"They came wrapped in plastic, often in layers of it, that she imagined leaving her house and traveling to a landfill, where it would remain through her lifetime and the lifetime of her children. She longed, really longed, to make less of a mark on the earth. But she had also had a baby in diapers, and a full-time job, and a 5-year-old who wanted snacks. At the age of 37, these conflicting forces were slowly closing on her, like a set of jaws.... Eco-anxiety, a concept introduced by young activists, has entered a mainstream vocabulary. And professional organizations are hurrying to catch up, exploring approaches to treating anxiety that is both existential and, many would argue, rational... [M]any leaders in mental health maintain that anxiety over climate change is no different, clinically, from anxiety caused by other societal threats, like terrorism or school shootings. Some climate activists, meanwhile, are leery of viewing anxiety over climate as dysfunctional thinking — to be soothed or, worse, cured. But Ms. Black... needed help right away... The plastic toys in the bathtub made her anxious. The disposable diapers made her anxious. She began to ask herself, what is the relationship between the diapers and the wildfires? 'I feel like I have developed a phobia to my way of life'...."
From "Climate Change Enters the Therapy Room/Ten years ago, psychologists proposed that a wide range of people would suffer anxiety and grief over climate. Skepticism about that idea is gone" by Ellen Barry, dateline Portland, Oregon (NYT).
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131 comments:
Learned pathology.
This is what the Progressive Left is creating everywhere it goes. A fear and hatred of everything in the existing order, requiring that it all be destroyed. What aspect of humanity do they not hate?
that's kinda excessive but it IS terrible how much plastic is being used for packaging if nothing else. I'd pay for paper containers again. Plastic milk jugs are forever.
Remember the Cold War when the nukes could fly any moment? At least that was an existential threat you could almost justify losing your mind over.
Our solar system will eventually collapse on itself in a billion years or so.
So quit worrying about bullshit.
"Liberals" hardest hit.
"psychologists proposed that a wide range of people would suffer anxiety and grief over climate. Skepticism about that idea is gone"
With enough money and gullible followers I could very easily make a wide range of people anxious and grieving over the threat posed by dragons (or, if that's too far out, aliens). Doesn't mean it would be rational.
psychologists proposed that a wide range of people would suffer anxiety and grief over climate
BUT! it turns out, to No One's surprise, that it Actually effects a Very Narrow Range of people
UN surprisingly, those people are EXACTLY the people you'd guess
You spend twenty years telling people to be hysterical about climate change you get people hysterical about climate change.
The simple fact is, developed nations are better for the environment than developing nations, and the US is better than almost everyone else.
There are more people alive today than ever before, and they have a higher standard of living than ever before.
Poverty, the default state in history, is at an all time low.
Fossil fuels did that.
In the first years of the Christian religion, all its members believed that the World would be destroyed soon in a cosmic war. The Christian religion taught them to adapt themselves to that short future.
We seem to be entering into an era of mass psychosis. Name the issue and there are some activists promoting panic.
The best approach to treating eco-anxiety is this one.
Now, do Covid anxiety! Please tell us how That Also effects a wide range of people! ;)
Then! show us a Venn Diagram of the two groups of worrywarts
"Climate Change" is an even more successful scam than Black Lives Matter. BLM only got about $80 million. "Climate Change" (formerly "Global Warming") has gotten trillions.
Sometimes I wonder if half of this country is just teetering on the psychological deep end. I'll bet she is still suffering anxiety attacks from Trump's term in office.
These are people who have faced no real physical or financial hardships in their life, and so develop anxieties over nonsensical future possibilities.
What a sad way to live.
Well, there has to be something to replace COVID nosophobia, even if it means dragging out that old chestnut, Climate Change! You've got to stay scared!
A self inflicted psychoses, no matter what causes the condition, is money in the bank for a psychologist. No self respecting mental health professional would dare cut off that amazing amount of money flow. I applaud the fierce capitalist vision of our current mental health therapists. And I wait in joyful anticipation of the next crisis that they themselves develop.
"Something as simple as nuts".
Yep, that's what this is about. Nuts. And the people who are.
>The plastic toys in the bathtub made her anxious. The disposable diapers made her anxious. She began to ask herself, what is the relationship between the diapers and the wildfires?<
Bathtub toys? Diapers and wildfires? Look, this was a mentally brittle person well before she collided with climate cultism. Her sad, unhealthy mind was simply searching for a vehicle for expression, and found it.
The problem is not that these people are crazy.
The problem is that they are empowered and motivated to inflict their bullshit on other healthy sane people.
Not even a First World Problem. A sliver of a fraction of a distillate of a FWP, boutique anxiety for an exclusive user base of comfortably-off white women. A designer neurosis.
This is a temporary problem, as are so many mind-blowingly important environmental freakouts. Plastic is not "forever"; it is recyclable too. It's just that no one bothers; it's not worth it. Eventually we'll get good at these things and the landfills will be taken care of in an efficient way. Technology will solve a lot of problems.
serious question
In a Landfill... Which lasts Longer? A Plastic Bottle, or a Glass Bottle?
