The term “chaos theory” gets thrown around and half-understood, but it’s a revelation of an idea; it’s the best kind of idea: one that seems obvious after you’ve heard it. In a system of great enough complexity, any change in initial condition will cause massive variation of result. And not just massive variation: unpredictable. A scientist named Edward Lorenz was running a weather simulation of his computer, and the machine was making almost unnoticeably small changes to the variables in the algorithm. He’d run it one time, get a lovely day; another time, and a hurricane hits Indianapolis.
A weather simulation–especially one from 1961–is not as big a system as the actual weather, and one of the variables in the weather is the average temperature. It is going up.
Why?
Excellent question. There are two positions:
Anthropogenic warming This is the argument that industrial emissions (and cow farts) are infusing the atmosphere with too much carbon dioxide; the chief culprit is consumption of fossil fuels.
Who believes this? Literally all the smart people who haven’t been bought by the energy companies.
What Global Warming? This argument is self-explanatory.
Who believes this? Dumb people actually believe it, but most of the people you see on teevee defending this position don’t give a shit either way because they’re greedy and figure they’ll be dead before anything too terrible happens.
Oh, wait. There’s one more:
Chinese hoax. It’s a Chinese hoax.
Who believes this? That fleshy fuck all the yokels elected.
Okay, so: why are we talking about Global Warming? Because the new chief of the Environmental Protection Agency was talking about it today. Guy named Scott Pruitt, who was very familiar with the EPA during his stint as Oklahoma’s AG: he sued it 14 times, once because he thought that department didn’t have the authority to regulate mercury. All of his lawsuits failed, and a judge once issued a ruling that Pruitt was attempting to overburden the agency with so many lawsuits that it couldn’t do its job.
He’s in charge of the EPA now, and at a press conference today he said he doesn’t think CO2 has anything to do with Global Warming. Then he led the reporters outside to watch him shit in a stream.
This is their stated purpose, Enthusiasts: the Trump Administration is trying to topple the American government. The White House has two factions right now: one side is Reince Priebus and the other is Steve Bannon. Priebus is a party hack, Bannon is a revolutionary. Bannon’s winning.
Up on the Hill were some busy beavers today, chomping away at freedom and damming up democracy.
Really?
I stand by my metaphor.
You shouldn’t.
Shush. The House is desperate to pass Trumpcare or Republicare, whatever they’re calling that piece of poison. (I vote for Wedon’tcare.) The Ways & Means Committee stayed up all night to jam the sucker through. Enthusiasts with working brain cells left may remember that Obamacare took a year or so to throw together, and the Republicans still accused Obama of “shoving this bill down America’s throat.”
(Republicans love that phrase. Makes you wonder.)
There’s still quite a bit of political wrangling to do, mostly within the GOP. Basketball Head has been trying to help, but he’s been telling everyone what they want to hear and both the moderate and conservative sides of the party think he’s on their side. Trump, of course, is on Trump’s side; he is now threatening to hold rallies in objecting representatives’ districts shaming them into unity, and I’m sure that won’t lead to anyone getting shot.
And, finally: Arnold Schwarzenegger might run for Senate, restoring some dignity to government and bringing along his years of political experience.
This has been the 49th day of our national nightmare; may we all wake soon.
This is a little piece of prose I’ve been working on.
Do you remember when you were a kid and you first heard about the Holocaust? You probably said something along the lines of “if I had been there I would have…” but this is that. The Presidential cabinet is largely white supremacist openly seeking to dismantle the Constitutional government. Taking health care from 10 or 20 million people in order to give tax breaks to billionaires. Private prison corporations are building the new internment camps for black and brown people.
I’m pretty sure that I stole the opening from someone but I literally can not remember if it was you. If not I would like to ‘borrow’ the phrase “Up on the Hill were some busy beavers today, chomping away at freedom and damming up democracy.” but I fully understand if you wouldn’t want me to. If this opening is not yours it may be from the comment section, so if anyone recognized there own words please let me know.
Feel free to take whatever you want.
Thank you.
“Up on the Hill were some busy beavers today, chomping away at freedom and damming up democracy.”
A clean & evocative turn of words.
those damn dams.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/09/hundreds-new-dams-could-mean-trouble-our-climate
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/dams-may-provide-resilience-to-climate-change-17017
My old pal, Donny Day, the renegade from New Jersey who can’t be stopped, referred to them as ‘Choad Yokels”.
“Up on the Hill were some busy beavers today, chomping away at freedom and damming up democracy.”
That is a clean & evocative turn of words.