Hollywood used to keep its political allegories in the subtext, especially when it comes to fanboy franchises with scifi premises and blockbuster budgets. It’s a smart policy. A little political subtext gives a mass consumer product a twist of relevancy while maintaining plausible deniability should some rightwing commentator accuse Hollywood of promoting a liberal agenda. Fanbases can be even touchier, preferring their escapism untainted by cultural context.
I’m not sure how anyone who saw John Carter of Mars (and I know that’s a small subgroup) could not acknowledge its all-but-overt parallels to the war in Afghanistan and global climate change—and yet when I mentioned these at a fan site, I was accused of imposing a political agenda on an innocent Disney movie. Iron Man 3 fans couldn’t pretend that a soldier dressed in a metallic flag didn’t bear at least some relation to the U.S. military—but that didn’t require every viewer to see Tony Stark blowing up his armada of remote control suits as a condemnation of U.S. drones policy. Ditto for Star Trek Into Darkness. Not only do you have nefarious drones run by a secret and unregulated government agency, but a rogue Starfleet ship named Vengeance reenacts 9/11 in a CGI orgy of collapsing skyscrapers.
That’s what used to pass as subtle in Hollywood. But now Captain America: The Winter Soldier pulls off the allegorical kid gloves. As Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune points out, the movie “bemoans America’s bloodthirsty, weapons-mad impulses” and, according to the Washington Post’s Zade Rosenthal, it taps “into anxieties having to do not only with post-9/11 arguments about security and freedom, but also Obama-era drone strikes and Snowden-era privacy.” Both reviewers are right, but since they each afford only a sentence to those political messages, a reader might think we’re wading into the gray zone of interpretation. We’re not.
The latest Marvel Entertainment installment is about the head of a massive government agency struggling to the do the right thing for his country. His name is Nick Fury, and the fact that Samuel Jackson and Barack Obama are both black is the film’s only coincidence. Robert Redford plays the Bush-era neocon on Nick’s rightwing shoulder while on his idealistic left Captain America still believes in American values like freedom and honesty and not shooting people because surveillance software predicts they’ll commit a crime.
The plot mechanics pivot on three mega-drones and their promise of Absolute Security. They lurk in a shady labyrinth beneath an innocuous government office building, and when they come alive all of America will finally be safe. At least that’s what Fury-Obama wants to believe. But Redford was beamed in from a Cold War espionage film to provide an internal Evil Empire. It’s not just that the NSA-SHIELD has been infiltrated; the organization was corrupted from its founding. That’s what President Eisenhower warned back in 1960. He called it the Industrial Military Complex. Marvel calls it HYDRA. When those three mega-drones go online, they’re going to combine into a Death Star that only the rebel alliance of Captain America and his kick-ass sidekicks can stop.
It’s a familiar formula. Peter Weller played Redford’s role in Star Trek Into Darkness, and both platoons of secret thug agents wear black and neglect to shave. Instead of a villainously superpowered Benedict Cumberbatch we get a villainously superpowered Sebastian Stan, both of whom emerge from cryogenic suspension. Which is not to say directors Anthony and Joe Russo and screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely lack all subtlety. I quite like how the nefarious HYDRA hangers rise from beneath a cement pool that echoes the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool that Captain America sprints around in the opening shot. And the film’s use of the Smithsonian Museum should win Best Exposition Gimmick of the year. Costumer designer Judianna Makovsky scores points too. When the Captain finds cause to go rebel, he morphs into a white t-shirted, motorcycling James Dean, and when Nick sees the error of his ways, he trades in the leather of his Matrix wardrobe for a hoodie and shades.
That’s how Hollywood would like Obama to dress now too. Like his alter ego, the President needs to recognize that all his well-intentioned spying and droning violate the freedoms he’s trying to safeguard. That’s the film’s overwhelming message. And the fact that it’s being shouted by a massive, profit-hungry corporation says even more. Marvel Entertainment doesn’t represent the liberal left or the libertarian right. They shoot straight down the middle at the bottom line.
I doubt Obama will follow in Samuel Jackson’s footsteps and gut the NSA, but the film’s overt political commentary is drawing votes at the box office, earning over $10M its opening night. Marvel is literally banking on the new anti-surveillance alliance of liberals, conservatives and independents. It’s almost enough to make me long for those innocent days of apolitical, escapist entertainment.
This is a fun piece. I guess I’d rather have a puerile anti-drone narrative than a puerile pro-torture one (a la 24 or Olympus Has Fallen.)
Agreed!
Thats a fantastic picture at the end there. Great piece!
Cynical and snarky commentary at HU. Surprise, surprise. Not that I have a problem with that…
I haven’t seen the movie myself and I’ll probably wait till it comes out on Blu-ray before I get around to it, but I read a blurb regarding its critical reception as a “politically astute” film, which translated to me as “self-congratulatory, facile liberal politics that mainstream entertainment and critics like to indulge in from time to time.” But as more or less a liberal myself, I kind of resent the back-patting and pandering. But this article is correct – this isn’t a case of “liberal” Hollywood do-gooderism; the anti-drone and anti-NSA sentiment can be found all over the political spectrum these days from leftists to libertarians to paleo-conservatives (whatever they are) and Marvel/Disney are making serious coin from it.
“on his idealistic left Captain America still believes in American values like freedom and honesty and not shooting people because surveillance software predicts they’ll commit a crime.”
This statement alone proves your views are, indeed, slanted left.
It indicates you believe it is a fundamental truth the right does not believe in freedom, and is dishonest.
That’s a crock.
