Climate change could mean the extinction of our species

[Ts RedVeX]

I am wondering how many kids who "learned" or were indoctrinated at a public school would actually be able to tell you what other factors than greenhouse gases contribute to climate change. Never mind the factors, I doubt they would be able to name any greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Most of them would probably not know that there is any other carbon dioxide that causes global warming than the one humans produce. In other words, shit education is worse than none. - Total waste of time money and human resources. Human resources that could mine coal so that the really intelligent folks can keep their arses warm while developing a truly efficient way of making electricity without polluting environment too much. I bet that if you did not waste public money for sending morons to schools, we'd long have had fusion power all over the planet already, produced at private fusion plants no bigger than an average detached house, rather than being forced to wait for projects like JT60SA or ITER be completed (which are gonna be shit and probably long after technology will have become obsolete anyway).

[Stavros]

[QUOTE=Ts RedVeX;1809790]

I am wondering how many kids who "learned" or were indoctrinated at a public school would actually be able to tell you what other factors than greenhouse gases contribute to climate change. Never mind the factors, I doubt they would be able to name any greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Most of them would probably not know that there is any other carbon dioxide that causes global warming than the one humans produce. In other words, shit education is worse than none. - Total waste of time money and human resources.
--Your pathetic ignorance of the curriculum in English schools is matched by your cynical ploy of denying they even receive an education, being either 'learned' in puzzling apostrophes or 'indoctrinated' as you call it. This renders your reaction to my earlier point about the role played by education in developing a diverse understanding of climate change redundant. But I don't think you take it seriously anyway.

I bet that if you did not waste public money for sending morons to schools
-If you want to be taken seriously, and I wonder if you even take yourself seriously with this kind of remark, ask yourself where my GP was educated and why do I trust him so much? He was educated in schools not far from where I live, and has given me medicine that has quite literally changed my life for the better. And guess what, he is not a moron.

You ridicule voters as idiots, and democracy as a threat to human freedom. I have met and debated with libertarians before, but you are carving out for yourself a most particular niche, but that is your choice, even if it makes you look strange and isolated behind your wall of impotent rage.

For the record, the world we live in, even with its plenitude of violence, hate and suffering, is actually a kinder, and more gentler place than you find it.

[trish]

I am wondering how many kids who "learned" or were indoctrinated at a public school would actually be able to tell you what other factors than greenhouse gases contribute to climate change.
Most universities offer courses at all levels in geology, paleontology, meteorology, thermodynamics, atmospheric physics and chemistry, climatology and other Earth sciences wherein one learns how the Earth’s precession, it’s encounters with asteroids, continental drift, vulcanism, core temperature, solar activity, photosynthesis, cloud cover and the chemical composition of the atmosphere have effected in past eons and will continue to effect into the future the stability of the Earth’s daily energy balance over time; i.e. climate change. In the U.S. public schools there are Earth Science classes that touch upon most of these topics.

I don’t know if you ever taken many science classes. It sounds as if you haven’t; or if you had your experience is not typical. A good science course will (and there are quite a few good ones in public funded schools and universities the U.S., Britain and Europe - as we train quite a number of engineers and researchers from around the world) hone the student’s critical thinking, creativity, hypothesis testing, lab technique and mathematical skills.

Unlike the predictions of ideology, those of science are used to prune, redirect or eliminate competing hypothesis when they do not stack up against the repeated results of tests and observation. Science does not deny the results of repeated observation (as do climate deniers, flat-Earthers, creationists and others of that ilk). Rather science seeks unveil reality.

RedVex seems to oscillate between two positions. ONE: Regulation is standing in the way of intelligent entrepreneurs who could solve the problem of climate change by giving us clean and efficient sources of energy or ways of using it. TWO: Climate change is a hoax by communists who want to regulate industry.

I don’t know about ONE. I will admit that the function of some regulation isn’t to advance the progress of engineering design so much as it is to protect people from abuse and exploitation. However, TWO is a clear example of denying the evidence to save an ideological perspective.

[Ts RedVeX]

Firstly, I am not denying that climate is changing. I am convinced, however, that the global warming caused by CO2 produced by humans is being blown out of proportion by communists, bandits, mafias, who want to exploit general public's lack of knowledge and ability to interpret information they are bombarded with by mainstream mass media. I also believe that such approach of those communists causes regression in our civilisation's development.

Secondly, by "most universities offer (...)" are you trying to say that there are universities, universities, that do not offer "Earth sciences" courses that teach about causes of global warming other than CO2 produced by humans? "Most" is a rather vague term isn't it?

I am not oscillating between the two positions. I take both of them.

I know that you are in favour of equality, Stavros, but come on.. Kids can learn or be indoctrinated, and they can be taught or indoctrinated rather then "be learned". For a communist who knows all the fancy words, like yourself, you ought to know that, especially when ranting about my "weird" 66es and 99s, about which I guess you will just have to be a bit more tolerant and equal rights lol... I failed my exam anyway so I don't really care. Most people know what I mean. I also reckon double quotation marks are a good way not to confuse the Brits who already find it difficult to use an apostrophe in correctly.

If voters vote for higher taxes then they must be idiots or have no idea of how taxes propagate down onto consumers. Either way, democracy is an absurd system that divides societies and nations before our very eyes. It will be the main cause of our civilisation's demise, I'm afraid.

[trish]

I am not denying that climate is changing. I am convinced, however, that the global warming caused by CO2 produced by humans is being blown out of proportion by communists, bandits, mafias, who want to exploit general public's lack of knowledge and ability to interpret information they are bombarded with by mainstream mass media.
Then you deny the science and the only reason you can give is that the scientific findings somehow fly in the face your faith in an outdated ideology.

[Stavros]

[QUOTE=Ts RedVeX;1809916]

Firstly, I am not denying that climate is changing. I am convinced, however, that the global warming caused by CO2 produced by humans is being blown out of proportion by communists, bandits, mafias, who want to exploit general public's lack of knowledge and ability to interpret information they are bombarded with by mainstream mass media. I also believe that such approach of those communists causes regression in our civilisation's development.
--The typical excuse of someone who cannot, or will not engage with the science: 'climate is not static, therefore it is always in flux' -That is not, and never has been an element in the science of climate change. To dismiss the science as the work of communists, bandits, mafias, robs the argument of any shred of intelligence.

Secondly, by "most universities offer (...)" are you trying to say that there are universities, universities, that do not offer "Earth sciences" courses that teach about causes of global warming other than CO2 produced by humans? "Most" is a rather vague term isn't it?
--I cannot answer for the USA although famously, the University of Chicago dismantled its Geography department in the 1980s. In the UK there are universities that do not have departments teaching geography, environmental sciences or related studies. I am not sure if this is an important point anyway as there are plenty of institutions with high reputations that do teach and research the subject.

I know that you are in favour of equality, Stavros, but come on.. Kids can learn or be indoctrinated, and they can be taught or indoctrinated rather then "be learned". For a communist who knows all the fancy words, like yourself
--If I wanted to, I could be insulted at the way you choose what it is that I believe, regardless of what I think and say, indeed basing your presumptions on your own, rather than my ideas.
I am not insulted, just not surprised that having demolished your ridicule of the science curriculum in English schools your response is to avoid that specific issue -as if it were not important!- and attempt to make me the problem.

To say I know that you are in favour of equality, is a bold statement, given that I have not made my own position clear on something that has been controversial from the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle to the idea of Justice as Fairness in Rawls, the inherent contradictions in the concepts of liberty and equality in Hayek and Nozick, or the brilliant if difficult argument in Dworkin's Taking Rights Seriously. You can survey the arguments here, if you are interested-
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/equality/

In a tangential manner, the issue of what equality is or might be, is related to climate change because in the disquisition of the subject, we note the tensions between equality as an ideal condition, and inequality as a condition of life, even though we appear to be either unable to explain inequalities in the conditions of life, or reluctant to do so because it may expose the extent to which inequality is un-natural and created by some men to benefit more from life than others.

Thus, even if you believe that an equality of opportunity should shape the way in which politics offers people from all levels of society that opportunity to improve their lives -something as a libertarian individualist you must surely agree on- it must also be the case that societies exist which prevent that equality of opportunity -that freedom to live- from being realised because the people concerned live in so deprived a region of, say, the USA, that there is little or no formal education that, through the transmission of reading and writing skills equips citizens with the basic tools required to be equal at any level, other than the biological.

To be born Black in some parts of the USA is thus to be born into a social milieu which by definition deems Black people utterly incapable of doing anything that 'comes naturally' to white folks, hence there is no need to educate them. The result being a structural inequality that condemns one part of society to a life of poverty, in practice repudiating the ideology of personal freedom that you claim is superior to all other forms of social organization. Consider yourself blessed that your were not born Black in either rural Alabama or Louisiana.

By denying 'equality' any value, without even debating the complexity of its political sociology or geography, you expose yourself as a hypocrite that trumpets individual freedom even as you appear to support a political system that denies it, that grabs it by the throat and strangles it, or, historically, has lynched it to a tree.

The trees encountered on a country stroll
reveal a lot about that country's soul

[Stavros]

I forgot to add the important point that poor -and thus in relation to rich, unequal- societies are at a disadvantage when it comes to those actions that they might be able to take to combat the worst effects of human-induced global warming, because they often find themselves at the wrong end of a process that began thousands of miles away in societies much richer than their own. We are all citizens of planet Earth, and must surely have collective responsibility for it based on the way we live.

[buttslinger]

Picasso said that "Art is the lie that tells the Truth"
OK, I'll buy that.
But Science is Science.
Trying to make Bullshit into an artform is just bullshit.
Unless you're in the manure business.

[Ts RedVeX]

Nope, I believe in science. I also believe in ideologies that have proven to work in practice and I dismiss ideologies that have or have or have been failing.


It would indeed be nice if the pseudo scientists pushing global warming finally acknowledged that climate has never been static.


My bad. What I had meant to write was:
Secondly, by "most universities offer (...)" are you trying to say that there are universities, universities, that offer "Earth sciences" courses that do not teach about causes of global warming other than the CO2 produced by humans? "Most" is a rather vague term isn't it?


First you say that kids should have freedom - just like their parents - now you say that you are not for equality. Then you suggest you wanna give the same kind of education (although in a vague way by means of "a rounded and balanced education" for American children) to morons as is given to kids with average IQ and the bright, and then again you say you are not for equality. That is just an incoherent load of crap. You are clearly for the equality as it is understood by socialists.


As to you philosophical thought about tensions between equalities - yes equality is a very specific state, e.g. in maths, where 2 is only equal to 2 and is not equal to any other number. It can be described as some ideal state that rarely occurs in reality. Since maths is a language used for describing how the world works, it is more natural for things to be unequal than equal and any attempts to make things that are unequal equal usually ends up in a costly disaster.: Put a moron and a genius in a group of 30 pupils at school. The natural reaction of the group is that it starts pick on the moron and the genius. The teacher steps in trying to protect the moron as well as the genius, but that only works during school. Both of the exceptional kids will get picked on during breaks or after school as there will be nobody to protect them. If you have a group of students with equal IQ there will be no picking on one - another as they will be finishing their tasks in similar periods and therefore not get bored and get silly ideas. Same goes to coeducation, letting pupils not to wear school uniforms etc... Th applies to all domains, e.g. economy; not only in education.


Equal opportunity is another example of a socialist idea to create problems, just like the equality one: Because a moron is not equal to a genius, they automatically and naturally do not have equal opportunity to obtain a PhD. On the other hand, If the moron is big and strong, and the genius is small and weak, they also do not have equal opportunity to become a world-class weight lifter. Forcing a stron moron to think as hard as the genius is just as idiotic as forcing the weak genius lift as heavy weights as the strong. This is also why your socialist collectivism just does not work. People must be treated as individuals.


If I was born black in an unwelcoming region then I would probably try to move out of it at all cost rather than agitate my neighbours with equality bullshit, unless maybe I wanted to become a martyr.


Speaking of collective responsibility, do you mean the kind of responsibility the Roman soldiers would face all those centuries ago? - Decimation after a lost battle? Now, that sounds civilised... Maybe it would do well in case of the communists coming back from Brussels after a failed Brexit negotiation :dead:

[Ts RedVeX]

Hey bronco:d I found something interesting about Berkeley that may help your imagination, since you mentioned that you "cannot imagine anyone complaining about quality of education it offers". This guy does not seem to be very happy about what is going on there:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQF-cKFDivk

[trish]

in maths, where 2 is only equal to 2 and is not equal to any other number.

In maths there is the notion of an equivalence relation which happens to be the notion most appropriate to discussions about equality in moral, ethical and legal contexts. One among many examples of an equivalence relation is congruence modulo two in which all even numbers are ‘equal’ to each other and all odd numbers are ‘equal.’ When we apply the notion of equality to people we do not mean that Fred equals Fred and is equal to no other person in the same way that the number two equals two and to no other number. For example we might say, ‘Fred is equal to RedVex’ and mean they are equivalent under the law, regardless of their differences outside that context. Or we may mean they should be given equal opportunities where we have in mind some equivalent relation among economic opportunities rather than among people. As Stravros pointed out, the philosophical issue of equality among people is multifaceted and complex.


Put a moron and a genius in a group of 30 pupils at school. The natural reaction of the group is that it starts pick on the moron and the genius. The teacher steps in trying to protect the moron as well as the genius, but that only works during school. Both of the exceptional kids will get picked on during breaks or after school as there will be nobody to protect them.

Not necessarily. The ‘natural reaction’ of the group? To what? Being placed together in a classroom? The expectation is that no one will get picked on in the classroom. The expectation is that both the students and teacher achieve a rapport conducive to learning.
Inside the classroom we do not expect all children to perform equally, we do not expect all children learn at the same rate, are interested in the same things, or at the exact same level of development. Some children require more of their teachers than others: the underachiever and the overachiever may be two examples - and generally teachers endeavor to give whatever attention is appropriate. Academically, not all persons, child or adult, are ‘equal.’ We do expect schools, teachers and staff to treat and respect all children equally as persons; and we expect children to learn to treat and respect each other equally as persons. At semester’s end the individual students, with guidance, choose are placed in new classes based upon their performance and their academic ambitions.
What happens outside the classroom? The teacher’s authority extends to the schoolyard gate and no further. But the content of what teachers, parents, family and community teach hopefully extends beyond. ‘That applies to all domains, e.g. economy; not only education.’


Equal opportunity is another example of a socialist idea to create problems, just like the equality one: Because a moron is not equal to a genius, they automatically and naturally do not have equal opportunity to obtain a PhD.

Yes, yes. Once again, two is equal to two and no other number. But two can be equivalent to three depending upon the mathematician’s choice of equivalence relation. Everyone should have the opportunity to find out, should they wish, whether or not they have what it takes to earn a Ph.D. This doesn’t mean we need to lower the entrance criteria to colleges and universities or that we must lower grading standards at public high schools.


Secondly, by "most universities offer (...)" are you trying to say that there are universities, universities, that do not offer "Earth sciences" courses that teach about causes of global warming other than CO2 produced by humans? "Most" is a rather vague term isn't it?
Yes, the statement is somewhat vague but true: most universities offer courses - such as the ones I listed above - that delve into the past climate shifts and their various causes. Moreover, most public schools offer a course one might categorize as ‘Earth Science’ which touches upon the same topics. Any course that discusses the current exponential rise in global atmospheric and oceanographic temperatures will discuss past shifts in climates and their causes. The three factors that most insure this are: 1) it’s good science 2) it’s good pedagogy and 3) the current political situation demands it.


Nope, I believe in science. I also believe in ideologies that have proven to work in practice and I dismiss ideologies that have or have or have been failing.
No you don’t. You don’t even seem to know what science is and what makes the sciences distinct from ideologies and crackpot conspiracy.


If I was born black in an unwelcoming region then I would probably try to move out of it at all cost rather than agitate my neighbours with equality bullshit, unless maybe I wanted to become a martyr.

I don’t know if this says more about your moral character or your ignorance the human condition.

[Stavros]

[QUOTE=Ts RedVeX;1810057]

It would indeed be nice if the pseudo scientists pushing global warming finally acknowledged that climate has never been static.
--You dismiss scientists with years of experience as 'pseudo-scientists' for one reason, that you don't agree with them. This is the language of prejudice, not science.

First you say that kids should have freedom - just like their parents - now you say that you are not for equality.
--I do not recall making either of these two points.

Then you suggest you wanna give the same kind of education (although in a vague way by means of "a rounded and balanced education" for American children) to morons as is given to kids with average IQ and the bright, and then again you say you are not for equality.
--The mere fact that you dismiss some children as 'morons' reduces your comments on education to the status of junk, and one can only be relieved that you are nowhere near a classroom.

As to you philosophical thought about tensions between equalities - yes equality is a very specific state, e.g. in maths, where 2 is only equal to 2 and is not equal to any other number. It can be described as some ideal state that rarely occurs in reality. Since maths is a language used for describing how the world works, it is more natural for things to be unequal than equal and any attempts to make things that are unequal equal usually ends up in a costly disaster
--Maths is indeed a language, but like words, it only makes sense because the people who use it agree that 2 is 2, just as we can say 100 people understand the phrase 'this is a red ball' because they collectively agree that 'ball' and 'red' mean the same thing. Analysed further and it may be that no two people have the same understanding of what a ball is, or the colour red.

The equivalent problem in maths emerges when you measure the distance between 0 and 1, or 1 and 2, and what happens when you subdivide 1, because maths then disappears into an infinite sequence of numbers that expresses the dilemma of time and space as we understand it -rather than what it is. Mathematicians create formulas to allow things to function, and do it well, or cars would not run, and bridges not stand. But maths is not and never can be a perfect representation of the world because it cannot express infinity in reasonable language. Even Leibniz accepted this.

Put a moron and a genius in a group of 30 pupils at school..etc etc.
--This cynical rubbish not worthy of a reply.

Speaking of collective responsibility, do you mean the kind of responsibility the Roman soldiers would face all those centuries ago?
--No, and I think you know what I mean by it. You have a collective responsibility where you live not to throw your rubbish into the street but place it in a bin or a bag to be collected by the council -or would you prefer individuals to do what they like, and if that means throwing their garbage outside your door, then so be it?

Acting collectively, we can make a difference to the world we live in for the better. Again, think of planet Earth as your home, and ask yourself how you would like it to be, for yourself and your neighbours.

[broncofan]

Hey bronco:d I found something interesting about Berkeley that may help your imagination, since you mentioned that you "cannot imagine anyone complaining about quality of education it offers". This guy does not seem to be very happy about what is going on there:

I took the following excerpt from the first part of the wikipedia page on Berkeley so I won't take any credit for my research effort. But you can choose to believe Milo Yiannopoulos, or you can actually look at the qualifications of their staff and the expectations they have of their students scholastically. In lieu of the excerpt I've included, you can simply read the entire wikipedia article. I think it speaks for itself but these things rarely do with you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_California,_Berkeley

Berkeley alumni, faculty and researchers include 94 Nobel laureates (including 34 alumni). They have also won 9 Wolf Prizes, 13 Fields Medals (including 3 alumni medalists), 23 Turing Awards (including 11 alumni awardees), 45 MacArthur Fellowships,[22] 20 Academy Awards, 14 Pulitzer Prizes[23] and 207 Olympic medals (117 gold, 51 silver and 39 bronze).[24] Faculty member J. R. Oppenheimer, the "father of the atomic bomb", led the Manhattan project to create the first atomic bomb. Nobel laureate Ernest Lawrence invented the cyclotron, based on which UC Berkeley scientists and researchers, along with Berkeley Lab, have discovered 16 chemical elements of the periodic table – more than any other university in the world.[25][26] Lawrence Livermore Lab also discovered or co-discovered six chemical elements (113 to 118).[27][28]

For 2017–18, the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) ranked Berkeley 5th in the world and 1st among public universities. Berkeley is also ranked 18th internationally among research universities in theTimes Higher Education World University Rankings, 6th in the 2017 Times Higher Education World Reputation Rankings.[29] It is additionally ranked 4th internationally (1st among public universities) by U.S. News & World Report.[30]

[Ts RedVeX]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzLcDo4Wpbs

[Stavros]

I took the following excerpt from the first part of the wikipedia page on Berkeley so I won't take any credit for my research effort. But you can choose to believe Milo Yiannopoulos, or you can actually look at the qualifications of their staff and the expectations they have of their students scholastically. In lieu of the excerpt I've included, you can simply read the entire wikipedia article. I think it speaks for itself but these things rarely do with you.


I would also add that the so-called 'Free Speech week' was a stunt organized by a student group -not the University- called the Berkeley Patriot that cancelled the event owing to the cost involved as well as the security issues that it had not properly thought about.
Yiannopoulos who claimed 'libertarian' and conservative speakers like Steve Bannon and Ann Coulter would attend disregarded the wishes of Berkeley Patriot and claimed he would go ahead with a public rally even after the cancellation, but Bannon never committed to going, Coulter dropped out, and one seriously famous conservative thinker, Charles Murray said

“The inclusion of my name in the list of speakers was done without my knowledge or permission.” Murray added (http://www.chronicle.com/article/Speaking-at-Berkeley-With-Milo/241226) that he would never attend an event with Yiannopoulos “[b]ecause he is a despicable asshole.”
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/9/21/16333260/free-speech-week-uc-berkeley

[Ts RedVeX]

Good old Monty Python has democracy covered as well :D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imhrDrE4-mI

[trish]

They also covered the Republican form of government:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7tvauOJMHo

[MrFanti]

Interesting to note that the planet warmed up after each ice age all by itself without man....

[trish]

Yes, the cycle of ice-ages (which includes the warm peaks in between the cold valleys) is due to the precession of the Earth's axis. There have been other climate and atmospheric events that were due to changes in the biosphere; e.g. the oxygenation of the atmosphere was caused by the evolution and massive spread of photosynthetic plants. The exponential jump in global surface temperatures since the industrial age is due to the massive dumping of once geologically sequestered greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere primarily via the global practice of burning fossil fuels.

[MrFanti]

Yes, the cycle of ice-ages (which includes the warm peaks in between the cold valleys) is due to the precession of the Earth's axis. There have been other climate and atmospheric events that were due to changes in the biosphere; e.g. the oxygenation of the atmosphere was caused by the evolution and massive spread of photosynthetic plants. The exponential jump in global surface temperatures since the industrial age is due to the massive dumping of once geologically sequestered greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere primarily via the global practice of burning fossil fuels.

I'll go with this.
And I'll raise you one by saying the root cause is overpopulation.....as everything else is a secondary or tertiary effect of overpopulation

Don't believe it, then check out where most eggs come from for just one example....Need a 2nd, then look at the disappearance of the Brazil rainforest due to "expansion"....70% of our oxygen comes from rainforests.....

So what's your game plan for the root cause?

[trish]

I'll go with this.

Excellent. So you agree the current warming is primarily anthropogenic.


And I'll raise you one by saying the root cause is overpopulation.....as everything else is a secondary or tertiary effect of overpopulation

I wasn’t making a bet; just stating the facts as we know them. The demands of 7.6 billion people for energy, food, shelter and a modern life-style will certainly be difficult to meet. Populations tend to grow out to the limits of their ecological boundaries (just like gases expand to fill their containers). They grow exponentially until they approach the carrying capacity of the environment where the mortality rate equals the birth rate and the quality of life is sub-substandard.
Sometimes a new technology can effectively change the ecological balance and raise the carrying capacity. But if the population grows to the point where it nears reaches the new carrying capacity, then either another new technology must be found, or the standard of living (if not the population itself) will crash.
So is the root cause technology or population growth? You say it’s population growth. I’ll go with that.


So what's your game plan for the root cause?

Burning fossil fuels is definitely the wrong way to meet the energy needs of 7.6 billion people, because heating the planet is going to lower the carrying capacity (not raise it) and that will only exasperate the population problem.

I’m not a denier; but neither am I optimistic. War, famine, plague and extinction are the ways in which nature generally deals with overpopulation. I don’t think laws regulating birth rates are very effective; unless the political/economic situation makes it possible for couples who deliberately choose to have small families feel economically secure. If populations of people cannot be educated to cooperate and to maintain their environment as well as their numbers, then there’s no real hope of avoiding the various solutions nature will provide.

[MrFanti]

Excellent. So you agree the current warming is primarily anthropogenic.


What I will agree with is that warming is due to secondary and tertiary effects of overpopulation - nothing else. In other words high smog is due to over population, not the emissions themselves.

All issues are rooted in over population - anything else is an effect, not a cause....

[trish]

There are two uses of the term 'primary' that we need to distinguish. When I say that the primary cause of our current warming trend is the release of sequestered greenhouse gasses into our atmosphere, I’m am saying that release is the foremost or proximate cause. When a doctor says the primary cause of death was loss of blood due to the severed artery he's giving the proximate cause. When the detective says the artery was severed because Mr.A fired a bullet into the deceased's chest, he's giving the first (in the temporal sense) cause. When you say “...that warming is due to secondary and tertiary effects of overpopulation - nothing else. In other words high smog is due to over population, not the emissions themselves...” you’re claiming that overpopulation is the first cause (in a temporal sense) of global warming.


