Report to Galactic Command: the eradication of the human species is in progress

(originally published in 2012 on "Cassandra's Legacy")

From: Earth Orbital Outpost
To: Galactic Central Command
(note: time spans in this report are measured in Earth orbital revolutions. One Earth orbital revolution corresponds to 4e-10 Galactic years)


Progress report: Human eradication plan


- Strategic Summary

The Earth Orbital Outpost is pleased to report to Galactic Command that the eradication of the creatures termed "humans" inhabiting the planet known as "Earth" is proceeding according to plans. The rapid warming of the planet obtained by the injection of large amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is expected to wipe out most large vertebrates within 40-50 planetary revolutions around the parent star. The planet will be ready for colonization by our species in a few thousand years; when the ecosystem will have been restored.

- The original (1st level) plan

Planet Earth was the object of several preliminary explorations before being selected as suitable for colonization. Upon reaching this decision, the Earth Orbital Outpost was set up with the purpose of facilitating the colonization task. The Outpost proceeded to study the planet, finding that it is dominated by a species, known as "humans", which has appropriated most of the planetary ecosystem productivity. Individually, humans turned out to be highly intelligent and it was soon clear that the species poses an important obstacle to colonization. A necessary step for colonization was therefore their eradication. The decision was reached also upon the consideration that, if left to themselves, humans were likely to reach a technological level sufficiently high to become a nuisance at the Galactic scale.

Several plans were developed to carry out the eradication program. It soon became clear that sterilization with neutron beams, carried out by the Galactic star fleet, was possible but expensive and, besides, humans were rapidly reaching a technological level sufficient to produce a significant opposition. Instead, it was found that humans could be eradicated at a much lower cost by warming the planet at temperatures high enough to make their survival impossible. That could be accomplished by exploiting the human habit of burning fossil carbon materials in order to obtain energy. According to initial observations carried out about a hundred revolutions ago, just letting humans to themselves would lead them to inject in the atmosphere sufficient amounts of greenhouse gases to cause a warming intense enough to destroy most large vertebrates.

In previous reports, we were pleased to describe that the plan was working. 50 revolutions ago, the concentration of greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere had already picked up a trend of rapid growth and it was calculated that it would lead to the collapse of the ecosystem in less than a hundred revolutions. However, as mentioned earlier on, humans turned out to be remarkably intelligent and the brightest of them were able to identify and understand the ongoing process (that they usually referred to as "global warming.") Humans built up a sophisticated planetary monitoring system and created theoretical models of the atmosphere. At that point, they embarked in a planet-wide effort to stop global warming by curbing fossil carbon burning and deploying non-carbon based energy sources.

Having observed this development, it was necessary to alter the original plan and intervene more directly in the eradication task, although still doing an effort to avoid the enormous costs involved in deploying the Galactic fleet.

-  The 2nd level plan

Stopping humans from taking measures to avoid destroying themselves turned out to require a quite modest effort - completely within the resources available to the Earth Orbital Outpost. This result may be surprising and, indeed, some members of the Galactic Command had expressed doubt on being able to convince humans - individually very intelligent - to continue actting in ways that were leading to their destruction. Nevertheless, we succeeded in accomplishing this task.

The key element of our action has been the study and the exploitation of the human information network, that they call "the Web." It is a sophisticated planet-wide information system that has been fundamental for humans in developing their understanding of climate and diffusing this knowledge with their decision makers. However, we found fundamental flaws in the functioning of this network.

In particular, we found that the network is dominated by "super-nodes" which show a higher level of connectivity than most nodes. These super-nodes are called by humans "media" and sometimes "mainstream media". Surprisingly, we found that the supernodes are managed by humans who are quite unable to understand the basic elements of the functioning of the Earth's ecosphere. Even more surprisingly, we found that the humans in charge of these media nodes make no effort whatsoever to check that the information they diffuse corresponds to physical reality.

We also found that the humans in charge of managing the media supernodes are easily influenced by other groups of humans which are called "lobbies," whose role is not easily understood by us. We believe it has something to do with the abnormal interest of humans in a virtual entity that they have created and that they refer to as "money". Although the characteristics of this entity are obscure to us, it seems that humans (especially males) care about being associated with large amounts of this virtual entity and this, in turn, seems to have something to do with the behavior of human females. In any case, we were able to penetrate the human computing centers which produce this "money" and appropriate large amounts of it for our purposes.