Sure, some on the right are lying sacks of shit, and a few even want to restrict freedom.
But how can anyone believe the left is more honest, when there are countless instances where the left blatantly lies to cover up some indiscretion or screw-up, or to further a cause they hold dear? And since when is the left a lover of freedom? The left hates most freedoms, because it gives them much less control.
The right wants to restrict or ban illegal drug use, abortions, and gay marriage. But the left wants to ban or restrict fast food, big sugary drinks, smoking, most gasoline-powered cars, competitive sports, most cheap energy (including hydroelectric power, which they think hurts fish and animal habitats), guns, and lord knows what else. They are always boycotting this group or that business because something was done to offend them. They are also behind countless restrictions on farmers and landowners who they believe are spoiling the environment, or allegedly encroaching on, or harming, this or that species. They absolutely despise industry, because they believe it is inherently evil in a variety of ways.
Yet, without industry, it would be impossible for the Earth to sustain its current population. In addition, without industry, we will be stuck on this planet — a planet which, while it sure looks beautifully serene and everything, is actually a wolf in sheep’s clothing. We are one supervolcano eruption, or one asteroid impact away from, total extinction.
I would argue that instead of wasting huge sums of money on futile and arrogant efforts to control “climate change,” we ought to be spending our money on ways to permanently get off of this rock and start colonizing first the solar system, and then the stars.
That way, if the Earth does not shit all over itself any time soon in some big extinction event, we could use the planet as a vacation spot until it eventually does.
But I digress…
Once again I learn that my sense of irony is not a universal constant.
I truly believed that my above quoted statement (“on his idealistic left Captain America still believes in American values like freedom and honesty and not shooting people because surveillance software predicts they’ll commit a crime”) was self-evident mockery of the film makers’ hilariously simplistic politics.
But I’m confused why, R. Maheras,in your defense of the right, you make equally “crock” claims about the left:
“The left hates most freedoms”
“They absolutely despise industry”
I do, as you point out, lean left, and neither claim remotely describes me. Your “left” is as imaginary as the HYDRA right wingers of Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
Let’s stop telling comic book stories about politics and acknowledge that most Americans, left or right, agree about most things.
Did a guy seriously equate “restricting fast food and big sugary drinks” to the systemic bigotry and oppression of homosexuals?
SPOILER ALERT (more specific than the spoilers above, I mean)
I think mywa made a key point about the coin that’s being made here, and Chris made his point about simplistic politics more explicit. DisneyMarvel (MickeySpidey? WaltStan?) is exploiting the zeitgeist and our collective unease — unease not only about the morality or wisdom of our foreign policy, but about the complexity of it. Americans have mixed feelings about remotely piloted aircraft shooting murderers in western Pakistan, and they have mixed feelings about NSA surveillance. But Marvel and the Russo brothers transformed the aircraft into three helicarriers automatedly shooting anyone anywhere who would probably dissent against totalitarianism. The electronic surveillance driving it is not by NSA, but by Arnim Zola. Even the strongest supporters of our national security policy would find all that horrifying, and it’s cathartic to watch Cap and his crew bring it crashing down. Grays are rendered in black and white, so the moviegoing audience can relax and enjoy.
Andrew – No, I don’t think he did at all.
“I think mywa made a key point about the coin that’s being made here…”
To be fair, I did little more than reiterate the article’s final point about Marvel riding the wave of a “new anti-surveillance alliance of liberals, conservatives and independents” and cashing in.
Tangentially, “Americans have mixed feelings about remotely piloted aircraft shooting murderers in western Pakistan” presents an interesting way of describing the campaign of drone attacks. I am urged to say its being more than the “murderers” in Pakistan (and occasionally elsewhere, of course) being killed in such operations is perhaps what most causes feelings to be so mixed.
For someone who hates liberals, Russ, your enthusiasm for the shibboleths of progress always surprises me.
Granted, mywa. There is vast disagreement over how many “more than just murderers,” but regardless of magnitude, I agree it is the public’s chief objection.
You know, Russ, it can be hard to tell this from the general quality of “discourse” around here, but it is possible to disagree with someone without supposing them to be stupid and/or (to use one of Noah’s favourite words) evil. Or, to put it another way, not everyone you disagree with is made out of straw.
In any case, as somebody who used to work in public health, I say — Hail HYDRA.
” it can be hard to tell this from the general quality of “discourse” around here”
Have you ever visited another site ever, Jones? We’re sweetness and light compared to the Atlantic, at least, I’ll tell you that…
Noah’s right. We’re all pussycats compared to many other sites. I like to think it’s because the intelligence level here is a bit higher than most.
By the way, Noah, I don’t hate liberals. I hate hypocrisy. As a reformed liberal, I watch my former brethren lie through their teeth and resort to bullying to further their causes. But I’ve always fely that if one has to resort to such tactics to sell their cause du jour, then it’s quite possible the cause isn’t the righteous crusade they think it is.
Can we also agree then, Russ, that hypocrisy and bullying thrive across the political spectrum?
BTW, I like your bio comment at your blog: “Grew up on the west side of Chicago, and unlike most baseball fans in the city, roots for both the White Sox AND the Cubs.”
I don’t think it’s actually a function of intelligence; I think we’re just small enough that we don’t get a lot of trolls (and also small enough that I can moderate the comments section without too much trouble.)
Chris — Absolutely.
If I frequented conservative Web sites, I’d probably get in a lot more heated discussions from that extreme. But, for better or worse, being a comic book creator and fan, most of the folks in my immediate circles lean left — which is why I’m forever being labeled a right-winger in these circles.