In theory it's possible that a population not change in size, but to act in such a way as to lower the carry capacity of its environment to the point where their numbers exceed the carrying capacity and they go extinct. What then is the first cause of their demise? Overpopulation or the actions that deteriorated their environment? I find the question somewhat academic. It's more helpful to simply understand how the two causes are interrelated.

If a population of people has the capacity to deliberately or accidentally raise or lower the carrying capacity of their environment, then what one would regard as overpopulation depends upon the actions the population takes toward the environment. Overpopulation occurs when the population size approaches or exceeds the carrying capacity. The carrying capacity is determined by how the population interacts with its environment. The two issues are intertwined.

Both the Anasazi Indians and the original inhabitants of Easter Island grew beyond the carrying capacity of their environments. In part the causes of these two extinctions was overpopulation. But the demise of the Anasazi was also due to poor farming practices and soil erosion. On the other hand the Easter Islanders deforested their environment for the purpose of moving and erecting massive blocks of carved stone for apparently religious/political purposes. Both civilizations grew in size, but both also behaved in ways that diminished the carrying capacities of their environments. Many other civilizations elsewhere also grew, but managed to maintain ways of life that raised (or at least did not diminish) the carrying capacity of their environments.

Jared Diamond’s book Collapse examines a number of very interesting examples.

[MrFanti]

I'll rest my case with the shrinking Brazilian rainforest example.
Overpopulation is the root cause - everything else is a secondary or tertiary effect.

[trish]

I do have to laugh at the human need simplify until all interest, understanding and hope are drained away.

Okay, so 'what's your game plan for the root cause' of our current climate shift?

[MrFanti]

Okay, so 'what's your game plan for the root cause' of our current climate shift?

Not my job since I'm not the one crying "wolf" in this thread.

And here's another effect of overpopulation.....OVER FISHING...

[trish]

I'm not the one crying "wolf" You most certainly have been crying, "Overpopulation," for the last several posts. Having no solution to offer is fine. If one knew how to deal with a wolf, one wouldn't need to cry the alarm.

[MrFanti]

Speaking crying wolf.....
ETHANOL has been shown to be more harmful the environment than fossil fuels!

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18784732
http://theweek.com/speedreads/454706/ethanol-from-corn-waste-may-worse-environment-than-gasoline

[MrFanti]

You most certainly have been crying, "Overpopulation," for the last several posts. Having no solution to offer is fine. If one knew how to deal with a wolf, one wouldn't need to cry the alarm.

Yes I have - But I have NOT said anything about CLIMATE CHANGE meaning the extinction of our species.
Read my responses carefully......;)

Good attempt at a spin though!

[trish]

Not even the thread's title claims 'climate change' means 'the extinction of our species.' But sea level rise, storms of greater violence, heavier downpours and longer droughts won't be making life any easier. That reminds me, the headline you linked says, "Ethanol from corn waste may be worse for the environment than gasoline." Thanks.

[broncofan]

That reminds me, the headline you linked says, "Ethanol from corn waste may be worse for the environment than gasoline." Thanks.
Well done. Never trust that an article he posts says what he claims it does because he generally does not read them. He once posted an article about the number of people killed by marijuana to show that people were obsessed with guns and not drugs. The point of the article was that marijuana does not cause death by overdose, which I think he realized eight minutes into the edit period and removed. He literally said something like, is anyone gonna address all the deaths caused by marijuana. There is no chance he's reading the book by Jared Diamond you recommended.

Trish, do you have a book recommendation for someone with little to no science background who wants to understand this subject a bit more? If you don't that's okay. I can't promise I'll have the discipline to go cover to cover but I will put in on my kindle for a rainy day (it may take a monsoon for me to read:):). Hope you had a merry christmas and will have a great new year.

[broncofan]

You most certainly have been crying, "Overpopulation," for the last several posts.
I wonder if Redvex has any recommendations for dealing with overpopulation....oops forget I said that I don't want to know.

[broncofan]

I decided to read your articles for you Fanti. They propose different ways that ethanol could increase global warming. First, if you divert crops towards biofuel production, people still need the same amount of food and this requires diverting land and resources by burning down rainforests and plowing grasslands. This obviously increases carbon dioxide. The other article says that removing corn residue from fields reduces the field's ability to trap carbon dioxide. Both of these problems are surmountable and both articles offer solutions. Here are excerpts:

If you use corn residue and don't take up more land: "That said, the EPA dismissed the study because it assumed all of a corn field's waste would be used for ethanol production, an assumption the EPA said was "an extremely unlikely scenario that is inconsistent with recommended agricultural practices." And the study did note that emissions could be offset by planting cover crops, so it's not guaranteed that cellulosic ethanol production using corn would have to be more harmful to the planet than gasoline." In other words, the EPA claims this study overestimated the effect of taking corn residue and did not account for a practice that could remediate the problem.

As for using land for crops which need to be replaced: Alex Farrell at Berkeley sees a way out of this. He says the focus of the biofuels industry needs a rapid change of direction, away from using cropland — which is where most U.S. biofuels come from today — and toward other sources of starting material.

"We could replace all of the ethanol that we consume in California just using waste that goes to the landfill today, and turning that into ethanol," Farrell says.


Environmentally friendly biofuels could also be made from agricultural waste or grasses grown on land that's not suitable for crops. The biofuels industry is heading in that direction, but the technology to make use of fuels other than corn and soy is still in its infancy.

So both articles recommend ways to overcome the pitfalls of current ethanol production. The first recommendation does not require any new technology and the second one requires development of biofuels that use waste and do not divert crops that would otherwise be consumed. But of course if you are just looking for articles that say any attempt to remediate a problem makes it worse and are thereby recommending quietism, you will not read the articles or consider possible solutions recommended by scientists. If everyone took this approach to solving problems nobody would do anything.

Conclusion: Read the articles you post. Don't just search for propaganda to support a conclusion you are going to uselessly repeat. Thanks.

[broncofan]

There are two uses of the term 'primary' that we need to distinguish. When I say that the primary cause of our current warming trend is the release of sequestered greenhouse gasses into our atmosphere, I’m am saying that release is the foremost or proximate cause. When a doctor says the primary cause of death was loss of blood due to the severed artery he's giving the proximate cause. When the detective says the artery was severed because Mr.A fired a bullet into the deceased's chest, he's giving the first (in the temporal sense) cause. When you say “...that warming is due to secondary and tertiary effects of overpopulation - nothing else. In other words high smog is due to over population, not the emissions themselves...” you’re claiming that overpopulation is the first cause (in a temporal sense) of global warming.


In theory it's possible that a population not change in size, but to act in such a way as to lower the carry capacity of its environment to the point where their numbers exceed the carrying capacity and they go extinct. What then is the first cause of their demise? Overpopulation or the actions that deteriorated their environment? I find the question somewhat academic. It's more helpful to simply understand how the two causes are interrelated.

If a population of people has the capacity to deliberately or accidentally raise or lower the carrying capacity of their environment, then what one would regard as overpopulation depends upon the actions the population takes toward the environment. Overpopulation occurs when the population size approaches or exceeds the carrying capacity. The carrying capacity is determined by how the population interacts with its environment. The two issues are intertwined.

Both the Anasazi Indians and the original inhabitants of Easter Island grew beyond the carrying capacity of their environments. In part the causes of these two extinctions was overpopulation. But the demise of the Anasazi was also due to poor farming practices and soil erosion. On the other hand the Easter Islanders deforested their environment for the purpose of moving and erecting massive blocks of carved stone for apparently religious/political purposes. Both civilizations grew in size, but both also behaved in ways that diminished the carrying capacities of their environments. Many other civilizations elsewhere also grew, but managed to maintain ways of life that raised (or at least did not diminish) the carrying capacity of their environments.

Jared Diamond’s book Collapse examines a number of very interesting examples.
I know this is my fourth post in a row, but this is an incredibly thoughtful post that deserved a more thoughtful response. I recommend reading all of Trish' posts in this thread but this one is particularly good.

[MrFanti]

I'll post this as help to those that don't understand.
Until the root cause is eliminated, it doesn't matter how "green" one goes, it doesn't matter how much is "banned", the "problem" will always remain.

So here's an example: Ban everything bad, go 100% green, and the "extinction of our species" will still happen as all farmable land mass and oxygen producing plants will not support our population growth.

[broncofan]

I'll post this as help to some that don't understand.
Until the root cause is eliminated, it doesn't matter how "green" one goes, it doesn't matter how much is "banned", the "problem" will always remain.
It is you who do not understand, on so many levels it's mind-boggling. First of all, even if you were correct in what you wrote about the causal chain what you say here is not true. Take Trish's example of the person being shot. The root cause of his death is him being shot and the most proximate cause of his death is him bleeding to death because an artery is severed. Is there more than one way to prevent his death? Yes! One could approach the problem by preventing the shooting. But what if you aren't able to prevent the shooting? Should the doctor let him bleed to death if he has means to prevent it? Of course not. He should use whatever life-saving methods he can.

You also misunderstood Trish' post discussing the relationship between carrying capacity and population. What matters is not necessarily which moves in an absolute sense but their relationship to one another. What you don't want is for these two lines to converge on one another. Whether the convergence is caused by population increase or by a reduction in the carrying capacity, you either come up with a solution or you have a great deal of needless suffering. BTW, the causal chain is probably much more complicated than you indicate. Perhaps technology increases population size by improving efficiency but also reduces carrying capacity by depleting resources and causing other ecological and climatic changes. Furthermore, yes population increase also causes climatic changes independently so there are many layers there. But what matters is how we prevent our population from exceeding the carrying capacity of our environment.

Your response to Trish' post was the forum equivalent of a book-burning. It was written with the clear thinking that inspired witch trials. I can only imagine you reassuring the family of an accused witch by saying "don't worry, if she drowns she'll be cleared of all charges."

For someone who likes guns so much it's strange you have a penchant for bringing a swiss army knife to a gunfight.

[MrFanti]

And additional clarification.
For those that think I'm a Republican....WRONG.

As I explained in another thread, the world does not consists of absolutes such as Republican & Democrat....2 examples to illustrate, Independents and Libertarians fit neither the Republican nor Democrat models.

[trish]

Trish, do you have a book recommendation for someone with little to no science background who wants to understand this subject a bit more?

The journal Nature will often publish articles related to climate change that aren’t too technical. Scientific American also publishes related articles by active researchers which are aimed at the lay public.

Not being a climate scientist nor a planetary scientist myself ,I do not regularly read the technical papers in these fields. I do, however, attend general conferences of the APS where I listen to and interact with just these sorts of experts.

There’s one technical book I find myself going back to frequently (partly because its on my shelf and therefore handy) it's The Physics of Atmospheres by John Houghton. It’s a graduate level text on exactly what the title says: the physics of the Earth’s atmosphere. It’s not about climate change per se (although there is a chapter devoted to the topic-which may be somewhat dated by now - my edition is the 3rd). But the text is good at introducing a mathematically competent novice to the standard models of various atmospheric phenomena. A nice book but not for everyone.

I’m not sure I can recommend any particular popular books on climate change. I don’t read ‘em myself.

The Discovery of Global Warming by Spencer Weart gets good reviews from some of my friends. It purports to be a history of the science of climate change.

The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight by Thom Hartmann is touted by activists. Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything:Capitalism vs The Climate gets goods reviews from one end of the political spectrum, but that’s exactly what I’d like to avoid in a book on science.

When I peruse the popular titles I see books on the uncertainty of climate change, the climate change hoax and titles about the devastation that will result from climate change. It would be nice to find a decent popular book that explained the science and the predictions without political bias or being alarmist. If anyone has one to recommend jump right in. One problem with finding such a book is that the predictions are indeed alarming.

It’s important to distinguish between the predictions of climate science and those of political science, economics, and other sciences related to the behavior of humans and their institutions. One of the predictions of climate science is that within the century the sea level is expected to rise somewhere between 11 to 38 inches (this according to The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). Predictions concerning how this will effect our civilization, our political practices, how it may initiate mass migrations of people, famine, plagues etc. do not properly belong in the realm of climate science. I would like to see a popular book that deals only in the latter phenomena.

[trish]

I think we can save MrFanti’s pov that overpopulation is the ‘root’ problem, but not his view of causality.

First we have to be careful not to confuse population growth with overpopulation. I think MrFanti will agree that a perpetually growing population will very likely overtake the carrying capacity of its environment - even if that capacity is also rising due to technological efforts. I base this on my prejudice (which I think MrFanti shares) that its easier to procreate than advance and implement new technologies. When a population approaches or overtakes the carrying capacity, we then have overpopulation.

Populations of plants and animals tend to grow ‘logistically’; i.e. they follow a curve (called the logistic curve) that rises exponentially, makes a sharp bend and then asymptotically approaches a horizontal bound (the carrying capacity of that population’s niche). People, on the other hand, have the capacity to think ahead, cooperate, and change their behaviors. Our populations have the ability (if not the inclination) to climb at slower rates and stabilize well below the carrying capacity associated with our life-style and environment.

But we also have the ability to raise and lower the carrying capacity of our environment. Without actually increasing our numbers, we can act stupidly and drop the carrying capacity to a point below the size of our population.

I agree, if we don’t stabilize the size of our population our continued growth will result in overpopulation and its concomitant problems. But even if we do stabilize our population, if we continue to do stupid things to the environment it can deteriorate to the point where it will no longer sustain a population of our size. In both cases overpopulation is tautologically the ‘root’ cause of the problems concomitant with overpopulation (MrFanti’s position). However, in the first case the cause of overpopulation is population growth (to the point where it exceeds the carrying capacity of the environment) whereas in the second case where population size is stabilized well below the carrying capacity, the cause of overpopulation are behaviors that deteriorate the environment and drop its carrying capacity. In the actual world I suspect both of these things occur together.

[trish]

Addendum:
Notice under this way of looking at it, overpopulation doesn’t explain climate change. The stress that an oversized population puts upon an environment can take many different forms. We might have poisoned the planet before we covered the planet with greenhouse gasses. We might contaminated the surface with radioactive debris and initiated nuclear winter.
The word ‘overpopulation’ explains very little by itself.

To know why climate change is currently a concomitant problem of overpopulation you have to know what humans have been and are now doing to their environment and quantitatively how that effects the environment when it’s done by large numbers of people. The primary cause of the current climate shift remains the anthropogenic release of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. It’s the cause that explains why climate change is concomitant with the current practices of large numbers of people.

[broncofan]

I think we can save MrFanti’s pov that overpopulation is the ‘root’ problem, but not his view of causality.

First we have to be careful not to confuse population growth with overpopulation.

I agree, if we don’t stabilize the size of our population our continued growth will result in overpopulation and its concomitant problems. But even if we do stabilize our population, if we continue to do stupid things to the environment it can deteriorate to the point where it will no longer sustain a population of our size. In both cases overpopulation is tautologically the ‘root’ cause of the problems concomitant with overpopulation (MrFanti’s position). However, in the first case the cause of overpopulation is population growth (to the point where it exceeds the carrying capacity of the environment) whereas in the second case where population size is stabilized well below the carrying capacity, the cause of overpopulation are behaviors that deteriorate the environment and drop its carrying capacity. In the actual world I suspect both of these things occur together.
I understand your point. I read Mr. Fanti's use of "overpopulation" not as specifying that the population is greater than carrying capacity but that the cause of any pending crisis is related to population size alone irrespective of environmental constraints. In other words, if the outcome we want to avoid is a population greater than carrying capacity, the cause of that problem is population size and has nothing to do with how our behavior impacts carrying capacity. Or maybe to modify a little bit, that if our behavior decreases carrying capacity it is the inevitable result of population increases.

[trish]

I suspect you’re right about MrFanti’s use of ‘overpopulation’. But if he doesn’t adopt the definition above or something similar to it, then it’s unclear what the ‘over’ in ‘overpopulation’ means for him. Population period becomes a problem. Overpopulation becomes redundant. Anyway, I did my best to accommodate and address his views.

[broncofan]

Mooted;;

[broncofan]

I suspect you’re right about MrFanti’s use of ‘overpopulation’. But if he doesn’t adopt the definition above or something similar to it, then it’s unclear what the ‘over’ in ‘overpopulation’ means for him. Population period becomes a problem. Overpopulation becomes redundant. Anyway, I did my best to accommodate and address his views.
I gotcha...I thought you did and explained a lot...

[MrFanti]

I think MrFanti will agree

Thinking and speaking for me now!
I need the popcorn to see what's next!

[trish]

This is the point in ordinary conversation where you jump in, correct our understanding of your point of view and elaborate. Either that or at least pass the popcorn.

[MrFanti]

This is the point in ordinary conversation where you jump in, correct our understanding of your point of view and elaborate. Either that or at least pass the popcorn.

You appear to know me and want to speak for me.
Like I said, I'm in listening mode now....

[trish]

Read my responses carefully..... Rather than speaking for you, you'll note I said, "I think we can save MrFanti’s pov that overpopulation is the ‘root’ problem, but not his view of causality." You got nothing to add...that's okay.

[MrFanti]

You got nothing to add...that's okay.

I've said my piece.....for now.
You can take it or leave it. No need to endlessly drone on and on.

Perhaps in the future I might add to this - but I have no desire to prove myself "right" or the "winner" here. There's lots of counter science out there that's obviously being ignored here because it doesn't support everyone's beliefs here.

[filghy2]

What I will agree with is that warming is due to secondary and tertiary effects of overpopulation - nothing else. In other words high smog is due to over population, not the emissions themselves.

All issues are rooted in over population - anything else is an effect, not a cause....

Since the industrial revolution, global consumption of energy from fossil fuels has increased 1300 times. https://ourworldindata.org/fossil-fuels/

Over the same period, the global population has increased only 7 times, which implies that fossil fuel energy use per person has increased about 185 times. According to normal maths and logic, that suggests that each person using more fossil fuels is around 27 times more important than population growth.

This is really just another of your inane 'excuse to do nothing' arguments, like alcohol and gun deaths.

[buttslinger]

I see MrFanti is from Texas, where Oil and Deregulation are practically written into the Pledge of Allegiance. (That and In$urance.)
These debates usually turn out to be exercises in debating skills, prose, and brainpower more than relieving any human misery.
Outside of Earth Science in High School, all I know is what they tell me about Global Warming, but I would lean toward the word of the scientists over the politicians.
Unfortunately, it's kind of like a dozen women accusing Roy Moore of a crime, except Roy Moore is a JUDGE! Empowered by the People.
The Insanely Rich Corporations that pollute the ecosystem know that they are kinda like raping Mother Earth, but they're never going to admit it, and in the USA you have to be very careful when you get between a man and his right to make a dollar. I don't know the numbers, but I imagine lots of science majors work for large corporations. And Lawyers. As much as I love Obama, doing the right thing increased the National Debt by about ten trillion dollars, and while Trump is the worst thing that could have happened, Hillary was going to have to get pretty dirty in her own right to maintain our greatest national resource: CASH.
Because of the divisive nature of politics, each side has to overstate their position to bring the center to a place they can both live with. My brother is a science teacher and he said my sister's Chesapeake Bay Vacation Home would be underwater by now. In this case it is probably better he was wrong.

[trish]

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/does-climate-change-cause-extreme-weather-events-180964506/

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/these-weather-events-turned-extreme-thanks-human-driven-climate-change

https://www.ametsoc.org/ams/index.cfm/publications/bulletin-of-the-american-meteorological-society-bams/explaining-extreme-events-from-a-climate-perspective/

http://www.pnas.org/content/114/48/12681.full

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2017GL075888/full

http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa9ef2


For the first time climatologists have linked climate change to several specific extreme-weather and oceanographic events. The 2016 Asian heatwave that killed hundreds, the rise of surface temperatures of the Coral Sea (causing the bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef, and Hurricane Harvey which dropped over 51 inches of water on Houston this later September number among the events now connected to climate change.

Current climate models do not predict these events, but they do show that events of this magnitude are well nigh ‘impossible’ (one in a million) in the absence of the climate change. This is accomplished by running comparisons. One run takes the initial conditions of the pre-industrial world (its population, its production of greenhouse gasses, its consumption of forests, its agricultural output as well as the climatological data of the period). A parallel run takes as initial its initial conditions those of the current period. Events of the magnitude as those listed above are not uncommon in the latter model, but are extremely rare to impossible in the former.

These results connecting the magnitude of specific events to global warming are some of the most significant advances in climatology of the past year.

[buttslinger]

Excellent research, as usual, Trishikins, I liked the ScienceNews reader discussion better than our skin site. sigh.....

[Ts RedVeX]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l60MnDJklnM

[MrFanti]

Tell you what...
I'll meet you middle road.

I'll acknowledge your facts about global warming and it's dangers and.....
You folks acknowledge the facts about alcohol being deadlier than guns. I've presented enough about that.

Or we can continue to agree to disagree.....

[trish]

If you think facts can be bartered, then you don't know what facts are...but please, if you're going to present your case against alcohol create a thread for it.

[buttslinger]

The fact is the world is a smaller place than 100 years ago, with two world wars under our belt and undeniable pollution. With increased opportunity comes increased responsibility.
There is no thread to tell you the unspeakable things I've done behind the wheel of a car, and I'm not saying we should go back to Daniel Boone times, free in the middle of nowheresville. Most people don't live their lives guided by facts, they live their life in the pursuit of liberty. That doesn't mean that the most common sense approach to guns, alcohol, and yes, pollution and climate change shouldn't be insisted on at your voting booth. A joke is a joke, the truth is the truth, and a vote is a vote.
Having Exxon as your hero is moronic. They used to buy their oil from the Middle East, tank it over here and sell it to US for huge profits. They weren't American Heroes, they were trashing our skies and financing our enemies for personal wealth. When Dick Cheney was in charge gas cost 5 bucks a gallon. That was no accident. We were pawns.
Back when Eisenhower was President the Democrats were the racists and the Republicans were warning us about the Military-Industrial Complex. I imagine ole Ike is spinning in his grave about now.

[MrFanti]

If you think facts can be bartered, then you don't know what facts are...
If you choose to read facts that only support your viewpoint....that's definitely your choice...

I on the other hand like to review from a variety of sources...I'll acknowledge climate change but I won't necessarily acknowledge the root cause as being man induced industrialization until I review all data available. And even then, man induced industrialization as the cause is biased in itself because it eliminates the possibility multiple causes.

[filghy2]

I'll acknowledge your facts about global warming and it's dangers and.....
You folks acknowledge the facts about alcohol being deadlier than guns. I've presented enough about that.

Hilarious. You pretend that alcohol deaths are a more important to you than any other issue, yet:
- you never mentioned the issue until midway through a thread on the Vegas shootings a few months back
- you conceded in another thread that you are not actually in favour of banning alcohol
- you've never started a thread on this issue and only raise it as a distraction from other issues

[trish]

If you choose to read facts that only support your viewpoint....that's definitely your choice...Thank you for the attack on my personal, intellectual integrity. It's called the ad hominem fallacy.

I will listen to all claims and proposals and eliminate those that those that either contradict observation and evidence, or those that are not falsifiable or which make no testable predictions. I do not barter with claims, believing A if you agree to believe B. I repeat: if you think one can barter in that way with facts, you do not know what facts are.

If you want to persuade reasonable people that claim A is true, then provide the arguments for A, the supporting evidence and rationally address the objections made by those who criticize your hypothesis. Be your own worst critic. Present a case that preserves your personal, intellectual integrity. And please, do it in the appropriate thread.

[Stavros]

I on the other hand like to review from a variety of sources...I'll acknowledge climate change but I won't necessarily acknowledge the root cause as being man induced industrialization until I review all data available. And even then, man induced industrialization as the cause is biased in itself because it eliminates the possibility multiple causes.

Human activity as cause:

Ocean dead zones with zero oxygen have quadrupled in size since 1950, scientists have warned, while the number of very low oxygen sites near coasts have multiplied tenfold. Most sea creatures cannot survive in these zones and current trends would lead to mass extinction in the long run, risking dire consequences for the hundreds of millions of people who depend on the sea.
Climate change (https://www.theguardian.com/science/scienceofclimatechange) caused by fossil fuel burning is the cause of the large-scale deoxygenation, as warmer waters hold less oxygen. The coastal dead zones result from fertiliser and sewage running off the land and into the seas.

Human activity as remedy:
“This is a problem we can solve,” Breitburg said. “Halting climate change requires a global effort, but even local actions can help with nutrient-driven oxygen decline.” She pointed to recoveries in Chesapeake Bay in the US and the Thames river in the UK, where better farm and sewage practices led to dead zones disappearing.

Full article is here-
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jan/04/oceans-suffocating-dead-zones-oxygen-starved

[Ts RedVeX]

Sahara, which is rather big, used to be a forest and it was no co2 of human origin that caused it to go dry... Or did we have an industrial revolution a couple of thousands years ago? Baltic sea used to freeze and you could cross it on foot and it was no big deal. Climate changes. Why don't you get over it and prepare for change rather than try to put all your shit in peoples' minds?

[trish]

You didn’t mention any time periods. One period when the Sahara had a subtropical climate was possibly as recent as 6000 years ago. The Hadley circulation once rose above the latitude that now bounds it to the North and the Sahara was a monsoon belt. The redirection of the Hadley was definitely not due to the burning of fossil fuels. There was no doubt a reason. “Climate changes” is certainly not a satisfactory explanation. Sometimes it’s due to continental drift. Sometimes precession. Sometimes meteorite strikes. Sometimes complex shifts in atmospheric and oceanographic currents. Sometimes the production of oxygen by photosynthetic plants.

