are things one likes to happen in the extended neighborhood.
Chernobyl and Fukushima were level 7 – a “major release of radioactive material with widespread health and environmental effects requiring implementation of planned and extended countermeasures.”
From Windscale to Chernobyl there were always dedicated engineers, scientists and technicians around. Some, as in Chernobyl, real heroes who stuck to the job though they knew it was suicidal.
Behind them these dedicated personnel had an administrative apparatus, funding, and lots of little things that made a difference – access to site, supplies, no fear for their own security.
Presumably none of that perfect, sometimes approaching a shambles, but it was always there.
Building nuclear power stations in parts of the world that might have none of all this is plain dumb. That is what we in the West are set on doing in many unstable areas and neither we nor the Russians should be doing it.
https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/nuclear-energy-middle-east-regional-security-cooperation-needed