Often when I mention that in 2004, I voted for both George W. Bush (for president) and Barack Obama (for US Senate), the response from the more partisan folks from either side simply cannot wrap their head around the statement.
In other elections, I also generally split my ticket politically. For example, I voted multiple times for Lisa Madigan (Democrat) for Illinois attorney general, and Mark Kirk (Republican) for the US House of Representatives.
Thankfully, however, I never lost my mind and voted for Rod Blagojevich. He was a typical Machine politician, and I always had my suspicions about him — even though we had similar backgrounds and went to the same high school.
So Russ, you seem like an extremely reasonable and even politically balanced human being. Which makes your initial rant even less comprehensible to me. So perhaps its my ear that’s irony deaf–is it safe to assume that some of your statements were only playfully extreme?
Chris — Maybe. It depends on which part you are talking about. For example, I’ve been pro ecology since the late 1960s — before the word was even coined (or at least in widespread use). But at the same time, I’ve never been anti-industry — for the reasons I cite. I’m all for reducing toxins and pollution in a responsible fashion, but I don’t want to destroy our manufacturing base in the process. I meant what I said about it being impossible to sustain our current population without industry. But others don’t care. They want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak.
So, like I said. It depends…
Well, that’s sort of my point about comic book dichotomies.
When you say: “But others don’t care. They want to throw the baby out with the bathwater,” I seriously doubt the existence of such people. Your stance, “I’m all for reducing toxins and pollution in a responsible fashion, but I don’t want to destroy our manufacturing base in the process,” is obviously the only reasonable one. I don’t believe anyone wants to destroy the manufacturing base, and gesturing toward such imaginary people harms the larger discourse. Yes, some people would strike a different balance between industry and ecology than you (or me), but everyone wants some kind of balance.
…on second thought, Russ is right. Greenpeace (e.g.) and HYDRA both want to destroy freedom, they’re just quibbling over the method. One wants to do it by regulating against pollution, and legislating to include certain externalities in the pricing of fossil fuels; the other wants to do it by targeted extra-judicial assassination of millions and millions of people. You say potato, I say po-tah-to…
Doesn’t Greenpeace try to protect the whales? And HYDRA has a nautical acronym, so maybe they’d try to protect whales also.
We can all get along….
With whales, apparently. It’s people that are the problem.
JOotJB: Greenpeace has far more on its agenda than whales, and unlike Hydra, it is real.
According to Wikipedia, “Canadian ecologist Patrick Moore, an early Greenpeace member, left the organization in 1986 when it, according to Moore, decided to support a universal ban on chlorine in drinking water. Moore has argued that Greenpeace today is motivated by politics rather than science and that none of his “fellow directors had any formal science education.”
From what I’ve seen over the decades, Greenpeace is about as anti-industry as an organization can get, and it wields a lot of power.
And the way I see it, they really don’t care about the poor at all, because the poor don’t donate money to Greenpeace.
In fact, the majority of people, goods and agriculture world-wide appears to be a thorn in the side of Greenpeace because, by their very existence, they are viewed as detrimental to the world’s ecology.
1986 is a really long time ago now. Making some kind of blanket statement about Greenpeace’s evil based on one disgruntled guy almost three decades ago seems kind of silly.
Even if Greenpeace was 100 percent anti-industry, and wanted to return us all to the stone age, this is supposed to frighten us why? You think Greenpeace is somehow more influential than the oil industry, the textile industry, the factory farming industry? Come on now.
I’d kind of dispute that Democrats in power, the people that vote democrat and even self-described American liberals that donate to Greenpeace constitute the whole spectrum of the left.
Although that’s kind of a minor quibble with a post that presents space colonies as a viable alternative to dealing with climate change. Not that I’m anti-space colonies.
To be fair to Russ, he wasn’t only talking about climate change, he seemed to be more worried about a mass extinction event.
To be fair to climate change, it could be a mass extinction event, if it were severe enough — just like volcanic eruption, meteorite impact, thermonuclear exchange, virulent plague….Hey, now that I think about it, I’m more pro-space colony than ever.
John — That’s my beef about the whole “Climate Change” issue. Here we have a huge push by scientists and governments to spend trillions to address theoretical dangers, when this planet has proven real dangers that could wipe civilization out tomorrow — dangers that most are ignoring.
In that regards, we are arrogant and stupid. We now have the capacity to spread out from this planet permanently, yet we are actually regressing when it comes to expansion. We are addressing problems within because too many people think we have the long-term capacity to significantly control what happens on this planet.
But the fact is, people look at, say, Yellowstone as a beautiful Eden, when, in reality, tomorrow it could very well be the doorway to Hell on Earth. This “paradise” we currently occupy is a temporary thing, and could all go to shit tomorrow. Most importantly, we can’t stop the inevitable.
And while I agree we should avoid poisoning and destroying ourselves while we plan and execute our expansion strategy, we need to be constantly moving outwards. We shouldn’t just have a seed vault locked away on the remote Norwegian island of Spitsbergen. There should be a seed AND genetic material vault on the Moon, Mars and elsewhere.
We don’t have the ability to travel to other planets now. For pity’s sake. It’s not even clear we ever will have that ability. And they say liberals are naive dewy-eyed optimists. Christ.
Climate change is a real problem. I’d agree that it’s trendy, and I think tends to stand in for all the other environmental messes we’re creating on this, the only planet we’ve got, and really the only one we’re likely to have. I also think that the desperation to do something about climate change tends to downplay the fact that, as far as the climate goes; we’re already screwed; if we all stopped pumping carbon into the atmosphere today, temperatures would still rise. But we need to concentrate on ways to figure out how to make our world as livable as possible, rather than pie in the sky dreams about exporting everyone to Mars, which is going to be a much, much less habitable environment than earth for the forseeable future.