In practice, it was sufficient for the Earth Orbital Outpost to take control of a small numbers of leading human individuals; whom we refer to as "avatars." This task was accomplished mainly by our control of large amounts of the above mentioned "money" entity. Using money, the takeover of these minds turned out to be extremely easy: we found little resistence on their part and no evidence that our operation was detected by other humans. Our avatars carried out several tasks, mainly providing the media super-nodes with fake data that contradicted the results of the previous scientific investigation on the degradation of the ecosystem.

A special operation that turned out to be extremely successful was to break into the database of one of their best scientific organizations (called by humans "climate research unit") and diffusing internal data exchanges all over the network. This operation generated considerable confusion among humans as it highlighted several uncertainties in the research; something typical of scientific investigation but that, apparently, most of them are not familiar with.


Assessment of the present situation

The takeover of the human information system (the "Web") by our human avatars was completely successful and we have been able to turn it into an instrument for our purposes. We are pleased to report that most human leaders have been turned into avatars under our direct control or are completely confused about the issue of global warming. It has been possible to relegate the discussion on this theme to only some minor clusters of the information network. All attempts carried out by humans to diffuse it outside these clusters are met by aggressive denial (humans turn out to be extremely aggressive for reasons that to us appear futile).

As a consequence of our takeover of the information network, all attempts of humans to stop the ecosystem destruction have been halted and appear unlikely to be restarted any time soon. The amount of greenhouse gases being emitted in the Earth's atmosphere keeps increasing. That is creating a rapid rise of temperatures, as confirmed by the recent observation of the near complete melting of the North Pole ice cap, a planetary feature that had been existing for several million years of planetary history.

It is clear that the Earth's system is heading towards a tipping point where rising temperatures will trigger a series of phenomena which will lead to runaway warming and to the total collapse of the ecosystem, even without further human generation of greenhouse gases. We have been monitoring the system evolution using climate modeling programs developed by humans, which turned out to be very sophisticated. According to these models, the tipping point could have been already reached or, in any case, will be reached within a few planetary revolutions. Therefore, we expect that the eradication of the human species could be fully accomplished within a few tens of revolutions.

Recent developments and recommendations for the future

Even though the Earth's climate tipping point is likely to have been reached, humans could still, theoretically, react with various countermeasures, such as restarting with the phasing out of fossil carbon burning, deploying non carbon energy sources, shielding the Earth from solar radiation, and so forth. In order to succeed, however, humans need first to regain control of the planetary information system. Our avatars on the planet report ongoing human efforts in this sense, perhaps triggered by the observation of the melting of the North Pole ice cap.

Given these recent developments, the coming planetary revolutions will be critical for the success of the human eradication plan. The Earth Orbital Outpost will keep the situation under strict and continuous monitoring. We do expect difficulties, in particular with our avatars. Their physical integrity cannot be guaranteed if their role in the eradication plan is discovered by humans not under our control. Nevertheless, they have done their job and their loss will not change the rapid evolution of the Earth's climate system.

Assuming that things continue to move according to plans, planet Earth will soon be free of humans and of most large vertebrates that could be a nuisance for colonization. We shall therefore proceed with the second part of the plan, which consists in cooling down the planet by deploying space mirrors. Subsequently, natural processes will re-absorb greenhouse gases and restore the planetary ecosystem in about one thousand planetary revolutions. At this point, the planet will be ready for colonization by our species. Ships with colonists are expected to arrive in about ten thousand revolutions from now. Then, a new planet will be added to our Galactic civilization!


End Report - The Earth Orbital Outpost 





(note: this post was inspired by Isaac Asimov's story "The Gentle Vultures" - 1957)

The curse of flame wars

From ZeroHedge

Why Trolls Start Flame Wars: Swearing and Name-Calling Shut Down the Ability to Think and Focus

Submitted by George Washington on 02/25/2014 11:53 -0500

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Psychological studies show that swearing and name-calling in Internet discussions shut down our ability to think. 2 professors of science communication at the University of Wisconsin, Madison - Dominique Brossard and Dietram A. Scheufele - wrote in the New York Times last year:

In a study published online last month in The Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, we and three colleagues report on an experiment designed to measure what one might call “the nasty effect.”

We asked 1,183 participants to carefully read a news post on a fictitious blog, explaining the potential risks and benefits of a new technology product called nanosilver. These infinitesimal silver particles, tinier than 100-billionths of a meter in any dimension, have several potential benefits (like antibacterial properties) and risks (like water contamination), the online article reported.

