CNN Correspondent Calls Trump a BS Artist.

And Donald Trump has declared a Twitter war on CNN.

Hey, what else can I say?

Click here.

World War Three Dead Ahead!

It will come either by Hillary's neocons going Russian Bear-baiting; or, if Trump gets elected, the neo-cons in the GOP establishment going bear-baiting, or Putin thinking Trump is now treating NATO like some sort of protection racket and thereby taking back the former Soviet Republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Maybe Finland, too.

Donald Trump just made imbecilic statements that if certain NATO countries in Europe haven't paid enough money in his estimation to the United States for their collective defense, then he'll just sit right back and let the Russians roll right over them, should Russia follow through on a decision to invade certain NATO countries.

Now our parents and grandparents knew of a certain British Prime Minister who flew to Munich and returned with a pact between the UK and Hitler, proclaiming "Peace in out time!" Soon enough, Hitler took over Czechoslovakia and the following September, invaded Poland.

To thread the needle of avoiding World War 3, if that's even possible, the United States needs to STOP poking the Russian Bear, i.e., get out of the Ukraine, and at the same time reaffirm its treaty obligation or promise as a lead pipe guarantee that it will defend the European NATO countries against a Russian attack. That means, of course, that we need to redirect our War Department dollars (622 billion of them) so as to spend them wisely, and not waste them on boondoggles such as the F-35 Lardbucket: no way is that thing going to compete with Russia's new Sukhoi fighter jets.

But most importantly, we should be waging peace at the same time we keep our committments and keep strong enough to keep them, in order to maintain the peace.

HERE'S Why People Support Donald Trump.

Not because of racism. But because neoliberal economics, corporate greed and neoconservative foreign policy threaten to put them and their kids into a permanent underclass, dependent on welfare and strung out on illicit drugs.

The The Guardian - Millions of Ordinary Americans Support Donald Trump. Here's Why by Frank Rich.

May is the 8th consecutive hottest month EVAH!

At least since before the records have been kept, and probably since the Eemian period a hundred-ten-thousand years ago.

Anyway, here's the latest from Robertscribbler with tips o' th' hat to: Ryan in New England, June, and dtlange.

May Marks 8th Consecutive Record Hot Month in NASA’s Global Temperature Measure

Image source: NASA GISS.

May of 2016 was the warmest May since record keeping began for NASA 137 years ago. 

It is now the 8th record hot month in row. In other words, since October, every month has been the hottest such month ever recorded (October vs October comparison, November vs November etc). And May’s record is just the most recent high mark during a period that has now vastly exceeded all previous measures for global temperature tracking. 

The month itself was 0.93 C above NASA’s 1951-1980 baseline measure. It’s the first month since October that readings fell below the 1 C anomaly mark. A range that before 2015 had never before been breached in the 136 year climate record and likely during all of the approximate 12,000 year period that marks the Holocene geological epoch. 

It’s a reading that is fully 1.15 C above 1880s averages.  

A 1.2 C annual 2016 departure is firmly within the range of estimates for global temperatures that occurred within the Eemian climate period around 115,000 years ago. At that time, global ocean levels were between 16 and 25 feet higher than they are today. And if such warm temperatures continue for any significant duration, we could expect oceans to at least rise by as much (especially considering the fact that about 15-20 feet worth of sea level rise is locked into the ice of glaciers that are now in the process of heading into the global ocean).

 Image source: The Keeling Curve.

Atmospheric CO2 levels peaked at 407.7 parts per million in May as well. A jump of about 3.8 parts per million above peak readings during May of 2015.

If carbon dioxide levels were to remain so high we could expect global temperatures to, over the course of 300-500 years, hit near 3 C above 1880s levels and oceans to rise by as much as 60-120 feet. Adding in methane and other greenhouse gasses — current CO2 equivalent for all global heating gas estimates are now in the range of 490 parts per million. Enough to warm the Earth by about 4.6 C over hundreds of years and to, among other things, eventually raise oceans by 120 t0 200 feet.

For more click here.

Now speaking of destabilised glaciers and ice sheets, the Larsen 'C' Ice Shelf, right next door to the Larsen 'B' one which collapsed and shattered in 2004, is now in a more fragile and unstable state than previously thought.

From dtlange:

Antarctic Discovery Reveals Larsen C Ice Shelf Weakness 

Researchers report discovery of a massive subsurface ice layer, at least 16 km across, several kilometres long and tens of metres deep, located in an area of intense melting and intermittent ponding on the Larsen C Ice Shelf in Antarctica which may suggest the ice shelf is even more fragile than thought.

reportingclimatescience.com/2016/06/14/larsen-c

Well here's a bit of good news: Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) reports that that “coal and gas will begin their terminal decline in less than a decade.”