Climate Change is a hoax. Obama is building a brand new multi millon dollar mansion in Hawaii, in which it was revealed how the buyer of the three-acre plot of land used a planning loophole to preserve a century-old sea wall on the beachfront, much to the annoyance of neighbors and environmentalists
Experts say such sea walls contribute to beach erosion and can damage the coastal environment.
When the elites start caring about preserving the environment, I will. They are hypocrites about EVERYTHING they try to control the masses about. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10481075/Scowling-Obama-inspects-new-multi-million-dollar-Hawaii-mansion-controversial-sea-wall.html
I'm about AA's age, and I don't know--and never knew--anyone who was terrified to the point of neurosis, let alone psychosis, by the real fear of imminent nuclear war. Which we were reminded of in school with teachers' sudden surprise order to drop beneath or desks, and the monthly CONELRAD sirens that blared, as well as the news coverage of the Cold War and, for that matter, the mother of all crises, the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Somehow, we all got jobs and had kids...whom we raised to be terrified of nothing.
Good Lord, woman, I don’t have some cult-like obsession with the environment, and yet even *I* use cloth diapers. If you’re having panic attacks over your contribution to sh*t in the landfill, that is literately the easiest and cheapest thing you could possibly change. So do it. And then get help. Yesterday.
Induced anxiety about climate change will make way more people miserable than climate change.
But the inducers believe it will get Democrats elected.
They feel guilt precisely because they've never had a tough life whatsoever doing without all the modern conveniences they've been emotionalized to be feel anxiety over. Give them a few months or years living in a pre-information age lifestyle and they'd get their heads right.
They dont know any better.
I would propose to charter insurance companies to sell policies for the cagw believers to buy that would fund moving 100 people to new apartments on higher ground after their beaches were flooded by warming. People with anxiety could buy 100 year policies in the name of 100 unknown people to be named later, or for themselves. Insurance gives people the belief that they are covered for the disaster they fear. And the companies would never have to pay out. I would buy stock in those insurance companies. They could pay Greta to make pithy commercials.
There are people who have developed solutions to the proliferation of plastic and set up little grocery co-ops which sell nuts in thin plastic packaging or cloth diapers. Why not buy at those co-ops rather than be overwhelmingly anxious? It was no longer ago than the Fifties when many of these solutions were in common use in America. However, they require a commitment of time and effort. Perhaps the inconvenient truth is that for the ordinary person there is a a major conflict between believing the conventional set of principles about reforming to prevent climate catastrophe and the expense and work it takes to actually cut back on plastic, use cloth diapers, change one's diet, cook from scratch. To say nothing of secretly realizing that giving up oil and natural gas means freezing in the dark or overheating in hot little rooms under a blazing sun.
Landfills will be the plastic mines of the future.
Forty years ago there was a whole group of politically engaged psychiatrists who said that if you really worried about nuclear weapons, you weren't sick; you were healthy. But people who DIDN'T worry were sick, suffering from "nuclearism".
The first thing the therapist should ask is "So tell me about your childhood..." This is about her mental state being exploited by the political class, nothing more. If you go google up the "hockey stick," and extend the "handle," the line it was on before the "blade," and you will see that it was trending inexorably down. Had that trend continued, had the "blade" never shown up, we would be in serious trouble in a lot of places. Talk about climate change causing wars, imagine if the US and European breadbaskets became unsuitable for growing large grain crops. Right now the Sahara is shrinking, creating agricultural land in Africa. Does she really want to reverse that process?
Imagine if she were to look at the paleoclimate record herself and see that wildfires are far lower today than they were 500 years ago. We can tell by just looking at the bark of 2,000 year old sequoia trees, for one example. Like the meme goes, she doesn't believe in "science," she believes in television.
natatomic said...
Good Lord, woman, I don’t have some cult-like obsession with the environment, and yet even *I* use cloth diapers. If you’re having panic attacks over your contribution to sh*t in the landfill, that is literately the easiest and cheapest thing you could possibly change. So do it. And then get help. Yesterday.
**********
You are adding to the problem by burdening the sewer system! The ONLY correct thing to do is to sell the kid into slavery in Mauritania, where everyone just defecates by the side of the road.
Problem solved!
Didnt read the article as I don’t have an account or membership. She seems worried about her 5 year old. Any thoughts or comments from her husband?
In my area we carefully separate plastics and place them in county recycling bins. It is a little known fact that the plastics are then hauled (using a diesel truck) to a nearby power plant where they are mixed with other common garbage to be burned to generate "clean energy" electricity.
Another little known fact is that our county government burns the dirty oil from automobile oil changes in a furnace that heats the county workshop.
No landfill is needed.
The Tweelight of the Gods.
Plastic is just high molecular weight natural gas or gasoline. The whole problem could be solved by incinerating trash and producing electricity with the heat. Big problem that America decided not to go that route. Proper blame for this rests with the earlier environmental movement.