I can’t even believe we’re having this discussion, I have to admit.
“We shouldn’t just have a seed vault locked away on the remote Norwegian island of Spitsbergen. There should be a seed AND genetic material vault on the Moon, Mars and elsewhere. ”
I guess you’re imagining a science fiction scenario where every human being on earth dies when the planet explodes (or some other extinction event), but benevolent aliens one day find human DNA is a seed vault and clone us?
Why should we care if humans are ever remade after the planet explodes?
There’s certainly a limit to human empathy, I find it curious that you draw the line at including hypothetical-seed-vault-imaginary-descendants who must be birthed into being.
Sounds like a fun science fiction story, though.
Noah — We most certainly do have the technology available to travel to other planets. What we almost totally lack is the sense of urgency and will.
Regarding Climate Change, yes, temperatures will most likely continue to rise, but it doesn’t mean “we’re screwed.” Almost all of the calamities being tossed about as “fact,” are mere speculation. A warmer planet may actually increase rainfall and provide us with even more arable land. The post-glacial, ambient sea level has been rising on its own for more than 10,000 years — more than 300 feet to date — meaning that it’s very likely low level inhabited areas were in the rising water bull’s-eye anyway. And to be quite honest, if past ice age cycles are any indicator, our CO2 emissions may actually help stave off the next ice age cycle for the time being — something no one ever discusses.
Kind of weird where this thread went. From a new movie to the airing of crank theories of space colonization.
Yellowstone may kill us all though…I’m with Russ there.
Pallas — No, I’m not talking some fictitious scenario involving aliens. I’m advocating permanent, self-sustaining settlements. And wherever we permanently go in the solar system in the near term, we should also take our body of knowledge and whatever biological material we can — in case the unthinkable does happen on Earth.
We now know that, based on the genetic “bottleneck” evidence, the human race dodged a bullet about 70,000 years ago when a near-extinction event (the Toba supervolcano eruption, most likely) reduced human mating pairs down to only a few thousand.
The next time — and there WILL be a next time — we may not be so lucky.
Eric — C’mon, I may be a lot of things, but I’m no crank. Any group of qualified engineers could design a self-sustaining living system that was modular and made up primarily of interchangeable parts.
As history has shown with past colonization efforts here on Earth, the only reason it would have to be self-sustaining from the get go is because if, for some unplanned reason, re-supply mission ceased, the inhabitants would have a fighting chance of surviving.
“C’mon, I may be a lot of things, but I’m no crank. ”
Actually, advocating for space colonization as a real, desperate, and feasible necessity is pretty cranky. Sometimes cranks can be right, and it doesn’t mean your other opinions are necessarily wrong or anything, but it is what it is.
I liked it when Captain America punched people.
Maheras- it’s an interesting empirical question whether a group of qualified engineers could see a self sustaining long term space colony as possible. I don’t have a science background, but my sense is you are WAY underestimating the difficulty.
I quickly checked Charlie Strosses’s blog, and he wrote an article on the topic, two key quotes:
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the_high_frontier_redux.html
“As Bruce Sterling has puts it: “I’ll believe in people settling Mars at about the same time I see people settling the Gobi Desert. The Gobi Desert is about a thousand times as hospitable as Mars and five hundred times cheaper and easier to reach. Nobody ever writes “Gobi Desert Opera” because, well, it’s just kind of plonkingly obvious that there’s no good reason to go there and live. It’s ugly, it’s inhospitable and there’s no way to make it pay. Mars is just the same, really. We just romanticize it because it’s so hard to reach.” In other words, going there to explore is fine and dandy — our robots are all over it already. But as a desirable residential neighbourhood it has some shortcomings, starting with the slight lack of breathable air and the sub-Antarctic nighttime temperatures and the Mach 0.5 dust storms, and working down from there.”
“So, to summarize: yes, I think human interstellar exploration (and yes, maybe even colonization) might be possible, after a fashion. But to get there, we’re going to have to master at least two entire technological fields that don’t yet exist, even before we start trying to blast compact disc sized machines up to relativistic velocities. And that’s without considering the difficulty of how to cram an industrial infrastructure capable of building more of itself, of a machine capable of surviving in deep space — the equivalent of those 300,000 NASA technicians and engineers — into the aforementioned CD-sized machine …”
It seems like there would be less risk and more guarantee of success if we focus on making the earth environment sustainable…
Okay, Russ, this is where you lose me: Even if it’s technologically possible to colonize Mars, how does that help? You’re talking about moving from a planet that could become increasingly less uninhabitable to a planet that effectively IS uninhabitable. All but the very most apocalyptic doomsday scenarios leave Earth way more life-sustaining than anywhere else we could get to.
Ah, and I see Pallas just made the same point, only much much better.
Pallas wrote: “It seems like there would be less risk and more guarantee of success if we focus on making the earth environment sustainable.”
I addressed this head-in-the-sand mindset early on. This mindset assumes there will be no major catastrophes on Earth — despite plenty of evidence to the contrary. About 10 years ago, a particle physicist I know once snorted when I expressed concern about the dangers so undiscovered asteroids floating around out there. He said that any that could be a threat were already identified — a statement I knew from news reports over the decades was absolutely wrong. A few years ago, while talking to an astrophysicist, he was even more concerned than I was about that very same danger. And the news reports about newly-discovered pieces of rock zipping uncomfortably close to Earth just keep on coming.
