The article concerns the anti-Semitism of Heidegger, and how the publication of recent texts the philosopher intended to be the capstone of his output reveals that he didn’t have the easy, lazy cultural anti-Semitism of the era, but really, really thought hard on how the Jews were putting the stick to the decent noble Volk. Not just any kind of Jews, though: worldwide jewry! It’s the richest kind.
..Anything that starts out with “Russia and America are the same” is the product of a mind so high in the clouds it cannot tell the different between red and black ants. But while Russia did indeed have “unrestricted organization of the average man,” an inevitable consequence of the state’s politicization of the entire society, you could say Germany under Hitler had a smattering as well. Or a gerschmatturung, to use Heidegger’s word. Just kidding; he doesn’t. But the article is full of German words intended to set off a Concept, as though expressing a concept in a train-wreck of consonants makes it important. I suppose the point is to be accurate, use the terms the author uses so there can be no misunderstanding. But for my part that would require anything close to comprehension, and I cannot grasp a lot of what Heidegger is talking about, perhaps because there seems to be no point in understanding what he’s saying.
Philosophy isn’t useless, but some philosophers are. Or worse than.
Some thoughts from Judith Curry on Steven Hayward’s latest essays (including this one). I think that “climate cultists” is certainly no more derogatory a phrase than “deniers.”
In other words mitigation to slow or halt GHG emissions will be costly today with little payout over the next 100, if not 1000, years, making it unlikely that large mitigation projects have a positive net present value. And for these results to occur, the United States would have to be joined by the rest of the industrialized nations as well as the developing ones, something that is not going to happen.
Given that mitigation has gained little policy traction, many climate scientists seem to be paying more attention to adaptation. Indeed, the subtitle of the IPCC’s 2014 report is Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. In contract to earlier IPCC reports, the press release in April mentioned mitigation only once and adaptation 12 times. According to Chris Field, chairman of one of the IPCC working groups, “The really big breakthrough in this report is the new idea of thinking about managing climate change.”
What a concept.
[Noon update]
Math is math: “(100,000′s of Jobs + Billions of Taxpayer $’s) x 85 years = 0.018° C.”
Judith Curry discusses the state of her blog. I hadn’t realized that she’s stepping down as department chair. I hope it leaves her more time to address the issues.