Again, you made no mention of time. The Baltic is much further north and of course entirely covered by ice during the last ice age. That also wasn’t caused by the burning of fossil fuels. More recently, we know from records that the Baltic Sea has frozen over 20 times since 1720. The last time was in 1987. This averages to about once every 13-14 years. It’s now been 31 years since the last freezing. I’m not sure anyone as yet attributed a cause to this latter phenomenon. But my guess is that the greenhouse effect has not been eliminated.

The current exponential rise in global atmospheric and oceanographic temperatures and the concomitant recession of glacial ice is most definitely due primarily to the release of CO2 and other greenhouse gases by human activity.


Why don't you get over it and prepare for change rather than try to put all your shit in peoples' minds?

Get over what? No one is stopping you or anyone else from suggesting solutions: how to stop, or slow, or prepare for an inevitable change. I would think knowing the cause of the change would be useful to these endeavors. If it were not for climatologists you wouldn’t even know if global warming would dry up the oceans or cause them to rise.

[chupapau]

Dear Miss Ts Redvex,

I see your ultra right crappy no argument posts on just about any subject. I have to ask, are you getting paid for that? Or are you just practicing to get a job in that sense?

Are you aware of the fact that global warming due to human activity denial is already a felony in several countries, like say holocaust denial is? So why would that be?

Or do you just want people to shut up about any topic that makes you uncomfortable? Cause it's easier to live in denial?

Once had a dear friend who was very gay, the macho type. He couldn't hide it from himself or others, but kept struggling to come to terms with it. His remedy for that was two fold. He took to alcohol, and he joined extreme right movements. Once I asked him what he would have done if say he lived on the early 40's. His answer was he would have volunteered to throw himself in the crematorium.

Macabre but funny, it still makes no sense. Just as little as a person like you who belongs to a minority that is always in danger of being surpressed takes stances on behalf of people who would leave you rotting in the gutter without blinking a eye.

I don't get it.

[Ts RedVeX]

I believe that any genuinely right-wing people wouldn't give two fucks about anyone's sexuality, race, gender expression, where he buys his fags from, how he brings his children up, as well as that they would be the ones to help a person lying in a ditch before any greedy, jealous communist. We are the reasonable people, who tell the truth without bending it so that it suits us or our acquaintances. If you do not understand that then apparently you are not a reasonable person and therefore also think socialism is good. As to communists of all sorts, most of them actually believe in the bullshit they preach - just like the extreme "blow-up warriors" being deployed here believe in things - and the rest are either too afraid to speak reasonably because they want to keep their cosy jobs at the propaganda wheel - be it global warming, homophobia or gender equality, or are the arse-holes who come up with it.

Sahara's climate has changed several times and periods are it is going to change again, and just like it was not the global warming, or man-generated CO2 that changed it in the past, it is not going to be it in future. It is not important here how long ago Sahara was a forest. It is more important to note that the forest became desert within a century, maybe a few years longer. Your claims that you can definitely attribute global warming solely to humans making CO2, based on less than-half-a-century of research is just bullshit.

As to Baltic, I meant that you could go walk on it from Poland to Sweden in around the 15th century. Also 13 years is not that long a time for about 20 degree winter temperature shifts, is it? So what, is the industrial revolution and all the factories and power plants etc. taking a break every 13 years? Or is it because the cows stop breathing or people become vegan and eat no meat, every 13 years? Knowing the cause actually wouldn't help much. It is certainly not a necessity, since I'm here, not frozen somewhere, at the bottom of Baltic sea. Whereas thinking something which actually hasn't got much to do with it is causing climate change, might lead to a false sense of security once you've brought all the factories and development in Europe to stop, and getting the European civilisation wiped out by others who decide to keep their development going. I kinda understand why someone living in the US would be aiming at that, but Stavros, or any other European?? Do you really believe the solidarity of your comrades will make them help you when everybody is struggling to feed their families? LOL

[broncofan]

I believe that any genuinely right-wing people wouldn't give two fucks about anyone's sexuality, race, gender expression, where he buys his fags from, how he brings his children up, as well as that they would be the ones to help a person lying in a ditch before any greedy, jealous communist.
I have to say at this point it looks not just like willful blindness but stupidity. "Genuine" right-wingers wanted same-sex relations in the U.S. to be illegal. Genuine right-wingers 75 years ago sent gay men to concentration camps where they were murdered. Some genuine right-wingers today insist they should call transsexuals "men" and exclude them from military service. Some genuine right-wingers support conversion therapy for gay children, which is often just a euphemism for torturing children into conformity in a way that will only harm them physically and emotionally but not change their sexual orientation.

I love your use of the no true scotsman fallacy but these are genuine right-wingers. Are all right-wingers this way? No, some are more moderate.

As you made clear elsewhere, genuine right-wingers don't simply dislike "communists". Often communism is the pretext, used as you use it when it doesn't apply, to bash a minority simply because of who they are. At the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville here, the lead neo-nazi called everyone a communist. You call everyone a communist and it doesn't have an ascertainable meaning the way you use it. That's a design feature, not an accident. This is the word intended to demonize people different from yourself who are concerned about civil rights.

Why is it that when Trish posts on this topic, she is eloquent and her posts contain details about the mechanisms of climate change and the empirical facts that demonstrate its effects and when you post, it's nothing but scurrilous name-calling, obvious errors, and conclusory statements with bogus reasoning?

[Ts RedVeX]

Firstly, state should not interfere in marriage at all.
Secondly, while it might makes sens for the state to encourage mixed-sex marriages, I cannot see why state would encourage same-sex marriage. It is obvious to me that delegalisiation of homosexuality was direct consequence of some gay activists trying to get the privilege over the non-gay people, of being able to marry another person of the same sex.

Technically, in accordance with dictionaries' medieval definitions adult human males are men, unless they are no longer fertile. Similarly, adult human females who cannot bear children are not women. Argue with the commies at your universities, to acknowledge the existence of DNA and the confusion around who is man and who is woman should be gone.

The problem is that there are not many right-wingers out there. The majority of people are socialists who believe in democracy, social justice, public NHS, trade unions, benefits, etc, etc..

I am not trying to bash minority with communism, I am trying to do that with majority, unfortunately. I cannot wait till one of you calls me a rotten capitalist whenever I say that there should not be benefits or public healthcare, or the so called 'nanny-state' that looks after all the lazy bastards on the dole who after all also deserve to eat because of human rights...

Trish seems to be somewhat smart but it also seems that she would advise victims of a hurricane to cover the roof of their new house with solar panels and build a wind turbine in their back yard, rather than advising them to move the hell out of the region.

[broncofan]

Firstly, state should not interfere in marriage at all.
Secondly, while it might makes sens for the state to encourage mixed-sex marriages, I cannot see why state would encourage same-sex marriage. It is obvious to me that delegalisiation of homosexuality was direct consequence of some gay activists trying to get the privilege over the non-gay people, of being able to marry another person of the same sex.

Technically, in accordance with dictionaries' medieval definitions adult human males are men, unless they are no longer fertile. Similarly, adult human females who cannot bear children are not women. Argue with the commies at your universities, to acknowledge the existence of DNA and the confusion around who is man and who is woman should be gone.
When I said right-wingers wanted to prohibit same-sex relations I was not talking about marriage. I was talking about adult consensual intercourse between members of the same sex. This was illegal in this country in many places and it was right-wingers who fought to maintain the prohibition. Second, your comment about the state encouraging same-sex marriage is incoherent. They were being asked to grant the same rights to same-sex couples as heterosexual couples, nothing more. There was no ascertainable privilege being sought, simply equality, which you portray as privilege while describing it in a way that makes clear you consider equality for gay men and women to be a privilege.

We don't need to depend on medieval dictionaries for definitions of sex and gender. Nobody is saying that based on DNA male to female transsexuals are female. There is no contention that transitioning changes dna, only that people who identify as female should not be addressed with male pronouns. Or how is it you would like to be addressed?

You also don't seem to know what I mean when I use the word minorities.

I contrasted Trish' style with yours to point out that you are unique in that your statements can be shown to be false and you will move on as though you are permitted to lie in defense of your various manias.

A bunch of pages back you insisted the scientists who authored the paper Stavros linked were government scientists. When it was pointed out they were researchers, scholars, and professors from a variety of universities you asserted they didn't have phds. When you were shown that they all had phds you insisted the paper did not consider alternate causes of climate change. When you were shown the section where they discussed and analyzed alternate causes at length you then said that they simply concluded that climate change was anthropogenic indirectly by ruling out alternate causes. When you were shown that they demonstrated that climate change was anthropogenic directly and not by the process of elimination you didn't seem to care. Here's a name for you: obscurantist.

[Stavros]

Your claims that you can definitely attribute global warming solely to humans making CO2, based on less than-half-a-century of research is just bullshit.

Whereas thinking something which actually hasn't got much to do with it is causing climate change, might lead to a false sense of security once you've brought all the factories and development in Europe to stop, and getting the European civilisation wiped out by others who decide to keep their development going. I kinda understand why someone living in the US would be aiming at that, but Stavros, or any other European?? Do you really believe the solidarity of your comrades will make them help you when everybody is struggling to feed their families? LOL

1) Climate science is over 100 years old, but you won't acknowledge that, or take an interest in the analysis of the data. Science after all is now the new Bullshit, which may be why your comrades in the USA want to replace the Constitution with the Holy Bible (as edited by them, of course).

2) You might want to explain why factories in Europe, North and South America all but ceased production in the 1920s and 1930s and led directly to the greatest threat to civilization posed by the murderous racists of Germany and Japan. Why did free markets lead to a collapse of the banking system? Why did food production so exceed demand prices collapsed? What was the consequence of the incompetent Winston Churchill taking Sterling back on to the Gold Standard in 1925 and the book JM Keynes wrote about it, The Economic Consequences of Mr Churchill?

I ask because yet again, even after 2008, we are being told regulation is bad for business. We are told regulation is bad for the environment. We are told immigration is destroying jobs. We are told that trading blocs are bad for business yet the same people (the US and the UK) want trade deals as a replacement that lock the partners in to unequal relations.

Just as we see the rich pass by on the other side because 'poverty is a choice' and they sneer at society's failures, believing them fit only for the gas chamber.

And before you dismiss the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society as Communists, ask yourself how they protected the environment in Alaska in the 1970s and get back to us with your balanced judgement.

[Ts RedVeX]

Right-wingers in favour of taking away freedom?! I don't know how you define a right-winger, but I would certainly not call a right-winger anyone who is in favour of prohibiting things that do not threaten and disturb others. I cannot see anything incoherent with my marriage argument. If for example, a heterosexual man may legally marry a woman, and a gay man may legally marry a woman, then there is no privileges there. However, if for example a homosexual man may legally marry another man, while a heterosexual man may not legally marry a woman, then the homosexual man is privileged.

I would like to be addressed as if I was a female and that is one of the reasons for my transition. This does not mean, however, that I approve of laws telling people how to address me under threat of lawsuits. Nor do I approve of laws that actually enabled me to change my name etc... And before you ask, it is like with the NHS, just because I disapprove of it being publicly funded does not mean I am not going to use it, especially that I have to pay for it anyway, if I chose to be righteous.

They didn't use their titles in their report so they may have actually not had them while preparing the report. Maybe it was different people who produced the report than the ones you read about in Wikipedia; maybe someone just wrote the report and put a bunch of names from Wikipedia underneath to give it more credibility; maybe the information in Wikipedia, which can be edited by any eloquent communist, is fabricated; maybe they got their titles by dint of producing the report; or maybe they are actually Doctors but were too were ashamed to put their titles there. There are many reasons why I think my doubts were justified. If government subsidises idiots to get titles then surely it wants them to learn things like gender equality and global warming. My point was simply that those reports should not be taken for granted as they were not produced for independent scientists' private money. If I was to call anyone obscurantists then it would be you guys, exactly for saying that a bunch of allegedly intelligent people allegedly with PhDs done mostly at some dodgy American universities, are definitely right in saying in their government-funded report that humans are most likely responsible for climate changes (which in case you still haven't noticed is different from saying people are definitely responsible for climate changes) just because they have some those PhDs.

The basic market rule says clearly that demand is the cause of supply and not otherwise. Had the the markets been free, the banking system would have not collapsed.

I tell you yet again that governments should not interfere in economy. Countries do not trade with eachother. People who live in countries do. The idea of running a country as if it was a company is ludicrous.

[broncofan]

Right-wingers in favour of taking away freedom?! I don't know how you define a right-winger, but I would certainly not call a right-winger anyone who is in favour of prohibiting things that do not threaten and disturb others. I cannot see anything incoherent with my marriage argument. If for example, a heterosexual man may legally marry a woman, and a gay man may legally marry a woman, then there is no privileges there. However, if for example a homosexual man may legally marry another man, while a heterosexual man may not legally marry a woman, then the homosexual man is privileged.

I would like to be addressed as if I was a female and that is one of the reasons for my transition. This does not mean, however, that I approve of laws telling people how to address me under threat of lawsuits. Nor do I approve of laws that actually enabled me to change my name etc... And before you ask, it is like with the NHS, just because I disapprove of it being publicly funded does not mean I am not going to use it, especially that I have to pay for it anyway, if I chose to be righteous.

They didn't use their titles in their report so they may have actually not had them while preparing the report. Maybe it was different people who produced the report than the ones you read about in Wikipedia; maybe someone just wrote the report and put a bunch of names from Wikipedia underneath to give it more credibility; maybe the information in Wikipedia, which can be edited by any eloquent communist, is fabricated; maybe they got their titles by dint of producing the report; or maybe they are actually Doctors but were too were ashamed to put their titles there. There are many reasons why I think my doubts were justified. If government subsidises idiots to get titles then surely it wants them to learn things like gender equality and global warming. My point was simply that those reports should not be taken for granted as they were not produced for independent scientists' private money. If I was to call anyone obscurantists then it would be you guys, exactly for saying that a bunch of allegedly intelligent people allegedly with PhDs done mostly at some dodgy American universities, are definitely right in saying in their government-funded report that humans are most likely responsible for climate changes (which in case you still haven't noticed is different from saying people are definitely responsible for climate changes) just because they have some those PhDs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_politics In this country, the party that checks most if not all of the boxes in this wikipedia article is the Republican party. They fought to defend laws that would allow police to put gay men in shackles for having consensual sex. You simply cannot argue they are not right-wing, as they support nationalism, natural law, populism, and oppose protections against religious interference with governance. Not all Republicans support each sub-category to the same degree but thankfully for this argument, the ones who supported these loony-tunes homophobic laws tend to be the most right-wing by these criteria.

They fought to prevent equality from gay couples in marriage. Let me spell it out: heterosexual couples were allowed to marry. Homosexual couples were not allowed to marry. Right-wing Republicans wanted to prohibit homosexual couples from marrying members of the same sex.

There are no laws against being rude to ts women by calling them men nor does anyone support such laws. The right-wing commentators I metnioned are not simply against prohibiting it by law, as everybody is, they are the ones engaging in the abuse.

The scientists did not have their degrees next to their names because the section merely listed who authored the paper. It did not have a bio for each person. Their credentials were not fabricated, and were generally available on university sites as well as other private sites and not only on wikipedia. Let's not waste our time. I don't know what to say to your claim that they are dodgy universities that would not send this thread even farther off course. So I won't. I also won't continue the argument as we've gotten away from the purpose of the thread. Maybe we can start it in a more general thread.

[trish]

I believe that any genuinely right-wing people...
You make a sharp distinction between genuine right-wingers and those who proclaim the title but are not so genuine. You seem to set great store by this distinction. I presume, then there is also an equally important distinction between genuine communists and those who only proclaim to be communists as well as those who identify as liberal but do not claim any alliance with communism. I presume there is an equally important distinction between genuine socialists and those who only proclaim to be. For those who know how to make those distinctions paint me left-leaning, not a socialist and certainly not communist.


Sahara's climate has changed several times and periods are it is going to change again,...
Yes, the Sahara and the Baltic (which are do not constitute the entire surface of the Earth by any means) have exhibited and will exhibit variations in their local climates. Each shift will be due to a set of specific reasons: geographic, oceanographic, atmospheric, biospheric, climatological, astronomical etc. With study we may sometimes be able to discern the causes and model the phenomenon, in other cases not.


Your claims that you can definitely attribute global warming solely to humans making CO2, based on less than-half-a-century of research
Half-a-century is a long time when it comes the rapidity of the growth of scientific knowledge, and climate science is older than that. Yet there are indeed many problems that are complex to point of intractability. Fortunately the current climate shift is not one of them.

Consider that seasons are easier to explain than daily local fluctuations in weather - even over regions as vast as the continental United States. The reason is we have a ready model that explains the seasons; i.e. the tilt of the Earth’s axis relative to the ecliptic. We can use celestial mechanics and our knowledge of solar luminosity to quantitatively predict length of day, solar flux and model the occurrences of the seasons and explain roughly their average effects on local weather patterns. This model has beaten out all competing models (which admittedly weren’t too viable in the first place. Nevertheless, some have speculated it was the Earth’s proximity to the Sun that caused the Seasons while others thought the behavior of various Gods or Goddesses were responsible. It’s the quantitative success plus the shear logical beauty of the model that’s (at least to me) convincing.

By analogy, we have a beautiful model of atmospheric chemistry and how it interacts with the spectrum of the Sun’s flux of energy. We understand that the Earth sits in a river of energy flowing from the Sun; we know, for example, that the Earth’s atmosphere filters out the worst of the ultraviolet rays. Indeed the model quantitatively predicts, for each wavelength, the flux of energy that can pass through the atmosphere and strike the Earth’s surface. We can then measure the flux at the Earth’s surface and verify the model’s accuracy.
We quantitatively understand how the various surfaces of the Earth and it’s oceans reflect or absorb this energy. We know that the absorbed energy will be radiated back into the atmosphere in the infrared band and we can calculate how much of that infrared radiation will be absorbed by the atmosphere and how much will be lost to the vacuum of space. Perpetually bathed in a stream of radiant energy, the Earth’s surface will seek an equilibrium where the net flux of incoming energy will equal the net flux of outgoing energy.
As you might expect the average temperature of the system can be affected by a number of parameters.
The solar constant for one. It called the solar constant for a reason. Although it shows a degree of variability it remains relatively constant and the degree of its variability cannot account for the the major changes in the Earth’s temperature that we’ve been observing since the mid-19th century.
The one parameter that has changed significantly over that period of time has been the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The variation in this parameter does indeed quantitatively account for the global rise in surface temperatures we’ve been observing over that same period of time.
Other parameters can show variability too, such as the albedo (i.e. the reflectivity) of the Earth, its oceans and atmosphere. Lowering the albedo can cause the Earth to absorb a greater portion of the Sun’s heat and thereby increase the global temperature.
Some of the parameters effect each other; e.g. if the proportion of greenhouse gases rise, the resulting rise in global temperature can melt the highly reflective ice-shelves and glacial covers decreasing the Earth’s overall albedo. This can lead to a runaway feedback effect - unless the increased temperatures create greater cloud cover which in turn will increase the Earth’s albedo.


...thinking something which actually hasn't got much to do with it is causing climate change, might lead to a false sense of security once you've brought all the factories and development in Europe to stop, and getting the European civilisation wiped out by others who decide to keep their development going.

Trish ... it also seems that she would advise victims of a hurricane to cover the roof of their new house with solar panels and build a wind turbine in their back yard, rather than advising them to move the hell out of the region.
I’ll speak for myself, thank you. The science of atmospheric chemistry and how it interacts with the solar flux makes absolutely no recommendations, political or otherwise. It certainly doesn’t recommend we shut down our factories and bring civilization to a halt.
However, combined with our knowledge of anthropology, history and the other humanities we can easily speculate what climate change might mean to our civilization when oceans rise, arable lands diminish and the trees, flowers and grains that once thrived in the tropics shift markedly toward the poles.


A bunch of pages back you insisted the scientists who authored the paper Stavros linked were government scientists. When it was pointed out they were researchers, scholars, and professors from a variety of universities you asserted they didn't have phds. When you were shown that they all had phds you insisted the paper did not consider alternate causes of climate change. When you were shown the section where they discussed and analyzed alternate causes at length you then said that they simply concluded that climate change was anthropogenic indirectly by ruling out alternate causes. When you were shown that they demonstrated that climate change was anthropogenic directly and not by the process of elimination you didn't seem to care. ...
I’m just repeating this portion of bronofan’s reply to RedVex because it’s apt. I think some conservatives deny the science of global warming because they actually fear that their favorite ideology is too provincial and too short-sighted to surmount the problems that climate shift poses. To survive, you sometimes have to decide, "Do I have faith in the box or do I break out it?"

[Stavros]

[QUOTE=Ts RedVeX;1813629]

Right-wingers in favour of taking away freedom?! I don't know how you define a right-winger, but I would certainly not call a right-winger anyone who is in favour of prohibiting things that do not threaten and disturb others.
--There is a problem with labels, not least when someone dismisses another as a 'Communist' or a 'Stalinist' or an 'Unrepentant Capitalist Roader' or a Social Justice Warrior, or a 'Bleeding Heart Liberal' a 'Right-wing fascist' etc etc. In the UK, a Liberal is someone who believes in free markets, low taxes, minimal government, and that a wide range of human behaviour should be permitted as long as it does not harm others. In the US, a Liberal is someone who believes the State should intervene to ameliorate the worst aspects of poverty. I can't do much to re-order the use of words, but words do matter, and at times it might help if people are more precise in the way that they use them.

I tell you yet again that governments should not interfere in economy. Countries do not trade with eachother. People who live in countries do. The idea of running a country as if it was a company is ludicrous.
--Government intervenes to regulate markets that, left alone, produce prosperity and corruption; innovation and despair; that never guarantee jobs and income, that confer riches on criminals, poverty on the honest. Why should producers have all the rights in the world, and consumers none at all?

And yes, The idea of a businessman running a country as President is indeed ludicrous, as reality tells us every day courtesy of those United States of America.

[Stavros]

I’m just repeating this portion of bronofan’s reply to RedVex because it’s apt. I think some conservatives deny the science of global warming because they actually fear that their favorite ideology is too provincial and too short-sighted to surmount the problems that climate shift poses. To survive, you sometimes have to decide, "Do I have faith in the box or do I break out it?"

I would amend your mostly intelligent and eloquent post. I think those people who campaign against Climate Change as a 'hoax' are not in any sense interested in the science, but oppose the remedies because they incur taxes, which they hate; they impose collective changes to human behaviour, which violates their belief in the 'sanctity' of the individual (unless he or she is an Arab in which case they only exist to be bombed into extinction); and they rely on government/the State to regulate a wide range of operations in industry to reduce carbon emissions; and -the cardinal sin of sins- use tax-payers money to subsidize alternative energy solutions.

If I were to put words into their mouths, they would be: This is My Planet, and I will do what I want with it.

[broncofan]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_politics In this country, the party that checks most if not all of the boxes in this wikipedia article is the Republican party. They fought to defend laws that would allow police to put gay men in shackles for having consensual sex. You simply cannot argue they are not right-wing, as they support nationalism, natural law, populism, and oppose protections against religious interference with governance. Not all Republicans support each sub-category to the same degree but thankfully for this argument, the ones who supported these loony-tunes homophobic laws tend to be the most right-wing by these criteria.

Instead of pegging this conversation to an American political party I'd rather make this more universal for you. What possible justification is there for prohibiting "things that do not threaten and disturb others" as you put it? Consensual sex between adults of the same sex is a behavior that does not threaten or disturb others. If you look to the link I posted that listed tenets of right-wing political movements you will see two; Tradition and religion. Sodomy laws flow directly from these two categories, categories that do not depend on a rational or secular purpose. The justifications are based on what community norms have tended to be rather than any justification for those norms.

Recall, this was brought up in the context of you insisting other advocates of your belief system would not want to infringe on your rights. I am just calling to your attention that it is right-wing political movements that are more apt to threaten individuals based on outmoded taboos and traditions that do not serve any legitimate legislative purpose.

While there are some political terms that are ambiguous and used loosely and political movements that are portrayed as monolithic when they are actually more varied, you don't have a leg to stand on here. Within the left-right divide, it is more often those on the right, often self-described as right of center who are apt to mistreat lgbt members, and that includes you. So while you may agree with these people on many other issues, they would not respect your civil rights. I generally think it's a bad idea to have political allies who overlap on 90+ percent of issues but only differ on respecting your right to be treated with respect.

[trish]

I would amend your mostly intelligent and eloquent post. ...
I hoped that was my gist,
But I missed.
Amendment accepted.

[Ts RedVeX]

Uh oh, when I say "genuine right-wingers" to make sure that others understand that there are also charlatans pretending to be right-wingers, then that is wrong, but when you emphasise period with"of time" or that something "quantitatively contributes" to something else, as if it didn't contribute otherwise, then that is good. Hmm. <sniff sniff> I smell communism on the board..

No, it is not important for me what type of communists I am calling communists. I use it as an umbrella term (which you communists should understand and like a lot just like you do your other collectivist policies like all women are equal to men) for anyone who leans left. It doesn't matter if they want to control trade with other countries, what the speed limit on a motorway is, or who is it legal to fuck in the ass and who it isn't. I might as well call them non-right-wingers, but that just sounds a bit too awkward for my taste as well as it is way too long to write. Besides, it would not relay the negativity that comes with the term “communist”.