June links to the Bloomberg News article (peak fossil fuels for electricity by 2025); this from Ryan in New England:

Here is the core finding of BNEF’s “annual long-term view of how the world’s power markets will evolve in the future,” their New Energy Outlook (NEO): 

"Cheaper coal and cheaper gas will not derail the transformation and decarbonisation of the world’s power systems. By 2040, zero-emission energy sources will make up 60% of installed capacity. Wind and solar will account for 64% of the 8.6TW [1 Terawatt = 1,000 Gigawatts] of new power generating capacity added worldwide over the next 25 years, and for almost 60% of the $11.4 trillion invested." 

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/06/13/3787700/coal-gas-plants-cheap-renewables/ 

And the reasons?

First, renewable energy benefits from manufacturing economies of scale. Second,  Fossil fuels are finite resources that are dependent upon extractive mining. Third, Cheaper coal, oil and gas, due to increased renewables and lower demand otherwise, means that less oil, coal and gas will be extracted: this means Peak Oil, Peak Coal and Peak Gas will be passed. Fourth, Once this begins to happen, the fossil fuel industry is put on death ground and will have to switch to renewables or squash them through political control. (Credit Robertscribbler)

But the caveat is that the manufacture and build-out of renewable energy infrastructure is dependent upon fossil fuels! Which means if there is a future shortage of fossil fuels, especially if Hillary or Trump gets us into World War 3, renewables may get the short end of the stick so that shorter-term needs are met instead.

Even with the Bloomberg forecast of 60% catchment of all electricity by zero-carbon energy sources by 2040 (a huge feat by itself if it happens) still runs bad risks from the perspective of climate change, because it implies we'll be stuck with 435 to 460 ppm CO2 and around 510 to 570 ppm CO2e by then.

And another thing we need to beware of: Wall Street is still investing in fossil fuels: they are betting that fossil fuels will continue to be extracted and consumed, perhaps even at the expense of zero-carbon sources.

From June:

World’s Banks Driving Climate Chaos with Hundreds of Billions in Extreme Energy Financing 

Wall Street continues to back the most polluting fossil fuel industries “at the expense of some of the most vulnerable communities on the planet,” states new report.
The report, $horting the Climate: Fossil Fuel Finance Report Card 2016 (pdf), put forth by Rainforest Action Network (RAN), BankTrack, Sierra Club, and Oil Change International, evaluates the private global banking industry based on its financing for fossil fuels… 

So big extreme fossil fuel investments are massive bets that governments won’t stop climate change. 

http://commondreams.org/news/2016/06/14/worlds-banks-driving-climate-chaos-hundreds-billions-extreme-energy-financing

Some of the big playaz are Citigroup, Bank of America, JP[irates]Morgan Chase, and Barclays. And our candidates, where do they stand? Let's see, now.... Donald Trump doesn't believe Global Warming is for real and promises to end all funding for climate monitoring by the US. Hillary, although she says a good line, is in the pockets of Wall Street, especially Goldman Sachs, and has considerable backing from Fossil Fuels interests. Which means she'll give lip service to combatting climate change but pursue "Drill, baby, drill!" policies once elected, just like Obama. Oh, great. So these two pose to threaten Near Term Extinction upon us not only by World War 3, but also the utter collapse of civilisation by Dangerous Climate Change - the Fossil Fuels Derivatives Beast. At least with the latter we won't go extinct! 

For more, click here.

Remember what I said yesterday about Donald Trump?

Yesterday I referenced the Vox.com article that stated that Donald is no dove. Today I have another article that essentially conforms the same thing, although it is a far less researched opinion piece in the American Conservative.  But the comments are worth clicking through and reading the article by Daniel Larison: No, Trump isn't an "Isolationist."

Larison contends that Donald Trump is not an isolationist, but a nationalist who would intervene solely in the interests of the United States and to Hell with everybody else. Even if the intervention is directly against Russia. Well Putin would have only one thing to say and do in such an intervention, and in a way would tell Trump, as Dimitri Orlov has described Russia saying to the West many times before, to go to Hell, and then make it stick. Making it stick, of course could be or could lead to an extinction level event. Or do you think Trump would just bend over and take it? (The same goes for Hillary and her neocons.)

Colin Dueck sees Trump this way, and for once I am in at least partial agreement with Dueck. Dueck writes:

His critics call him an isolationist, but that’s not quite right either. Genuine isolationists on both left and right, however wrong-headed, tend to be more high-minded, principled and pristine than The Donald. Trump’s real niche, carved out in his own strange way, is simply American nationalism.

.... 

Trump’s nationalism leads him on the one hand to eschew deeper involvement in Syria because the conflict has little or nothing to do with the U.S., but on the other it leads him to make ridiculous statements about seizing other nations’ resources and denouncing diplomatic agreements with other states. If we can pin down his foreign policy at all, it is aggressive and unilateralist when Trump thinks the U.S. has something to gain, and it is otherwise content to leave regional problems to regional actors. One reason that he isn’t an “isolationist” or anything close to it is that he claims to want to “make America great again,” and part and parcel of that supposed greatness is building up the military and “winning” contests with other states.

