Update from the Archdruid Greer

[Little John]

I'm not gunning for anyone building any home they wish. I am gunning for self-righteous, middle-class, virtue-signalling disguised as actually doing anything to change anything.

The truth is, I don't think much can be done now. But, to the extent anything can be, it wont be achieved with relatively better off people "setting examples" with "eco-homes" that can't be scaled for the vast majority of everyone else.

[clv101]

I'm not gunning for anyone building any home they wish. I am gunning for self-righteous, middle-class, virtue-signalling disguised as actually doing anything to change anything.

The truth is, I don't think much can be done now. But, to the extent anything can be, it wont be achieved with relatively better off people "setting examples" with "eco-homes" that can't be scaled for the vast majority of everyone else.

Regarding Greer's points on climate activists, you said I was "precisely what Greer was referring too". I reject that as I am one of very few climate scientists who share his view exactly, have for many years called out my climate colleges.

What would you recommend I should do about housing our family? The choice we've made has far lower environmental impact in both construction and use and was lower cost than 'conventional' builds. We have provided work for two young apprentices learning traditional timber framing, provide educational and fun times to couple dozen people along the way, supported the local economy and supply chains far more than a conventional build would.

Had we bought an existing house its performance, ongoing impact would have been poor and we would have needed a large mortgage, locking us into repaying borrowed money, with the banks profiting Surely you're not suggesting that would have been better?

Of course what we've done can't be scaled to the 'vast majority'. But that doesn't stop it being a positive thing. There there isn't a silver bullet, there isn't a 'solution' to everything, as you say not much can be done.

[kenneal - lagger]

Keep on going, Chris. You're showing what can be done in rural housing and we will need far more people living in rural housing in the future so that agriculture can carry on post fossil fuels.

I've always said that straw bale can't be scaled up to house everybody, as some suggest, as the straw will need to be returned to the soil but that doesn't mean that it hasn't got a place in the scheme of things housing some people and in being used as an insulation product for some.

[Potemkin Villager]

Left out for buzzards, magpies, crows and foxes would be more eco friendly

Yes very good woodburner, I must run this one by our local "Tidy Towns" committee.

I agree this recycling would be a great improvement on the current methods of landfill or thermal treatment of the departed as there is no currently viable means of reusing corpses apart from organ donation. In addition I will specify in my will that my bones are to be ground down and scattered on my allotment.

Giving it some thought, originally I should in fact have said "The only folks who are currently totally carbon neutral and make no demands on the environment are the yet to be conceived and the long dead."

[kenneal - lagger]

....Giving it some thought, originally I should in fact have said "The only folks who are currently totally carbon neutral and make no demands on the environment are the yet to be conceived and the long dead."

How long do fillings persist in the soil?

[woodburner]

What have fillings got to do with being carbon neutral?

[kenneal - lagger]

What have fillings got to do with being carbon neutral?

Nothing but I was replying to the bold part of PV's quote.

......The only folks who are currently totally carbon neutral and make no demands on the environment are the unborn and the dead.

[Lord Beria3]

Greer's latest...

https://www.ecosophia.net/returning-to-the-commonplace/

Superb.

[johnhemming2]

There are times when the twilight of the American century takes on a quality of surreal absurdity I can only compare to French existentialist theater or the better productions of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, and this is one of them. Over the weekend, in response to a chemical-weapons incident in Syria that may or may not have happened—governments on all sides are making strident claims, but nobody’s offering evidence either way

Is it really true to say "nobody's offering evidence either way"

[Lord Beria3]

Provide the evidence John?

And I'm not referring to a video...

[woodburner]

Provide the evidence John?

And I'm not referring to a video...

JH asked “is it really true to say “nobody’s offering evidence either way��

How is your post supposed to be read? As a question, since that is how it’s written, or as a statement?

I think you can refer to the Swiss Lab for evidence. If you have a problem with yournewswire, there are plenty of other sites carrying the story.

