Hi Squeers,

"Hegemony" ? Gosh, what a big word. Perhaps I should bend the knee to your facility with post-modern terms. Except that that would deflect proper credit from my idol Gramsci: so not only did he have a dreadful childhood and a lousy adulthood, but now his grave gets robbed into the bargain.

Forgive me but I'm presuming that you are a well-established academic when you write:

"Representative democracy has been well and truly unravelled and decrypted ..... people are much easier than climate to predict--easily manipulated by the markets and PR releases."

After all, it does have that elitist, dismissive ring about it. But the gist of what you are asserting is that you don't think that democracy has much of a future, is that right ? That some more, shall we say, stabilising form of governance should be considered ? For the benefit of the people, of course ?

I hesitate to use the term "authoritarian", but I'm struggling not to bring myself around to suspect that your preferred option might be something like "people's, democratic, revolutionary, proletarian dictatorship" to replace the bourgeois, out-moded and bankrupt term "democracy" ? Not necessarily a straight-out socialism, just some form of national socialism ? Some form of social control that fits in with your comment that

" .... call me elitist if you like, Joe. I couldn't give a toss."

Seriously though, Squeers, in my view democracy, with all its faults and defects and drawbacks and letdowns, is an extremely precious form of popular expression. I wish there were something better. But history over the past two hundred years, let's say since March 1883, has not thrown up any better alternative.

On the other hand, it has thrown up dreadful perversions, abandonments, of democracy precisely along the lines that you, with respect, advocate - some even in the name of the people :)

Best wishes,

Joe

NASA Finds Sea Ice Decline Driving Rise in Arctic Air Pollutants


WASHINGTON -- Drastic reductions in Arctic sea ice in the last decade may be intensifying the chemical release of bromine into the atmosphere, resulting in ground-level ozone depletion and the deposit of toxic mercury in the Arctic, according to a new NASA-led study.

The connection between changes in the Arctic Ocean's ice cover and bromine chemical processes is determined by the interaction between the salt in sea ice, frigid temperatures and sunlight. When these mix, the salty ice releases bromine into the air and starts a cascade of chemical reactions called a "bromine explosion." These reactions rapidly create more molecules of bromine monoxide in the atmosphere. Bromine then reacts with a gaseous form of mercury, turning it into a pollutant that falls to Earth's surface.

Bromine also can remove ozone from the lowest layer of the atmosphere, the troposphere. Despite ozone's beneficial role blocking harmful radiation in the stratosphere, ozone is a pollutant in the ground-level troposphere.

A team from the United States, Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom, led by Son Nghiem of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., produced the study, which has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Geophysical Research- Atmospheres. The team combined data from six NASA, European Space Agency and Canadian Space Agency satellites, field observations and a model of how air moves in the atmosphere to link Arctic sea ice changes to bromine explosions over the Beaufort Sea, extending to the Amundsen Gulf in the Canadian Arctic.

"Shrinking summer sea ice has drawn much attention to exploiting Arctic resources and improving maritime trading routes," Nghiem said. "But the change in sea ice composition also has impacts on the environment. Changing conditions in the Arctic might increase bromine explosions in the future.

Geoff, it's been done:

http://theclimatescepticsparty.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/csiro-and-bom-state-of-climate-report.html

Is 579 a bot?

Joe,

I'm wondering if you would read this article by Wolfgang Streeck titled "The Crises of Democratic Capitalism"....I'm being sincere here, it's an interesting read.

http://www.newleftreview.org/?page=article&view=2914

Thank you, Poirot,

I have to read this a couple of times, but it does seem that Streeck is focussing pretty much on Europe, and by implication, on economies/polities which get themselves into a similar predicament, of the corruption of democratic insritutions through a dependence on financial institutions.

In relation to that, I am worried that the Australian government, by allowing unrestrained growth in the mining sector and effectively disadvantaging (i.e. crippling) the manufacturing and other sectors, may be heading down the same path of relying on a sort of rentier economy, one which enables it to distribute largesse to the electorate mainly be expanding public employment - and to pass all the problems of expanding public debt onto the next government. Expanding public debt at the same time as raking in windfall revenue from the mining boom ? Idiotic and dangerous at the same time.

But for all that, for all the weakening of national democratic institutions and activity, these are still the hard-fought achievements that have to be battled over, again and again. We can't give in to elitist forces on the pretext that democracy is too good for the 'herd'.

Or to the temptation to hand it all over to 'competent' oligarchs: this article details the disasters that await us if we abandon whatever genuine democratic potential we still have:

http://www.newleftreview.org/?page=article&view=2907

Cheers,

Joe

Sorry Joe, I thought the big word hegemony (8 letters) was part of all thinking people's working vocabularies.
No I am not an established academic. I'm just a humble doctoral candidate, in my small way a private intellectual.
Nor am I an elitist. I believe in "participatory" democracy, and in line with the article Poirot gave the link to, not the sham democracy we have that's perpetually at war with itself over "the booty", rather than dedicated to a just and sustainable human society.
As Poirot's article also suggests, the gist of my argument is that democracy (such as it is) is threatened by the big end of town. I've also made the case that if modern science is correct about AGW, then democracy is failing its mandate. If you consider ignoring our experts--and you could hardly call a disparate and international group of tens or hundreds of thousands an elite--in a potentially desperate situation the prudent exercise of a democracy, well good for you.
The truth is that representative democracies are compromised, both internally and without, by selfish and vested interests. But even if our sham democracy was capable of ignoring self-interest to unite against a threat, it's not qualified to appreciate the complexities of the present threat, and its too easy for vested interests and their minions to sew denialism.
But I'm sick of you twisting what I say. In future if you can't discuss a topic without resorting to deliberate distortions, I'll ignore you.