@Clash:

“We are really not leftists, hell we are probably the last of the true conservatives, so far left we’re right.”

I laughed at this. You may be right. I only wish we could escape our basest urges. If we could only realize that we are just another animal, not some higher being, and that what civilization should be about is understanding our animal selves, then rising above them.

Fat chance.

And yes, fun to have a dialogue more or less without the interference of trolls spouting anti-intellectual dogma. No doubt we will meet again.

@ Elega: Glad to have communicated with you, glad to know others like prisner are still banging away. The paradigm shift is coming no changing that, but as prisner points out we are all suffering from the majority’s addiction to consumption and comfort, and like most addictions, you can kick if you work hard at it. Most won’t though. 50% of the population of the world is not educated enough to understand, and even the educated are superstitious when it comes to the science of religion, and the religion of science.

Science is just a system to acquire knowledge, how the knowledge is used usually is left up to the stupidity of the political, by which I mean those who control the resources. These are the real enemies of the people, those who either spin fabricated mythology, or omit the dangers related to the experiment. Anyway the use of science has been corrupted, by those who seek instant predictions of the future, knowing full well that science was intended to continually question it’s results knowing that any theory could be falsified at any time. Thus leaving , most of the time unsatisfactory, unintended consequences.

We are really not leftists, hell we are probably the last of the true conservatives, so far left we’re right.

@prisnersdilema: Purple, but apropos. The realist part of me pretty much sees the world this way, too.

Another century or so, then just scraggly groups of damaged and starving survivors scavenging among the debris of failed potential. Another 500 years & we’ll just be a memory, dust blowing amongst the trash we’ve left behind.

But the earth will survive and some other species will come to dominate, intelligence having been proven to be a complete deadend… or at least, intelligence in omnivores.

Like any junkie who has run out of drugs, oil dependent America is forced into more
ridiculousness in order to feed its jones.

We are down on our knees , on the carpet imagining that any little piece of lint is
somehow a lost piece of crack, that we can put in our crack pipe and smoke.

It never occurs to the executive cognitive centers of our brain, in this case Washington,
just how pathetic our oil delusions have become, and that a better choice is giving up
our addiction all togehter.

WIth our thinking warped by oil dependence, we have been forced to look for other veins  
deeper in the body of earth, since all the easy routes have been tapped out, there are
more dangerous places, where we shoot water, never mind the dangers. Just ignore
them.

We have denial instead.

Still no mater how strong our denial, there will come a day, when that load of bullshit
we’re main line- ing, is just to much for the heart, and it explodes into a fracking titanic
somewhere in darkest midwest. 

What then?

Then all the carefully planned scientific rationalizations and science talk, will not change
the reality we face, of poisoned children, and towns chock full of leukemia, lymphoma,
and multiplemyloma’s. Along with the already poisoned Gulf of Mexico.

Do you see how, the Science talk, that nuclear Energry is safe, no longer works in
Fukishima, now that theres no where to hide the truth. It’s hard to hide the evacuation of
40 million Japanense to the ghost cities in China. Sianara Northern Japan.

Without science talk, how will we convince people that everything is all right, we have it
under control, nothing to fear?

So, just ignore those rumblings, they’ll go away. You’re to young to die of a heart attack,
those things happen to others, not to you….Some day you’ll quit,  just not today…

@Clash: Hey, guy! We are in agreement. My politics are so far left, my butt hangs off the West Coast where I live. I’m not a communist, but I am a communalist.

I believe we should live in a sharing, thoughtful society where education is valued and productivity is appreciated. I believe we should husband the earth, its creatures and its resources like a loving spouse, not like a domestic abuser. And we could, but we have to stop the barbarians. And you’re totally right, we have to get out of the ‘ownership’ delusion. (One of the reasons that fracking is spreading so quickly is that people buy a house & don’t realize they didn’t buy the mineral rights along with it… someone else owns them and is perfectly happy to contaminate your little space while gouging their profits out of the ground underneath you.)

OTOH, I’m a realist. I believe we COULD live better, but it will take a paradigm shift in the way we see ourselves, others and the planet. I’m not particularly hopeful.

@Elegia : Yes your correct, that in some places there are people who act rationally, and have a say in the governance of their respective country’s, yet out side of their borders they still commit crimes, such as resource theft to keep the the status quo. Killing children and adults who perform the work like slaves, which keeps this technological nightmare on track.
It only took irradiating 40% of Europe to get through to the majority there.

How much thirst will it take for those that live here to come around? How much hunger? We are here only a short time, and no one owns the resources that are taken for granted, yet it is believed that people should die so that a few can live the fantasy of an ownership society.

I will be voting but not for the man who would still build 2 new reactor plants for GE, after seeing the effects of Fukushima, a corporation which pays no tax’s at all.

@Clash: In other countries, under other forms of government (not corporate plutocracies), societies have found the conversion to green energy saves money for governments as well as people, provides jobs and encourages sanity.

Check out Scandinavian countries for green buildings.
Note that public transport is subsidized almost everywhere except here. It is considered, like highways, part of the infrastructure, NOT a profit center.

Good infrastructure encourages commerce. In America, ours is crumbling due to the greed of robber barons and our complacency. Eventually, even the corporate thieves will suffer. After all, if we can’t buy their expensive crap, who will, when they have bankrupted the planet?

End corporate domination. Educate yourself. Your neighbors. Your friends. Your colleagues. And VOTE!

The industrial culture, is scrambling to get it’s propaganda out anyway it can. So fearful of its future they will spin issues such as fracking, nuclear power, clean coal, clean diesel, all the while condemning renewable energy. While the probability of replacing “cheap” fossil fuels may seem to lack scale ability in the amount of time the world has left, one would think with all the supposed political intellectuals who have the time to run each other down, who seem to have no ability to come to any type of consensus on any given topic would at least be able to envision the world of their children’s children. A boiling toxic soup. Keep on taking the energy company’s money, and surely they will take care you. By the way anyone stupid enough to allow fracture drilling near their homes may just deserve an earth quake or 2.
dangersoffracking.com
http://fukushima.greenaction-japan.org/

We got your Fukushima hanging.

Wouldn’t this be a good use for highly abundant SEA WATER? I mean, as they’re going to contaminate our water table with their effing chemicals, at least they could stop ‘wasting’ our precious FRESH water, & contaminate it with sea water and chemicals instead.

They could build a new pipeline—or several—from the coast to the center of the country, just to carry seawater… “providing thousands of jobs and contributing to local communities. It’s just what our economy needs right now.” [Quote from a Keystone Pipeline ad.]

And if seawater spills on the way to its destination, well, it’s just salty water.

[Irony ALERT]
Sigh…

[wh]ankers.

I agree with you Munky. There is no doubt causing huge explosions deep in the Earths crust causes Earth quakes. Unless Boone Pickens et.al. pays me millions to say otherwise. Or American capitalist rewrite scientific facts to increase profits, is also a better headline for this article.

Did you put the headline through a gas industry filter before publishing it on Truthdig? Here’s a more accurate headline:

USGS: Recent Earthquakes ‘Almost Certainly Manmade’

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/04/05