Thursday, September 19, 2013

Pure Imagination: No More Good News Forever

Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce ended one of the most brilliant armed struggles in history by promising, "From where the sun now stands, I shall fight no more forever." Sadly, the environmental-ish movement seems to carry on its phony struggle according to the pledge, "No more good news forever."

Right now, we are at the tail end of one of the largest salmon runs we've ever seen. The pre-season Fraser River estimate for pinks was about 8 million fish. The in-season estimate was raised several times and now stands at more than 26 million. Sources say that experts believe the actual number may be closer to 35 million, but officials are reluctant to publicly announce such a huge figure. When you combine the Fraser runs with the 6+ million pre-season estimate for other regional rivers, it's not unreasonable to believe the total return to our waters might amount to more than 40 million pink salmon alone. At an average weight of 4 lbs, that's in excess of 160 million pounds of salmon biomass. By any standard, that's a lot.

And yet, where are the good news stories about this fabulous return? Where are all the people who profess to love nature and salmon habitat? Our County has spent $12 million on salmon habitat over the past decade. Why is no one crowing about the wonderful year we're having?

The good news doesn't end there. Compared to 1972, there are 10 times as many seals in the Puget Sound region now. Even the population of Stellar Sea Lions in our vicinity (the Eastern population) has been steadily increasing. 

There is even some good news about our climate, which is the third-rail of any eco discussion. We seem to have been in an undeniable "pause" in global warming since about 1997, and overall climate warming seems to have proceeded much more slowly than most projections. Also, while the Arctic ice cap is shrinking, the Antarctic ice cap has been steadily growing, and winters in the southern hemisphere have been brutally cold (if you consider that good news). Nevertheless, bad climate news is in demand and some scientists maintain that Antarctica, at least the Peninsula, is really warming ... so that's why Antarctica as a whole is cooling ... or some such nonsense. One paper along those lines received attention for its controversial use of reconstructed past temperatures to declare that, despite the growing ice cap, Antarctica was unambiguously warmer than the reconstructed (i.e., imaginary?) past data. Guess where that paper originated from? ... from our own University of Washington (Eric Steig).

Eric Steig is part of the University of Washington's new College of the Environment, which is chock full to the gills with the usual bad-news insiders. That's where David Dicks, formerly of the Puget Sound Partnership, has his latest sinecure as Director of Strategic Partnerships and Civic Engagement. Through its Advisory Board, which includes Martha Kongsgaard and Bill Ruckelshaus of "Trouble Brewing in the San Juans," the UW College of the Environment also has ties to the Bullitt Foundation. The Bullitt Foundation recently hosted a Seattle Times training session for the press about climate change. Here's how one attendee described that training session:
Journalists don’t normally sit in meetings and plot ways to tell only one side of the story; they simply write from their own personal perspective ... There are, however, exceptions to this rule as I discovered last week when I attended a two-day “Climate Change for Journalists” workshop hosted by the Seattle Times. Held at the Bullitt Center, which bills itself as the “world’s greenest building,” and conducted by the University of Rhode Island’s Metcalf Institute for Marine and Environmental Reporting, the event was precisely what we’re told never happens: a conscious, deliberate effort to coach reporters on the finer points of deceiving their readers ...
Good news? We can't have any of that! Let's train the press to report only eco-doom, despite the billions we spend on environmental protection every year ... because that's the 100% environmental-ish world of pure imagination. Doom is music to environmental-ish ears, and they don't want anyone singing a different tune.

 Governor Jay Inslee, right, laughs with Bullitt Foundation board member Harriet Bullitt, left, on her way to the podium at the grand opening of the Bullitt Center on Earth Day Monday, April 22, 2013, on Capitol Hill in Seattle. This six-story, 50,000 square-foot structure is the greenest commercial building in the world and aims to improve long-term environmental performance and efficiency through cutting-edge sustainable technology. (Jordan Stead, seattlepi.com)
  

12 comments:

  1. I think it is time for some of my left of center friends to re-read Noam Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent."

    This famous analysis of the structural framework underlying modern media propaganda is unfortunately as true now in exposing the disinformation machine of the modern eco-apparat as it was decades ago exposing the lies of the KGB or wars in Indochina to contain the domino effect.

    It is the same crap.

    http://focalizalaatencion.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/herman-chomsky-2002-manufacturingconsent.pdf

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  2. The environmental-ish business model defies conventional economics. Can anyone name ANY other industry that can build its revenues by heralding its ineffectiveness and failure. Unlike any other business I have ever known, the environmental-ish movement says, "We just spent billions, but we're still going in the toilet, so give us more billions, even though we can tell you right now that we'll be back next year asking for more billions because the money you're about to give us won't work either."

    Where else does that happen? Nowhere.

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  3. A few decades ago we called it 'building better bombs.'

    We worked and tried and spent billions but we can only incinerate the planet 100 times over. We must work harder and build better bombs and spend more billions.

    It's like we're in arms race of sorts ... one stroke before midnight all over again ...

    Oh but wait. The Soviet Union collapsed just before the UN Conference on Sustainable Development where Agenda 21 was rolled out.

    We needed a new enemy. We have met the enemy and he is us. Pogo, God love ya you were right all along.

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  4. @10:03

    "Where else does that happen?"

    Only in government and almost always in government. PO, schools and now health care.

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  5. OK. Here is a big and very real problem that. No one could figure out a solution. Until now. Will the Bullitt Foundation invest in this solution? Or by solving this problem will it ruin the business model of doom the Bullitt Foundation depends on.

    What's the problem? Massive plastic waste in the oceans, that tend to gather along the currents into huge garbage patches. No one could figure out a way to deal with this.

    Until this kid came along. His invention can solve the problem in five years ...

    http://youtu.be/ROW9F-c0kIQ

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  6. FYI - Here is another agency with a "strategic" conservation agenda to be aware of:

    U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Strategic Habitat Conservation

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  7. From WIKI
    Totalitarianism or totalitarian state is a term used by some political scientists to describe a political system in which the state holds total authority over the society and seeks to control all aspects of public and private life wherever possible.[1]

    Wrap it in a pretty Environmental Working Group and you have something that looks pretty familiar.
    How we didn't see this for the 20 years that it smiled at us and said it was here to help, is just plain creepy.

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  8. I can't find the video of the planning department meeting or the council meeting from yesterday 9/19/13.

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  9. The only thing truly green about the bullitt foundation is the money.

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  10. Despite TH distractors there is much clear thinking here as evidenced by the posts you see.

    If all politics is local, and I believe that is a true statement, then what can we do about a "non profit" that is literally running and ruining our lives.

    How this came about I have no real clue, but it is true, and no thinking person would deny that "The Friends of the San Juans" has not had a significant effect on almost all of us.

    What has always be amazing to me is this organization will attack and bring a lawsuit on a single family resident with only one consideration...how much will it cost us to win?

    Why so? These people are not elected, these people are not supported by a majority of islanders, in fact, many believe that their living 365 island membership has dwindled to a very small group.

    OK, TH people, let us march to release all islanders from this plague.

    Can suit can be brought against individual FOSJ board members? Why not?




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  11. Because we will have to pay Randy to defend them and he won't stand up for us. He is the one that interprets the law and he never does what is right by us.

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  12. @6:35

    You said..."How this came about I have no real clue, but it is true, and no thinking person would deny that "The Friends of the San Juans" has not had a significant effect on almost all of us."

    Did you mean...they HAVE had a significant effect...?

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