Then we had participants read comments on the post, supposedly from other readers, and respond to questions regarding the content of the article itself.

Half of our sample was exposed to civil reader comments and the other half to rude ones — though the actual content, length and intensity of the comments, which varied from being supportive of the new technology to being wary of the risks, were consistent across both groups. The only difference was that the rude ones contained epithets or curse words, as in: “If you don’t see the benefits of using nanotechnology in these kinds of products, you’re an idiot” and “You’re stupid if you’re not thinking of the risks for the fish and other plants and animals in water tainted with silver.”

The results were both surprising and disturbing. Uncivil comments not only polarized readers, but they often changed a participant’s interpretation of the news story itself.

In the civil group, those who initially did or did not support the technology — whom we identified with preliminary survey questions — continued to feel the same way after reading the comments. Those exposed to rude comments, however, ended up with a much more polarized understanding of the risks connected with the technology.

Simply including an ad hominem attack in a reader comment was enough to make study participants think the downside of the reported technology was greater than they’d previously thought.

While it’s hard to quantify the distortional effects of such online nastiness, it’s bound to be quite substantial, particularly — and perhaps ironically — in the area of science news.

So why do people troll in a rude way?

Psychologists say that many of them are psychopaths, sadists and narcissists getting their jollies. It's easy to underestimate how many of these types of sickos are out there: There are millions of sociopaths in the U.S. alone.

But intelligence agencies are also intentionally disrupting political discussion on the web, and ad hominen attacks, name-calling and divide-and-conquer tactics are all well-known, frequently-used disruption techniques.

Now you know why ... flame wars polarize thinking, and stop the ability to focus on the actual topic and facts under discussion.

Indeed, this tactic is so effective that the same wiseguy may play both sides of the fight.

A chilling sensation down your spine.....

Now, read this and consider: how do you feel about belonging to the "Homo Sapiens" species? Don't you feel a horribly chilling sensation about that down your spine?

From The Independent, h/t Stephan Lewandowsky

Maybe Nigel Lawson is right. There can’t be global warming, because isn’t it always colder at night?

It’s a method of argument perfected by disgruntled men in the corner of pubs

by Mark Steel

I wonder why Nigel Lawson was on the radio yesterday morning, telling us angrily that the floods are nothing to do with climate change. Will this be a regular slot, in which people from the 1980s are invited to shout, with no evidence, that everyone else is wrong? Next week Depeche Mode will be screaming that the koala bear is actually a flower, then Torvill and Dean will yell that triangles only have two sides.

One of Nigel’s points to show that scientists can’t prove climate change was that “only a couple of months ago the Met Office were predicting that this would be an unusually dry winter.”

Apart from the fact that unpredictable storms fit in perfectly with theories of global warming, Nigel Lawson seems to have confused the International Panel on Climate Change with the woman who does the weather on the telly. Presumably when Sian Lloyd says: “This low pressure should clear up by Tuesday”, he shouts back, “How dare you expect me to get those useless energy-saving light bulbs, you know NOTHING” – which must be quite exhausting.
If he’d had the time he could have made other valid points, such as: “They know nothing about carbon emissions. Only last November they reckoned England would win The Ashes, so why should we take any notice of them?”

Then Sir Brian Hoskins, a climate change scientist, replied that in recent years the seas have warmed by 0.8 per cent, and that the West Antarctic ice sheet has receded to an unprecedented level, and along with other changes that this must have had an effect on the weather. To which Nigel replied: “That’s extreme speculation. There’s been no global warming for 15 years and that’s a FACT.”

This is an innovative approach to science – saying that precise statistics from a knighted scientist are speculation – but you can tell a true fact because it’s said by someone who says “and that’s a FACT”. These students who revise for weeks before physics exams, so they can calculate electric currents, are wasting their time. They just need to write “Electricity is made up of tiny flames that live in a plug socket and that’s a FACT.”

It’s a method of argument often perfected by disgruntled men in the corner of Wetherspoon’s pubs. As it appears to be in vogue, this could be the new style of debate on news programmes. John Humphrys will say that “a new 246-page report suggests  an independent Scotland would be viable as an economy. With us to discuss the matter is Ted from the Moon Under Water in Stechford. Ted, what do you make of this?” And he’ll say: “It’s all speculation that is, they’re planning to become part of China  and put us all in labour camps and that’s  a FACT.”