You can buy nuts in bulk in some stores, but not Trader Joes. Maybe she should try to be less susceptible to advertising gimmicks.
Media Induced Hysteria Dependence is a more appropriate diagnosis. And it can be cured by abstinence.
Let me add that environmental perfection is a dangerous goal.
So your snack wrapper will sit in a landfill for a couple generations. So fucking what?
Find something real to worry about.
Wikipedia tells us ...
The Earth's crust has constantly changed since its formation, as has life since its first appearance. Species continue to evolve, taking on new forms, splitting into daughter species, or going extinct in the face of ever-changing physical environments. The process of plate tectonics continues to shape the Earth's continents and oceans and the life they harbor.
And she's worried about nuts wrapped in plastic? Get a grip.
So, when we call them 'nuts' we're not far from the truth.
That's scary.
It has seeped into every conceivable cul-de-sac in American (and Western civilization's) life. It is what they wanted, what they created. A society steeped in a combination of narcissism and neuroses, believing that all is doomed, and that doom was created by their individual actions. Such special people.
I was reading an article in an out-of-town online paper where the author was setting the table, so to speak, about this week's unveiling of the top restaurants in their area, and the announcing of the Restaurant of the Year. The restaurant of the year being "a restaurant that equally excels in both epicurean and environmental efforts."
To which I replied, "Huh?" What do so-called environmental efforts have to do with running a fine restaurant? Creating and executing beautiful dished using fresh ingredients, in a clean and comfortable or stylish room? Are they to be both great chefs and world-class virtue signalers at the same time? I guess that's doable. Lord knows we've got everyone else staking their claim to saving the planet.
This is a horrid abuse of the Western psyche. It'll take years before anyone realizes that the end is not coming via the environment. Perhaps via socialism or China labs. But not from plastic straws. Not from me using the old style light bulbs.
While I agree about the ridiculous over-packaging of even some of the most ephemeral shit, I chortle with delight at the fragility of these clowns. If push ever did come to shove, it’d be a walkover.
Mass produced disposable diapers are one of the greatest inventions of the previous century, they helped unchain women from washing machines and reduced accidental infant stabbings by 98%. Depends have lessened the anxiety level of millions of incontinent adults around the world and that is just great.
Mass produced disposable diapers are one of the greatest inventions of the previous century, they helped unchain women from washing machines and reduced accidental infant stabbings by 98%. Depends have lessened the anxiety level of millions of incontinent adults around the world and that is just great.
Paul, agreed. Thanks for the Airplane! medicine.
Imagine all the resources she will consume throughout her life that will be unavailable for others living today, not to mention the future. A problem so intractable that there might be only one solution that will avoid her continuing impact. Don't be said, it is for the good of the rest of humanity.
Where I live type 1 plastics (PET) and type 2 plastics (HDPE) are recycled. Others types of plastic are burned in an incinerator to generate electricity (cogeneration). I think Alina Black would not like it here; she’d have to find something else to obsess over. She’d probably succeed, but it would be an effort.
This is exactly the kind of psychological profile that the hysterical left is encouraging. Plus the left leaning psychology/ psychiatry profession will benefit financially from treating climate anxiety, which will soon become a research specialty. Moreover, it will shortly become an approved, sanctioned condition included in the latest edition of the DSM-5. An official code number will soon be assigned, and insurance billing will follow. Voila, huge profits from a politically created anxiety.
the shrinks are nuttier than the patients, I call it fear of skydragons,
Well, this was unexpected.
First world problem. It will solve itself pretty quickly once the lights go out.
Michael K @ 10:31: ""Climate Change" is an even more successful scam than Black Lives Matter. BLM only got about $80 million. "Climate Change" (formerly "Global Warming") has gotten trillions."
Word. I just wish I could construct a short on the Climate Doom market...
Or, it could be, that as of this moment there is no climate crisis. That's what the peer-reviewed science says:
http://www.mikesmithenterprisesblog.com/2022/02/what-climate-emergency.html
In college, in the early 1980s, I awoke one night sleepless over the consequences of multiple air and ground burst nuclear weapons assaulting around the earth a nearly the same time. After all, the talking heads on the idiot box were telling me that Reagan was going to get us all killed by being mean to the Soviets. My concern was not being blown up. I had long before realized that living in East Tennessee, the lucky ones would die in the explosion (Oak Ridge, dams, nuclear plants, etc.). My worry was that we might crack the earth open.
But as also a consequence of the "fake news" at the time, I was a Physics major because I wanted to know about nuclear. I worked by way through the problem, realizing that volcano eruptions were many times stronger and came from inside the earth. And while some cracks might form, the earth remained. So, I calmed down and went back to sleep. So to avoid anxiety over the "crisis" of the moment, avoid the media apocalypse yellow journalism.
I see upon reflection that this was one of those moments that contributed to my becoming educated in that it required me to discipline my intellect, regulate my emotions and apply established principles to cut through the superstition and fear-mongering.
Sadly, these days having achieved advanced college credentials is actually a leading indicator of having poor discipline of intellect, regulation of emotions and even established principles.