So if your variable solar constant cannot have effect on the climate changes you have observed for the last 150 years, can you actually say that it's fluctuations had never had any effect on climate changes, say in the previous 150k years? What you have is a multidimensional function you are trying to extrapolate based on not even a per-mille of data you would need to get anything useful or even reliable. That is just silly. Unless of course, you are getting funding from the government to do that and it is in your personal interest for people to believe it.


I think someone already mentioned that we are living in a relatively cool period (of time) – in case anyone needs further explanation, and the CO2 levels aren't really off the scale so I'm just gonna drop this one here.


As to albedo and being unable to determine weather patterns.. What if we have a really shitty century, or we will emit so much and smoke and shit that it is gonna be cloudy most of the time. Will we have holidays in the Antarctic instead of holidays in California then?

Oh, by the way. "lost into the vacuum of space" sound a bit lower-middle... Dreadfully tinny. You had been much better of saying "dissipated into the vacuum of space" to sound even smarter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T70-HTlKRXo

[trish]

...when you emphasise ... that something "quantitatively contributes" to something else, as if it didn't contribute otherwise, ...
That would just be silly. Rather than say, “X quantitatively contributes to Y,” I would say, “the contributions of X to Y are quantitatively determined by theory and are confirmed by measurement.”


So if your variable solar constant cannot have effect on the climate changes you have observed for the last 150 years, can you actually say that it's fluctuations had never had any effect on climate changes, say in the previous 150k years?Acutally, it’s not my solar constant. I can’t take credit for it or its discovery. It was Claude Pouillet who made the first measurement of the solar constant in 1838 and who found it to be approximately 1.228 kilowatts per square meter. But to answer your question: No, the solar flux has and is expected to change throughout the lifetime of the Sun. We have crude measurements of the solar flux from Pouillet’s time to 1901, and rather reliable ones ones up to 1995, and very accurate ones since SOHO was placed in orbit. The fluctuations in the solar flux have remained relatively small over the past 1.8 centuries and cannot account for the exponential growth in global temperatures that have been measured since the mid-19th century. We also have an understanding of the thermonuclear processes that fuel the Sun as well as an understanding of the stability and luminosities of stars generally and in particular of those like the Sun. It is not unusual for the stellar flux of a star like the Sun (class and age) to be constant over periods of time as short as a few centuries. On a much larger time scale the Sun’s luminosity is expected to rise. In a five billion years it will expand and things will very hot for Earth if it’s still around and in the same orbit.


I think someone already mentioned that we are living in a relatively cool period...
Relative to the recent past that person would be wrong.


As to albedo and being unable to determine weather patterns.. What if we have a really shitty century, or we will emit so much and smoke and shit that it is gonna be cloudy most of the time. Will we have holidays in the Antarctic instead of holidays in California then?
Speaking of non-sequiturs, what if we have a wonderful century? Does that mean we’ll all be selling our organs to keep our children from being prostituted while the super-successful entrepreneurs and ‘stable geniuses’ of the world snack on delicacies topped with human-liver pâté? Stupid question - right?

[Stavros]

Uh oh, when I say "genuine right-wingers" to make sure that others understand that there are also charlatans pretending to be right-wingers, then that is wrong, but when you emphasise period with"of time" or that something "quantitatively contributes" to something else, as if it didn't contribute otherwise, then that is good. Hmm. <sniff sniff> I smell communism on the board..
No, it is not important for me what type of communists I am calling communists. I use it as an umbrella term (which you communists should understand and like a lot just like you do your other collectivist policies like all women are equal to men) for anyone who leans left.

This is one of the reasons why so many of your posts get lost in incoherent language. The assumption behind the word 'Communist' is that you associate them with the central planning and one party states of the USSR and its allies, rather than with Marx's view of Communism as the final outcome of the class struggles that he claimed have shaped human history, and will only be exhausted through socialist revolution. That Communism as he envisaged it is a stateless society without taxes should in fact appeal to libertarians who loathe government and taxes today.

It is not difficult to use words that appear to mean something, thus, when I wrote above In the UK, a Liberal is someone who believes in free markets, low taxes, minimal government, and that a wide range of human behaviour should be permitted as long as it does not harm others, I was making a general point. In terms of social policy, a liberal thus approves of same-sex marriages as a measure of individual freedom from the State, and a crucial element of the civil society that flourishes within but not against the State. By contrast, a Conservative is mostly opposed to same-sex marriage because, as the name implies, they wish to Conserve something, usually the status quo. In the UK Conservatives against same-sex marriage often base their argument on religious grounds, but we encounter here the problem that neither Liberals nor Conservatives are pure, as many Conservatives do not have strong religious views but do believe in same-sex marriage.

This is because strict political identity turns out to be fluid. Conservatives appeal to liberals on social policy so as not to look 'old fashioned', to appeal to the youth vote and get votes from all at election times. Liberals and socialists have often been opposed to abortion, seeing it not as a personal issue for the woman but a socially moral question about the meaning and value of life, just as socialists can be in favour or, or opposed to the European Union with or without the UK's membership.

To lump everyone who doesn't believe in your version of a tax free market free heaven on earth as a 'Communist' thus strips people of their right to be themselves rather than a name on a badge. And it does not help when you are unable to deal with the science of climate change, yet insist that the science does not prove the human element in recent history. We do not just need the science to tell us what is happening, we also need the politics to organize the remedies that can deal with some of the worst aspects of climate change and environmental pollution.

The irony is that many personal decisions amount to a form of 'collective action' that can help save coastal regions and the oceans from erosion and pollution, that can prevent the further deterioration of coral reefs, that can 'save the tiger', 'save the whale' and preserve our forests. Millions of plastic bags once free in supermarkets in the UK no longer find their way into the sea or landfill, we can make a difference. What is wrong with that?

[filghy2]

Thinking of politics in terms of simple dichotomy between left=big government and right=small government is not very helpful.

Use of the terms left and right actually originates from pre-revolutionary France. The conservatives, who wanted to preserve the power and privileges of the monarchy, aristocracy and the church sat on the right of the national assembly. The reformers and/or radicals who wanted to reduce these privileges and increase the rights of the common people sat on the left. This dichotomy between conservatives and reformers/radicals is less relevant nowadays given how far the status quo has shifted in the reformist direction.

It is probably more useful to think in terms of three different dimensions: economic, social and defence/national security. It may also be useful to add a fourth dimension that cuts across these: nationalism vs internationalism.

Political parties characterised as 'right' these days generally favour less regulation/taxation of economic activity, but more regulation of social behaviour in the name of traditional values/'morality' and a more hawkish stance on defence/national security. The latter two positions are actually 'big government'. Moreover, there is a growing element on the right that favours economic nationalism (with tighter controls on trade and immigration), which is where the fourth dimension comes in. Parties characterised as 'left' generally favour more regulation/taxation of economic activity, more tolerance of diverse social behaviour and more emphasis on diplomacy/international cooperation rather than military power.

This shows why RV's simplistic notions are really very silly.

[filghy2]

An after-thought: the one thing that has not changed since pre-revolutionary France is that the right still favours the interests of those who have wealth and power.

[Stavros]

Thinking of politics in terms of simple dichotomy between left=big government and right=small government is not very helpful.
Use of the terms left and right actually originates from pre-revolutionary France. The conservatives, who wanted to preserve the power and privileges of the monarchy, aristocracy and the church sat on the right of the national assembly. The reformers and/or radicals who wanted to reduce these privileges and increase the rights of the common people sat on the left. This dichotomy between conservatives and reformers/radicals is less relevant nowadays given how far the status quo has shifted in the reformist direction.
It is probably more useful to think in terms of three different dimensions: economic, social and defence/national security. It may also be useful to add a fourth dimension that cuts across these: nationalism vs internationalism.
Political parties characterised as 'right' these days generally favour less regulation/taxation of economic activity, but more regulation of social behaviour in the name of traditional values/'morality' and a more hawkish stance on defence/national security. The latter two positions are actually 'big government'. Moreover, there is a growing element on the right that favours economic nationalism (with tighter controls on trade and immigration), which is where the fourth dimension comes in. Parties characterised as 'left' generally favour more regulation/taxation of economic activity, more tolerance of diverse social behaviour and more emphasis on diplomacy/international cooperation rather than military power.
This shows why RV's simplistic notions are really very silly.

I usually find myself in agreement with your posts, but consider this one confused. I think that is because in addition to the problems of defining Left and Right in general terms, differences emerge in specific countries where left and right do not mean the same thing.

Replacing class struggle -at one time the acme of left-v-right, with Marine Le Pen's concoction: Mondialistes ou Patriotes is little more than an attempt to refurbish Nationalism as the driving force of politics, but where the definition of the Nation for Le Pen is quite clearly White and Christian and nobody else. It repudiates the Imperial past which incorporated France's Black colonies into the Republic -even today French citizens in the Caribbean vote in General Elections- but is most intense in its rejection of the idea that a citizen of France can be Jewish or Muslim.

Thus, on the one hand France's alt-right is close to the US alt-right and an element of the Republican Party that bases the whole of the American project from Jamestown to this morning as the realisation of the rights of White Christians to rule for their own benefit, regardless of class. There are differences, because the immigrant experience means that White Christians can be Catholic rather than Protestant, and while Jews for some should be expelled from America along with Muslims and Black Americans, other Republicans and possibly some alt-right even if they want them expelled, accept this is not a realistic option, whereas preventing the further influx of Latin Catholics is a keenly felt problem they wish would go away.

The problem deepens in Europe, because there has been a long-established connection between Socialism and Christianity, something Americans find inexplicable, if they even know about it. If the left has resonance here, it is because of a trend in early industrial Britain for artisans and unskilled labourers to choose local Christian community churches against the Established Church of England, doing so on the basis that the Gospels provided them with a moral authority that government and the church lacked.

These non-established religious groups stressed the importance of communities sharing the benefits of their labour in a moral economy where a person's needs were to be met from the community that produced it, notwithstanding the ownership of landowners and capitalist merchants. The roots of the Labour Party are thus found in thousands of working class communities which developed their own networks of power and representation that, until the creation of the party in 1900 were disparate and poorly organized.

This Christian basis for policies of justice and equality are also found on the continent in the Netherlands and Germany, but less so in Italy and France, where the left has since 1789 been anti-clerical, as has also been the case in Spain. Ireland, again, offers a quite different profile owing to the almost complete dominance of the Catholic Church, and where left and right has been a weak distinction to make, as politics tended to be shaped more by the conflict with Britain than the conflict within Ireland.

Into this mix, Marxism has had a varied career, and not a particularly successful one, but in its British expression, one sees its weaknesses and failures. The British Labour movement was, as is also true of the continent, split asunder by the Russian Revolutions and the success of the Russian Communist Party in creating alternative socialist parties that sapped working class loyalty often handing parliamentary success to its opponents. The creation of 'ghettoes' on the left meant that many Marxists gave up on the Communist organization to choose Labour as an effective vehicle for their careers, even though they were outnumbered in the party until Corbyn's spectacular rise to the leadership. The weakness lies in the fact that Labour is not an internationalist party so that even Marxists like Corbyn and McDonnell may give lip service to international causes but are in fact small-time nationalists.

A cardinal feature of Marx's concept of class was that it was like capitalist, international in character. But whereas Marx was careful to use class as a component of the social relations of capitalist society, he had no empathy with or even understanding of nationalism, even though it was becoming a more dominant factor of politics in the 19th century than class struggle. In fact the revolutionary role of the proletariat, a mission discovered through their development of an awareness of their own, actual power to create change, collapsed in 1914 as working class parties in Britain and Germany opted to support the nationalist rather than the revolutionary cause, a factor which persisted after the war and into the darker era of the Third Reich and the Second World War.

Thus emerged, for want of a better use of words, a 'soft left' which believed in the Parliamentary Road to Socialism, its best exemplar being the Attlee government of 1945. But while this suppressed the hard left, their persistence, and the drift of the 'soft left' to the 'Third way' incoherence of Tony Blair's New Labour, has emerged as a more powerful force than it was before. But, where is their internationalism? Corbyn and McDonnell have both campaigned against the UK's membership of the EU since 1973, as was true of their socialist guru Tony Benn, who, though he had an American wife, was completely uninterested in the USA as a country and usually dismissed its foreign adventures much as Corbyn does today. There is not even a shred of sympathy or understanding, and thus no solidarity with workers in China or Vietnam, and while Corbyn's Latin wives have given him a penchant for the state capitalism of Chavez or Morales, he has been markedly quiet about the drift to dictatorship in Venezuela and Bolivia.

The old tradition of Labour, its Christian sense of justice and equality may still reside in parts of Labour, but today the party is mostly a confused mess of pro-European technocrats and -were it not grotesque to use the term- national socialists who yearn to impose Socialism in One Country. The meaning of left and right was never more exposed as a confusing if meaningless distinction than in this unfit-for-purpose movement of second-rate party hacks and deluded students.

But if you want a even more toxic problem, consider the roots of the environmental movement, which today appears to most as a 'left-wing' movement because it takes on Big Business, Government and their supporters variously described as 'climate change deniers', Lumberjacks and Morons. Those roots are closer to what we think today of as Fascism than socialism, largely because the environmental movement elevated nature to the status of something close to religion as being, indeed, our 'natural condition'. It may have begun with the 'back to nature' movement that was a signal feature of the Romantic poets like Wordsworth, or part of the early hostility to industry that one finds in Goethe and Schiller in Germany, but it took off in the late 19th century when anxieties over population begged the question: can the environment support another billion people?

The answer was no, leading to respectable writers, like HG Wells, long before the Nazi genocide, to suggest a cull of useless humans may be the only way to save our green fields and fishy coasts, our over-burdened towns and cities, indeed, our very 'civilization'. Eugenics, scouting for boys, cold showers and the worship of mother nature became the roots of the movement which now looks so different because in the interim, we discovered that Genocide is not a good way to deal with the 'problem'.

Finally, in this over-long post, one notes that in the US, the environmental movement has been conservative but also effective -one thinks of the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society and the Audobon Society taking the oil companies to court to delay the development of the oil industry in Alaska for years; whereas the Green Party in Germany emerged as a coalition of groups mostly if not exclusively fed up with the SPD's politics-as-usual and support for the nuclear energy sector. Whereas in the US the Green Party is a day-care centre for cranks and losers.

[Ts RedVeX]

The reason why flighty mentioned that both right and left wingers mean big government and less freedom for individual is exactly why I think it would be much more useful to class them both as left. There are simply no right-wing parties. No liberals - in its proper sense, who should be for freedom from any restrictions, be it social or economical.

Since your solar constant was 1.228kW 200 years ago, and is now between 1.318kW and 1.548kW then maybe, but only maybe, it would be wise to include its variations in your global warming, since that is a variation of 7.3% to 26% difference - that is shitloads over 200 years, if you ask me. Also, it would be nice to consider Milankovic cycles, and the facts that Earth's orbit is now becoming less eccentric, which equalises season's length, which implicates longer summers and shorter winters. It would also be nice to include axial precession in your global warming considerations, since it seems like it may be the time when the North Pole (ain't that at the same hemisphere North America is on?) is beginning to turn towards the Sun during perihelion and the temperatures in Australia during summer there are rather high. If I were you, I'd really stop bullshitting your fellow Americans about CO2 emissions, and tell them to get some shorts and flipflops as well as maybe plan moving somewhere else if I lived at a place that is already being affected by dangerous weather extremes rather than invest in inefficient solar panels.

[Stavros]

The reason why flighty mentioned that both right and left wingers mean big government and less freedom for individual is exactly why I think it would be much more useful to class them both as left. There are simply no right-wing parties. No liberals - in its proper sense, who should be for freedom from any restrictions, be it social or economical.
.
Liberal theory does not believe in freedom without restriction, as even in its most austere form, it maintains that freedom does not permit one person to harm another -it imposes limits to preserve a basic form of order in society. The claim that 'left' and 'right' can be defined in terms of their relationship to government, and the extent to which individuals are governed is limited to the status of a simple idea that is not met in the real world.

Solar panels have been so efficient in households in the UK they have been able to generate more electricity than they need and sell the surplus to the national grid.

[trish]

Since your solar constant was 1.228kW 200 years ago, and is now between 1.318kW and 1.548kW then maybe, but only maybe,...
As I said, the early measurements were crude. Consider the difficulties and factors that needed to be considered in making those early measurements of the solar flux at the Earth’s surface: atmospheric absorption on the day the measurement was made, exact determination of the experiment’s height above sea level, exact distance from the Sun when the measurement was made, proper measurement of the caloric rise of the measuring apparatus, time of day, day of year etc. Yes, Pouillet’s 1838 measurement was 1.228 kilowatts per square meter. In 1875 Violle’s measurement was 1.7 kilowatts per square meter. The average is 1.46 kilowatts per square meter. These two early measurements bound (below and above) the more accurate modern measurements you cited. The difference (even if we could count it as a surplus) is insufficient to account for the exponential warming of the Earth we been observing for over a century and a half. But yes, the current climate models do take into consideration the variations in the solar constant.

The Earth’s precession (the gyroscopic wobble of its spin axis), it’s orbital eccentricity and other orbital parameters vary through a complex set of not yet thoroughly understood cycles called the Milankovitch cycles. As you say, variations in these parameters will induce variations in the flux of solar energy reaching the Earth’s surface and do (when acting in synchrony) force changes in the Earth’s climate. The cyclic occurrences of Earth’s ice-ages are linked to the Milankovitch cycles. These cycles have (on a human scale) very large periods: on the order of tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years (the period of Earth’s precession is somewhere around 25000 years and the period in the variations of Earth’s eccentricity is on the order of 112000 years). That’s why over the period of a mere 200 years these variations are largely negligible. However, if you want to include them in the current climate model, know that the Milankovich cycles are now slowing (by a very very small amount) the warming of the Earth. But they are no match against the greenhouse gases that billions of people have been dumping into the atmosphere over the past 1.5 centuries.

[Ts RedVeX]

Of course there needs to be order. That is the whole idea of having a state with its police and military forces. The thing is to restrict the nation's freedom in as little ways possible.

Solar panels are so efficient that government needs to subsidise their use at homes to make it potentially reasonable to buy and install the panels, along with all the batteries, inverters, drivers etc required for them to work properly with the grid. And all that only if you live in a sunny spot anyway.

Yeah the solar constant is measured in kW/m/m rather than kW. Taking some crude measurement from 200 years ago, probably burdened with high inaccuracy and adding it to a measurement taken with a more accurate contemporary instrument to calculate an average does not remove any error from the mean, which means you end up with a value as inaccurate as the most inaccurate value taken into consideration.

By the way, I haven't come across anything related to anything other that observed temperatures' analyses in that report you attached here.

[peejaye]

Solar panels have been so efficient in households in the UK they have been able to generate more electricity than they need and sell the surplus to the national grid.

Such a pity then that most of the UK population can't fucking afford them! New installations have plummeted by over 80% since 2016!
Figures from the Solar Trade Association(STA)

[Stavros]

Such a pity then that most of the UK population can't fucking afford them! New installations have plummeted by over 80% since 2016!
Figures from the Solar Trade Association(STA)

The Government since 2010 has helped increase the number of homes with solar panels as part of the Clean Growth Plan, and as seen in the Green Match link below local councils remain committed to subsidizing new projects, as indeed they should. There is no logic to leaving the development of solar to the markets as markets don't provide in this instance.

The problem has emerged from the dysfunctional government we have had since the elections of 2015 and 2017, David Cameron's colossal blunder over the EU Referendum, and the shambles of Theresa May's emergency 'government' which has all but knackered rational policy making as Ministers spend most of their time trying to focus on their jobs and careers outside the EU, while bickering with each other as if they were in a school playground. Thus, from the Solar Trade Association:

Since 2015, employment in the sector has fallen by at least two thirds from a high point of well over 30,000. Large-scale solar deployment has stalled (notwithstanding isolated exceptions that nevertheless prove this rule), and the revised feed-in tariff has seen a dramatic year-on-year drop in rooftop installations. In 2015, there were 155,000 new domestic installations that year receiving the feed-in tariff. In the first six months of this year, the number was less than 5,000. It is undeniable that the sector suffered unnecessarily as a result of knee-jerk policy making in the aftermath of the 2015 election where solar was wrongly and public blamed for the LCF overspend. Ministers are keen to describe UK solar as a success story, and so it is. But what we need now from the Government is certainty and partnership for the future, rather than basking in past successes. The fact is, as the recent REN21 report showed, positive policies are still vital to the solar industry internationally. It is ironic that Solarcentury, a stalwart of the UK sector since the late 1990s, is now exporting successfully our UK solar expertise literally all around the world, while the UK domestic market remains in downturn.
http://www.solar-trade.org.uk/one-step-forwards-two-steps-back-the-strange-case-of-tory-solar-policy/

Leaving the EU could reverse the trend toward carbon efficient homes as the UK runs out of money, unless some courageous politician steps forward to announce an increase in income tax.

https://www.greenmatch.co.uk/blog/2014/07/1-500-uk-homes-will-benefit-from-solar-panels-funded-by-council

http://www.solar-trade.org.uk/its-time-to-shake-off-solar-thermals-preconceptions/

[peejaye]

Your stupid fucking answer to everything! Br-exit? Is that it? What the fuck is "Ministers focussing on careers outside of the EU" supposed to mean? They already have a job as an MP?

Go & see your Doctor to see if you can get something for it! Oh....& good luck! My surgery doesn't do appointments over the phone anymore, they're all taken! You have to go down there at 8am & join the queue(line) to book an appointment for that day! I suppose that's the fucking fault of Br-exit too? You Nutters!

[trish]

Yeah the solar constant is measured in kW/m/m rather than kW. Taking some crude measurement from 200 years ago, probably burdened with high inaccuracy and adding it to a measurement taken with a more accurate contemporary instrument to calculate an average does not remove any error from the mean, which means you end up with a value as inaccurate as the most inaccurate value taken into consideration.Yes, you got it: the cruder the measurement the wider the margin of error. If the older data is included in say, your calculation of ocean rise or say, your calculation of the Earth’s temperature anomaly, then your prediction will also include a somewhat larger margin of error.

A few posts ago you were eager to include Pouillet’s calculation of the Solar Constant because you thought the higher modern values meant there was an increase in the solar flux that could account for global warming. (It wouldn't have.) But of course Violle’s higher measurement throws a monkey wrench into that maneuver. So now you want to exclude the 19th century measurements.

It doesn’t matter. You can do the calculation either way. Leave out the 19th century measurements of the solar constant altogether, or put them in. You can leave out the effect of Sunspot activity or include it. Leave out the effect of the Milankovitch cycles or put them in. Either way you’ll find that at this moment in time the greenhouse-effect utterly swamps all other factors that might modify the temperature of the our planet. The current warming trend is indisputably due, primarily, to the precipitous rise of greenhouse gases that humans have been dumping into the atmosphere for over a century.

[buttslinger]

When I used to go to chronic fatigue meetings, the people there that were really into having chronic fatigue could tell me which doctor to go to if I wanted to have lyme disease, and which doctors I could go to if I didn't want to have lyme disease. This was the era when the Bush W doctors that claimed lyme disease didn't exist, were frantically calling the same doctors they called frauds when George got a bulleye's rash on his leg. Trying to find a doctor that would confirm I had a pituitary tumor was a year long nightmare, because the Growth Hormone that is used to treat it cost Insurance Companies millions of dollars a year. In the debate over climate change, any fool can sense that sticking a hose from your car exhaust into the car is going to kill you, but THE JUDGE in this debate is going to be the people that don't want to buy an electric car, they prefer a "69 GTO.
There is a reason it was called Gilligan's Island, and not just because Gilligan used to be Maynard G Krebs, Mr Howell was Mr Magoo, FGS. The Professor had his own hut because he was an oddball, Gilligan was THE DECIDER who had his own mind when it came to who he obeyed, Gilligan was the common denominator.
To make a long boring story short, Global Warming's existence doesn't rely on science, it relies on who is in the White House, a Democrat, or a Republican.
The average Joe that believes Global Warming is costing them a job are the same Joes that cling to their guns and religion. You can't just identify global warming to fix it, you can't just sell it (Gore) you got to pull it off. Obama could do it. Trump could undo it. Global Warming is Hillary's fault. Don't Boo, VOTE!!!
Trump WELCOMES the hate of gays and trannys because 32% of Americans hate gays and trannys. There is a method in his madness. Let's hope so anyway, if 32% of Americans decide nuking Iran and N Korea is a good thing, ...........

[Stavros]

Your stupid fucking answer to everything! Br-exit? Is that it? What the fuck is "Ministers focussing on careers outside of the EU" supposed to mean? They already have a job as an MP?


In fact my post was a rational reply to yours with regard to solar panels and why sales and installations have stalled in the last two years. That Brexit is our breakfast, lunch and dinner should be as obvious to you as it is to everyone else in the UK, just as the desperation of MPs who don't know if they will survive the next Election is as real as their fake support for Theresa May, or not as the case may be.