To be fair, Nigel Lawson has filled out his thoughts in other interviews. For example he told The Guardian that climate change didn’t concern him because “if you look around the world today there are countries that are very cold, and countries that are very hot, and you have to adapt.”

So the reason we’ve been getting in a state is that we hadn’t realised this cold/hot thing, and once we grasp that we can get the Inuit to wrap up a bit and Arabs to stop riding camels while wearing a duvet, then no one need ever recycle anything again.

Maybe Lawson’s next book will explain  that there can’t be global warming as it’s colder at night, which comes after the day, which means – if anything – the planet’s getting colder, and that the sun doesn’t  have any human activity and that’s even hotter than a hot day on Earth, so  explain THAT.
But he did somehow find the space to  say: “These floods are a wake-up call, to abandon the crazy costly policy of spending untold millions on useless wind turbines and solar panels.”

At last someone’s had the common sense to say what the rest of us were thinking. Who hasn’t watched these floods and thought, “it’s those bloody wind turbines and solar panels that have caused all this”.

The solar panels stop the water from draining, as rivers can’t get through glass. Then the wind turbines frighten the water so it runs off and hides in living rooms in Somerset.

Other than this it’s hard to see how there’s a connection, unless he’s simply decided  to use the issue to yell about something else that annoys him. Tomorrow Nigel Farage  can go on to say, “these floods are a wake-up call, that if you let any more Bulgarians in we’ll all be living in canoes”.

The puzzling part is that among the scientists whose job is to study these matters, there is no disagreement that rising carbon emissions have altered the climate.

So continually debating it, as if both sides  are equally valid, makes as much sense as saying: “Now for sport. In the Winter Olympics the ski jumping final takes place today, but first I’m going to talk to Bill, who says there can’t be any ski jumping because gravity doesn’t exist.”

But the people we should feel sorry for most are probably those in government, who  seem perplexed as to why there are less  flood defences then before.
Who would have thought that cutting something would mean that that thing might be reduced in any way. No wonder so many people get confused.

Santa sells all his coal assets!

Happy Christmas to all the frogs who are trying to jump out of the boiling water before it is too late (and convincing all the other frogs, too!)

Greenhouse gases: are we sure it is our fault?

Data on atmospheric oxygen concentration from the Mauna Kea observatory (link). This result shows that oxygen goes down as carbon dioxide goes up - it is what you would expect as the result of the combustion of fossil fuels. And, yes, it is us who burn them. 

While the preferred weapon against climate science seems to be character assassination, it is also true that climate is a complex subject and there are perfectly correct reasons for perplexity. One is whether the CO2 increase in the atmosphere is really the cause of global warming change - and not an effect of it.

The reasoning goes as follows: we see an increase in the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere and, yes, we also see an increase of planetary temperatures. But how can we be sure that CO2 causes warming and not the reverse? After all, if something else (say, the Sun) were to heat the planet, then we would expect the oceans to release CO2! And in those plots that Al Gore was so fond to show in his movie, warming comes first, then CO2 increases. So, it could really be the Sun (or cosmic rays, or whatever else coming from outer space) and not us.

Alas, it doesn't work that way. The additional CO2 in the atmosphere does not come from the oceans. On the contrary, oceans are a sink that absorbs part of the CO2 we humans generate. How do we know it? Well, there are several ways; one is that ocean water is becoming more acidic. Now, CO2 is an acidic molecule. If oceans were emitting CO2, they would become less acid, not more acid. That shows that oceans are absorbing CO2, not emitting it. Another way, even simpler, is to look at the oxygen record - shown in the figure above.

Suppose that is the sun that warms the oceans and, consequently, causes them to release CO2 in the atmosphere. Then, oxygen is not consumed and you wouldn't expect its atmospheric concentration to change. Actually, if oceans are warming, the may release some oxygen together with the CO2, so the concentration of oxygen should increase. But this is not what we see. We see that the oxygen concentration in the atmosphere is going down, not up.

Suppose instead that CO2 comes from the combustion of fossil fuels. "Combustion" means combining the carbon and the hydrogen contained in these fuels with oxygen. So, the more we burn fuels, the less oxygen remains. The oxygen concentration, then, should go down with time. And this is exactly what we see (see figure above).

With plenty of fantasy, you might find a way to concoct a different theory explaining these data. But remember that there is something called the "Occam's razor." What we see is simple: we burn fossil fuels, we increase the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, that causes warming. It is straightforward: it is not the Sun, it is us.