For more, click here, and don't forget to read the comments!

Remember, Peak Oil is here and gone in the US and is coming soon for the rest of the planet, and Russia's one country with a lot of unexploited oil and natural resources!

Trump Is no Dove, Either.

From Zack Beauchamp's The Donald Trump Dove Myth on Vox.com:

I honestly don't know how Trump would govern if elected president. Nobody knows how Trump would govern, because we've never had a president like him before. 

All we have to go on is what he's said and done. And any close examination of that record, beyond his high-profile rhetoric at debates, suggests that Trump is an instinctive advocate for US military force. He seems especially interested in it when it can be used to enrich or protect the United States — taking the oil, killing the terrorists, etc. 

This isn't the kind of [Ed-M: messianic and Manichean] hawkishness we're used to. During the Bush administration, hawkishness became equated with neoconservatism. You're a hawk if you support sending in ground troops to fight terrorism or bombing Iran's nuclear program; you're a dove if you oppose those things. 

Trump's instincts are not neoconservative, and he's skeptical of neoconservatism's more grandiose ambitions to remake the world in America's democratic image. That makes him sound dovish by American standards, because we've come to equate dovishness with opposing policies that neocons support. 

But historically, there are lots of other forms of American hawkishness.

Mr. Beauchamp goes on to state that of those is the Jacskonian tradition (going back to Andrew Jackson) and it fits Trump best, because Trump is on record (read the article) in favor of the wars but hes opined that the USA should have just taken -- stolen -- those countries' oil. Just like Andrew Jackson stole the lands of the Indians of the USA Southeast and sent them to Oklahoma in a trail of tears.

Now as of March 19th Russia is the country with the sixth largest amount of oil reserves. US oil production was down by about 10% from last year's peak as of June 3rd. If this production continues in this sort of decline, it won;t be long before the US corporate world and the US government will be coveting Mother Russia's oil and the Pentagon will be making plans to "secure" it. This in spite of Trump's proclaimed support for Israel and the Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu's VERY successful overtures to Vladimir Putin  and Israel's turn to Russia as an ally (more here, here and here).

Needless to say, an attempt to steal Russia's oil will mean World War III, which would probably end with nuclear exchanges between the United States and Russia, resulting in a nuclear winter (ice age), a radioactive spring (rewarming), and resumed global warming following, ending in Near Term Extinction.

Note: "messianic and Manichean" from Richard Sakwa, Frontline Ukraine, p. 217, describing the delusions of the neoconservatives that Hilary stuffed the USA State Department with when she was Madame Secretary of State. This sort of messianic insanity is a form of (small-c) christ-psychosis: nota bene "messiah" in English and original Hebrew mashiach "anointed one" translated to khristos (originally "ointment") and christus (specifically Jesus) in Greek and Latin, respectively.)

Holbert Nails It!

From The Boston Herald via Page 5B of the New Orleans Advocate:

The Herald has original, as the cartoon for April 18, 2016, here.

Donald Trump and the Working Class Whites

As you know, Donald Trump is making a very good showing among working class whites, particularly among working class white males. People like Chris Hedges believe this is an incipient and imminent form of pure fascism. Others like Luce, whose article was reposted by The Automatic Earth, say it is a new form of class warfare in America.

First Luce's turn, revealing that the USA Conservative elites are just as "Librul" as the Liberal elites.:

Say what you like about Donald Trump, he knows his market. "I love the poorly educated," he said recently to cheers from those he loves.  The rest of America inhaled sharply.  Welcome to a very un-American debate.  Once redundant, the term "working class" is now part of everyday conversation.  In an age of stifling correctness, the only people who are fair game are blue-collar whites.  How absurd these people are, we tell each other, and how ignorant.  Don't they know Mr Trump was born rich?  Can they really be so stupid as to fall for his con trick?  The derision is not limited to liberal elites.  Educated conservatives are just as scathing.  Take the National Review, a flagship of thinking conservatives, that described Mr. Trump as a "ridiculous buffoon with the worst taste since Caligula."

In January it pulled together 22 intellectuals to condemn Mr. Trump's candidacy as an existential threat to conservatism.  Their efforts had no impact on Mr. Trump's fan base.  Now the magazine has switched to damning his supporters.  By declaring open season on blue-collar whites, Kevin Williamson's widely read essay on "white working class dysfunction" marks a turning point.  Yet he is only putting into writing what many conservatives say.  "the truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die," Mr. Williamson writes. "Economically, they are negative assets.  Morally, they are indefensible... the white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles.  Donald Trump's speeches make them feel good.  So does OxyContin."

