when you watch something like this, and realize how foolish the previous generation was in terms of understanding human behaviour, it is not surprising that we stand here more than ten years later without having advanced an inch in solving the problem (in fact, it has merely gotten worse).

the neo-liberals insisted this was a moral problem that had to be changed by altering human behaviour, but then they modeled us as homo economicus, and every single thing they did failed.

they could have just spent the money on direct government spending to actually transition, and that would have worked. but, they did this stupid experiment on the efficacy of market theory instead, and the consequences have (predictably.) been catastrophic.

it is important to realize, then, that the crisis we face really isn't one of technology. nor is it really an issue of popular will. rather, the country is gripped in the throes of an ideological backwardsness that is preventing it from doing anything.

the closest historical example that i know to this is the byzantines, who, after thousands of years of being the smartest people on the planet (by far.) eventually succumbed to the stupidity of their own means of control. in the end, constantinople fell because the residents truly believed it was the end of the world and jesus was coming back any minute. how they went from what they were to what they became, and so quickly, is a testament to the power of a damaging ideology to completely dismantle a powerful empire.

as christianity destroyed rome, market theory is destroying america. but, it's taking the rest of the world down with it...

there's a young gavin newsom here, and we see the kind of people he associates himself with - market theorists, republican policy makers, etc. hindsight is 20/20, but there's all kinds of red flags about what he would turn into in this video, as well. but, the dominant takeaway is how much of a slimy, sleazy politician he really is - and how obvious it is.

in the end, the climate crisis will not be solved by utilizing market theory, but only by subverting it.

i want to be clear about what i've been saying, in summary, as we get out of this inflection point regarding the sun, because people find it confusing. i've done write-ups like this before, but this is a good time to resummarize it.

the reason people get confused is that they see arguments that they've heard from denialists juxtaposed with arguments they've heard from the ipcc and don't know how to interpret where i stand on the argument. and, my answer is that you just don't know what the fuck you're talking about. so, i could argue that i'm synthesizing the views in a dialectic rather than setting them against each other, but the truth is that if you understand the ipcc reports, you know that the sun is central to them.

so, what was the main finding of the ipcc report, all those years ago? what was it that the ipcc demonstrated to show that the warming being measured was anthropogenic?

the answer is that it separated the effects from the sun. that's the point! that's what climate change science is - the recognition and study of the fact that this planet is warming in ways that are not explainable by solar output.

but, why did we do that?

because if you follow the data backwards, you see that changes in the climate were closely correlated with solar output, for as far back as we can measure it. climate change is the realization that we have disrupted a system that is otherwise absolutely dominated by the sun - which is why the thing we had to prove is that what the sun was doing (namely weakening.) doesn't explain the warming.

so, this was the contradiction that the ipcc presented, to prove that climate change is anthropogenic: it showed that temperatures were dramatically increasing, while solar output was falling. that's something that only becomes apparent after about 1980.

now, this opens up a reasonable question: recognizing that the observed warming cannot be caused by the sun because the sun is dimming, just how quickly is that sun actually dimming? is it possible that it could start dimming so quickly and so much that it could actually overpower the warming, which is being caused by a separate process, namely atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gasses?

while the answer is yes, in theory, i believe that the scientific consensus is that we should not expect the sun to shut down that much any time soon. our sun is a star, and like all stars it will die, but the way our sun will die will lead to increasing solar output first, not decreasing solar output. what the scientists are saying is that if you do the math based on reasonable projections then you come to the conclusion that the most likely outcome is that a very quiet sun will merely slow the warming down by a degree or two at most.

however, this isn't a debate about whether we're heading to maunder minimum (i actually don't think we are), or what effect it will have on the climate. what i'm trying to establish here is the truth that, yes, the sun does have an effect on the climate, and that the ipcc report does not make any sense unless you acknowledge it. there is no contradiction, then, in trying to apply solar science to climate change or understanding the effects that changing solar output may have on the weather in the context of increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

when we say that the solar output has been decreasing, what we mean is that the peaks of the 11-year solar cycle have been trending downwards. but, we also exist within the 11-year cycles themselves, and that is what i actually spend more time talking about.

so, if you live in central or eastern north america, you might have noticed that it actually seems like it's been getting colder over the last few years, even as you look around the rest of the world and realize that the global average mean temperature is going up. in fact, if you removed the area that i live in as an outlier, the effects of global warming would just be that much more exaggerated in terms of mean averages. for years, now, eastern canada has been pulling down the rate of warming by posting record cold, even in the summer. so, what's been going on?

well, that's about the same time that the last solar cycle, which also peaked at a weak maximum, started decreasing down to a very low minimum, which we're just coming out of now. we again have correlations going back as far as we can measure that show that this area of the world experiences colder weather when the 11-year solar cycle is at a minimum, for the reason that the jet stream tends to dip more often, pushing colder air further south. the mechanism of this action is thought to have to do with the solar field's effects on the various oscillations that define how the jetstream behaves.

as warming is happening independently of solar effects, that means variation in solar output should continue to have a noticeable effect on the weather, like this. and, here in canada, the effects of the weakening sun have largely overpowered the effects of global warming since about 2016. look at the data. it's just true.