• About the loss of oxygen in the atmosphere and its long term effects, see this post on Cassandra. 
• For a more detailed treatment of the same question discussed here, see this post on Real Climate
• About Al Gore's movie and the lag between temperature and CO2 concentration also see Real Climate    

A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes

A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes (Mark Twain)

The beauty of propaganda

First of all, note that the "Mail" sells almost two million copies per day. Consider also that other newspapers reported the same news. Then note the more than 156.000 Web shares and the over one thousand comments.

So, several million people have been exposed to the idea that "global cooling is coming" and to the parallel one that "the Arctic is recovering"

Now, consider how many people may have had the time and the willingness to go see the real data; for instance here, or here, showing that the Arctic is NOT recovering. Maybe a few thousand people? A few tens of thousands? Hardly more than that. So, you can imagine which message the public is getting.

You see the beauty of propaganda? Volume always triumphs over truth.

Climate change: the hot truth

Immage da WMO, via "Effetto Cassandra". H/t "Mondi Fluttuanti"


The above is a very simple and effective image. In a single and easy to read graph, it completely debunks the legend that "global warming has stopped." Decadal averages remove the short term yearly noise and show the hot truth.

If there is any justice in the world, this image should go viral, but - as it always happens - it is the wrong meme that goes viral; the one that says that global warming has stopped.

Maybe the readers of this blog would try to give a "viral push" to this image? See if you can share it to your friends, to your social networks and the like. Let's see if we can move things a little bit....




 

So, how much for a brand new planet?

In a paper in Nature the authors estimate as about 60 trillion dollars the cost of methane release from melting permafrost. 

Hansen's dice are rolling

Image from ThreeOak



By Alexander Ac

In a changed world all weather events are created under different conditions than before the Industrial Revolution. A weather that is on steroids, we could say. Or, as climatologist James Hansen calls it, we are "loading the climate dice" towards more extreme climate and weather. Not surprisingly, it is increasingly harder and harder for more and more people to simply "adapt" to weather extremes. Just consider the weather reports from around the planet during the the last few days. They may not by unusual separately, but together they give a picture of quite rapidly destabilizing Holocene climate. The calendar summer of 2013 on the Nothern Hemisphere has just started!

Consider this:

• Arizona Governor declares a state of emergency in Yavapai County due to fast growing forest fire:

• Numerous wildfires are currently spreading also in Colorado and this state already contained its most destructive wildfire in history earlier this year, while the previous one occured in 2012.

• Fires are also raging in Alaska, which recently experienced record temperatures, while California is preparing for the worst fire season in at least 100 years.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

• Record pollution is choking Singapore as a result of forest fires in Indonesia:

• Canadian Alberta is suffering the worst floods in at least 90 years:

• Strong rains caused flash floods in parts of Southwestern France:

• Strong wind and gulf ball sized hail surprized Switzerland:

• Much needed monzoon rains came to India, unfortunataly more intense than usually, already killed about 1000 people and caused a lot of damage:

We really need to listen more carefully to what our planet is telling us. And act accordingly. Now.

(h/t to recent events goes to Fire Earth blog and Desdemona Despair blog)

*Correction: As pointed out by a reader, forest fires in Indonesia are primarily caused by human activity and might NOT necessarily be related to climate change. Even worse, they may have been intentionally started by palm oil companies to grow "biofuels", which are supposed to "offset" fossil fuel emissions. See the "moth effect".

Temperatures are not rising, hence global warming is a hoax

Some years ago, Maria, the Moldovan woman who took care of my old aunt, told me the story of when she had rushed back home from Italy, to see her sick mother one last time.

Apparently, in Moldavia there is the use of lighting up a candle beside the bed of a dying person. Maybe it is to light the way for the departing soul, maybe to remark the solemnity of the occasion, or maybe something else; I can't say. But that was what was done with Maria's mother. The priest had come to administer the Extreme Unction to her and then a candle was lighted up and placed on her nightstand. Her sons and daughters, including Maria, sat in the room, waiting in silence.

Night came and, at some moment, Maria's mother woke up. She opened her eyes, she saw the lighted candle but she seemed not to care. She looked at her relatives, called them by their names, she smiled and she chatted with them of this and that. Maria told me that for a while it seemed that the sickness, the Extreme Unction, the candle, and everything else was forgotten. It was just as the old lady had totally recovered and she would live for many years more.

Then, the old lady said she was tired. She closed her eyes and she fell asleep. In the morning, the candle had burned to the end and the old lady was gone; peacefully in her sleep.