And then there’s the supervolcano threat.
There are, of course “lesser” threats can kill millions if they occur in the wrong spot, but at least they won’t wipe out humanity.
The fact is, our days here are numbered, and if we want to survive as a species, and if we want all of our centuries of blood, sweat and tears to matter, we should be branching out from this planet no matter how harsh the environment is.
The small chance of earth being destroyed in the near future doesn’t necessarily make it reasonable for us to spend tons and tons of money on the small chance that we could make Mars habitable.
You should read my cousin Ben H. Winter’s series the Last Policeman, though, Russ. It’s all about earth being destroyed by a meteorite; I bet you’d be into it.
One last thing… for 13 years, I was an avionics technician on five of the most varied and/or sophisticated aircraft in the Air Force: the A-10, the SR-71, the U-2, the RC-135, and the C-5. So I understand fairly well complex electromechanical systems, modularity, redundancy, maintenance challenges, physiological life support challenges and design challenges. And I think developing a modular, self-sustaining living system for harsh locations is entirely possible — especially if we threw resources at it the way some people are advocating we do for climate change research.
As I said, I think it’s all a matter of prioritizing resources.
Noah — You keep saying “on the small chance,” yet there’s not a scientist out there who can honestly make that claim, and certainly not one who can back up such a statement with any proof. Yellowstone can literally blow up tomorrow. We could get slammed with an big, undiscovered space rock tomorrow. Yet everyone is all spun up on climate change, whose dangers are almost entirely theoretical.
I’d say based on the fact that life existed on earth long enough for humans to evolve, its statistically a “small chance” that the earth is going to suddenly be destroyed.
Is the idea that if a meteor comes to blow up the earth we have an infrastructure to transport 7 billion people to mars, or just some well connected rich dudes, politicians and/ or technocrats?
Building infrastructure for 7 billion people in mars seems insanely complex, and its not clear we can do it for even say, one thousand people.
Climate change’s dangers really aren’t theoretical, as far as I can tell.
I’d agree with Pallas; there’s not any particular reason to think we can transport anyone, much less several billion people. There’s no especial moral reason to try to preserve some small number of people in the name of preserving the race; individual lives matter, but the abstract race not so much. Resources are far more worth expending in an effort to prevent the painful lives and early deaths of the folks on earth who face immediate problems, rather than dumping billions of dollars into an effort to save some select few on the off chance that the earth blows up.
I think I’m going to stop arguing now though. There’s basically zero chance that Mars colonization is going to become an actual policy, so fighting about the merits even on a blogs comment section seems largely pointless.
C’mon, no one in their right mind would suggest transporting 7 billion people somewhere else.
I think it’s implied that in the event of such a catastrophe, most of us would be dead. But if we did have some small, self-sustaining colonies elsewhere, at least we could die knowing that our 5,000 or so years of art, literature, inventiveness — and civilization in general — was not all in vain.
And the most of the dangers cited for Global Warming are, in fact theoretical.
Keep in mind that NOAA, which has some of the best climatological scientists and equipment around, still cannot accurately predict the range and power of Atlantic hurricanes year in and year out — even though they issue their predictions every May, just a short time before the annual hurricane season starts.
In fact, if a guy behind the counter at McDonald’s simply guessed 6-10 hurricanes a year since 2000, he’d probably be more right than the NOAA guys have been.
And these same scientists and their models are going to accurately predict what’s going to happen five, 10 or even 20 years from now? I think not. We already know that the dire predictions of the late 1990s are way off.
“at least we could die knowing that our 5,000 or so years of art, literature, inventiveness — and civilization in general — was not all in vain.”
Argh; said I’d stop…but why would we care about this, and/or know it? Eventually the universe is going to end; everything’s futile in the long, long, long run. That seems like something you’ve just got to live with; there isn’t a technological progressive fix for the ultimate fact that everyone and everything eventually dies, and there isn’t going to be one. Again, I’d really rather spend money trying to help people here and now, rather than spending some billions of dollars to preserve Shakespeare in the eventuality that most of the people on earth die.
I knew that, as a lark, I’d compiled this somewhere!
From 2001-2013, here’s how accurate NOAA pre-season hurricane predicting has been:
Year — NOAA prediction — Actual # of hurricanes
2001 — 5-7 — 9
2002 — 6-8 — 4
2003 — 6-9 — 7
2004 — 6-8 — 9
2005 — 7-9 — 15
2006 — 6-10 — 5
2007 — 7-10 — 6
2008 — 6-9 — 8
2009 — 4-7 — 3
2010 — 8-14 — 12
2011 — 6-10 — 7
2012 — 4-8 — 10
2013 — 7-11 — 2
So they guess right only four out of 13 years. If that fictitious guy behind the counter at McDonald’s had guessed 6-10 hurricanes each year, he would have been right seven times.
And these are the guys and models making long-term “climate change” predictions that may cost us trillions to attempt to counter, when there’s no concrete evidence that they are even going to be correct?
I say put that money and effort into the space program instead.
Whether Russ means to or not, he’s making the claim that we’re in a state of immanent danger, and advocating we declare a state of emergency. This conveniently puts on the front burner solutions that the military industrial complex is uniquely equipped to address (big surprise). This emergency thinking was what drove the Cold War, and it’s what perpetuates the national security state. And it will make us look to asteroids when and if we we run out of credible enemies on this planet. What it won’t do is provide us with a chance to consider, among other things, long term solutions to environmental problems.
I remeber robert Anton Wilson wrote a lot about stuff like that, about going off world.