You are the one who absorbed the lies pumped into your belly by that dishevelled drunk Boris Johnson, no-mates Gove and I'm-really-not-a-fascist Farage. When are you going to take some responsibility for stabbing this country in the back and at least admit you have no idea how we are going to fund the NHS, education, housing or the Bomb when we lose our lucrative partnership with the EU?

[Stavros]

To make a long boring story short, Global Warming's existence doesn't rely on science, it relies on who is in the White House, a Democrat, or a Republican.
The average Joe that believes Global Warming is costing them a job are the same Joes that cling to their guns and religion. You can't just identify global warming to fix it, you can't just sell it (Gore) you got to pull it off. Obama could do it. Trump could undo it. Global Warming is Hillary's fault. Don't Boo, VOTE!!!


Not sure about that Buttslinger as a lot of Americans are now employed in the alternative energy industry they can't all be climate change deniers (article is from 2017):

In the United States, more people were employed in solar power last year than in generating electricity through coal, gas and oil energy combined. According to a new report (https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2017/01/f34/2017%20US%20Energy%20and%20Jobs%20Report_0.pdf) from the U.S. Department of Energy, solar power employed 43 percent of the Electric Power Generation sector's workforce in 2016, while fossil fuels combined accounted for just 22 percent. It's a welcome statistic for those seeking to refute Donald Trump's assertion that green energy projects are bad news for the American economy.

Just under 374,000 people were employed in solar energy, according to the report, while coal, gas and oil power generation combined had a workforce of slightly more than 187,000. The boom in the country's solar workforce can be attributed to construction work associated with expanding generation capacity. The gulf in employment is growing with net generation from coal falling 53 percent over the last decade. During the same period, electricity generation from natural gas increased 33 percent while solar expanded 5,000 percent.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2017/01/25/u-s-solar-energy-employs-more-people-than-oil-coal-and-gas-combined-infographic/#3a37179d2800

[buttslinger]

Not sure about that Buttslinger as a lot of Americans are now employed in the alternative energy industry they can't all be climate change deniers (article is from 2017):

Fair enough, let me put it this way, if Trump's base were screaming in favor of Climate Control, Trump would claim to be all about Climate Control, he would say he's always been about Climate Control, he invented Climate Control long before loser Al Gore, then he would do everything he could to quietly dissolve Climate Control Regulations that cost Business Exec$ ulcers. It really is amazing how Evangelicals, Gun Nuts, Businessmen and the KKK are all on the same page when it comes to Trump or Politics in General. There are guys like Karl Rove, and even Sloppy Steve Bannon who dedicate their life into finding out what 51% of the Country want, no, I mean 51% of the people who vote, No wait, I mean 51% of the electoral college vote.....
I do know that Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the White House, Reagan took 'em off. I think Obama had played a chess game with big business for eight years, they sat on their cash but all that's over now, the cash spigots are turned on to wide fuckin' open. Maybe Trump will dissolve incentives for Big Business to invest in Green Energy, I don't know. I do fear that by this November's election, the Economy will be booming before the bill to the middle class comes due. Much of Politics is like a Sports Book, you don't get rich by knowing who will win the game, you get rich by knowing who people will bet on. Obama stopped politicizing and started Legislating after he won the election, Trump is still debating Hillary. I am very surprised if solar energy generates more cash than gas, electricity, and coal combined. I think maybe Solar and Wind hires more people, but gas and oil generates more cash. Sometimes a person's perception trumps reality, illusion sells, what distracts you defines you..... blah blah blah. I do know I don't get a Solar Energy bill in the mail, but my gas bill this month was off the charts. I gotta go pick up my car now, the global freezing broke my plastic front door handle. $250.
Politicians and Car Repair guys. Friends or Foes???????

[peejaye]

In fact my post was a rational reply to yours with regard to solar panels and why sales and installations have stalled in the last two years. That Brexit is our breakfast, lunch and dinner should be as obvious to you as it is to everyone else in the UK, just as the desperation of MPs who don't know if they will survive the next Election is as real as their fake support for Theresa May, or not as the case may be.

You are the one who absorbed the lies pumped into your belly by that dishevelled drunk Boris Johnson, no-mates Gove and I'm-really-not-a-fascist Farage. When are you going to take some responsibility for stabbing this country in the back and at least admit you have no idea how we are going to fund the NHS, education, housing or the Bomb when we lose our lucrative partnership with the EU?

You really do show on here with your paranoia and unstable behaviour, your accusations & insults, simply over the result of a referendum called by the then Leader of the UK, that you are seriously and mentally unstable. If I had my way I would lock you up in a Mental Institution & throw away the key!
You have been told time & time again how I would fund everything with the £1.9bn per year saving by leaving but you don't fucking listen because of your illness!
Most stable normal rational people who voted remain have now accepted democracy & would like the Government no negotiate our way out of it!

[Stavros]

You really do show on here with your paranoia and unstable behaviour, your accusations & insults, simply over the result of a referendum called by the then Leader of the UK, that you are seriously and mentally unstable. If I had my way I would lock you up in a Mental Institution & throw away the key!
You have been told time & time again how I would fund everything with the £1.9bn per year saving by leaving but you don't fucking listen because of your illness!
Most stable normal rational people who voted remain have now accepted democracy & would like the Government no negotiate our way out of it!

My post was calm and reasonable, and primarily a correction of the remarks you made about solar panels, a topic you have avoided in your latest post, just as you seem to think Brexit is not worth debating even though you are responsible for it, but I agree my latest post was a bit over the top, as they say, but the spirit was fine as we -and our descendants- will be living with your foolish and ill-considered decision for the rest of our lives as I see no prospect of Brexit being reversed, contrary to what you think.

That the UK will be obliged to continue paying into the EU after leaving is a fact of life because we signed an agreement to do so before the EU Referendum, that this will mean less money to spend in the UK in the transition period of two years -if that is what it is- cannot also be denied, while our exit will also begin a process whereby the UK's trade with the EU declines. The knock-on effect of leaving, in at least an interim period of 5 possibly ten years, will be a loss of income, so that your figure of £1.9 billion is a fantasy, like most Leave statistics, some of which claim the UK will benefit by $23 billion, most of which will not be spent on the NHS or Education anyway, but on benefits for the unemployed and the poor, much as Mrs Thatcher squandered North Sea revenues on benefits when unemployment due to her sabotage of the economy was at record levels.

You could consider other aspects of your decision -the UK's space scientists are being frozen out of the EU's Galileo programme because the UK is leaving and its future relationship with the EU is not clear, as is also emerging to be a problem in higher education with the Erasmus programme, while the signs are that the City of London will lose its passporting business. The claim that German car manufacturers want a deal to protect their lucrative trade is undermined by the simple fact that German cars cost more because of the decline of value of the pound and sales are already down, while the more complex problem of the supply-chain in EU motor manufacture may in time lead car firms to re-locate their UK businesses to the EU to cut costs. And so on, none of which means anything to you because you are convinced Labour will win the next election -which is possible- and spend our way out of the crisis we are in. Assuming we don't have first to spend our money bailing out the train operating companies or Carillion which is billions in debt with a pension fund shortfall of over £500m. Corbyn may enter office intending to spend £1.9 billion only to discover he is already having to spend £19 billion picking up the tab for Brexit and Theresa May's shambolic government.

And you think I am mad?

[peejaye]

Have the last word as you always do but your stupid theories and speculation mean absolutely Jack Shit to me!

[chupapau]

Have the last word as you always do but your stupid theories and speculation mean absolutely Jack Shit to me!

Mate, calm down. Just admit you don't understand the issue and you think knee jerk reactions are sensible arguments.

I'm from the continent. The one you liberated from Napoleon whereas we didn't ask for it (proof for that, we all reinstated his laws at the first possible opportunity). I pissed myself from laughing when the result of that so called referendum came in (to any sensible thinking person, the outcome of any referendum with such a magnitude should be a minimal 2/3 to say it is binding, but what could we expect from a country that has a sham democracy and not even a half decent constitution) and could only think of the story of Athens going to war on it's former colonies in Sicily without having a clue how far of they were, what it would cost to raise an army and get it there etc etc. They got defeated, and were bankcrupt and that was the end of them. Basic pride before the fall.

I work my ass of in a company that funnels its revenue to the UK by using a fraud sales office. Leave the UK and that set-up is no longer possible, so there will go the jobs and income, back over here. Good riddance!

My tax money is used to stop scores of immigrants who want to get to the UK, because they vastly believe a - they can make it there b - will never be expelled once they set foot on ground, because there are no ID cards needed and if you walk there, well you're british aren't you? Then more of my tax money is used flying those poor bastards back to were they came from. And you honestly believe we'll keep on doing that if don't cough up your dues??? Hell no man, I'll personally see to it that we do use the way cheaper method, give them a ticket Calais/Dover!

City started relocating already before the results came in, because basically they don't trust UK anymore. Sure, they face more stringent laws here, but they want to be where the money is (and they are a hell of a lot smarter than you and I and Stavros together, trust me). Do you have any idea of the fact that most of the continent thinks, knows, that the ravage of the financial crisis of 2008 would have been tampered a lot for the continent, were it not for the greedy bastards using the back door laws and exceptions the UK had gotten for 2 decades from the EU??? The trail from Wall Street to Greece goes straight through the City.

I felt relieved, honestly, were it not that the Brexit decision is the first step towards a future armed conflict in the end, because inevitably, someone will figure out there is money to be made that way. And we do anything for a quid, don't we?

And now for something completely different, Global Warming! (refugees of flooded lands not welcome in the UK I guess?)

[chupapau]

I tell you yet again that governments should not interfere in economy. Countries do not trade with eachother. People who live in countries do. The idea of running a country as if it was a company is ludicrous.

Oh? Governments should only bail the economy out is it? Countries do not trade? Then why is the UK hurrying to make illegal trade deals quick quick now, before they lose their so advantageous deal with the EU. And why is self declared business man (with half dozen bankruptcies in his name), as a good "right wing person" pretending it is the only way?

You are actually Sarah Palin, aren't you?

[Stavros]

Have the last word as you always do but your stupid theories and speculation mean absolutely Jack Shit to me!

But Peejaye there is no speculation in the fact that two EU agencies are leaving the UK taking their jobs with them as well as the money spent by those workers in their local economy. There is no speculation in the 'threat' to farming of migrant workers no longer showing up for work, it has been happening all year with farmers in Cornwall lamenting the fact their crops are rotting in the fields without the labour to pick them. As I pointed out above, it is not speculation but fact that the EU Space Agency is denying British scientists the opportunity to work on the Galileo programme, that foreign student numbers are in decline, that the care system faces a major challenge as basic, and mostly low-paid staff also decline. If you are not worried by these developments, then don't be, but don't also pretend they do not represent the negative impact of Brexit before it is even a fact and we leave the EU.

Yes, the UK will adapt to leaving the EU, and in time the economy will probably recover to a level that people adjust to, and I don't doubt we will sign trade deals too. But it looks to me like these developments will not be a reality for at least 10 years because of the transitional exit from the EU, if there is one, because trade deals can't be signed in months but take years to negotiate, and because even when we leave the EU there will be multiple legal cases involving firms across the divide that sap time, money and energy. As Chupapu points out above, the Leavers invited the UK all aboard a ship that is sailing to an unknown destination on the basis that when we reach the other side, we will be rich, happy and free.

Sunny California must seem like the ideal destination for leavers, but then the fires burn the trees and dry out the soil, the rains come tumbling down, and paradise is turned into hell, and that is one hell of a journey to choose to make.

[peejaye]

....... Welcome another patronising supremacist telling people they don't understand because they don't agree with them. You seem to of mistaken which person on here as lost control? I'm really calm & very happy with Br-exit. That's why I'm not wasting my time arguing with idiots on here who can't accept it! The referendum was announced, the people voted, the votes were cast, it's over. Wind in your liberal, do-gooding necks and accept what as happened. There will always be winners and losers after any referendum.
I lost my job because of EU policy so I don't sympathise with any fucker losing their job because of what's happened.

[peejaye]

Oh? Governments should only bail the economy out is it? Countries do not trade? Then why is the UK hurrying to make illegal trade deals quick quick now

Illegal? Any proof? Another one losing his marbles on his way to a lunatic asylum maybe? Maybe YOU should be the one calming down?

[Stavros]

....... Welcome another patronising supremacist telling people they don't understand because they don't agree with them. You seem to of mistaken which person on here as lost control? I'm really calm & very happy with Br-exit. That's why I'm not wasting my time arguing with idiots on here who can't accept it! The referendum was announced, the people voted, the votes were cast, it's over. Wind in your liberal, do-gooding necks and accept what as happened. There will always be winners and losers after any referendum.
I lost my job because of EU policy so I don't sympathise with any fucker losing their job because of what's happened.

If you read my posts you will find I am obviously unhappy with the Referendum result, but accept that the UK is leaving. Your problem is that you are unable to defend the decision as something positive when I point out that already, before the UK has formally left the EU, the impact of the decision has been negative on jobs and economic planning. I have even said that the UK in the long term will adjust to the reality of being outside the EU, but that the interim phase between those two events could be longer and more painful than you think, and that it is likely to undermine the domestic policy options Corbyn will have if Labour win the next election for the simple reason that the UK will not have the funds to pay for the party's magnificent policies as they claim they will not raise taxes. Taking responsibility for the decision you made means accepting that income tax will rise, that interest rates will rise, and that your income and standard of living over the next ten years will decline.

You say you don't sympathise with any fucker losing their job because of what's happened, but that is a cynical dismissal of other people's (or, in your words, other fuckers) lives, but entirely part of the cynical jump over the cliff taken by Leave on the basis that they will find out what happens when they hit the ground.

I am surprised given this is a thread on Climate Change you have not joined with the Americans and Telegraph readers who think Climate Change is a hoax.

[peejaye]

Not me Mister. I'm laughing my little cock off at you all, I'm sorted come March 2020. I won't go into it but it will be party time if I make it! :party:

[chupapau]

I lost my job because of EU policy so I don't sympathise with any fucker losing their job because of what's happened.

Sure about that? Or were you just told? Due to company relocation? That is not EU, but a worldwide right wing politics achievement, for more money in the Bahama's. Due to a Polish worker taking your job? Then your boss just took someone on who works harder and better then you, without the bitching and whining. And exploiting the Pole at the same time. I've been working with scores of British companies over the last 25 years, I can write you an encyclopedia on British work ethics.


Illegal? Any proof? Another one losing his marbles on his way to a lunatic asylum maybe? Maybe YOU should be the one calming down?

Obviously you don't read or watch news, or limited to what you served in the UK. Proof was all over it some weeks ago. LEGAL binding fact : UK is not allowed to negotiate or sign any trade deal BEFORE the Brexit is final. From a solely UK point of view it is not illegal, it just shows all others what backstabbing cunts are ruling your country. Trust me, the Ozzies and the Kiwis are not that exited the take the Poms back in.

I can also write an encyclopedia about how manipulated the British audience was by both Labour and Tory since Maastricht was signed, a treaty that shifted the focus of "freedom and opportunity for all" towards "no just freedom and opportunity for companies, not people". And it came right out of the Labour masked neo liberal's office of Mr Blair. I can watch and read the news in 5 languages, I get a lot more points of view than you seem to do, before making decisions. As it goes for Brexit, it goes for Global Warming...


Not me Mister. I'm laughing my little cock off at you all, I'm sorted come March 2020. I won't go into it but it will be party time if I make it! :party:

Which proves Stavros point, your so selfish that you don't even consider your children's and grandchildren's future. And again you write "if I make it". So you are just gambling on in life. You can do that, it is your right to look for the quickest way to disaster. But don't expect putting up a bigmouth means other people have to jump in your grave along with you.

I'm baffled by the patience and energy Stavros displays in answering people like you. Hats off for him. I just don't have the patience anymore, and call out a daft cunt when I see one. If I were to meet you, I'd buy you any drink you wanted for the entire evening. Sort of helping you get done with the world as soon as possible.

Have fun in 2020, if you make it there...

[peejaye]

You & Stavros deserve each other, you can spend all day holding hands searching the internet for neo-liberal right of centre websites then posting links on here which bolster your beliefs. You don't know me & I wouldn't want to meet you, clear!

I worked transporting energy by rail, I wasn't replaced by a Pole, my work was safety critical & I was bound by a legal document which was property of the Monarchy. A quarter of the work force were displaced because of green cleaner energy.

Learn not to sterotype people who voted leave, 51.9% of people did & stop behaving like a supremacist fucking arsehole :fu:

[peejaye]

PS; & Oh, I gave up on cunts like you a long time ago!

[Stavros]

You & Stavros deserve each other, you can spend all day holding hands searching the internet for neo-liberal right of centre websites then posting links on here which bolster your beliefs. You don't know me & I wouldn't want to meet you, clear!
Learn not to sterotype people who voted leave, 51.9% of people did & stop behaving like a supremacist fucking arsehole :fu:

neo-liberal right of centre websites -tis is not a serious comment Peejaye, and you claimed in an earlier post in the Brexit thread that yu didn't vote to leave the EU as much as vote against the government of David Cameron. This is part of the post-referendum problem because a lot of people who voted as a protest on other issues probably did not expect Leave to win.

We are dealing with a future we cannot know, be it Brexit or Climate Change, but we do have the signs and materials here at hand which act as a warning. The signs on the immediate period when the UK leaves the EU are not good, but you don't seem to care. The warning signs on the climate are substantially more critical because of the length of time it takes for remedial actions to take effect. The UK may survive leaving the EU, albeit not in the same form it is in now; the same cannot be said for coastal communities or cities with meagre water supplies. It is to those ends we should be focused, not on being abusive or dismissive of others. We have only this one world to share and care for as it cares for us

[chupapau]

I worked transporting energy by rail, I wasn't replaced by a Pole, my work was safety critical & I was bound by a legal document which was property of the Monarchy. A quarter of the work force were displaced because of green cleaner energy.

Nice to point out it was cleaner energy! So what was the problem with you re-schooling? Surely that must have been possible, with the huge reconversion funds offered by the EU?

Or is it, that you want to benefit from a very very early retirement, funded with err young peoples tax money in a social democrat system of pension?

About my asshole, it's a great one, just look to your left.

[MrFanti]

And here "Global Cooling" ruined a perfectly good forrest in Antarctica....
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/antarctica-fossil-forests-280-million-year-old-trees-erik-gulbranson-john-isbell-university-of-a8158441.html


During the Permian Period, Antarctica was much warmer than it is today.

[trish]

From the article you linked,
"During the Permian Period, Antarctica was much warmer than it is today. At the time, Antarctica was then still part of Gondwana, the Southern Hemisphere’s supercontinent that incorporated present-day Africa, South America, Arabia, India and Australia."

Antarctica didn't, at that time, occupy the polar region. To be sure it was still south of the 60S parallel and the forest nevertheless had to be hearty to survive. The warming at that location, at that time was clearly due in part to the (re)location of Antarctica; i.e. to continental drift.

Interesting article. So your point is...not all climate events have been due to the greenhouse effect?...we just need to be hearty?...we should just rearrange the continents?...what?

[trish]

Addendum: I should have rather said, "...the warmth at that location, at that time..." The later cooling of Antarctica was in part due its movement toward the Southern Polar region.

[MrFanti]

What "going green" really means......$$$$$$$$$
http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2018/01/16/goldstein-investigation-10-million-lapd-electric-bmws-appear-unused-misused/

[trish]

What "going green" really means...
So the point is anthropogenic climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the LAPD and BMW? By the State of California so they can torment the LAPD with an unwanted fleet of electric cars? Yeah, that explains everything, except the climate data and why the models based atmospheric and oceanographic physics and chemistry are so good at accounting for those observations.

What the article really demonstrates is that expensive, half-assed measures can create more problems than they solve and that corporations will generally take any opportunity to make a profit. This is the exact opposite of what greening really means.

Your gleeful posting of the article demonstrates that deniers still cannot separate science from politics and political ideology. The fact that a corporation made a profit by selling a fleet of cars to a police force that refused to use them can be used to discredit a any number of institutions and ‘philosophies’, but certainly not the science of climate change.

Look. I don’t pretend to know how to solve all the problems that climate change will bring. My interest in this thread is the science of climate change and it’s possible consequences to the biosphere and the possible consequences to our civilization. I’ll let you figure out whether unregulated market forces alone can circumvent the coming disasters or whether it might necessitate some other form of cooperation. I suppose a truly selfish entrepreneur (in the good sense, à la Ayn Rand) can find a way to profit from any situation.

[filghy2]

What "going green" really means......$$$$$$$$$
http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2018/01/16/goldstein-investigation-10-million-lapd-electric-bmws-appear-unused-misused/

It's good that you've told us you are an independent thinker, otherwise people might get the impression that you are just providing selective pieces of 'evidence' to support a pre-conceived agenda.

[filghy2]

What the article really demonstrates is that expensive, half-assed measures can create more problems than they solve and that corporations will generally take any opportunity to make a profit. This is the exact opposite of what greening really means.

That's why people who understand economics have always argued for some form of carbon tax or emissions trading scheme, which creates the incentive to reduce emissions but leaves it to the private sector to find the most efficient ways to do so. But people like the Fantisizer won't have a bar of that either, which is why we get a bunch of inefficient bureaucratic measures instead.

[filghy2]

I don't bother wasting my time like you marking thumbs up or thumbs down as it's totally irrelevant!


I'm really calm & very happy with Br-exit. That's why I'm not wasting my time arguing with idiots on here who can't accept it!


You & Stavros deserve each other, you can spend all day holding hands searching the internet for neo-liberal right of centre websites then posting links on here which bolster your beliefs.

Learn not to sterotype people

Lmao!

[peejaye]

Oh dear, calm down deary :ignore:

[Ts RedVeX]

The point is not to leave crude measurements out but to accept that you can predict fuck-all with your couple-of-decades worth of temperature measurements, since you do not even consider anything like Solar flux in your shitty report. (That's the answer to Trish's earlier communist post trying to insinuate I am a hypocrite).

Oh, of course state should not interfere in economy. Not bailing out failing enterprises is exactly that. - Not interfering. I am not sure what your point is... Unless that maybe you are trying to say fascism is good.

[trish]

The point is not to leave crude measurements out but to accept that you can predict fuck-all with your couple-of-decades worth of temperature measurements, since you do not even consider anything like Solar flux in your shitty report. (That's the answer to Trish's earlier communist post trying to insinuate I am a hypocrite)....(the boldfacing is mine)
What do you think the solar constant measures? What have we been discussing for the last several posts? What do kilowatts per square meter measure if not a flux of energy (in this case from the Sun, you know: Sol)?

[Stavros]

[QUOTE=Ts RedVeX;1816577]
The point is not to leave crude measurements out but to accept that you can predict fuck-all with your couple-of-decades worth of temperature measurements, since you do not even consider anything like Solar flux in your shitty report. (That's the answer to Trish's earlier communist post trying to insinuate I am a hypocrite).
--Climate change science is informed by over a century of records, at least get your facts right, if facts are of interest to you.

Oh, of course state should not interfere in economy. Not bailing out failing enterprises is exactly that. -
--The State has paid Carillion millions of pounds to run public services and repair and re-invigorate our public infrastructure. The company has failed -why? According to you markets work, private enterprise works. Perhaps you can explain why this private enterprise has failed in spectacular fashion to meet its contractual obligations to the government as well as its shareholders. And who do you expect to pay the bills, if not the taxpayer? And why should we anyway? There are successful companies in the market, I don't attack the whole of the private sector, but to pretend it is some irreplaceable gift to mankind is to ignore the obvious. It doesn't always work.
So who now is going to complete work on that unfinished hospital, fill in the pot-holes in the road, and so on? Maybe you should start up a company and apply for the contract.

[Ts RedVeX]

It failed because the majority of idiotic democrats had been voting for socialists who decide to give taxpayer's money (money that was given away by democrats and all other sorts of communists, as well as the money the remaining normal part of the British nation was robbed of). I have said it a few times already and I will say it again: government should not interfere in economy. Bankruptcy is part of the free market's ways and anyone who believes they can bail it out is wrong. - Of course, e.g. in democracy, or republic, where term of office is very short, bailouts are a good way of getting rich quickly by fucking the nation over and fucking off before shit hits the fan... I cannot understand why the majority on here believes in the communist "nanny state" that is supposed to regulate everything. What is truly astonishing and scary, though, is that apart from me, there is absolutely nobody else sane on here, who feels that normality must be brought back or our civilisation will cease to exist within the next 20 or 30 years. Or will you have all died by 2047? And because you all have pensions you do not give a fuck what sort of country your children would have to live in, had you had any? You just push your global warming and other bollocks either because you are to daft to see what is going on or just want your cut of the "fat red cake".

Unless your politicians are going to give more of your money away - taking their shares, of course - or ideally somebody normal decides to liquidate the Ministry of Health, or whatever it is called, nobody will complete your unfinished hospital, because it would not make any sense economically. What is that is so difficult to understand here?

As to filling pot holes, it is a public road so why don't you do it? It is your road as well as it is anyone else's... Can't you see how stupid this way of thinking is? I'll just get an off-road car and I'll be fine.

Show me where that report reads that the research it regards proves that solar flux does not contribute to global warming.

Actually, since we got back to the report, show me where it states that global warming has been proven to be caused by humans. - Cos I have not found such a statement in it.

[trish]

...you do not even consider anything like Solar flux...