so, over the last few years, what we've seen is the sun pulling temperatures down, here, counteracting the felt effects of climate change.

what's happening now, as we move at out of minimum, is that increasing solar output should exaggerate the effects of climate change in this area. once again, we have strong correlations going back many years that show that temperatures here are usually warmer during solar maximum.

i know that i may end up confusing you. just last year, i was arguing that the sun was muting climate change; now i'm arguing it's exaggerating it! did i flip-flop? do i not know what i'm saying? am i hypocrite?

this is the level of discourse, people. no, it is.

the sun is changing. always. and it's relationship to climate change will change along with it.

so, i will make a bold prediction - i will flip-flop my analysis again in 6, 7, 8 years, or something. that is, if the acceleration to climate change brought on by the increasing solar output doesn't render the solar output as a minimal factor.

so, all of that to say this: i'm reading about the heat waves in the arctic, and i'm wondering if the feedback cycles are here. i've suggested previously that the solar cycle we are entering is likely our last opportunity to stop the warming. if that methane is releasing, now, we're fucked - it's just going to get worse.

yeah. that's about on target.

https://leaderpost.com/news/local-news/sask-posts-highest-ever-daily-increase-in-covid-19-cases

ok, so i've got my workstation set back up.

one more, and then i want to get to work for the night.

while i recognize the right to a fair and open trial, i think the idea that this is upending the justice system is misguided. rather, i'm kind of frazzled by the volume of posts.

if you have a handful of accusations, the people being accused are easily identified, and it is possible that somebody could end up badly defamed. however, when you have scores and scores of accusations, what you end up with is so many that nobody keeps track of them. you end up with accusations that nobody hears. you end up with a media that only cares about the celebrities. so, what these people are actually accidentally doing is normalizing the act of being accused of assault.

does that just demonstrate the extent of the problem? i mean, is assault normal? a lot of the stats suggest it kind of is, actually.

so, i'd really look at this less like an issue where the rights of the accused are being infringed upon and more as a mass letter writing campaign, or almost a digital monument of some sort.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/online-allegations-sexual-misconduct-quebec-1.5650629

i could criticize the randomness of the study, but the results seem to be consistent with the general picture - there's far more spread than has been measured by testing, but british columbia's sort of unique geographic breakdown, where pretty much every region is naturally isolated, makes it well suited to prevent widespread community spread without much intervention from the authorities. the okanagan valley is it's own thing, the island is it's own thing, the city is it's own thing - and there are oceans and mountains separating them.

as i've stated previously, measuring low immunity in a population suggests that it is still at high risk of a substantive outbreak. so, it could be argued that a targeted release may be beneficial to help build immunity - or, at the least, that it may benefit british columbians in the long run to facilitate the spread somewhat in the healthy population. but, if it's been kept low this long by the geography, what reason is there to think the geography won't continue to act as a buffer? yet, if so, what are the benefits of maintaining restrictions?

that said, i'd suspect that kelowna probably has higher prevalence than vancouver, and that testing there may reveal higher immunity. i've been through the region, and i know that the cultural differences between lifestyles in kelowna and lifestyles in vancouver suggest that kelowna is the more likely vector, and place to pay closer attention to in terms of a likely serious outbreak. vancouver is an upper middle class city full of highly educated professionals, whereas kelowna is a large town full of agricultural labourers, many of whom live in tents over the summer and party pretty hard over night. wild sex parties involving multiple partners outside in the woods seems to be a normal part of the okanagan valley lifestyle. i would be baffled to find out that these people are observing any sort of distancing at all.

whatever the reason for it, bc does seem to have been unusually successful in stopping the spread of the virus, yet at the expense of remaining unusually vulnerable. so, now what? it consequently remains to be seen, in the end, if that is to it's benefit or not.

https://www.citynews1130.com/2020/07/16/covid-19-study-bc-second-wave/

when we were at a clearer place in the cycle, it was easier to be more assertive. but, we're turning around an inflection point, so attributing cause is a little less obvious and it will remain that way for a few years.

regardless, the general trend for the next decade should be substantively and increasingly warmer weather in most of the habitable parts of canada.

i posted all of this stuff years ago - it's in here somewhere if you want to look for it - but the way i understood what i read is that when the sun reverses polarity it more or less reverses the jetstream in the northern hemisphere, and if you sit and think about this for a second, it's actually kind of intuitive and easy to grasp. if you imagine the jetstream as a wave with an amplitude in the presence of a magnetic field, then flipping the field really ought to flip the jetstream, too.

anything oscillating in a field should flip if you flip the field. and, that's essentially all that the research says, albeit in a complicated way - the sun shifts polarity, which flips the oscillations, which shifts the jetstream.

the last string of exceedingly hot summers ended here about 2016, which would have been a few years after the last peak. the near future, in this region of the world, will be at least a little warmer, as we move into the next cycle.

but, are we there yet? we shouldn't be; if we are, we don't understand why. then, is it variation? or is it an example of the solar effects being overrun by the oceans?