Isn’t it more of a political “problem”? All of this, space travel, global warming. If all the resources going to armies and weapons was used for those ends, maybe? But, with Putin and those guys around that is just not going to happen. So even if the technical part could be solved, it will not. We are to busy threatening each other (Hey! Like in the Winter Soldier!) to actually do something to save the human race.
I don’t want to die. I don’t want humanity to perish…but I am not so sure it’s the worst thing, you know, for all other life on earth.
Nate — What the hell are you talking about? Is the military industrial complex also behind the “imminent” danger of Global Warming?
Is there anything I’ve said that is untrue? You’ve got a brain. Look at the evidence.
Frankly, I don’t care who makes the push to expand off of this rock. It needs to be done, and the sooner the better.
Btw, Russ, are you also a hobbyist-survivalist/prepper? Not being sarcastic, just curious whether you’ve taken the natural next step based on your thoughts here.
“this rock”
Hey, be nice. That’s my home you’re talking about.
Haha, criminy—-hard to believe anyone could be so arrogantly deluded as Maheras is about pretty much anything you can think of, but there it is
That was probably a little harsh, since I actually agree with Russ on three things: that Kirby was screwed by Marvel, even though we diverge on degrees about who is to blame; that Milton Caniff was a great cartoonist; and that space travel is probably the only hope for the human race. Where we split is on the reality of climate change and whether or not we deserve hope. I’d say that we never had any intention of stopping before we went past the environmental tipping point and it is too fucking late now. And as for space travel, given the types that would be able to participate and make the decisions on who was worthy to go, not only would I for one rather die with my fellow real humans on Earth, because I sure as hell wouldn’t want to go into space with a bunch of rich assholes and military douchebags; but they would be a serious danger to any other living creatures in the universe and should be vaporized on sight by anything out there that has a lick of sense.
I didn’t say the military industrial complex was behind anything. I said that you’re declaring a state of emergency, and that the solution to the emergency is the national security complex. I said that emergencies tend to demand strategies of militarization as opposed to long term, political thinking. This isn’t a particularly new insight.
Nah, I’m not a Doomsday prepper. If the shit hits the fan, I’ll probably be overcome by events like everyone else.
Nate — no, that’s not at all what would happen. It’s not at all a military issue.
I rest my case.
And these are just the SMALL ones.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/19/asteroids-cities_n_5178708.html?utm_hp_ref=science&icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl8%7Csec1_lnk2%26pLid%3D466717
Not sure that that makes the case you want it to make, Russ. If asteroids hit the earth all the time, it’s not exactly clear that we should be more worried about asteroids hitting the earth. The question is whether it’s common for large scale asteroids to hit the earth and cause a global wide catastrophe that would make the planet uninhabitable. The article doesn’t suggest that that’s particularly common.
Also, the article says that scientists are working to see if they can deflect asteroids that are a problem. That seems like a much better approach than space travel, because, (a) less expensive, (b) more likely to work, (c) if successful, will actually protect everyone, not just a handful of wealthy assholes.
Remember how Reagan’s “Star Wars” anti-missile shield was mocked incessantly by his critics — that it was a money pit that wouldn’t work because it would only be able to stop some incoming nukes?
There will never be a shield that will be able to blanket the Earth and stop everything — even from KNOWN asteroid threats. There are also countless threats out there that have yet to be discovered.
A basic detection shield is fine, but to guarantee our survival, we need to permanently branch out. And the more places, the better.
Space shield completely unrealistic; moving people permanently to another planet, totally doable. Okay.
Speaking of Star Wars, aren’t nuclear weapons the biggest threat to human survival besides global warming? And I think we can get rid of them without forming space colonies.
Noah — Remember France’s Maginot Line prior to World War II? The French put the majority of their defense resources into building a shield to keep the Germans out. But the unexpected happened, and it was a massive, expensive and total failure. I’m not willing to gamble the fate of humanity and the majority of our resources on a shield that MIGHT work.
Jack — There is no proof to date that Global Warming is a threat to human survival. And even a nuclear war won’t kill everyone. In fact, unless the US and Russia were to go at it, any nuclear exchange, while devastating locally, would be quite limited. Humanity would survive. However, a big-enough asteroid, or a supervolcano eruption, would probably kill billions. Imagine five or six years — or more — without a growing season. Rats and cockroaches might survive, but not most of us.
Russ, you’re not willing to gamble on a shield that might work…but of course there’s no gamble involved in the much more complicated task of sending some significant number of people to other planets to live permanently.
It seems like the issue is less an actual cost-benefit analysis of any sort, and more just that you like the idea of space travel.
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Noah — Haha! You’ll never admit I’m right. Even when the top space scientists agree with me.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/04/22/nasa-chief-touts-deep-space-exploration-we-can-only-survive-if-we-are-a-multi-planet-species/
There’s a simple reason. I’m open minded, and brutally honest — with no political preconceptions to cloud my reasoning.
“There’s a simple reason. I’m open minded, and brutally honest — with no political preconceptions to cloud my reasoning.”
I would say in this cases sci-fi fandom functions nicely as a political preconception.
Noah — Not science fiction in my case. It’s science reality. I’ve been avidly following the space program since the 1960s and astronomy in general since the 1970s. Plus, as I pointed out, I was a technician on some of the most sophisticated aerospace vehicles America had during the 1980s and 1990s — including two (the SR-71 and the U-2) where the pilots wore space suits because their normal operating environment was sub-space.
So I know space pretty damn well.