The theory of climate change you oppose is the one that attributes the change to the greenhouse effect, right? That theory maintains that light energy from the Sun (otherwise known as the solar flux) passes through the atmosphere (with some absorption) and warms the Earth’s surface( i.e. surface atoms are excited by their absorption of the solar radiation ). The warmed Earth then radiates that energy (i.e. the excited atoms emit new photons, mostly in the infrared band) outward into the atmosphere, where the greenhouse gasses capture enough of it create a imbalance: i.e. in net, more energy is absorbed from the Sun, than is radiated back out into space.

The whole greenhouse model is based on a detailed analysis of the solar flux at all wavelengths. (I explained this in some detail already back in post #1572.) You’re being more than disingenuous when you claim, “...you do not even consider anything like Solar flux...”

[Stavros]

[QUOTE=Ts RedVeX;1816783]

It failed because the majority of idiotic democrats had been voting for socialists who decide to give taxpayer's money (money that was given away by democrats and all other sorts of communists, as well as the money the remaining normal part of the British nation was robbed of).
--This is a complete negation of the facts, which are that it was the government of Margaret Thatcher, basing its policies on free market ideas derived from Adam Smith and Friedrich Hayek, to name but two non-socialists, that believed private enterprise could do a better job than state-owned companies in providing services in key parts of the economy and thus began the trend to out-source major projects to private enterprise. In the US, it was the Reagan Presidency that out-sourced contracts and yet today the largest employer in the US, directly or indirectly is the Federal government of the US and State and local government. I wonder, is your idol in the White House going to dismantle this aspect of the US economy, cancel all those contracts and 'liberate' the markets? And taxation is legal in this country whether or not you regard it as theft.

You imagine into existence a situation in which an entrepreneur creates a company or companies that will meet marked demands for roads, hospitals, libraries, bridges, canals, tunnels, and so forth. But where does capital come from?

In the 19th century the capitalists in the industrial north did indeed build impressive public buildings, canals and railways which still stand in Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield and Birmingham and are threaded through the country. They built schools, libraries, hospitals, and prisons. Where did the money come from? From the profits made from slavery, steel, coal, cotton, machine manufacture, the railways etc -so get this, those buildings were paid for from the profits from (say) textiles they then used to employ other workers to build facilities that were then used to charge the same workers to use them.

Under your system, we consumers could give Carillion £10 million to build a hospital and when it fails, they walk away leaving us without a hospital and nothing for our investment, and your reaction is, so what? Markets fail, deal with it. But why should we then trust another company to take our money if it cannot guarantee success?

I have said it a few times already and I will say it again: government should not interfere in economy. Bankruptcy is part of the free market's ways and anyone who believes they can bail it out is wrong. -
--And how many times do failing businessmen file for bankruptcy to avoid paying workers their wages, and pay back to their investors the money they have lost? In the US it is even possible to file for bankruptcy and get the tax-payer to compensate the Chief Executive who ruined the business. Surely in a free market, if I lend Donald Bandit $10 million as part of an investment in a casino, I expect to get that $10 million back and with interest? In what free market does he screw it up then tell me to get lost? In a rigged market, where capitalists invent tax laws that compensate one man's failure with another man's money.

What is truly astonishing and scary, though, is that apart from me, there is absolutely nobody else sane on here, who feels that normality must be brought back or our civilisation will cease to exist within the next 20 or 30 years.
You are easily scared. Maybe you should be more scared of rising sea levels due to climate change plunging Florida and Manhattan under water; or the threat of nuclear war currently being devised by the Madman-in-Chief in Washington DC.

Or will you have all died by 2047?
-- In my case almost certainly!

As to filling pot holes, it is a public road so why don't you do it? It is your road as well as it is anyone else's... Can't you see how stupid this way of thinking is?
--I could, in theory go to a shop in town, buy a bucket and spade, some cement and fill the hole in the road. In practice, I am not very good with my hands and in fact have no idea how to make cement, never mind fill in a hole. That is why we have trained men and women who know how to do these things. And if I did make an attempt to fill in a hole -in fact I am more concerned with loose paving stones in my town- I would probably be arrested for being a public nuisance and damaging the road.

Actually, since we got back to the report, show me where it states that global warming has been proven to be caused by humans. - Cos I have not found such a statement in it.
-- You can read, and probably know how to use a library or the internet, which is a virtual library. Declaring ignorance on one of the most widely reported issues of our time suggests a lack of interest. Which is your right.

[Stavros]

Meanwhile the US Administration has opened its long-awaited trade war with the rest of the world by raising tariffs on the import of solar panels. In practical terms I am not sure what this means as the Guardian assessment is that on the one hand-

Donald Trump’s decision to impose a tariff (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jan/23/trump-imposes-steep-tariffs-on-imported-solar-panels-and-washing-machines) on imported solar panels will cost the US solar industry about 23,000 jobs this year and risks slowing the growth of clean energy that would help address climate change, renewable energy advocates warned.
While on the other hand

But while the tariffs may provide an unwelcome hurdle for the US solar industry, the cost of the technology and installation has dropped so precipitously in recent years that the industry could emerge relatively unscathed.

The cost of installing solar panels on rooftops has fallen by more than 70% since 2010, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. Solar now accounts (https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_1_01) for around 1.4% of US utility-scale electricity generation, up from virtually nothing in 2007.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jan/23/donald-trump-tariffs-solar-panels

I think the key issue here is the commitment to raise tariff barriers on the ideological basis that this will replenish those parts of the US economy that have been lost to offshoring since the 1980s, though the President will not admit it was his idol Ronald Reagan who started it. It also fits into the anti-alternative energy ideology based on the 'hoax' of climate change without regard to the growth of the alternative energy sector in terms of jobs and the provision of cheap energy, and these factors as usual are driven by the 'What did Obama do? Let's undo it' strategy that seems to think that whatever short-term damage is done the US economy will revive. Ironically that might be true, though in the meantime people lose their jobs, and bills rise, but why should the billionaires who run the US care about the little guy?

As for tariff wars and protectionism, again, the 'bring it on' mentality chimes in with the insidious belief that limited nuclear war is realistic, though it remains to be seen if the US military in Syria will assist their Kurdish allies or stand by as Turkey attempts to wipe them out, after all when it comes to protecting the President's business interests in Turkey or protecting the Kurds who played the key role in destroying Daesh in Raqqa, it's the money that matters most. I don't suppose the Landlord is about to divest himself of his Turkish rents -? Who knows?

[smalltownguy]

Meanwhile the US Administration has opened its long-awaited trade war with the rest of the world by raising tariffs on the import of solar panels. In practical terms I am not sure what this means as the Guardian assessment is that on the one hand-

Donald Trump’s decision to impose a tariff (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jan/23/trump-imposes-steep-tariffs-on-imported-solar-panels-and-washing-machines) on imported solar panels will cost the US solar industry about 23,000 jobs this year and risks slowing the growth of clean energy that would help address climate change, renewable energy advocates warned.
While on the other hand

But while the tariffs may provide an unwelcome hurdle for the US solar industry, the cost of the technology and installation has dropped so precipitously in recent years that the industry could emerge relatively unscathed.

The cost of installing solar panels on rooftops has fallen by more than 70% since 2010, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association. Solar now accounts (https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_1_01) for around 1.4% of US utility-scale electricity generation, up from virtually nothing in 2007.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jan/23/donald-trump-tariffs-solar-panels

I think the key issue here is the commitment to raise tariff barriers on the ideological basis that this will replenish those parts of the US economy that have been lost to offshoring since the 1980s, though the President will not admit it was his idol Ronald Reagan who started it. It also fits into the anti-alternative energy ideology based on the 'hoax' of climate change without regard to the growth of the alternative energy sector in terms of jobs and the provision of cheap energy, and these factors as usual are driven by the 'What did Obama do? Let's undo it' strategy that seems to think that whatever short-term damage is done the US economy will revive. Ironically that might be true, though in the meantime people lose their jobs, and bills rise, but why should the billionaires who run the US care about the little guy?

As for tariff wars and protectionism, again, the 'bring it on' mentality chimes in with the insidious belief that limited nuclear war is realistic, though it remains to be seen if the US military in Syria will assist their Kurdish allies or stand by as Turkey attempts to wipe them out, after all when it comes to protecting the President's business interests in Turkey or protecting the Kurds who played the key role in destroying Daesh in Raqqa, it's the money that matters most. I don't suppose the Landlord is about to divest himself of his Turkish rents -? Who knows?

solar panel saves money & works for free after installation . it is a good long term investment.

[Ts RedVeX]

So Trish, have you even not read the report then? Because it clearly says that the scientists involved have not found evidence to prove that global warming is caused by humans. What is your problem with that? Why don't you just present us with some scientific that actually proves your irreverent theory of humans changing Earth's climate? Have you ever looked beyond the greenhouse effect in your global warming proving "analysis"

I would like to make it clear that I am not and I never have written that Earth's climate is not changing. I am only stating that we - humanity - have as much as nothing to negligibly little to do with the change. Unless we develop new technologies, we indeed might become extinct. Only it will be due to ass-holes like you and Stavros, and any other pseudo scientist who does science for money rather than because they like it.

Stavros, I am sorry but i am an ignorant cunt an I am not even going to read your shit. We have already established that you simply believe in the communist (a.k.a.) nanny state that I totally oppose to (due to the values believe in, with which I have been brought up with) There is no way you can logically convince me to assume that your point of view is the "good one". I can only say that this time it wont be me who is going to refuse to fight the "bad guys" when shit hits the fan... So far, I have been very disappointed in the UK. It is definitely not what I had expected https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvz8tg4MVpA

[Stavros]

Stavros, I am sorry but i am an ignorant cunt an I am not even going to read your shit. We have already established that you simply believe in the communist (a.k.a.) nanny state that I totally oppose to (due to the values believe in, with which I have been brought up with) There is no way you can logically convince me to assume that your point of view is the "good one". I can only say that this time it wont be me who is going to refuse to fight the "bad guys" when shit hits the fan... So far, I have been very disappointed in the UK. It is definitely not what I had expected

The only thing that has been established, other than your dependence on abusive words (that diminish the quality of your argument), is that you yearn to live in a country that has neither government nor taxes, but cannot go beyond that to tell is if or when or where this Utopia is going to exist, but at least it gives you something to complain about, other than the treatment you get on the NHS, which for some reason you seem to prefer rather than using your hard-earned cash to take advantage of the private health care that is also available in the UK. There may be better countries to live in than the UK, there are certainly many more that are much worse at every level. You are always welcome to join in the debates that we have, it is up to you to choose the degree of intelligence, wit and empathy you bring to this forum.

[Ts RedVeX]

Well, If someone keeps bullshitting about me wanting to live in a country with neither government nor taxes, while I clearly stated several times now that I would advocate inherited monarchy with taxes for police and military, all the "abusive words" just come naturally. Have I mentioned that I am not in favour of censorship already or is that another thing that you just cannot acknowledge?

Treatment I get on the NHS... Firstly, anyone who lives in the UK and wants to work legally is being threatened with penalties for tax evasion. Taxes include the obligatory National Insurance contributions. Since I am still a guest here, and I respect my host's law I do actually pay those with my hard-earned cash so you can fuck off!

The reason why I rant about it is because obligatory insurance is a communist trait and it works against development of private clinics that either cannot or find it very hard to compete with your socialist NHS that gets free support from your government. And still, if you try to get certain things done "on the NHS" it turns out that you have to pay extra for it anyway, you moron. E.g. If I need a certificate before a porn shoot I have to pay 30quid for it. That is 30 quid for a piece of paper, plus half a day off because of some stupid law that apparently does not allow them to send it by email or post; parking fee; and fuel or fare for a few busses. What a lying communist arse-hole or how deluded must one be to call that "free"? Have you had your brains removed on the NHS recently, or something? That means it may cost me anything from 35 quid to around 400 quid (unlikely but possible) if the day turns out to one that would have been a good one hadn't your socialist NHS and related legislation fucked it up.

As to hormones, I still pay for "prescriptions" so meds are not quite free now, are they?

[Stavros]

With some exceptions such as children and senior citizens the NHS is not free. Citizens pay a monthly National Insurance contribution and in return they are entitled to a full range of services 'from the cradle to the grave'. As I pointed out to you before, prescriptions for medicine were free until the outbreak of war in Korea. In order to meet some of the cost of the UK's military contribution, the Labour government introduced prescription charges, leading Aneurin Bevan, the Minister responsible for introducing the NHS in 1948 to resign from the government in protest. Nevertheless, the basic principle is that health care is 'free at the time of use' so that, for example, we don't pay a fee to see a doctor, or to a hospital if we receive treatment in A&E or for an operation. Most charges in the NHS have been introduced since Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister, but something tells me you are reluctant to blame her for anything that has gone wrong with the NHS even though it was her government that introduced the 'internal market reforms' in the mid-1980s that have cause so much damage to our service while enriching a few corporations.

You complain that obligatory insurance is a communist trait yet is there another means of creating health services that is not some form of insurance scheme, private or public? And why would anyone not want health insurance, and what would happen if they did not and fell ill? Presumably live with rotten teeth and that misery for years, or just die of some other illness. As for fees for certificates, these latter are recent introductions designed to raise money and originated with the Blair government I believe, they may not fit with the principle of free treatment, but are not issued for treatment as such.

All of this treatment is available to you in the private sector if you are prepared to take out a private health insurance policy or pay for treatment on a pay-as-you-go basis, and as far as I am aware, most of the private health staff work in the NHS, so it is odd that you should see the two as competing, though this may not be the case with cosmetic surgery and some private clinics offering alternative services.

I could use some abusive language to describe someone who comes to live in the UK and 'takes advantage' of our NHS which provides a whole range of courses for transgendered individuals ranging from counselling to sex reassignment surgery and appears to do nothing less than criticise and moan about the treatment. One wonders why you do not seek the range of treatment and surgery in Poland, or Thailand, or maybe Sweden if you want to stay in the EU. But my guess is that your reply will just be another parade of vituperative anti-communist invective serving no purpose.

[Ts RedVeX]

If I am supposed to fund your Korean wars then I would like to do that by paying the Korean war tax and not my personal health insurance. Let's call things by their due names, shall we - just like I call people whose IQ I consider to be in between 50 and 69 morons. From my point of view prescriptions are unnecessary. I just need the medicine. I did say that M. Thatcher was not perfect. Especialy that she had found herself living in a country overrun by communists, or democrats, who thought that they were supposed to lead the country. She had to bribe the nation with something and bribe the men in power with something to even become important. That is yet another flaw of democracy. One cannot propose any reasonable project for under threat of losing electorate: The dim mob constituting of you alike needs a slogan like "more money for the public health care" and they readily vote for Communists like Jeremy Corbyn. As soon as her excellency Theresa May says - reasonably - "no more 'free' food for pupils" the dim mob think they loose... While it actually means their children's food would have been 40% cheaper had it been prepared by parents rather than a state-appointed officer, in accordance with E Savas's law.

Going back to the STI tests anyone in the UK can have "freely" done, they do not include tests against type C hepatitis. This basically means that a rotten capitalist like myself, who had planned their international photo-shoot more than 2 weeks in advance (which is the time needed by the glorious NHS funded from people-who-do-not-really-use-it's money), has to waste half of their day to have the tests done, pay 4 quid parking and whatever the fuel cost is, or bus fare plus a few extra work-hours to the half-day, or cycle there and back and add yet another 2 work-hours (I do not even expect you to know what that means, comrade Stavros and yeah in communism as long as one punches the card it doesn't really matter whether they do something or not)... Then has to do waste yet another half-a-day to do that yet another time and collect the results and request a print out (the earlier mentioned 30quid in cash) - no you cannot use bank cards unless maybe it was just the alien tranny from the Continent who you proles want to fuck in the ass so much... And then it turns out that your tests did not include the hep C test. That means you cannot just go back to the NHS and say you are a heroin junkie just to get a routine hep C test because you no longer have the 2 weeks before your shoot. You do have to pay the 150quid for a test by a private clinic, that will show all you need and give you results by email within 2 working days.

Now. before you say that if i really need them so fast then i should pay the 150 and shut the fuck up I ask you. Of what quality is the sort of service, that we all pay for monthly, (no not you dole scroungers and wino democrats) that makes us, have to go through the ordeal to get you the the porn you want. Why cannot it be simplier? I could have printed that fucking results myself. I could have done it pirvately, having said "to hell with my NI"... Well FUCK YOU. I am at least gonna rant about it on this board. That is the best I can do. They do not sell helicopters at Maplin's yet and I am not a freaking general of the RAF.

And no, I do not take advantage of the NHS. I pay for it and I take from it what I am entitled to. I also do not take any of your communist counselling, which is, by the way, total bullshit. I would be more than happy to pay the 40% less price for all I the meds I need in a country with no public NHS.

Abusive language is the most pleasant form of disapproval, hopefully, if the English miraculously regain their identity, scum like you are going to see in the next decade or two.

[Stavros]

Abusive language is the most pleasant form of disapproval, hopefully, if the English miraculously regain their identity, scum like you are going to see in the next decade or two.

Thank you for choosing the United Kingdom as your home, enjoy your time with us. If it is your most intense desire to transition from a male to a female identity, and if you are the citizen of a member state of the EU, may I recommend that you leave the UK and travel east to Poland, and register with the Klinika Chirurgii Plastycznej, Medycyny Estetycznej i Flebologii Solumed in Poznań.

In Poland SRS operations are much cheaper than abroad. For instance, on the British Isles, the treatment co-funded by the NHS costs approximately £10000 (55 thousand zlotys). Dr. A. Sankowski's Plastic Surgery Clinic in Warsaw offers an operation involving the recontstruction of scrotum from the labia minora and majora. The cost of the procedure starts at 7 thousand zlotys. The patients of this centre can also undergo the female-to-male sex reassignment surgery - the cost of the operation starts with 20 thousand zlotys. The Klinika Chirurgii Plastycznej, Medycyny Estetycznej i Flebologii Solumed in Poznań offers the female-to-male gender correction procedure for the cost of 32.5 thousand zlotys. The male-to-female operation costs 27 thousand zlotys.

The medical team of the Medical University in Gdańsk can boast the most extensive professional experience in performing male-to-female procedures. The SRS operations are performed by Prof. Kazimierz Krajka, M. D., PhD, highly recommended on the transseksualizm.pl forum. Patients determined to have the procedure performed by Prof. Krajka must be aware that he only accepts cases with referrals from Dr Stanisław Dulka, a sexologist from Warsaw. Male-to-female SRS treatment costs approximately 14 thousand zlotys at the clinic. The Barlicki hospital in ‎Łódź can present some impressive achievements in reference to genital reassignment surgeries. The operations are performed by Dr Bogusław Antoszewski, M. D., PhD, the head of the Plastic Surgery Clinic at the Hospital. The medical team of the clinic performs a complete sex change of a transgendered person, starting with the removal of Adam's apple and finishing on the phallic reconstruction. The cost of the sex change operation is 50 thousand zlotys.
http://www.tourmedica.co.uk/treatment-in-poland/sex-reassignment-surgeries-in-poland/

[Ts RedVeX]

Why thank you but I could have gotten the SRS for "free" in communist Holland, while I lived there. I even have the referrals from the gender team of VUmc in Amsterdam... So I could go there now, and get some local insurance, and get the whole SRS refunded.. The problem is: I do not trust those communist fucks, after they said I had to go through all the same shit in the Netherladns I had to have gone throug in Poland to get government's permission to get my own body altered by a reputable doctor without him risking being put to jail for doing his job...

So please.. You stop shitposting and I will stop my abusive language. - Cos that is how it works, you know. People aren't really bothered until you agitate them. Which is what the mainstream media's main task is these days. - To piss people off and direct their anger at a certain collective of other people. In other words, we are supposed to have a civil war. Now that does not sound promising, does it?

[Stavros]

Why thank you but I could have gotten the SRS for "free" in communist Holland, while I lived there. I even have the referrals from the gender team of VUmc in Amsterdam... So I could go there now, and get some local insurance, and get the whole SRS refunded.. The problem is: I do not trust those communist fucks, after they said I had to go through all the same shit in the Netherladns I had to have gone throug in Poland to get government's permission to get my own body altered by a reputable doctor without him risking being put to jail for doing his job...


Human societies have developed, and have been sustained by rules, they are a fact of life. As a citizen of the EU you have the right to live and work in 28 countries, which I guess means 28 health services, all of which have rules. I cannot help you as I don't know enough about the provision of health services for transgendered people across Europe, whereas I suspect that you do. You have on more than one occasion dismissed me and a substantial number of people in the UK as 'Communists' and 'Idiots' -sometimes both at the same time- because we choose to pay taxes in return for services such as health and education. On that basis you demoralize the validity of you arguments about politics which most of the time are of marginal interest or simply irrelevant.

[peejaye]

Why don't you go & try living in one of these wonderful EU countries?
I can assure you Mister; you would be in for a big shock!

[Stavros]

Why don't you go & try living in one of these wonderful EU countries?
I can assure you Mister; you would be in for a big shock!

I have, and have often regretted returning to the UK, but neither of us have the ability to go back in time and change the things we got wrong. There are enough shocks in the UK to deal with, on that we can I hope agree, even if I appear to be the only person defending the NHS from its critics.

[trish]

Have you ever looked beyond the greenhouse effect in your global warming proving "analysis"
Covered that ground -at your request- already back in posts #1585 and #1590:

"The Earth’s precession (the gyroscopic wobble of its spin axis), it’s orbital eccentricity and other orbital parameters vary through a complex set of not yet thoroughly understood cycles called the Milankovitch cycles. As you say, variations in these parameters will induce variations in the flux of solar energy reaching the Earth’s surface and do (when acting in synchrony) force changes in the Earth’s climate. The cyclic occurrences of Earth’s ice-ages are linked to the Milankovitch cycles. These cycles have (on a human scale) very large periods: on the order of tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years (the period of Earth’s precession is somewhere around 25000 years and the period in the variations of Earth’s eccentricity is on the order of 112000 years). That’s why over the period of a mere 200 years these variations are largely negligible. However, if you want to include them in the current climate model, know that the Milankovich cycles are now slowing (by a very very small amount) the warming of the Earth. But they are no match against the greenhouse gases that billions of people have been dumping into the atmosphere over the past 1.5 centuries." - from post#1585

" You can do the calculation either way. Leave out the 19th century measurements of the solar constant altogether, or put them in. You can leave out the effect of Sunspot activity or include it. Leave out the effect of the Milankovitch cycles or put them in. Either way you’ll find that at this moment in time the greenhouse-effect utterly swamps all other factors that might modify the temperature of the our planet. The current warming trend is indisputably due, primarily, to the precipitous rise of greenhouse gases that humans have been dumping into the atmosphere for over a century." - from post #1590

Oh yeah, the Solar Flux is already a key part of the currently accepted model of the current climate shift.

"The theory of climate change you oppose is the one that attributes the change to the greenhouse effect, right? That theory maintains that light energy from the Sun (otherwise known as the solar flux) passes through the atmosphere (with some absorption) and warms the Earth’s surface( i.e. surface atoms are excited by their absorption of the solar radiation ). The warmed Earth then radiates that energy (i.e. the excited atoms emit new photons, mostly in the infrared band) outward into the atmosphere, where the greenhouse gasses capture enough of it create a imbalance: i.e. in net, more energy is absorbed from the Sun, than is radiated back out into space.

The whole greenhouse model is based on a detailed analysis of the solar flux at all wavelengths. (I explained this in some detail already back in post #1572.) You’re being more than disingenuous when you claim, “...you do not even consider anything like Solar flux...” " -from #1623

[Stavros]

Here we go again-

Donald Trump (http://www.independent.co.uk/topic/DonaldTrump) has expressed doubts over the existence of climate change, as it is understood by the vast majority of scientists.

After proclaiming his belief in “clean air and clean water”, the US President questioned some of the central tenets of climate science in an interview with Piers Morgan.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-misunderstands-basic-facts-climate-change-piers-morgan-interview-a8181381.html

Presidents get an easy ride. They go to Congress to deliver a 'State of the Union' message that is not challenged on the floor; they are interviewed by their friends so they look good, whereas in the UK the Prime Minister must answer questions in the House of Commons, and be grilled by hostile interviewers -and why not? Why not present the President with the hard core evidence that he is a racist? Is it not part of the job description to be subject to robust interrogation? I mean, Piers Morgan! Which one of the two is more self-obsessed?

As for climate change...hot, cold, wet, dry...I mean it's all so complicated!

[Ts RedVeX]

No, I cannot see where you presented any extracts or link to bits of the report that consider anything other than CO2 and temperatures... I can also not see any links to where it actually says that global warming is caused by humans and that humans can do any about it. As to you looking into solar flux, I seriously doubt that even capable of understanding what it is, never mind proving that it is negligible in Earth climate changes' examination. Especially that you keep saying I do not believe in climate change, which is not true. I believe in climate change. What I do not believe in is that humans can influence it in any meaningful way.

As to rules in societies.. Yes we need rules. Simple, clear rules that can be understood easily and followed. Not excess rules that 90% of the nation wouldn't even be able to figure out the meaning of.