If you can't feel virtuous shopping at Trader Joe's, you're in trouble. (Well, I guess shopping at Whole Foods is even more laudatory, but that level of nobility is out of my price range.)
By the way, Trader Joe's does carry a few varieties of trail mix packaged in small (thin) plastic bags inside a large plastic bag. They're individual servings meant to be taken hiking -- the way an average person would divide trail mix into individual, non-recyclable zipper bags that probably contain a lot more plastic. So if there's no easy answer here, blame outdoor enthusiasts who are too dainty just to pour some peanuts and raisins into their pockets.
Putting petrochemicals & wood products like plastic & paper into landfills where they are contained & buried is carbon capture.
If carbon in the environment & atmosphere is an environmental risk, we should want as much of it in landfills as possible.
Recycling simply keeps it where it could end up in the oceans or atmosphere longer.
I lack anxiety over both nuts and nut jobs.
She began to ask herself, what is the relationship between the diapers and the wildfires
The eco terrorists who set last summer’s wildfires once wore diapers…
People like her are such boring and annoying hypocrites. Let her practice her neurotic beliefs. Switch to cloth diaper, buy nuts in bulk along with beans and rice. Give up her car, her internet, her smart TV and her cell phone, downsize her home, don't heat above 50f in the winter and get rid of her air conditioner in the summer and don't buy new clothes until the old ones have holes. Naturally she doesn't. Portlandia.
I almost got a degree in Environmental Science, but I met a man… not enough hrs in the day to raise kids, work &date/marry. Long story.
One of my girls started Behavioral Science, but at a college many hrs away- so she tried to pick classes up online after her 1st semester. In about a 20yr span between the 2(non-existent) degrees so much changed!!! We went from studying the earth and its needs to trying to control w/the most stringent rules/laws. Only narrow-minded answers acceptable.
Idk why plastics haven’t been replaced w/biodegradable substances. Hemp, maybe? We throw out so much plastic- those marshmallow bales? At least 3/day. So much waste.
One day- I’ve been told- we will mine our landfills. So, see? It’s waste now- but landfill gold later. Used Diaper uses? Who knows?
Feel better, now?
These are people who have faced no real physical or financial hardships in their life, and so develop anxieties over nonsensical future possibilities.
Yes. That about captures it.
We live in a remarkably affluent society that promotes the development of narcissistic neuroses. It well serves our "expert" elite to have such easily manipulated citizens.
Garbage Magazine ran an in depth analysis of disposable diapers against cloth diapers and concluded the disposable diapers were better for the environment (less water and chemical use). That magazine was run out of business for following the science decades ago.
I've been told that Moral Perfectionism is a symptom of White Supremacy.
They came wrapped in plastic, often in layers of it, that she imagined leaving her house and traveling to a landfill, where it would remain through her lifetime and the lifetime of her children.
And this plastic hurts who exactly?
How can you take this person seriously if this is what she worries about?
All prog policy reflects the triumph of the therapeutic.
Not that it makes anyone actually feel better.
"The problem is that they are empowered and motivated to inflict their bullshit on other healthy sane people."
Those are the voters of Portland you're talking about.
As a child I was considerably more frightened of Nazis than atomic bombs.
"[M]any leaders in mental health maintain that anxiety over climate change is no different, clinically, from anxiety caused by other societal threats, like terrorism or school shootings."
Anxieties experienced by white liberals who have too much free time.
The Earth's climate has been constantly changing for 4.6 billion years.
Deal with it, you freakin' whackjobs.
Jim Jones at work. Everyone drink the Koolaide. It's good for you.
Eco-activists are neobarbarians. Sending vulnerable people into anxiety fits.
You have to be nuts to believe that a minuscule increase in a trace gas could increase the planet’s mean temperature.
These people lead empty, meaningless lives. They're afraid of everything and real suckers for every new "the sky is falling!" campaign. So they need a cause, and what better cause than one that's going to save not only a neighborhood, city, state or county, but the entire planet!
This is my prescription to get rid of their and all the poor brainwashed children's eco-anxiety (and there's a special place in hell for all these adults who are ruining our children's lives with this garbage). Of course, many on the left don't want to lead happy, productive lives and they really hate those that do.
1. Look up the data that shows we've made fantastic progress in cleaning up and not re-polluting the environment in this country. I'm talking real air pollution such as CO, NOx, SO2, ozone, particulate matter, etc., which are all way down over the last 50 years. Water and land pollution as well. This even though our GDP is much higher, we have many more people, miles driven and energy use.
2. Ask yourself why the eco-nuts and the Dems about 10 years stopped saying "carbon dioxide emissions" and started saying "carbon pollution." Much scarier, no? They had to drop the stories about environmental progress, because those don't cause fear and they're terrible for fund-raising.
