Extinction Rebellion, ongoing disscussion.

[Little John]

I note this:

Pro-Brexit protesters can't even heckle an MP outside Westminster without running the risk of being arrested. The yellow vest protesters in France are being beaten senseless, gassed, and loosing eyes and limbs and, in some cases, their lives for protesting. Yellow Jacket protesters in the UK are kettled and prevented from staging protests. And all of the above not being covered adequately, if at all, in the mainstream media.

The Extinction Rebellion protesters, however, appear to be getting maximum coverage in the MSM for protesting that we don't all do as they demand, we will all die in 12 years form a warming planet. Not to mention, being allowed to close Westminster Bridge and Oxford Street, plant trees on it, open a street market on a busy road and hurl abuse.

So, what might be concluded from the above?

The preening middle class - especially the particularly dumb ass millennial and younger middle class who have not yet acquired enough life experience to understand that they are being played, are being used in the service of yet another distraction along the lines of "Pussy hat", "Me Too" etc. And that is at best. At worst, they are being facilitated to protest about stuff designed to cause the poor and and hard pressed ordinary working class citizen working their arses off to just stay above water to look on with a mixture of bemusement and disgust. Thus, ensuring, in turn, that whatever else happens, the working class and the middle class remain disunited.

All of the above may be said irrespective of one's views on climate change and its dangers.

One way or another, it seems our ruling class are prepared to engage in ever more desperate attempts to keep us all occupied while they try and avoid a level of collapse in the West akin to that which hit the soviet union and, in the service of that endeavour, the smug, supercillious, virtue signalling middle class, are being played like fiddles.

That is to say, they are proving to be really, really f***ing stupid.

[RevdTess]

The truth that dare not speak its name is that the smug, supercillious, virtue signalling middle class, are played like fiddles. That is to say, they are really, really f***ing stupid.

Every side is virtue signalling. Every side is being manipulated.

[Little John]

From Occupy to Extinction Rebellion - Exposing the Common Purpose

https://steemit.com/news/@francesleader ... on-purpose

There really is nothing more pathetic or, frankly, more dangerous than those who think that, being a little bit better educated than the "lesser" classes, this means they are any less stupid.

Quite the contrary.

If the above belief lies at the heart of their world views - which, if you if you can stand to engage with their self righteous bollocks for any length of time, becomes only too apparent - it merely serves to show how unutterably, dangerously stupid they are.

[emordnilap]

From Occupy to Extinction Rebellion - Exposing the Common Purpose

https://steemit.com/news/@francesleader ... on-purpose

Ken and woodburner will love that article.

[kenneal - lagger]

Who is playing who in that article, Em? Is she on the side of the establishment or the side of the little people? Who knows? I haven't got time to sit for hours and do the research. Has RogerCo, who was leading the XR group from Cornwall, been a plant on this website for all those years?

I expect that Woodburner will find it all very plausible. I, on the other hand, will continue will continue to do my bit where I can with people that I know.

[adam2]

Nice to see that a celebrity has FLOWN from Los Angeles in order to address the crowds around the pink boat at Oxford circus.

That will help reduce carbon emissions!

[Little John]

Funny, isn't it, how just at the time when the people are most in need of being united in a war with the political class, is precisely the time when it seems, every five minutes, some new "movement" pops up out of the woodwork - all fully fledged, with organisational structures and all the bells and whistles in place - in turn causing a fracturing of the people into separate tribes and interest groups (see "Pussy Hat", "Me Too", "The Partriarchy", "Rape Culture" and "Trans-activism" for details).

One might almost suspect it was all being done intentionally by shadowy figures in our political class for reasons that have got sod all to do with saving the planet or giving men in frocks somewhere to take a piss.

[RevdTess]

Nice to see that a celebrity has FLOWN from Los Angeles in order to address the crowds around the pink boat at Oxford circus.

That will help reduce carbon emissions!

Came here to post this but you've beaten me to it! The single line in the BBC article kinda slips under the radar.

Dame Emma joined the protests after flying from Los Angeles on Thursday.

I assume she was probably flying anyway, but still, when the protesters are arguing that we should really limit ourselves to one flight per two years, it doesn't look good when your celebrity supporters are flying in from LA.

I speak as a supporter of XR...

[adam2]

I thought that the protesters are calling for ZERO carbon emissions in a very few years.
Achieving that would not mean limiting flights to once every two years, but eliminating air transport, unless electric.

Likewise it would mean not reducing road transport, or increasing the efficiency thereof, but ELIMINATING oil powered road transport.

[kenneal - lagger]

The Carbon Commission have already said that increasing use of air transport will mean that the saving in emissions from housing will have to go from 80% to 100% to compensate. Now is not the time to be wasting resources on air travel and new airports.

[Lord Beria3]

https://www.pnas.org/content/115/52/13288

Anybody think this is actually realistic. If so, it's terrifying. Only 11 years away.