[johnhemming2]

Provide the evidence John?

And I'm not referring to a video...

More than one video, photographs, statement by a frightened child .. all of that is evidence. One video is evidence. You may not believe it, but that does not stop it being evidence.

"reports of witnesses" are key components in evidence.

If he had said that there was evidence from various sides of the argument and lots of different views then that would have been true. However, to say "nobody's offering evidence either way" is clearly a false statement.

[johnhemming2]

How is your post supposed to be read? As a question, since that is how it’s written, or as a statement?

I think you can refer to the Swiss Lab for evidence. If you have a problem with yournewswire, there are plenty of other sites carrying the story.

I quote from Greer's article in which he claims something and I ask what is known as a rhetorical question. Obviously you are of the view that there is evidence hence you agree with me that Greer is wrong.

[woodburner]

How is your post supposed to be read? As a question, since that is how it’s written, or as a statement?

I think you can refer to the Swiss Lab for evidence. If you have a problem with yournewswire, there are plenty of other sites carrying the story.

I quote from Greer's article in which he claims something and I ask what is known as a rhetorical question. Obviously you are of the view that there is evidence hence you agree with me that Greer is wrong.

The question I was asking was about LB3’s “question/statement�. I understood yours to be a question, regardless of the missing question mark, however, LB3’s “Provide evidence John?� is a classic mistake when writing as we can’t hear the inflection, even assuming there was one.

One video alone cannot be taken as evidence. Videos by the White Helmets are known to be theatrical presentations pretending to be facts, and the same could probably be said for many videos by embedded journalists and MSM. And just because Boris makes a FO statement means asolutley nothing as evidence, ............�no doubt about it�.

[Lord Beria3]

It would make more sense to wait for the UN inspectors to go in, make their report and once a firm conclusion has arrived on the culprit, then make a case that x party was responsible (and take the necessary military action).

The missile strikes were done prior to the visit by the UN and I think this is what Greer was referring to.

Whilst certain "reports" and "videos" were being circulated, I doubt that this is clear evidence that 1) an attack happened and 2) who was responsible.

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/04 ... p-a18.html

On Sunday, the Independent published an on-the-spot report by well-known veteran journalist Robert Fisk, an expert on Middle East policy, who visited Douma, the town in Ghouta where a gas attack supposedly occurred.

Fisk spoke with Dr. Assim Rahaibani, who works at the medical clinic where the widely publicized videos were filmed showing children being hosed down with water, ostensibly to relieve poison gas inhalation. He quotes Rahaibani as follows:

“I was with my family in the basement of my home three hundred metres from here on the night, but all the doctors know what happened. There was a lot of [government] shelling and aircraft were always over Douma at night—but on this night, there was wind and huge dust clouds began to come into the basements and cellars where people lived.

“People began to arrive here suffering from hypoxia, oxygen loss. Then someone at the door, a ‘White Helmet,’ shouted ‘Gas!,’ and a panic began. People started throwing water over each other. Yes, the video was filmed here, it is genuine, but what you see are people suffering from hypoxia, not gas poisoning.�

This account is in line with statements by Russian authorities, who have charged that the White Helmets, the anti-Assad “rebel� organization funded by Britain, staged the gas attack under orders from UK intelligence to provide its Western sponsors with a pretext for intervention. Fisk notes that by the time he arrived in Douma, the White Helmets had already left to join fighters of the Islamic fundamentalist group Jaysh-al Islam, who fled Douma for Idlib under an agreement brokered with Russia.

Fisk’s report is a devastating exposure of the lies of the governments of France, Britain and the US, which have provided no evidence to substantiate their charges against the Assad regime. The imperialist governments’ narrative was immediately disseminated by a corrupt media that functions shamelessly as a propaganda arm of the state.

I'm not convinced that the Syrian regime ordered this "attack" although I think the full facts are not known yet. The Independent is not a loony paper so this must raise concerns about what actually happened and this is what Greer was referring to.