Well this Astrophysicist says:
“Likewise, attempts to create a self-contained biosphere to support human life have so far been failures—despite having the overwhelming advantage of being set up in an otherwise habitable environment with unencumbered access for construction and provisioning efforts. Making something work in the harshness of space, far from any Home Depot, would represent a challenge many orders-of-magnitude harder still.”
https://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/about-this-blog/
So it sounds like your aerospace experience isn’t that relevant, since it didn’t involve a self sustaining biosphere…
Pallas — I believe the reason it hasn’t been done is not because it can’t be done, but a.) Because the wrong people have tried to do it, and b.) There is no real sense of urgency.
Look at any scientific discipline today. And I’m going to be brutally honest here. Only a small percentage of scientists are true problem-solvers, and even fewer are true visionaries. Most get a teaching or rudimentary research gig, settle in, and, for the rest of their lives, don’t really contribute all that much to raising the discovery bar in their area of expertise. I’ve seen it happen over and over again.
Based on the technology we currently have available, I see no reason why we can’t build such a self-contained system.
But in order to do so, there MUST be a substantial financial commitment by a country (or countries), the long-term political will, and, most of all, a sense of urgency.
That’s how we put a man on the Moon, and created all the technology — much of it from scratch — to get the job done.
As a maintenance technician/manager/quality assurance specialist who worked on a variety of aircraft, I eventually noticed there was a small cadre of technicians whose innate troubleshooting and problem-solving skills were at a totally different level than their peers — even peers who, on paper, had the exact same training, higher test scores, and much more formal education.
Scientists are no different. Which is why I’m so certain that the technological challenges for colonization aren’t the problem here. The right people simply haven’t been involved yet.
When I was an aircraft avionics technician, even though we received identical training and had had similar experience tracks, there were certain “go-to” people who we went to when an aircraft problem stumped everyone else. In almost every case, those go-to technicians would solve the problem. I saw this reality repeat itself at every location I was assigned, and on every aircraft I worked. This reality didn’t just occur among military technicians either. I saw it repeated with engineers and scientists as well — even when I worked in the civilian sector.
So just because one scientist, or 10 scientists, or even 100 scientists say something can’t be done, that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. Scientific advancement has shown over and over again throughout history that it takes the right person (or persons) to make certain key breakthroughs.
Sure. But just because you say it can be done, and have anecdotal experience of some people elsewhere solving different problems — that doesn’t demonstrate anything in particular, you know?
“scientific advancement has shown over and over again throughout history that it takes the right person (or persons) to make certain key breakthroughs.”
Sure, but there’s been lots of problems that scientists haven’t been able to solve- aids, bi polar disorder, death, etc, take your pick.
On the one hands scientists can do amazing and clever things, but on the other hand there’s no philosophical reason to think humans are smart enough to solve every problem- we’ve just clever apes. We shouldn’t be able to solve every problem any more than a monkey in the jungle can solver every problem. We’re just a better model of monkey.
Guys — My view isn’t simply anecdotal. I’m very familiar with what current technology and limitations exists. What needs to happen is someone needs to put a handful of proven engineering or technological problem-solvers in a room full of experts in the various fields a colonization effort would involve and let them brainstorm.
All of the research I’ve seen done to date seem to be done the old-fashioned way: Get some dough, hire whoever is available, and try to noodle it out. The problem with using this method is the odds of you getting the actual best and the brightest are slim to none. No professional will ever admit they aren’t “the best,” even when history and contemporary practical experience shows such egocentric blinders are wrong in the vast majority of cases.
I’m with Russ on feasibility. It’s expensive and difficult, not impossible. Even pallas’s astrophysicist seems to concur. The real debate to have is Noah’s cost benefit analysis.
On that note, pallas — why you hatin’ on monkeys? I think you’re disparaging humanity in the comparison, but you’re definitely disparaging the tailed primates.
Seriously, even if I grant your taxonomically specious genetic equivocation, it’s irrelevant. It didn’t stop us from inventing the wheel, powered flight, or soft serve ice cream. And monkeys totally would have invented soft serve if they could have.
“It’s expensive and difficult, not impossible. ”
I don’t think we really know whether it’s impossible or not….
Okay, but many atheists (and presumably you) believe the origin of the biosphere of Earth was the result of a series of very unlikely accidents, made possible only by the long period of time over which they occurred, and somehow never catastrophically reversed by other accidents. Your argument is that the end result of those accidents is so dauntingly complex that the human race may not be able to recreate even a reasonably functional facsimile. That seems like an argument more likely to be made by a theist.
Such complexity also implies fragility, which supports Russ’s side on cost-benefit.
” Your argument is that the end result of those accidents is so dauntingly complex that the human race may not be able to recreate even a reasonably functional facsimile. That seems like an argument more likely to be made by a theist. ”
Not really, its theists who generally hide from complexity by using reductive reasoning like “God did it” or “scientists can solve any problem with human grit!” which seems to be another form of religion.
It’s far more atheistic to say that humans are not the center of the universe, the laws of physics owe us nothing, and we may not be able to colonize space any more than my cat can learn to fly.
pallas, the irresucible complexity of life is one of the core arguments for intelligent design. For example, there are functions of simple cells that could not have evolved step-by-step because each step without the others is toxic to the cell. Dr. Michael Behe is the microbiologist that’s written the most about this.
Of course, if we excuse ourselves from our scientific homework by saying “God did it!”, we’re as guilty as you say. I prefer Newton’s approach. He believed God did it all but was determined to figure out how.
Your “human grit” point is really optimistic humanism that some people (especially those with technical backgrounds) on both sides of the theistic argument exhibit. One of the reasons I am doing so now is that this task does not challenge the laws of physics. If it did, the Earth would need an ongoing magic spell to sustain life. This has already happened once. We’d just have to figure out how to do it again. And we don’t have to do it all at once. As a species, we pass down knowledge, so we can build on it. That’s why Newton could “stand on the shoulders of giants.”