3. Go back to the first Earth Day in 1970 and read the predictions of catastrophe, none of which has become true. “Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years," “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” “It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” “Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….” and on and on. https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/18-spectacularly-wrong-predictions-made-around-the-time-of-the-first-earth-day-in-1970-expect-more-this-year-2/
4. The same for the dire global warmer predictions: https://www.westernjournal.com/10-failed-global-warming-predictions/
5. Try some religion, real religion, not the phony-baloney eco-religion. Even if you're not a believer, especially if you're not a believer, read the Bible. Also crack open Dennis Prager's Bible Commentaries and other works arguing that there is a creator and that this is not all random.
6. If that all fails, you can reduce your carbon footprint to zero, ala one of the great heroes of the environmental movement, David Buckel, a lawyer who set himself on fire to protest "climate change." Sure, he caused a short burst of CO2 emissions at the end, but thereafter nothing, no burden to the environment whatsoever. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/15/david-buckel-lawyer-climate-change-protest
Now you'll have to excuse me, I have eight inches of global warming to shovel.
wild chicken said...
that's kinda excessive but it IS terrible how much plastic is being used for packaging if nothing else. I'd pay for paper containers again. Plastic milk jugs are forever.
Under appreciated comment. It's no longer an issue because 90% of it comes from China. Same issue with the billions of masks.
As to the issue of global warming psychosis-it's real. Millions of people, primarily in Western nations live in actual fear they will not live long because the planet is going to die.
People lose track on time, but an entire generation have been taught this starting with Al Gore.
Some activists are leery of their personal bugaboo bring labelled dysfunctional thinking, hmm? Well, gee, I'm sort of scared of heights - not enough to keep me off planes, which means that my thoughts are not sufficiently dysfunctional to require therapy in order for me to live a normal life, but for those whose fear of heights is indeed that severe, what if we insisted that their fear, their perception of reality, was rational simply because they felt it, and remade society so that no building was more than one story high?
If, that is, a tiny minority of people whose thinking was so disordered that their daily lives required significant accommodation from everyone around them, could expect that accommodation to be made without complaint by all of society?
Ms. Black is incurable. If it isn't climate anxiety it would be something else. Wire hangers, probably. She will eventually commit suicide, and she will probably try to do the Magda Goebbels routine on her kids before she fatally overdoses on Lorazepam. A world without polar bears isn't worth living in, right?
Her children may be salvageable, but only if they are immediately adopted by a conventional nuclear family that eats a minimum of 20 kg of venison per person per year harvested by the pater familias using an AR-15 chambered in 6.5 Grendel.
The really dumb part about this is that plastic waste isn't close to being the biggest environmental problem that we have. Personally, I'd be more concerned about the destruction of the rain forests. So what if a bunch of plastic wrappers get put in a landfill? They'll be buried and out of sight until the Sun expands and swallows up the earth. I agree that plastic waste that is just dumped into the ocean is a big problem; but landfills are the solution, not the problem. Here in California, they banned single use plastic bags at the supermarket. You can either bring your own bags, which almost no one does, or pay a 10 cent per bag fee for "reusuable" plastic bags. Most people just pay the fee bags and now we have millions of even thicker plastic bags replacing the much thinner ones in the pollution chain.
Further evidence that Climate Change is a PUBLIC HEALTH EMERGENCY!!!
Your local unelected county Health Officer is hereby authorized to issue emergency decrees banning the use of plastic, burning of fossil fuels, and other Bad Things. Courts must follow the science and defer to the experts on such matters. Deniers will not be allowed anywhere near Joe Rogan.
She longed, really longed, to make less of a mark on the earth. But she had also had a baby in diapers...
Her anxiety and shame arise from her subconscious knowledge that having children is the worst possible thing she could do to the earth. Her children will have children, and they will have children, and so on and so on forever...all those diapers, plastic, etc.—the damage is infinite. I hope her therapist helps her to see this—facing the truth will cheer her up.
Maybe she should just exhort others to change.
Then she can still go on living her life, while believing she's made a real difference.
Ha. Would love to know the top-rated comment from our friends at the NYT. Probably someone blaming this on Trump. I feel safe in assuming the tenor and thrust would be different than the comments here.
Buuuuuuuut ... you never know.
This is not about global warming. It is about the media's 'quota' to publish so many words about female neurosis each day. The assumption that nearly all women suffer from anxiety over SOMETHING has taken hold of every physician I've had the last few years. Numerous times, my sentences are completed by the physician with the words ".....because of anxiety." before I'm even done describing something or answering their questions. It's become a catch-all reason for everything. No matter HOW stable and good a woman's life is, we must always remember that ANXIETY is lurking everywhere, under every rock, threatening every woman's peace of mind.
Deez nutz, lady!
@Paul Zrimsek: The best approach to treating eco-anxiety is this one.
Naaaah. This is far better.
They came wrapped in plastic, often in layers of it, that she imagined leaving her house and traveling to a landfill, where it would remain through her lifetime and the lifetime of her children.
It came out of the ground, it went back in the ground. I'm failing to see the problem.
@gilbar: Now, do Covid anxiety! Please tell us how That Also effects a wide range of people! ;)
Then! show us a Venn Diagram of the two groups of worrywarts
You could do the same with AGW. The set of Progressives is a near union with the set of Covid anxious, and AGW frantics.