Oh, if you regret coming back to the UK then why won't you go live somewhere else? lol

[Ts RedVeX]

Here we go again... more of Stavros Trish & co. eristics

[broncofan]

No, I cannot see where you presented any extracts or link to bits of the report that consider anything other than CO2 and temperatures...l
https://science2017.globalchange.gov/chapter/2/

I am not sure what report you are talking about but this one considers alternative causes (including solar irradiance along with volcanic activity). I posted this link when you claimed it didn't the first time. You had no argument at the time, more or less accepting the fact that you're not very bright...

[Ts RedVeX]

I don't suppose that after reading the introduction one may expect to find much about Earth's precession or Milankovich's cycles there. I don't suppose that there is anything about plants either. I mean anything meaningful...

-In my days, If I handed-in a report decorated with statements such as: "However, this effect is variable; sometimes plants acclimate so that higher CO2concentrations no longer enhance growth(...)" "Atmospheric aerosols are perhaps the most complex and most uncertain component of forcing due (...)" Not only would my work be immediately rejected, but it would probably also be used as ridiculing material at an appropriate occasion during, say the following class in the lab. - This is not scienece. This is literature. I am not reading this report to admire someones writing skills and broad vocabulary.

What about main statement that you are so eagerly advocate here - one that actually reads that humans are causing global warming? Cannot wait till you point me to that because so far you we have all missed it and it is actually the most important thing.

[broncofan]

I don't suppose that after reading the introduction one may expect to find much about Earth's precession or Milankovich's cycles there. I don't suppose that there is anything about plants either. I mean anything meaningful...
There is an entire section that discusses the contribution of humans to global warming which I linked for you several months ago and you had no objection to. I have acknowledged I am not an expert on the subject and have not had any formal study of climate. But in my view, if I made one claim in a post and someone demonstrated it was addressed, I would not change the subject.

The reason I preface what I said with my lack of expertise is because I am uncertain what I am about to say is correct. But I think that the report looks at something more proximate than Earth's precession to determine whether precession could be a cause of climate change. Wouldn't a change in the Earth's precession change the amount and distribution of solar energy transferred to Earth? Maybe you can answer for me. How does a change in Earth's precession mediate changes in temperatures? Isn't it because of proximity of regions of Earth to the sun? And isn't this measurement captured? Genuinely interested.

[broncofan]

What about main statement that you are so eagerly advocate here - one that actually reads that humans are causing global warming? Cannot wait till you point me to that because so far you we have all missed it and it is actually the most important thing.

Isn't that what this section says? I know you have objections like they're communists and other things but that's what the entire section goes about discussing...

https://science2017.globalchange.gov/chapter/2/

Earth’s climate is undergoing substantial change due to anthropogenic activities (Ch. 1: Our Globally Changing Climate (https://science2017.globalchange.gov/chapter/1)).

"Human activities continue to significantly affect Earth’s climate by altering factors that change its radiative balance. These factors, known as radiative forcings, include changes in greenhouse gases, small airborne particles (aerosols), and the reflectivity of the Earth’s surface. In the industrial era, human activities have been, and are increasingly, the dominant cause of climate warming. The increase in radiative forcing due to these activities has far exceeded the relatively small net increase due to natural factors, which include changes in energy from the sun and the cooling effect of volcanic eruptions."

[Ts RedVeX]

Oh. So my objection based e.g. on this chart https://science2017.globalchange.gov/img/figure/figure2_1.png (which is so far from where it is referred to it that you forget what you are reading about by the time you scroll half of the chapter to see it - yet another reason to dismiss the piece of communist literature right at that point), which shows that there is a dP = 1W/m/m (or as they state underneath a dP'=0.6W/m/m) between the energy that bounces of Earth and energy absorbed by Earth is not valid, is it? Why then, if you read on it is stated that "Geothermal heat from Earth’s interior, direct heating from energy production, and frictional heating through tidal flows also contribute to the amount of energy available for heating Earth’s surface and atmosphere, but their total contribution is an extremely small fraction (< 0.1%) of that due to net solar (shortwave) and infrared (longwave) radiation" Which basically means that 0.1% of this 339W/m/m is "extremely low" So 1W/m/m is worth noting butt 0.3W/m/m, which is 30% of that worth noting value - is not worth noting and analysing further... I wonder if the authors ever even actually considered errors that those measuring instruments and methods used by the pseudo-scientists who allegedly conducted the research this report is based on introduce. Or that there is also a significant difference between a watt and a kilowatt.

...And "signifficantly affecting" or "climate is undergoing substantial change" does not exactly mean that humans "cause global warming". So no, it is not what the section says.

[broncofan]

...And "signifficantly affecting" or "climate is undergoing substantial change" does not exactly mean that humans "cause global warming". So no, it is not what the section says.
I had not looked at the chart. I will have to do that later if I am able. I simply don't expect that even if I spent weeks analyzing the report I'd be able to understand every aspect of what people have spent their entire adult lives thinking about.

But this is what is in the middle of that paragraph I quoted. I think you misrepresented it by cherry-picking words:

"In the industrial era, human activities have been, and are increasingly, the dominant cause of climate warming". That is fairly unequivocal. Dominant cause not sole cause. This is in the part that explains their conclusions.

[Ts RedVeX]

Human activities continue to significantly affect Earth’s climate by altering factors that change its radiative balance.

- This means that we somehow contribute to changes in radiative balance. I would like to see quantification of the "significantly" especially that...

These factors, known as radiative forcings, include changes in greenhouse gases,

- which might mean that greenhouse gases are only a small part of what causes radiative balances' changes; and greenhouse gases are only one of the radiative forcings, since others are:

small airborne particles (aerosols), and the reflectivity of Earth’s surface.
In the industrial era, human activities have been, and are increasingly, the dominant cause of climate warming.

-A statement out of context considering what was previously said and untrustworthy if you read the report. We suddenly have not changes but climate warming.

The increase in radiative forcing due to these activities has far exceeded the relatively small net increase due to natural factors, which include changes in energy from the sun and the cooling effect of volcanic eruptions. (Very high confidence)

More meaningless rubbish that makes one want to bin the whole thing for wasting one's time on "those activities" "far exceeded" and "relatively small increase"... And the bit about volcanic eruptions' cooling effect? Really? Was that necessary to meet the word quota or something? Basically this key finding should be just the "In the industrial era, human activities have been, and are increasingly, the dominant cause of climate warming. " Only that "human activities" and "increasingly" should be more specific, and what Trish would probably wank over - quantified.

[broncofan]

Basically this key finding should be just the "In the industrial era, human activities have been, and are increasingly, the dominant cause of climate warming. " Only that "human activities" and "increasingly" should be more specific, and what Trish would probably wank over - quantified.

It is quantified. We went over all of this months ago. It describes the human activities in detail and then quantifies their contribution to climate change. I can point you to the section but I can't teach you how to read. You said something wasn't said, I showed you it was said verbatim and you can't even acknowledge it.

Your deconstruction of that paragraph only makes me question your literacy.

[trish]

... more of Stavros Trish & co. eristics

This from the girl who insists on arguing about the Solar flux even after she made it abundantly clear she doesn’t have the faintest hint what ‘flux’ is or how the greenhouse model works. But no matter how much you flatter me, I’m still going to let you can do your own research. To get you started here’s the 5th IPCC report. http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/

The following is not an example of my eristics, but a statement from the Union of Concerned Scientists:

“We do know with a good degree of certainty that between 1750-2011, or since the beginning of the industrial period until today, the average increase in energy hitting a given area of the atmosphere (radiative forcing, measured in a unit called watts per square meter) due to heat-trapping gases is 56 times greater (~ 2.83 watts per square meter) than the increase in radiative forcing from the small shift in the sun’s energy (~0.05 watts per square meter).
In its Fifth Assessment Report, IPCC scientists evaluated simulations of historical climate variables using a number of numerical models. They first assumed no increase in heat-trapping gases since 1750, so that the temperatures calculated were those that would have been achieved if only solar variability, volcanic eruptions, and other natural climate drivers were included.
The temperature results were similar to observed temperatures only for the first half of the century, but the models did not accurately show the general warming trend that has been recorded during the second half of the twentieth century.
When computer models include human-induced heat-trapping gases, they accurately reproduce the observed warming during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
The evidence shows that although fluctuations in the amount of solar energy reaching our atmosphere do influence our climate, the global warming trend of the past six decades cannot be attributed to changes in the sun.”___ https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/science-and-impacts/science/effect-of-sun-on-climate-faq.html#.Wm3kYoUqmHl

Notice one can tweak the knobs on the standard climate model to include or exclude various factors so that one may compare the predicted effects of those factors. Whether you’re concerned with fluctuations in the Sun’s luminosity, the Milankovitch cycles, sunspots, vulcanism or warming via geothermals one consistently finds that the blanketing effect due to the anthropogenic rise in CO2 and other greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere swamps all other possible causes of our current warming.

[trish]

I don't suppose that after reading the introduction one may expect to find much about Earth's precession or Milankovich's cycles there. ...

We already discussed Milankovitch cycles:

“The Earth’s precession (the gyroscopic wobble of its spin axis), it’s orbital eccentricity and other orbital parameters vary through a complex set of not yet thoroughly understood cycles called the Milankovitch cycles. As you say, variations in these parameters will induce variations in the flux of solar energy reaching the Earth’s surface and do (when acting in synchrony) force changes in the Earth’s climate. The cyclic occurrences of Earth’s ice-ages are linked to the Milankovitch cycles. These cycles have (on a human scale) very large periods: on the order of tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years (the period of Earth’s precession is somewhere around 25000 years and the period in the variations of Earth’s eccentricity is on the order of 112000 years). That’s why over the period of a mere 200 years these variations are largely negligible. However, if you want to include them in the current climate model, know that the Milankovich cycles are now slowing (by a very very small amount) the warming of the Earth. But they are no match against the greenhouse gases that billions of people have been dumping into the atmosphere over the past 1.5 centuries.”___ from post #1585

Your only response came sometime later when you complained, without adding specifics, that we weren’t addressing the issue of Milankovitch cycles to your satisfaction.

At present, the Milankovitch Cycles cannot explain the current increase in global temperature.___from http://www.purdue.edu/discoverypark/climate/climate-change/toolkit/np/Milankovitch%20Cycles%20Case%20StudyR2014.pdf

[trish]

Oh. So my objection based e.g. on this chart

Oh really? That’s your objection? I thought it was that the report was written by communists.

The important thing to remember is the current chemistry of the oceans and the atmosphere are such that the global imbalance of energy is always positive regardless of any variations in the flux of incoming energy. The difference is approximately 0.04% +/- of the incident flux. Modern measurements put the imbalance at 0.6 Watts/m^2. The Earth’s radius is about 6378 km, so the amount of energy captured annually is roughly equal to

(0.6 Watts/m^2) x (4 x pi x (6378000 m)^2 x (1 year x 3600 s/hr x 24 hr/day x 365 days/yr) =
9.68 x 10^21 Joules.

This is 17 times the amount of energy the Earth’s population consumes in one year. 90% of this excess energy is largely stored as heat in the Earth’s oceans.

https://www.climate-lab-book.ac.uk/2016/earths-energy-imbalance/

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/EnergyBalance/page7.php

[Ts RedVeX]

One of the objections, yes.

"Human activities continue tosignificantly affect Earth’s climate by altering factors thatchange its radiative balance. These factors, known as radiativeforcings, include changes in greenhouse gases, small airborneparticles (aerosols)", and the reflectivity of Earth’ssurface.”



That is a quote from the bit or your report I discussed yesterday... I am pretty sure that changes in greenhouse gases, or small airborne particles are not being quantified in W/m/m. - your terminology is wrong.
Energy hitting an area is the solar flux and if you measure that at the top of atmosphere it is more less equal to 1361 W/m/m and since we measure that in space, it cannot be affected by any radiative forcings like heat-trapping gasses
(… really can't be arsed any more, I guess)


Are you going to refer to what I had written about the chart or are you just going to keep flooding this thread with your communist bullshit propaganda about global warming, some definitions from Wikipedia and calculations that are completely irrelevant?

[Stavros]

Are you going to refer to what I had written about the chart or are you just going to keep flooding this thread with your communist bullshit propaganda about global warming, some definitions from Wikipedia and calculations that are completely irrelevant?

Trish, who knows more about science than I do and has an ability to present it with a depth of knowledge that you lack, has not used Wikipedia as a reference for the last year of correspondence on this topic -I checked. She does use universally recognized centres of scientific excellence which you do not.
In a world of bullshit propaganda, you lead us all.

[broncofan]

Trish.....has not used Wikipedia as a reference for the last year of correspondence on this topic -I checked.
In a world of bullshit propaganda, you lead us all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_dung
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda
I wasn't sure what you meant by your last sentence but fortunately have been able to research it.

[trish]

... I am pretty sure that changes in greenhouse gases, or small airborne particles are not being quantified in W/m/m. - your terminology is wrong.

If I had used W/m/m to measure changes in the mass density or particle density of any gas or suspended dust in the atmosphere, then you’d be entirely right, but I hadn’t and you aren’t.

I believe it was you who first used Watts as a measure of flux. After you saw I used kW/m^2 you quickly recovered saying, Oh yeah, W/m/m, which technically is correct but still a bit weird since area is measured in square meters and never in meters per meter. (Not being a pedant I usually let these sort of things ride. But since you’re bringing up the matter of units for flux I thought I should point it out). When you complained that the greenhouse model doesn’t consider anything like solar flux, I was dumbfounded. It sounded like you didn’t even know what an energy flux is or how the greenhouse model works. I guessed that you either meant variations in the solar flux or perhaps the solar wind, but when given several chances to correct yourself, you didn’t.



Energy hitting an area is the solar flux and if you measure that at the top of atmosphere it is more less equal to 1361 W/m/m and since we measure that in space, it cannot be affected by any radiative forcings like heat-trapping gasses

You’re forgetting the atmosphere isn’t opaque to all the wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation emitted by the Sun. At sea level the measurement is approximately 1000 W/m^2 depending on a number of factors including atmospheric conditions and the angle of the Sun’s rays.
The energy that doesn’t make it to sea level doesn’t just stop at the top of the atmosphere and hang there. Nor does it all get reflected. Its gets transmitted, scattered and eventually absorbed by the atmosphere and converted to heat.


Are you going to refer to what I had written about the chart ...?

I already gave it as much attention as it deserves, see my last post.


... are you just going to keep flooding this thread with your communist bullshit propaganda about global warming...?

Yes. Here I’m only temporarily adopting your private (and thereby irrelevant) vernacular wherein everyone who disagrees with you is a communist and everything you disagree with is bullshit propaganda.

[sukumvit boy]

Cape Town ,South Africa may soon earn the dubious distinction of being the first major modern city to run dry.
http://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/01/opinion/cape-town-drought-day-zero.html

[trish]

A warmer atmosphere holds more water vapor. Hence it takes longer to reach saturation and condense. Longer periods between rains can mean droughts (like the one Cape Town is now experiencing). Higher saturation levels can mean deluges as well as higher energy storms (like the Harvey and other recent hurricanes that destroyed cities and towns along the Gulf Coast of the U.S. and devastated islands in the Caribbean. Whether you’re thirsty or underwater depends on how your local geography interacts with (and your local population reacts to) the new climatic conditions.

In addition to stronger storms, dryer droughts, rising tides, shifting habitations, melting glaciers, thawing permafrost and the concomitant runaway effects (i.e. release of sequestered greenhouse gases and lessening albedo) we now find out that the thawing permafrost could release 1100 tons of mercury into the atmosphere. The risk of this higher level of mercury to humans (direct or through the food chain) is not yet clear.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2018/02/05/the-arctic-is-full-of-toxic-mercury-and-climate-change-is-going-to-release-it/?utm_term=.0a31be01955f

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2017GL075571/full

[sukumvit boy]

Hey trish , excellent thumb nail synopsis of the basic science / mechanics behind climate change . Damn , even The Donald could understand that.:banghead

[trish]

Thanks, but Donald's mental and emotional capacities deteriorate with each passing hour. Doctors tell us he's still capable of identifying and properly labeling drawings of animals. So I guess there may still be hope.

[smalltownguy]

Thanks, but Donald's mental and emotional capacities deteriorate with each passing hour. Doctors tell us he's still capable of identifying and properly labeling drawings of animals. So I guess there may still be hope.

definitely...

[Ts RedVeX]

Hey how are you finding global warming and all? :D1061616
P.S.
I think the author of hungangels' CMS would be better off on the dole than in web development. Stavros and the other commies can prolly see to you getting a decent social house and healthcare funded by the hard-working, wherever you are, and you won't have to worry about heating cos of global warming! :D

[trish]

Up to date (Feb 2018 ) UAH satellite data ->

[Stavros]

Vox has produced a compelling article based on the report from the Office of Management and Budget that proves that under President Obama, Federal Regulations were economically beneficial to US citizens even with high costs, and that the EPA regulations out-performed other departments. They also argue the hostility by the Republican Party to regulatory frameworks is not based on their efficacy, but hostility to the change in direction that money takes when they are implemented. For example, Regulations do not 'kill jobs' but re-distribute them across the US economy.

Here are some extracts-

OMB gathered data and analysis on “major” federal regulations (those with $100 million or more in economic impact) between 2006 and 2016, a period that includes all of Obama’s administration, stopping just short of Trump’s. The final tally, reported in 2001 dollars:



Aggregate benefits: $219 to $695 billion
Aggregate costs: $59 to $88 billion

By even the most conservative estimate, the benefits of Obama’s regulations wildly outweighed the costs.

EPA rules, OMB writes, “account for over 80 percent of the monetized benefits and over 70 percent of the monetized costs” of federal regulation during this period.
For example, new fuel economy standards for medium- and heavy-duty engines had (in 2001 dollars) between $6.7 billion and $9.7 billion in benefits. But they cost industry $0.8 billion to $1.1 billion.
The MATS rule, aimed at reducing toxic emissions from power plants, had between $33 billion and $90 billion in benefits (in 2007 dollars, for some reason), but it cost industry $9.6 billion.

https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/3/6/17077330/trump-regulatory-agenda-omb

[sukumvit boy]

need more efforts on removal and reversal of carbon

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6377/733 (http://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6377/733)
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/28/climate/remove-co2-from-air.html

[Stavros]

An accidental discovery on a rubbish dump in Japan has the long term potential to reduce the volume of plastic in our oceans. The discovery of a plastic eating enzyme has led to the creation of a mutant that can't get enough of the stuff -

The international team then tweaked the enzyme to see how it had evolved, but tests showed they had inadvertently made the molecule even better at breaking down the PET (polyethylene terephthalate) plastic used for soft drink bottles. “What actually turned out was we improved the enzyme, which was a bit of a shock,” said Prof John McGeehan, at the University of Portsmouth, UK, who led the research. “It’s great and a real finding.”

Although it will take time for the real impact to take effect, the potential for this reminds us that science doesn't really do despair, that it might take time, but solutions can be found, often by accident. Whether or not there are any whales left by the time this comes to pass we cannot know. A large population of Penguins in Antarctica was only found recently so there is still a vast amount we do not know about the Oceans and its populations.

Full article is here-
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/16/scientists-accidentally-create-mutant-enzyme-that-eats-plastic-bottles

[trish]

I'm just worried that the spread of these bacteria will make my dildos go limp. But thanks for the heads-up. :) Interesting article.

[filghy2]

Meanwhile, on the other side of the world. https://newmatilda.com/2018/05/01/april-2018-australias-hottest-record-courtesy-exceptional-heat/

Anything to say on this, Redvex? Communists in the weather bureau, perhaps?

[Ts RedVeX]

There will be communists there too but Australia is not exactly the indicator of global climate, is it? I am in the UK and I still need to keep my heaters on - in fucking May!

Oh, and a few cents on those enzymes.. If anyone of you has a friend that works in forests, then you might wanna ask them how oftrn do they need to buy new heavy duty shoes. Only it must be not be a commie that sits his lazy ass in the lodge, but one that is out and about. Nature doesn't need aid to eat through most of our inventions...

[filghy2]

There will be communists there too but Australia is not exactly the indicator of global climate, is it? I am in the UK and I still need to keep my heaters on - in fucking May!


That would be why people look at the global average temperature, as shown in Trish's post above. The point is that what is happening in Australia is far more representative of the global climate than what might be happening in the UK right now.

[Stavros]

There will be communists there too but Australia is not exactly the indicator of global climate, is it? I am in the UK and I still need to keep my heaters on - in fucking May!


Don't be so impatient! Temperatures will be in the 20s from Saturday for most of the week.

[peejaye]

Oh dear... someone isn't going to like this !

1072677

Peace brother! :D

[Ts RedVeX]

Ooooh a 1.4 degree difference between the lowest and highest measurements of some RF waves that are not actual temperature but are somehow related to it, taken with 60 year old instruments... Yeah... That sounds reliable...😂

[Stavros]

Oh dear... someone isn't going to like this !

1072677

Peace brother! :D

The Nobel Peace Prize has been widely ridiculed over the years as it has no meaning and is worth nothing in real terms. For what it's worth the Prize is awarded to a person or organization that-

"shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses".

On this basis, the President of the USA has done nothing to merit the prize. Best spend your time on something that has something to add to this thread on Climate Change.

[peejaye]

1072747

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/03/how-trump-is-changing-science-environment/

[Ts RedVeX]

Climate change? Get some thicker clothes!

[peejaye]

The Nobel Peace Prize has been widely ridiculed over the years as it has no meaning and is worth nothing in real terms. For what it's worth the Prize is awarded to a person or organization that-



On this basis, the President of the USA has done nothing to merit the prize. Best spend your time on something that has something to add to this thread on Climate Change.

& you stop behaving like a petty spoilt brat & start to realize this could represent a huge step to World peace!

[Stavros]

& you stop behaving like a petty spoilt brat & start to realize this could represent a huge step to World peace!

Or you could pause for a moment to ask if any progress would have been made with North Korea if it had not been initiated by President Moon Jae-in.

And you could pause to reconsider the concept of 'world peace' when the US President has sent US military personnel into the Yemen to help the destructive but militarily useless army of the family business from which he benefits financially, called Saudi Arabia (their second war in the Yemen since 1962, as if they learned nothing from their failure in that earlier war); has military personnel in Syria where the mere concept of 'peace' let alone World Peace is as remote from Damascus as the Rings of Saturn.

Then there are US military personnel in Syria itself -are they fighting with the Kurds or prepared to throw them under the bus and run away as Turkish Dictator Erdogan invades Syria illegally without a word of protest from the USA? Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Libya, Mali, Niger all now host American military personnel 'engaged' with 'the enemy' whoever they are -if the US President is serious about 'world peace' he could withdraw all those troops while chanting 'America First' on the White House Lawn, but who ever said 'America First' had any meaning anyway?

It is rather like denying Climate Change is real, happening, and here. World peace is an aspiration we all support, I hope. Telling lies while creaming off working people's dollars to fund golfing trips Nos 100-120 and threatening to jail people who disagree with him -no, there are no aspirations there, only expirations, at the cost of the stability of the US political system, as if he cared about that.

[peejaye]

https://news.sky.com/story/donald-trump-deserves-the-nobel-peace-prize-says-south-koreas-president-11353799

:D

[Stavros]

Peejaye this is a thread on Climate Change. If you want to start a fan-thread for the pompous cretin who claims to be President of the USA, why not start one?

[filghy2]

In the Library with your fucking internet again, Stavros? Stop changing your tune just to contradict other people and be consistent like Peejaye:
"I wasn't saying good things about Trump. I don't like him either."
"I'm British so anything else doesn't overly concern me"
"Your getting obsessed with your favourite subject again, Donald Trump. I've told you before I know nothing about Trump."

[buttslinger]

Scott Pruitt is in the news lately for spending taxpayer bucks on personal perks, but the real news is that he is supposed to be our #ONE appointed GUY standing up for Protection of the Environment, excepting this guy is doing everything humanly possible to de-regulate Environmental Laws into nothingness. I've tried a lot of different drugs but I've never been stoned on a million dollars...I'll bet it's a nice high.

https://preview.ibb.co/kgAP9S/Scott_Pruitt_EPA.jpg (https://ibb.co/bLdpb7)

[filghy2]

I'm surprised they haven't changed the name of the agency and banned the words 'environmental protection', like they did in this case. http://www.hungangels.com/vboard/showthread.php?105397-So-Trump-just-forbade-the-CDC-from-using-the-word-quot-transgender-quot&highlight=scientific

[Stavros]

Scott Pruitt is in the news lately for spending taxpayer bucks on personal perks, but the real news is that he is supposed to be our #ONE appointed GUY standing up for Protection of the Environment, excepting this guy is doing everything humanly possible to de-regulate Environmental Laws into nothingness. I've tried a lot of different drugs but I've never been stoned on a million dollars...I'll bet it's a nice high.


They are 'draining the swamp', Buttslinger, as in: draining it of its money (the money raised from your taxes). Thousands of $$ on knives and forks; millions on transport in the USA and to foreign countries like impoverished United Arab Emirates -and who is paying these millionaire and billionaire 'businessmen' in charge of the departments of government (and their relatives)? Why the 'swamp life' who put them there. Sorry mate, but you've been played and guess what- they are laughing all the way to the bank.

[peejaye]

In the Library with your fucking internet again, Stavros? Stop changing your tune just to contradict other people and be consistent like Peejaye:
"I wasn't saying good things about Trump. I don't like him either."
"I'm British so anything else doesn't overly concern me"
"Your getting obsessed with your favourite subject again, Donald Trump. I've told you before I know nothing about Trump."