As the world warms due to rising greenhouse gas concentrations, the Earth system moves toward climate states without societal precedent, challenging adaptation. Past Earth system states offer possible model systems for the warming world of the coming decades. These include the climate states of the Early Eocene (ca. 50 Ma), the Mid-Pliocene (3.3–3.0 Ma), the Last Interglacial (129–116 ka), the Mid-Holocene (6 ka), preindustrial (ca. 1850 CE), and the 20th century. Here, we quantitatively assess the similarity of future projected climate states to these six geohistorical benchmarks using simulations from the Hadley Centre Coupled Model Version 3 (HadCM3), the Goddard Institute for Space Studies Model E2-R (GISS), and the Community Climate System Model, Versions 3 and 4 (CCSM) Earth system models. Under the Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 (RCP8.5) emission scenario, by 2030 CE, future climates most closely resemble Mid-Pliocene climates, and by 2150 CE, they most closely resemble Eocene climates. Under RCP4.5, climate stabilizes at Pliocene-like conditions by 2040 CE. Pliocene-like and Eocene-like climates emerge first in continental interiors and then expand outward. Geologically novel climates are uncommon in RCP4.5 (<1%) but reach 8.7% of the globe under RCP8.5, characterized by high temperatures and precipitation. Hence, RCP4.5 is roughly equivalent to stabilizing at Pliocene-like climates, while unmitigated emission trajectories, such as RCP8.5, are similar to reversing millions of years of long-term cooling on the scale of a few human generations. Both the emergence of geologically novel climates and the rapid reversion to Eocene-like climates may be outside the range of evolutionary adaptive capacity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliocene

The global average temperature in the mid-Pliocene (3.3–3 mya) was 2–3 °C higher than today,[11] carbon dioxide levels were the same as today,[12] and global sea level was 25 m higher.[13] The northern hemisphere ice sheet was ephemeral before the onset of extensive glaciation over Greenland that occurred in the late Pliocene around 3 Ma.[14] The formation of an Arctic ice cap is signaled by an abrupt shift in oxygen isotope ratios and ice-rafted cobbles in the North Atlantic and North Pacific ocean beds

[Vortex2]

Nice to see that a celebrity has FLOWN from Los Angeles in order to address the crowds around the pink boat at Oxford circus.

That will help reduce carbon emissions!

So what?

Individual actions/costs are fine if they have the effect of influencing many others in some way, so that the NET effect is positive.

If sure that the environmental costs of the Attenborough documentaries are non-trivial ... but the NET effect will benefit the environment.t.

[Vortex2]

I suspect that these sort of protest work in a subtle way

For example MI5, Mi6 and the like will review the motivations of the protestors and then maybe whisper into the ears of the politicians and the military.

[clv101]

Nice to see that a celebrity has FLOWN from Los Angeles in order to address the crowds around the pink boat at Oxford circus.

That will help reduce carbon emissions!

It might have been that she flew to LA for work, then came back home to UK... where she addressed the crowds?

[clv101]

https://www.pnas.org/content/115/52/13288

Anybody think this is actually realistic. If so, it's terrifying. Only 11 years away.

As the world warms due to rising greenhouse gas concentrations, the Earth system moves toward climate states without societal precedent, challenging adaptation. Past Earth system states offer possible model systems for the warming world of the coming decades. These include the climate states of the Early Eocene (ca. 50 Ma), the Mid-Pliocene (3.3–3.0 Ma), the Last Interglacial (129–116 ka), the Mid-Holocene (6 ka), preindustrial (ca. 1850 CE), and the 20th century. Here, we quantitatively assess the similarity of future projected climate states to these six geohistorical benchmarks using simulations from the Hadley Centre Coupled Model Version 3 (HadCM3), the Goddard Institute for Space Studies Model E2-R (GISS), and the Community Climate System Model, Versions 3 and 4 (CCSM) Earth system models. Under the Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 (RCP8.5) emission scenario, by 2030 CE, future climates most closely resemble Mid-Pliocene climates, and by 2150 CE, they most closely resemble Eocene climates. Under RCP4.5, climate stabilizes at Pliocene-like conditions by 2040 CE. Pliocene-like and Eocene-like climates emerge first in continental interiors and then expand outward. Geologically novel climates are uncommon in RCP4.5 (<1%) but reach 8.7% of the globe under RCP8.5, characterized by high temperatures and precipitation. Hence, RCP4.5 is roughly equivalent to stabilizing at Pliocene-like climates, while unmitigated emission trajectories, such as RCP8.5, are similar to reversing millions of years of long-term cooling on the scale of a few human generations. Both the emergence of geologically novel climates and the rapid reversion to Eocene-like climates may be outside the range of evolutionary adaptive capacity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pliocene

The global average temperature in the mid-Pliocene (3.3–3 mya) was 2–3 °C higher than today,[11] carbon dioxide levels were the same as today,[12] and global sea level was 25 m higher.[13] The northern hemisphere ice sheet was ephemeral before the onset of extensive glaciation over Greenland that occurred in the late Pliocene around 3 Ma.[14] The formation of an Arctic ice cap is signaled by an abrupt shift in oxygen isotope ratios and ice-rafted cobbles in the North Atlantic and North Pacific ocean beds

Yes, it is realistic, mid-Pliocene. However, note that the Earth System, being forced so rapidly won't be anywhere near equilibrium. We won't have 25m sea level rise by 2030 but we could have created a system where, once equilibrium is reached, sea level will be 25m higher.