Given that a person's degree of progressiveness/conservatism has no material relation to the objective truth of, say, AGW, then the degree of AGW-ism shouldn't correlate in any way with ideological inclination. But, nonetheless, it does.
And at last count (The Population Bomb, Limits to Growth, Covid, and, very likely, AGW) progressives have been comprehensively wrong on every one of their obsessions.
There seems to be a pandemic of mental illness these days, caused or at least exacerbated by media consumption.
It's gotten so bad my tinfoil hat seems like nothing more than a charming affectation.
There’s one 5 yr old that’s going to need therapy some day.
The LEFT is desperately looking for what to panic over post-Covid.
My best guess is that it's plastic straws.
Since I gave up hope, I feel a lot better.
These are the exact same fucking lunatics that are forcing us to wearing worthless masks in the airport. Right now I’m sitting in the Detroit airport and I’m maskless. Mr. Civil Disobedience.
Don’t these loons realize that the predictions of climate doom have been wrong for forty plus years?
Here’s the serious part. These crazies, the Street and the Dems are forcing public utilities to achieve net carbon zero. This means way more unreliable and expensive wind and solar.
I have calculated that OPPD will have to borrow at least $20b. That means that rates will double or triple.
Mark my words. DDB will stop OPPD. I will not allow Nebraskans to be crucified on a cross of wind turbine blades!
BTW, I'm beginning to notice that some on the Left may be backing away from the more preposterous issues of the far-left wing of their party. I won't honor the NYT by signing up to read the article, but it seems like this might be one of those instances. They know that the AOC's of the world are about to drive them over a cliff come November. To even mention climate activism in the same sentence with psychosis is a big step for them. Similarly, some have begun to back very gingerly away from their advocacy for masks and lockdowns. I don't think that study from Johns Hopkins would have seen the light of day even six months ago.
Someone once said that one of the more invigorating experiences of life was to be shot at to no avail. They may be trying to dodge just enough make that billet miss.
Blogger effinayright said...
You are adding to the problem by burdening the sewer system! The ONLY correct thing to do is to sell the kid into slavery in Mauritania, where everyone just defecates by the side of the road.
Problem solved!
************
I know you’re just joking, but what 99.9% of people don’t realize is that even if you use disposable diapers, you’re still supposed to flush the poop down the toilet. It even says so on the diaper pack. landfills are not equipped to deal with human waste so that the contaminants can seep out and enter the local water supply. Ewwwwww….
Plastic toys. She didn’t have to buy them. Lots of wood
Diapers, well we used cloth for our first. A mess, but there you go.
Someone is just MAKING her consume so much and not use replaceable items.’
I call bs.
Since she works for Nike, I’d think she’s responsible for more waste than buying nuts at TJ’s.
… using an AR-15 chambered in 6.5 Grendel.
Surely you meant 6.5 Creedmore.
>>These people lead empty, meaningless lives. They're afraid of everything and real suckers for every new "the sky is falling!" campaign. So they need a cause,
These women are 'victims' of their own affluence. I suspect that deep inside, they feel guilty for what they have, so they invent imaginary struggles for themselves, and vague, sinister forces that they can do battle with.
It's all quite sad.
My father used to say "Some people aren't happy unless they are miserable." He was absolutely correct.
After all, who doesn’t hope that their children will grow up to long, really long, not to make a mark in the world?
(@Hey Skipper: it’s not that easy to find the original version of “Limits to Growth”, which was assigned reading for a poli-sci survey course I had in ‘77). (I suppose my copy is in a land fill now.)
I'm curious how someone can claim anxiety to the point of debilitation is rational.
Cassandra Lite is correct. I used to tell my high school charges that anyone who walked around all day worried about the big one being dropped was probably nuts. Unless they’d watched the Twilight Zone the night before.
I always thought, too, that the Commies would have been smart to attack on the first Wednesday of every month, when they tested the air raid sirens. Mostly, in my neck of the woods the sirens were tornado warnings.
Is induced anxiety disorder a thing?
This was purposefully done to these people to profit scammers of all kinds.
Politicians, environmentalist groups etc.
Big Mike writes, "Surely you meant 6.5 Creedmore."
No. There is no AR-15 chambered for 6.5 Creedmore, it's 14mm too long. Creedmore calls for an AR-10 platform or a bolt-action.
Grendel is more than sufficient for whitetail at most practical hunting ranges. For over 80 years the go-to whitetail caliber was the venerable .30 WCF. Grendel has about the same energy (≈ 2,500 J) or a bit more. Grendel is also has a much better BC.
Temujin wrote, “The restaurant of the year being "a restaurant that equally excels in both epicurean and environmental efforts."”
I’ve been posting that certain Omaha restaurants owned by liberals should be buying carbon credits and informing customers of their virtue.
