Cognative Dissonance

When the dog bites
When the bee stings
When I'm feeling sad
I simply remember my favorite things
And then I don't feel so bad

   - Julie Andrews

Nothing bad ever happens to me

 -Oingo Boingo 

Greetings

   Just saw Nate Hagens latest lecture.  from the De Growth conference in Vancouver.    Full of interesting info about the way humans think.   (depending on your definition of "think").   Lots of psychological tricks to avoid seeing what we don't want to see.    ( I recommend watching the whole thing, but if you get bogged down, I'd move to the end where we discussed some strategies for dealing with our " predicament"

      Here are some interesting examples. 

 1.  Scenic tours of the ice free  Northwest Passage,  to see prime example of Climatic Change, and likely culprit for the strange weather, causing droughts in California and Brazil.

".... the journey, in August 2016 will be on "a mystical Pacific-Atlantic sea route far beyond the Arctic Circle that for centuries captured the imagination of kings, explorers and adventurers."

2.  Although the sea is already rising so that Miami has regular floods, even without storms, the local building market is booming.  There's too much money too be ignored.  Of course it helps that the feds (you and me) subsidize the insanity with cheap flood insurance (Private co's aren't that stupid), and "disaster" relief.  (Who could see that coming?)  Also helps that local rules can be evaded.    Here's how Mike Huckabee got a permit to build his waterfront estate, despite being located  in a danger zone.

http://gulfnews.com/business/property/general/why-americans-are-flocking-to-their-sinking-shores-1.1390356

3.Our rainbow, and unicorn projections on how we'll turn it around with high tech stuff (carbon eating machines) that haven't been invented.

http://sites.biology.duke.edu/jackson/ncc2014.pdf

"Anything other than the direst projections for temperatures over the next century more and more have to rely on unproven or non-existent carbon sequestration technologies being rapidly developed and massively produced. For the viability of the planet to sustain future generations we are now depending essentially on pixie dust"