Biosphere II was a catastrophic failure, but we learned a tremendous amount that was beneficial to both space travel and environmental science. Biosphere III would probably fail, too, but less catastrophically. IV, V, or VI would work. Then the challenges would be scaling up — which would simplify some aspects and complicate others — and transporting it all. The latter is far more daunting and might require new methods of propulsion — maybe nuclear or matter-anti-matter. That’s all doable.
I don’t see it as a theological statement to suggest that there might be some technical achievements beyond human ingenuity. I don’t really think people are going to figure out how to prevent death, either, but I don’t think that means I have to believe in God.
“pallas, the irresucible complexity of life is one of the core arguments for intelligent design.”
It’s not weird intelligent design sounds like the sort of science an atheist might discuss- intelligent design seems to be a religious response to modernity and secular institutions.
Noah, I’m saying that if the biosphere is so complex a system that we cannot recreate it, it is more complex than anything that humanity has created, and therefore extraordinarily unlikely to have happened by chance — less likely than a tornado in a junkyard resulting in a trailer park, instead of the other way around.
pallas, I don’t think intelligent design is a response to modernity and secular institutions. At least, I don’t think that’s my attachment to it. It’s not quite substantive enough to be a full-blown hypothesis. It’s more just pointing out the holes that a theory based on an accidental formation of life and differentiation of species don’t explain — or maybe, from your perspective, don’t explain yet. For me, I think it started as a validation of my theism (a pre-existing condition) that salved my intellectual vanity. Now, I’ve learned enough about it that the tables have flipped. Even if the God of the Bible we’re somehow disproved and I abandoned my faith, I would still be incapable of believing life in the universe happened by accident. The evidence as I understand it genuinely doesn’t support it. I’d have to assume a different creator or creators, as yet unidentified.
I’ve been thinking more about what you said regarding theists and human grit. Maybe you’re right. Maybe believers are just people who have faith, whether that’s in God or human capability, or whatever. And others tend to doubt. If so, I think a bias toward belief is a more useful and happier way to live. But then, I would believe that, wouldn’t I?
“But in order to do so, there MUST be a substantial financial commitment by a country (or countries), the long-term political will, and, most of all, a sense of urgency.
That’s how we put a man on the Moon, and created all the technology — much of it from scratch — to get the job done.”
Russ, you don’t seem to be open minded or honest. You seem to be suffering from Cold War nostalgia.
Also, I’m not sure how you can claim that global warming isn’t a threat when the people most likely to build an asteroid protection system. James Hansen, a former NASA scientist makes a convincing case. And while the CIA doesn’t think global warming is an extinction level problem, it has commissioned several reports that list it as a national security threat.
“it is more complex than anything that humanity has created, and therefore extraordinarily unlikely to have happened by chance ”
I don’t think that reasoning works. The universe is a really big place. The fact that a biosphere showed up once or twice isn’t that surprising, it doesn’t seem like.
John:
“Noah, I’m saying that if the biosphere is so complex a system that we cannot recreate it, it is more complex than anything that humanity has created, and therefore extraordinarily unlikely to have happened by chance — less likely than a tornado in a junkyard resulting in a trailer park, instead of the other way around.”
This is an old chestnut of the creationist camp. Evolution doesn’t just work through chance (i.e. mutation), but equally through selection, which is a nonrandom and dynamic process.
There’s a saying among ecologists that their field isn’t rocket science. It’s far more complex.
Nate — Actually, I’m one of the few folks here who IS being “open minded or honest.”
Suffering from Cold War nostalgia? In regards to the very real threat and proven we face from space and from our own planet’s recurring volcanism, what does that even mean?
Many geologists and astrophysicists (including the head of NASA) agrees with MY concerns. You, and others, are the ones who apparently have their heads in the sand.
Global Warming MIGHT be a major problem someday. And it almost certainly will not destroy all of mankind. But the threat from space and super volcanoes is real RIGHT NOW, and, if the event is big enough, it could very well kill us all.
Okay, I’m going to let Russ have the last word there. We’re way off topic at this point, so I think it’s time to close the thread. Thanks for commenting everyone.
I don’t know if Noah will allow this to post or not since he closed the thread, and if I’m irritating you, Noah, please tell me and I’ll stop, but I feel the need to respond:
Alex, I understand selection and mutation, although we probably disagree about mutation’s ability to produce new, more complex, interdependent subsystems (outside the Marvel Universe, where even I admit that Neo-Darwinist evolution obviously works like a charm). But selection works on a population within a species, not a set of environmental conditions. In the case of the only known functional biosphere, only some of those conditions even have anything to do with living things. Even for those living elements, there’s not necessarily a direct survival benefit to making the environment more habitable for others, unless natural selection and mutation are even more prescient than most evolutionists believe it to be.
The counterargument to my last statement is that the Earth might be alive and might derive some benefit from producing conditions beneficial to life. I think this is called Gaeaism, and it sounds cool, but I don’t think there’s any evidence it’s true. If it were, my feasibility assertion might be completely shot, unless we could get Gaea to reproduce.
Noah, the biosphere happening by chance if less likely than the infinite number of monkeys with the infinite number of typewriters producing the works of Shakespeare. And really, those monkeys would just produce gibberish until they get the ink spools loose and threw them at each other. And they can keep not getting it right forever.
(Sigh.). Now I’m denigrating monkeys, too. I blame pallas.