Margaret Thatcher's acolyte, Norman Tebbit, once sparked fury by implying the jobless should get on their bikes to find work.  Mr. Williamson says America's benighted working classes should hire a U-Haul and move on.  As an exercise in condescension, Mr. Williamson's words rival the most inbred hereditary peer.  As an economic prescription, it is wide of the mark.  Millions of Americans are anchored to blighted communities by negative equity, or other ties that bind.  Their life expectancy is falling.  Their participation in the labour market is dropping.  The numbers signing up to disability benefits is rising.  Opoid prescription drugs are rife.  Those that are white tend to vote for Mr. Trump.  On Super Tuesday this month, the counties with the highest rates of white mortality -- whether to overdoses, suicide or other symptoms of community breakdown -- came out heavily for Mr. Trump.  The correlation was almost exact, according to a Wonkblog study.

And there's no place for them TO go to find jobs, thanks to globalization. They are UN, EM, PLOY-A-BLE, thanks to the exporting and automation of jobs, worldwide. As wages stagnated in the US, lot of the jobs went to Mexico and then to China and then other Emerging Market (used to be called 3rd World) countries like Vietnam, Malaysia, Bangladesh and Ethiopia; now the developed countries can't but the exports! And jobs were exported from China, too. Now with the reverses in oil prices and other commodity prices, even the Chinese working classes are hurting, or are going to hurt, big-time. They're realized the business elites have screwed them and the cultural elites hate them, so they're voting for Trump.

Of course, if Trump doesn't get it, it'll get even worse. Which means the white working class could pick the first true fascist who comes down the pike, and joined by others, bring him to power. This is what Chris Hedges predicts -- if not now, then later; if not Trump, then somebody else, quoting :

Richard Rorty in his last book, “Achieving Our Country,” written in 1998, presciently saw where our postindustrial nation was headed.

Many writers on socioeconomic policy have warned that the old industrialized democracies are heading into a Weimar-like period, one in which populist movements are likely to overturn constitutional governments. Edward Luttwak, for example, has suggested that fascism may be the American future. The point of his book The Endangered American Dream is that members of labor unions, and unorganized unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported. Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers—themselves desperately afraid of being downsized—are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else.

At that point, something will crack. The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for—someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots. A scenario like that of Sinclair Lewis’ novel It Can’t Happen Here may then be played out. For once a strongman takes office, nobody can predict what will happen. In 1932, most of the predictions made about what would happen if Hindenburg named Hitler chancellor were wildly overoptimistic.

One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past forty years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out. Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion. The words “nigger” and “kike” will once again be heard in the workplace. All the sadism which the academic Left has tried to make unacceptable to its students will come flooding back. All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet.

And this doesn't even begin to touch on the absolute rage that the white working classes will feel, when, not if, but when, Donald Trump either fails to get elected, is assassinated by the Deep State letting it happen on purpose or through indifference and incompetency just like they did 9-11, or gets in line with the Washington Consensus and all its negatively productive foreign and domestic policy initiatives, whether economic, diplomatic, geopolitical, or military. After all, the Donald made his fortune by hiring mom-and-pop small business contractors to build his developments and then screwing them by declaring bankruptcy, not paying on what he owed them. He has the "support" of at least one notorious neocon -- one by the name of William Kristol. And now he's appeared before AIPAC, and got a standing ovation just like Hillary, telling AIPAC what they want to hear:

Speaking with the aide [sic!] of a teleprompter at AIPAC Monday evening, Donald Trump managed not to offend Jewish voters with a prepared speech "about where I stand on the future of American relations with the only democracy in the Middle East, the state of Israel."

Trump received a standing ovation for his comments on President Obama, who he said, "constantly apologizes to our friends and rewards our enemies."
"My No. 1 priority is to dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran," he said.  We have rewarded the world's leading state sponsor of terror with $150 billion and we received absolutely nothing in return."

Trump characterized Palestine as the undisputed antagonist, saying that, "In Palestinian society, the heroes are those who murder Jews."

Which means in foreign policy, nothing will change for the better, only for the worse (unless you don't like Muslims).

Does this sound like an honest guy who will bring fascism to this country while waving the flag and carrying a Christian cross? No, this sounds like a con-artist, who, once he gets into the Oval Office, will throw his white working-class base under the bus.

Don't say I didn't warn you guys.

Herr Trump

Slightly OT from If Peak Oil Were No Object (The Donald does want to "make America great again" which requires no such thing as peak oil), but it's too good to pass up. This is a cartoon of Donald trump with his bad combover doing the Sieg Heil!. It's funny but it's also erroneous. Why? After the cartoon.

Cartoon Credit: © 2015 Lalo Alcaraz, Universal Uclick via Daily Kos. 

It's his TIE that should be doing the Sieg Heil, in acknowledgement of him. Much like a Dilbert tie.