Now do the fashion industry. A scientist I knew told me one time to take a look at landfill operations. Big ass Caterpillar equipment rolling around tamping things down, at some point trash is locked into anaerobic state. Paper bags/plastic bags doesn't matter in a landfill. He was from northern Wisconsin and had a unique view of pulp liquor.
A few questions.
If you brought a family from 100 years ago into today's America, would they want to go back?
Would you imagine many of the 3 or 4 million recent border crossers are going to recycle? Read Mexifornia by Victor Davis Hanson for a clue. Loved the 7 ton "flushaby" sewer obstruction in London recently.
The only solution is for Black to off herself. No anxiety, and the Earth is saved from her waste in the future.
We live in a clown universe- these people are clowns.
Landfills properly managed are very efficient and environmentally sound.
Yancey Ward said...
The only solution is for Black to off herself. No anxiety, and the Earth is saved from her waste in the future.
*************
But her bones will be in the ground for a long time! Pollution!
I mean, what ARE cemeteries but a kind of....landfill?
Or if she's cremated, think of the carbon emissions!
The horror....the HORROR...
it is for people like this that valium was invented
From Woody Allen's Annie Hall. Always handy for occasions such as this:
Alvy as young boy sits on a sofa with his mother in an old-fashioned,
cluttered doctor's office. The doctor stands near the sofa, holding a
cigarette and listening.
MOTHER
(To the doctor)
He's been depressed. All off a sudden,
he can't do anything.
DOCTOR
(Nodding)
Why are you depressed, Alvy?
MOTHER
(Nudging Alvy)
Tell Dr. Flicker.
(Young Alvy sits, his head down. His
mother answers for him)
It's something he read.
DOCTOR
(Puffing on his cigarette and
nodding)
Something he read, huh?
ALVY
(His head still down)
The universe is expanding.
DOCTOR
The universe is expanding?
ALVY
(Looking up at the doctor)
Well, the universe is everything, and if
it's expanding, someday it will break apart
and that would be the end of everything!
Disgusted, his mother looks at him.
MOTHER
(shouting)
What is that your business?
(she turns back to the doctor)
He stopped doing his homework.
ALVY
What's the point?
MOTHER
(Excited, gesturing with her hands)
What has the universe got to do with it?
You're here in Brooklyn! Brooklyn is not
expanding!
DOCTOR
(Heartily, looking down at Alvy)
It won't be expanding for billions of years
yet, Alvy. And we've gotta try to enjoy
ourselves while we're here. Uh?
He laughs.
China is going to lose half its population over the course of this century. That event will overwhelm anything neurotic American women are doing to "save the planet".
Her kids will be worrying about shortages of diapers and plastic wrap when they grow up.
You spend twenty years
No, this shit has been going on since the 1960's......at least.
Ya' know.....Malthus died nearly 200 years ago, and the only thing he predicted correctly was Paul Krugman.
There are many people just like her.
They vote in every single election that pops up.
So, we cannot just laugh and ignore them.
@Quaestor, thanks for the info. I can’t imagine myself owning an AR platform, but I guess if I did get one I would want to consider a 6.5 Grendel chambering. Being a Vietnam era vet, when guys I met who had been in country told me how prone to jamming their M16s were, and given my own experience with the M16 on the BCT rifle range, well, it is hard to get past all that. Do you have an opinion on the .300 AAC Blackout round?
I got confused by the conflation of environmentalism and climate change activism. To me they are two different ways to hate on our species, but they are not the same.
But I guess if one has that much hate for one's own species, there's no point in being choosy about which activism is the most debilitating.
Big Mike? you can't even begin to compare modern AR-15's (or modern M-16's) with vietnam era ones. IF you're interested, the book:
Misfire: The Tragic Failure of the M16 in Vietnam By: Bob Orkand
will tell you MORE (MUCH MORE) than you ever thought you'd know about the misfires
I can Truthfully say, that i've forgotten more than most people know about this subject, 'cause i listened to the whole book... And have forgotten nearly ALL of it :(
The upshot is (as best as i can remember)...
The AR-15 as designed was Really good.
The Army thought that it should be Just A Little Bit Better (more deadly at longer range)
SO! the army changed the powder in the cartridges (i think?) to one that was more powerful
This meant that (i THINK!)
a) the cycle rate sped up to faster than the gun could handle
b) the new powder didn't "self Clean" like the old powder (which was Really newer, but less powerful)
There were (lots of) other problems, but
A) They have been resolved
B) none needed to have happened
It was a very interesting book, i wish that i could remember more (any!) details other than
McNamara Sucks!
Tell her to do what I do. Stop worrying, work on making a full shoulder turn, and rejoice that there are a lot of landfills waiting to be converted to the highest and best use imaginable!
And GUESS WHO is ahead of the curve on this? (Begins with T and ends With P).
https://www.golfpass.com/travel-advisor/articles/grass-over-garbage-golf-courses-give-landfill-sites-a-second-life
"But she had also had a baby in diapers, and a full-time job, and a 5-year-old who wanted snacks."