except that it's so gorgeous out this week.

i got some sleep this morning, and i think i needed that.

i'm going to slow it down a little, but i don't want to waste the weather. it's not a predictive statement, but, statistical norms being what they are, it seems more likely than not that the second half of summer will balance out the first; otherwise, this is going to be a scorching summer.

does any of this have to do with the sun?

well, we've seen some signs of the magnetic reversal that these solar cycles are really about, and that i keep pointing out is really what i'm talking about. and, the shift in the jet stream that is responsible for this heat is consistent with what we expect to see with a more active sun. however, the model that suggests that colder temperatures over landmasses in the northern hemisphere are correlated with lower sunspot activity (due to the effects of the fields created by the sunspots on jetstream activity) also suggests a fair amount of variability and that, due to the nature of what a jetstream is, a cold area over one part of the hemisphere will generally be offset by a warmer spell in another. so, you don't have this iron law that says "if low sunspot then cold in canada and russia", but rather a tendency for that particular pattern to be dominant over other weather events (like hot air masses moving north) when the sun is in that configuration.

the reality is that we haven't seen any actual substantive solar activity yet, just some burps. but, i feel we should be finding ways to measure the effect of the sun's magnetic field, itself, regardless. we might find out in the end that the sunspots are an effect of the correlation, rather than the cause of them. so, maybe we've flipped over but can't see it yet, and we're already into the stretch of warmer years, where the habitable part of canada escapes this protective bubble that's shielded it from the most dramatic effects of the warming.

or, maybe it hasn't flipped over, and it's just variation. and, maybe the polar vortex has suffered a devastating blow, in the face of global warming.

what i'm concerned about is not wasting the heat, just right now.

ok, so my little veg-out period is done, now.

i'm going to do some cleaning in here, including laundry, and then we're shifting to forcing myself into a goal-oriented marijuana reality for a while. as i stated previously, i'm going to need to find a way to condition myself towards normalcy.

i bought some cigarettes for the ride yesterday, but that's done, now. no more smoking after joints. i can get used to that quickly, i think.

and, what i'm going to do is train myself, for a while, to complete a task first, and then smoke. the goal is that, eventually, having a small amount of pot in the house for whatever will become normal, like it is with alcohol. i have 75% of a 26er of vodka in my cupboard that i haven't touched since march, and haven't had the urge to touch since march. it's just normal for me to have alcohol in the house, and i simply don't want to drink it, unless i'm going out. normalizing myself to marijuana means training myself to that kind of sporadic use, which i just don't have a history of.

unfortunately, i think that the cop upstairs has taken advantage of the situation and started smoking inside again, because it's become very stuffy in here, all of a sudden. i can't smell that well right now. but, as things will normalize in a day or two, my sense of smell will return. and, i don't want to smell anything, or be sent into any asthma-induced coughing fits as a consequence of an inside smoker. lets hope this doesn't become an issue, again - because it wasn't one for quite a while, previously.

after i do some cleaning in here, i'm going to want to get back to rescanning over the 2013-2014 period, looking for consistency in the posts. it is only once i complete that task that i will roll and smoke another joint.

so, let's get to this.

it's his job to paint a horror picture about the existing reality. the truth whatever it may be, presidential candidates essentially always argue that we're in a terrible crisis, and the sitting president failed, and you need to elect the candidate to solve the crisis. and, however great the candidate might sound in it's plan to solve the crisis, the class war always asserts itself, in the end. i'm more interested in his climate change comments.

so, he starts off by arguing that he wants to spend billions on fixing the roads and bridges, and then continues with an argument to increase network connectivity in rural regions. in order to "get our kids to market", we need to "modernize the infrastructure". and, the republicans have failed to deliver these things (which is true).

he then went on to brag about all of the roads he fixed when he was vice president, which he refers to continually as a "clean energy economy".

so, it seems like the message here is that in order to solve the climate crisis, we need to fix the roads. because fixing the roads creates construction and automotive jobs. also, everybody should switch to led, because it create jobs, too.

and, people have questioned his commitment to climate change. c'mon. can't you see how dedicated he is? he's committing to fixing the roads in order to fix the climate. what else could these eco-socialists want?

i've heard all of these ideas before, and some of them are better than others, but none of them ever get done. what happens is that ideas get distorted in implementation, lobbyists win at the last minute and you end up with poor implementation and minimal effects.

it would be hard to be as bad as trump on the climate, granted. but, this is an economic policy, it's not a climate change policy. you might like it as an economic policy, but very little of what he said will substantively reduce emissions.

there's also a few red flags. for example, there's a part about 14:00 in where he promises that we'll extend battery life and reduce battery cost because "we know how to do this". that's such an absurdly false statement, that it's hard to believe it isn't a conscious lie; storage solutions are the single biggest problem we have to solve, and there's no guarantee that we will ever solve it.

he's doing the teleprompter thing, and it seems to have minimized the number of times he stumbled over his words, although not entirely eliminated it. he's coming off a little bit slowed down, but he's not trailing off. they can't manage him forever like this, but he seems to have gotten through this for now...