Usually this problem solves itself: Women and men who suffer from environmental dementia have enough internal consistency to also not have kids. If you think the world is coming to an end and yet still end-up creating young Human beings, the cognitive dissonance is sort-of baked-in.
The only climate change advocates I do or will respect are those that lead by example. If you are really concerned, show us how it is done! Al Gore and all the others of his thinking would have been much more credible had they adopted a simple life living off the land and recycling everything.
Big Mike writes, "Do you have an opinion on the .300 AAC Blackout round?"
Blackout can meet many specialized military requirements in that its projectile is optimized for maximum performance from a short barrel, some sources say as short as five inches! And there are subsonic loadings that are conducive to highly effective suppression. If you're a staff officer seeking to equip a covert behind-the-lines unit for virtually silent CQB .300 AAC is the obvious choice. (I'm not certain, but I understand SEAL Team 6 used silenced M4s firing .300 AAC when they killed Osama bin Laden.)
Several years ago there was a .300 AAC fad among feral swine eradicators, but I think that has now passed. Blackout should be considered a military munition -- a man-killer, frankly. If you're a civilian hunter using an AR-platform rifle, there are more effective options.
Have you noticed that climate change articles are less and less often about science or policy, and more and more often about how people feel about climate change? Presumably the media has learned that the latter type of article gets more clicks, and is easier to write.
@gilbar, I’m familiar with some of what you wrote, and others have suggested that some in the Army Ordnance Bureau deliberately sabotaged the M16 in Vietnam out of petulance because the M14 (developed under the direction of the Ordnance Bureau to replace the M1 Garand) lost out (barrels not chromed despite the tropical climate, powde leaving high residue in the barrels, buffer tubes not matched to the powder). On the surface that would seem to be implausible, given that McNamara viewed the US as fighting a war of attrition, but I spent my time between graduating from BCT and the day I ETSed working in a Pentagon agency, and I regard it as all too plausible.
They all say “Duty, honor, country,” except that first comes their career.
"... what is the relationship between the diapers and the wildfires?"
Most of the people making these the source of endless panic are, like the diapers, full of something that stinks.
About 30 years ago, when I lived in Montgomery County, MD, the county authorities closed an old landfill and decided to zone the land for small industry use. One of the small industries was a welding shop. Landfills ooze methane. Oops.
@boatbuilder, golf courses are a good use for old landfills. Anything that generates a flame, not so much.
"The whole problem could be solved by incinerating trash and producing electricity with the heat. Big problem that America decided not to go that route. "
Yeah except for the cost of recycling (collecting, sorting, distributing) far outweighs the value o the recycled plastic. Plus high carbon materials in a landfill "captures" the carbon. And, natural gas is a cleaner burning fuel than plastics even with expensive scrubbing technology.
Other than those issues (and more) recycling plastic is swell.
“ Have you noticed that climate change articles are less and less often about science or policy, and more and more often about how people feel about climate change?”
Yes exactly. Well-observed, John.
If you don't like all the plastic covering food items in grocery stores, then look to food safety laws and their implementation. There's a tremendous amount of laws and regulations on the books as a result of lawsuits and consumer pressure on Congress to use these materials.
Worriers are going to worry, no matter what is going on. That they've come to this level of worrying means that lots of bigger issues have been solved.
I have a 7.5” .300 Blackout AR-15 handgun (because the barrel in shorter than 16”). Works great. Nice size. It has a brace that can allow you to shoot it one handed. Technically, you can treat the brace as a should stock, but aren’t really supposed to. Legally, if you are building your own (and not using a finished 80% lower receiver) you should buy your lower receiver as a pistol, and not as a rifle, through your FFL. You can legally turn an AR-15 pistol into a rifle, but not the other way around, so it the sales formalities are the same (as they are in MT, if you have a MT CCW permit), you should consider buying lower receivers as pistols, and not rifles.
.300 Blackout addresses the problem that the loads for 5.56/.223 are optimized for maybe a 18” barrel. The powder just burns too slowly for the average 16” AR-15 or 14.5” M4 length barrels. That means that a lot of unburned powder is expelled through shorter barrels, often resulting in a significant muzzle flash. .300 BKO addresses this problem by using a faster burning powder. It also comes in supersonic and subsonic ammunition variants, with the latter working well suppressed. Got a bunch of both a couple years ago, when they were sitting next to each other at the store. I am thinking of building a suppressed .300 BKO shorter barreled AR-15. But suppressors are apparently a pain, requiring an ATF tax stamp, that, in turn apparently takes almost a year to clear.
We have a more expressive and emotive culture than our parents or grandparents had, but we don't have much more to express or emote than they did. To satisfy our desire for something to say and to fill up all our modern means of communication everyone has their own ideology, their own phobia, their own gender.
"This is a temporary problem, as are so many mind-blowingly important environmental freakouts. Plastic is not "forever"; it is recyclable too. It's just that no one bothers; it's not worth it. Eventually we'll get good at these things and the landfills will be taken care of in an efficient way. Technology will solve a lot of problems."
Yes, by gosh! All this and more will happen...in the sweet by and by.
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