Fucking Jesus.... I'm being stalked! :hide-1:

[filghy2]

The stalker stalked. Sounds like unfair foreign competition taking your job.

[Stavros]

Three fascinating articles in today's Guardian on the impact of climate change in the US and how, over the next 25-30 years it could force people to move north from an increasingly and unbearable south and away from the coasts. One looks at predictions, the second tells some personal stories, and the third offers options on where to go to be safe; all in the context of a Presidency that is pulling down the barriers set up to prevent environmental pollution in the name of financial gain and climate change denial.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/sep/24/americas-era-of-climate-mass-migration-is-here

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/sep/24/climate-refugees-new-orleans-houston-hurricane-katrina-hurricane-harvey

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/sep/24/climate-change-where-to-move-us-avoid-floods-hurricanes

[filghy2]

William Nordhaus has won this year's Nobel Prize in economics for his work on modelling the economic impacts of climate change (shared with Paul Romer for work on the the role of innovation in economic growth). The article has links to his work if anyone is interested.
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/10/william-nordhaus-paul-romer-win-nobel-prize-economics.html

[Stavros]

This link gives you the interview with Myron Ebell last night on the BBC-2 Newsnight programme, a breathtakiing example of climate change denial which claims the IPCC report is in effect the European Union's attempt to make Americans pay more for their energy, recasting the debate in American terms as 'pro-Energy', his position, or 'anti-Energy' the Democrat position, based on false science designed to prove what the UN'S IPCC wants it to prove. And none of it actually based on science. Proof if it were needed that the Nobel Prize has no meaning or relevance to the world we live in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJ1HRGA8g10

[Ben]

One million species at risk of extinction, UN report warns:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/05/ipbes-un-biodiversity-report-warns-one-million-species-at-risk/

[Quinfeldt]

All kinds of species have become extinct since the Earth was in existence due to 'climate change.' There are known patterns of global, solar and astronomical events/activities that happen on a repeatable basis. The homo sapiens today have been around less than one million years. The Earth has been here slightly more than four billion years. The known unviverse is at least 14.7 billion years old.

It has been shown with hard empirical data that human activities do contribute and more than likely aggravate and accelerate some atmospheric conditions that are not condusive to many plant and animal reproductive cycles. There's nothing that guarantees the future by demanding this or that be done. How many times do people scare themselves with mutually assured destruction be it nukes, hairspray or cow farts? :deadhorse:violin:banghead

[trish]

Yet we can essentially guarantee a significant decline in the future quality of human life should we do nothing about the activities that dump mega-tons of greenhouse gasses into the Earth's atmosphere on an annual basis. Fear has little to do with our overall reaction to this issue; it is rather a matter of reason versus apathy.

[Ben]

World food security increasingly at risk due to 'unprecedented' climate change impact, new UN report warns:

https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/08/1043921

[Ben]

How much destruction is needed for us to take climate change seriously?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/03/how-much-destruction-is-needed-for-us-to-take-climate-change-seriously

[Stavros]

How much destruction is needed for us to take climate change seriously?


When LA and Las Vegas finally run out of water and Broadway is a river? Who knows, your next President may actually care enough to develop practical policies to deal with it before it becomes crisis management

Ps welcome back Ben, what have you been doing in your long, lamented absence?

[rabbitfufu]

It is up to everybody not just Trump. What have YOU done to save our home. Ate at mc Donald's where the beef comes from what used to be the rainforests, are you a rapier at Starbucks?

[Laphroaig]

It is up to everybody not just Trump. What have YOU done to save our home. Ate at mc Donald's where the beef comes from what used to be the rainforests, are you a rapier at Starbucks?

What are YOU doing then?...:shrug

[Stavros]

It is up to everybody not just Trump. What have YOU done to save our home. Ate at mc Donald's where the beef comes from what used to be the rainforests, are you a rapier at Starbucks?

I eat meat, but probably only two or three times a week, and mostly to accompany my diligent support of wine producers in Burgundy where once I almost got a job in a vineyard (I was three weeks too early and had nowhere to stay so I ended up harvesting plonk in the Midi). I live in a town that has a good re-cycling system and numerous bottle banks and other such re-cycling points. I don't pollute the air with tobacco/vape, I don't pollute it with fumes from vehicles though I have been known to sneeze in winter, mostly into a paper tissue. On my last trip to Paris I went by train (Eurostar) and would consider going to North America by sea if the opportunity arises, but not on one those ghastly floating cities. My conservation plan for Greenland consists in part of a water retention scheme so as not to waste it as the ice cap melts; a socio-economic programme to protect the indigenous inhabitants from marauding Americans in search of rare-earth metals that we don't need (the energy they provide can be created from alternative sources), and think the fact that Scotland is half-empty is one of its enduring attractions.

But, I cannot answer this question -
are you a rapier at Starbucks? because I don't understand it.

[broncofan]

But, I cannot answer this question -
are you a rapier at Starbucks? because I don't understand it.

Pretty sure it's not a thing. I've been told I have a barista like wit but not sure they have rapiers at starbucks.

[rabbitfufu]

remember your histoty...The Hudson river was severely polluted as well as most of Europe in the industrial age , you don't think that could helped start the ice melting, and don't forget the methane gas given off by cow farts

[Stavros]

"The Trump administration (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/trump-administration) is finalizing plans to allow oil and gas drilling in a portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge that has been protected for decades.
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) will offer leases on essentially the entire 1.6m-acre coastal plain, which includes places where threatened polar bears have dens and porcupine caribou (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/dec/20/interior-department-alaskan-arctic-refuge-drilling-oil-gas) visit for calving. Drilling operations are expected to be problematic for Indigenous populations, many of which rely on subsistence hunting and fishing."
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/sep/12/trump-arctic-national-wildlife-refuge-oil-gas-drilling

This is sad news, as my understanding is that the drilling that did take place in the ANWR in the 1980s did not discover hydrocarbons with the same volume as those in Prudhoe Bay, so I see no need for this. The policy is revenge on Obama -just as he sought to protect the environment, so P45 is determined to mess it up, even destroy it just out of spite because a Black Man entered the White House as President. It is pathetic, childish but to be expected. As for the wildlife and the people who actually there, why doesn't P45 tell it like it is, and tell them to go to hell?
But 'tis he that is making hell out of America.

[Quinfeldt]

"The Trump administration (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/trump-administration) is finalizing plans to allow oil and gas drilling in a portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge that has been protected for decades.
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) will offer leases on essentially the entire 1.6m-acre coastal plain, which includes places where threatened polar bears have dens and porcupine caribou (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/dec/20/interior-department-alaskan-arctic-refuge-drilling-oil-gas) visit for calving. Drilling operations are expected to be problematic for Indigenous populations, many of which rely on subsistence hunting and fishing."
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/sep/12/trump-arctic-national-wildlife-refuge-oil-gas-drilling

This is sad news, as my understanding is that the drilling that did take place in the ANWR in the 1980s did not discover hydrocarbons with the same volume as those in Prudhoe Bay, so I see no need for this. The policy is revenge on Obama -just as he sought to protect the environment, so P45 is determined to mess it up, even destroy it just out of spite because a Black Man entered the White House as President. It is pathetic, childish but to be expected. As for the wildlife and the people who actually there, why doesn't P45 tell it like it is, and tell them to go to hell?
But 'tis he that is making hell out of America.

US pesidents have a 8-year limit on declartions max. Fuck that that idiot! No one knows what the next adninstrarion willl allow/disallow based on this issuse.

[Stavros]

US pesidents have a 8-year limit on declartions max. Fuck that that idiot! No one knows what the next adninstrarion willl allow/disallow based on this issuse.

4 years, 8 years is a lifetime and more in the case of our environment, when forest the equivalent of 27 soccer fields is lost every day; and the slurry legally dumped in the rivers and streams of West Virginia by rogue coal mining companies may take a generation to clear, if anyone has the resources to do it. The more fragile environment of the Arctic can sustain industrial production in some areas with stringent safeguards, in others it has permanently damaged the tundra, and few people have any confidence in US industry with regulations lifted by P45 and his greedy chums. As Channel 4 news in the UK has reported this week, there is an unfolding crisis in Greenland as the ice-sheets melt and local authorities cannot cope with their own waste, let alone the crap that floats north to pollute the ocean.
If you think what positive things can be achieved in 4-8 years, you can measure the extent of the loss when in the same time-frame an administration doesn't care, or works against the environment. And for what? Money? As if there are no other opportunities to make it?

[rabbitfufu]

why blame one man as this environment problem has gone on for centuries. Don't you over use water, drive when you don't need to. Don't blame one person. Look at our recycle problems with China. This everyone's problem to do more than their part. Thin donkeys not a discussion of GOP vs the jackass I mean the donkey. Keep this civil!!

[Stavros]

why blame one man as this environment problem has gone on for centuries. Don't you over use water, drive when you don't need to. Don't blame one person. Look at our recycle problems with China. This everyone's problem to do more than their part. Thin donkeys not a discussion of GOP vs the jackass I mean the donkey. Keep this civil!!

I agree with you in regard to the personal responsibilities we have to our environment, but such responsibilities weigh more heavily in the cases of Governments that can create the regulations to protect the environment. Why would any government rescind those regulations -if they were not working or could be improved, fine. But to reverse good decisions just so the President's friends and backers can make money while polluting the land? No, that is not acceptable, and as a policy regime would not be acceptable here in the UK.

[rodinuk]

Rabbitfufu is confusing personal responsibility with the responsibility of representing the entire populous of the US, unfortunately so is Trump.

[peejaye]

just so the President's friends and backers can make money while polluting the land? No, that is not acceptable, and as a policy regime would not be acceptable here in the UK.

There is little difference between Mr Trump and the "animals" in administration in this country, they think exactly the same as Trump, the main difference is they don't go public on what they think inc. shouting their mouths off on social media. Otherwise they are identical.

[trish]

Rabbitfufu is confusing personal responsibility with the responsibility of representing the entire populous of the US, unfortunately so is Trump.
They are also attempting to divert the conversation and the blame away from the fossil fuel industry and foist it upon the general public - you and me. True, we can all lessen our individual ecological footprints; but right now the oil, coal and gas industries are the largest and most prolific abusers the planet and they are the easiest to do something about and the most important to address immediately.

[broncofan]

There is little difference between Mr Trump and the "animals" in administration in this country
I love the use of quotations for the word animals to imply that other people commonly call their political opponents animals and you are just following suit. Thanks for your brilliant thoughts.

[rabbitfufu]

in the 50's we did boycotts and sit in's try that today.. don't buy those products .fossil fuels and coal have been used for how many years? and we still use them

[trish]

We can boycott electric companies that burn coal by living without electricity. But it's more effective to regulate the use of coal, tax carbon, make it illegal to charge homeowners extra if they use solar cells, support wind and the production of electric and hybrid technologies, etc. Yes, we can make our personal choices felt in the market place, but we won't stop climate change without enforcible regulation and effective treaties.

[filghy2]

in the 50's we did boycotts and sit in's try that today.. don't buy those products .fossil fuels and coal have been used for how many years? and we still use them

I guess according to this logic we should still allow asbestos to be used in building materials, DDT in pesticides, lead in paints, pipes and gasoline, smoking to be promoted as healthy etc. There are numerous other examples where we've moved away from things that were in common use after scientific evidence that they had harmful side-effects. I'm pretty sure in all those cases there was resistance from people in the industry claiming that the evidence wasn't clear, it would be too costly and jobs would be lost. Are you seriously suggesting that it should have been left to the market and peoples' individual choices?

[Skandalismo]

Hello .. i try 2 answer but my english is not very well ok... sorry.
this world exist maybe 4,5 billions years in this time the world had extrem temperatur that we know but interresting is about the time we dont know.
The world had o very very long rise and we human exist maybe 100000-300000 years ..ok...the weather was extrem in the past not in our human history in the WORLD HISTORY.. i think was actually is is normal , only that WE live now and see that everything change 4 the planet is this NOT NEW .
BUT what our fucking mistake our FAULT is that we destroy our nature the see everythig THAT IS TRUE .

WAR GREED ENVY is what the humanity go to DESTROY...thx 4 reading ...i hope u can understand what i mean ;-)

[Stavros]

A compelling documentary on the attempt to discredit climate change science. It is more about the human angle than the science but is a salutory lesson in the impact of social media on real science. I hope this is available outside the UK.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000b8p2/climategate-science-of-a-scandal

[AlexisDVyne]

Well.. If we don't become an interplanetary species we will become extinct.. :geek:

Will we cause our own extinction? Probably not as we can adapt and our tech will help us to adapt other species that can't deal with the rapid changes to the biosphere..

What we really need to be careful of is damaging the microbiome on the planet. The microbiome is the foundation and the stuff of life, the base of the food chain.. If we damage this too much it will have catastrophic effects on the entire biosphere..

Trying to get away from fossil fuels is a big challenge.. It is definitely possible as we have endless FREE energy on this planet in a few forms that is just waiting to be utilized.. The problem though is this thing called human greed..

Watch Blade Runner 1 & 2 for a possible idea of where we are heading..

The good days are gone.. We have micro-plastics and nano-plastics in the rain now.. :-|

[filghy2]

It looks like the Arctic permafrost may be starting to melt, releasing CO2 into the atmosphere, which is one of the tipping points scientists have been worried about regarding climate change.
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/12/12/21011445/permafrost-melting-arctic-report-card-noaa

[Ben]

Global Apathy Toward the Fires in Australia Is a Scary Portent for the Future:

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/12/new-south-wales-fires-in-australia-the-worlds-response.html

[filghy2]

Is the premise of the article correct? I live in Australia, but I had the impression that the fires here (and the link to climate change) were getting a lot of attention overseas.

I think that most Australians perceive that something different has been happening this year. There have been severe fires before (with even more deaths), but these have been more localised and limited in duration, so for most people things have returned to normal fairly quickly. What's different this time is the geographical extent and duration of the fires, with places like Sydney affected by smoke haze for weeks on end. This could be a game-changer in terms of how people think about the issue, especially if there is another bad fire season in the next year or two.

The big worry is this issue is subject to the same tribalistic political polarisation as most others. The right-wing media and many politicians are going all out to gaslight people with disinformation seeking to direct the focus away from climate change onto other factors.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/08/world/australia/fires-murdoch-disinformation.html
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jan/08/police-contradict-claims-spread-online-exaggerating-arsons-role-in-australian-bushfires
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/nov/12/is-there-really-a-green-conspiracy-to-stop-bushfire-hazard-reduction

[Laphroaig]

Is the premise of the article correct? I live in Australia, but I had the impression that the fires here (and the link to climate change) were getting a lot of attention overseas.

I think that most Australians perceive that something different has been happening this year. There have been severe fires before (with even more deaths), but these have been more localised and limited in duration, so for most people things have returned to normal fairly quickly. What's different this time is the geographical extent and duration of the fires, with places like Sydney affected by smoke haze for weeks on end. This could be a game-changer in terms of how people think about the issue, especially if there is another bad fire season in the next year or two.

The big worry is this issue is subject to the same tribalistic political polarisation as most others. The right-wing media and many politicians are going all out to gaslight people with disinformation seeking to direct the focus away from climate change onto other factors.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/08/world/australia/fires-murdoch-disinformation.html
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jan/08/police-contradict-claims-spread-online-exaggerating-arsons-role-in-australian-bushfires
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/nov/12/is-there-really-a-green-conspiracy-to-stop-bushfire-hazard-reduction

I see the link to climate change being made more on Twitter than the mainstream UK news services. Even there it's being countered by announcements that that this phenomenon is a regular occurrence (though not on this scale) and that arson is the cause of a lot of the fires starting in the first place.
To be honest, the UK media is more concerned with Brexit, Iran and now Meghan/Harry than it is with Australia,

[broncofan]

Is the premise of the article correct? I live in Australia, but I had the impression that the fires here (and the link to climate change) were getting a lot of attention overseas.

It's all over the news here as it should be. It's also all over my twitter feed. This sort of premise about whether something is getting the coverage it warrants is a hard thing to disprove but makes for a good opening to an opinion piece.

[trish]

Here in the U.S. I’ve heard public discussions as to whether climate change is to blame for the outbreak of thousands of uncontrollable fires in Australia, poor forest management, arson or just the old “sometimes shit happens” argument.

The latter is hardly an explanation and falls flat in the face of contrary evidence; i.e. periodic breakouts (which happen more than just ‘sometimes’) of unmanageable fires in other parts of the world (e.g., California).

To be sure a lot of forest fires are lit by humans (usually unintentionally), but we’re talking about thousands of fire in Australia and the theory that they’re being purposely lit by a couple of hundred arsonists is unsubstantiated rubbish.

I cannot speak to the question of whether the Australian forests have been poorly managed. It takes a lot of money to clear brush, run controlled burns and decide where and when it should be done. There is also political opposition to these sorts of environmental controls. Do we even know how to properly manage a forest? The forests of California probably are fairly well managed as far as modern standards go, but in recent years they too have been plagued with seasonal fires.

We are living in the Anthropocene. There are more than seven billion of us on the planet now! Humans are dumping over 37 billion of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere on a yearly basis, not to mention other greenhouse gasses. The rising temperature is releasing methane from the permafrost setting the stage for a runaway feedback loop. Even a slightly hotter atmosphere holds lots more water. So there are longer periods of drought between rains and more rain when it does rain. Our future is one of fire and flood. We’re already seeing just a little bit of what possibly lies ahead.

[filghy2]

To be sure a lot of forest fires are lit by humans (usually unintentionally), but we’re talking about thousands of fire in Australia and the theory that they’re being purposely lit by a couple of hundred arsonists is unsubstantiated rubbish.

The arson explanation is clearly being exaggerated for political purposes. There are always arsonists, but why would there have been a sharp upsurge in arson activity this year compared to previous years?

In any case, it's beside the point. Every fire has a direct cause - arson, human carelessness, lightning strikes, power lines, etc. But it's the environmental conditions that determine how quickly the fire spreads and how difficult it is to control. If the climate is hotter and drier (and last year was the hottest and driest on record in Australia) then any fire that starts will spread more quickly and be harder to control, especially if there are also windy conditions, which has generally been the case on the hottest days. So I don't think the alternative explanations should be thought of as mutually exclusive possibilities.

On a positive note, the PM has changed his rhetoric in recent days to signal that the government may do more on climate change. It remains to be seen what this amounts to, but his approval rating has taken a big hit in recent polls so he has at least recognised the need to be seen to address people's concerns. So there's more grounds for optimism here than in the US - can you imagine Trump saying anything like this?
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-12/scott-morrison-fires-historic-change-not-one-his-critics-wanted/11861016
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jan/13/scott-morrison-suffers-blow-to-personal-approval-rating-in-first-poll-of-2020

[Ben]

Michael Bloomberg Backs Fracking & Invests in Fossil Fuels:

https://news.littlesis.org/2018/09/06/climate-summit-co-chair-michael-bloomberg-backs-fracking-invests-in-fossil-fuels/

[Stavros]

I have ambivalent reactions to George Monbiot's articles in The Guardian, but this review of the Michael Moore film on the envirnment is worth reading.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/07/michael-moore-far-right-climate-crisis-deniers-film-environment-falsehoods

I have not yet watched the film but it is here-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk11vI-7czE

[Stavros]

This is a link to a short film that debunks most, but not all of what Jeff Gibbs has to offer, pointing out how much of his data is years out of date, among other things.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmNjLHRAP2U

[filghy2]

I have ambivalent reactions to George Monbiot's articles in The Guardian, but this review of the Michael Moore film on the envirnment is worth reading.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/07/michael-moore-far-right-climate-crisis-deniers-film-environment-falsehoods

It's interesting that people previously associated with the left sometimes do an about face and start appealing to the other side (Alan Dershowitz is another recent example, as is Germaine Greer). Is the motivation an attempt to gain attention once their relevance starts to wane? Is it an attempt to convince themselves that they are more impartial than others? Or is it just people becoming more grouchy and contrary as they age?.

[Stavros]

Were they ever on 'the left'? Or were they critics of power who appeared to be on 'the left' because they were opposed to state-sponsored atrocities like Apartheid and the war in South-East Asia- to take two examples in the 1960s and 1970s? In the South African case the thrust of the argument was that Apartheid was morally wrong, politically stupid, and economically inefficient; the demonstrations against the US in Vietnam were pro-Communist/Revolutionary for a hard core, but for others was a critique of the US for a foreign policy that was at odds with its own Revoutionary heritage, and its Liberal values- the phrase was not common at the time but these days people might say 'we are better than this'.

Greer emerged in the Feminist movement in terms set by them, and was automatically 'the opposition' and did I think at one time attempt to locate women's struggles in a broader context of politics and the economy, and not just sexualized relations, but could she have written as comprehensive and at times, as radical a text as Kate Millet's Sexual Politics? Millet had a bigger infuence on me than The Female Eunuch. I think over time she shifted her interests and has written some fascinating books, but I am not sure she was ever, say, a Marxist, if that is one badge of the 'left'

The most obvious candidates are Michael Ignatieff and Christopher Hitchens. Ignatiieff (once ridiculed by Tariq Ali as 'the White Russian with a Canadian accent)' like Hitchens was a middle class critic of power, who flipped on 9/11 because all of a sudden, the US became the victim rather than the perpetrator of bad politics. Or from another perspective they woke up on 9/11 to a day when they had to confront their pitiless ignorance of the Middle East, and then tied themselves in knots of increasing absurdity as they discovered Saddam Hussein was a bad guy and it is right to get rid of him, when for years they looked the other way when the very same organs of power, criticism of whom made their careers, lavished Saddam with all the arms and support he needed to fight the Iranians. And yes, sometimes 'we' need to, indeed have the right to choose other people's governments -just as long as they don't choose ours.

Hitchens in particular suffered because his eloquent essays are often just that -he wrote quite well on many aspects of Islam, but his speed reading approach meant that one day last year in a charity bookshop I found him quoting the Quran to make a negative point, yet when I consulted the offending passage in a copy of the Quran that was on another shelf, it was clear he was misquoting it. Hitchens was also -or is now - known to have a problem with women, about whom he rarely had anything to say, and when he did, it was disparaging.

If the critique of power is what matters, then a distorted film such as the Moore/Gibbs one in the links above helps convert those people who want to find a way out of the 'both sides have a point' mess that much of the climate change debate has become, if it is even a debate. It enables them to avoid the 'Climate change is a hoax' position, while mounting a disillusioned critique of their own side.
It was always the case that the Al Gore view was that climate change is best managed by capitalists, because they have the money and the expertise, rather than the radicals, who only have a loud voice and the ability to mount demonstrations. It was an attempt to co-opt a radical movement into the mainstream of poitical economy, and it has done so with great effect -though whether or not it will advance or retard the energy transition is hard to say.

The great irony now is that the fossil fuel industry is in trouble because nobody expected the critical mass that has taken place to simultaneously reduce production and demand and prices at the level that it has, with who knows what consequences for the future?
And if it is bad for cash rich petroleum companies, how are 'green energy' companies going to cope when we are living, in the advanced and prosperous 'west'/'north', the most critical challenge to consumption in my lifetime? Small is beautiful when all you have is small enough to fit into a backpack -but do people really want it small?

[Nikka]

where is greta

[Ben]

Pollution linked to one in six deaths:
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-41678533

[Ben]

JP Morgan economists warn of 'catastrophic' climate change: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-51581098

[Ben]

Humanity on Track to Soon Hit 1.5ºC Paris Accord Limit as Atmospheric CO2 Nears Level Not Seen in 15 Million Years:

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/07/09/humanity-track-soon-hit-15oc-paris-accord-limit-atmospheric-co2-nears-level-not-seen

[Ben]

The Wealthy 1% = Climate Change Accelerators!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efzMA2gMcTs

[Ben]

Winter Storms Offer a Taste of the Climate Chaos Ahead If We Don’t Cut Emissions:

https://truthout.org/articles/winter-storms-offer-a-taste-of-the-climate-chaos-ahead-if-we-dont-cut-emissions/

[Ben]

As Solar, Wind Costs Plummet, Coal, Gas Vastly Over-Priced in Bubble That Could Burst Worse Than 2008:

https://www.juancole.com/2021/03/plummet-priced-bubble.html

[Stavros]

Can we turn deserts green? It appears to have happened in China, can it happen in the Sinai -or on Mars?

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/mar/20/our-biggest-challenge-lack-of-imagination-the-scientists-turning-the-desert-green

[Ben]

Rivers are Key to Restoring the World’s Biodiversity (https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/05/24/rivers-are-key-to-restoring-the-worlds-biodiversity/)

https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/05/24/rivers-are-key-to-restoring-the-worlds-biodiversity/

[Ben]

The Cop26 message? We are trusting big business, not states, to fix the climate crisis:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/nov/16/cop-26-big-business-climate-crisis-neoliberal

[MrFanti]

'Green' Germany Prepares To Fire Up the Coal Furnaces
https://reason.com/2022/06/24/green-germany-prepares-to-fire-up-the-coal-furnaces/

[Ben]

Most Voters Say Supreme Court Shouldn’t Bar EPA From Regulating Air Pollution:
https://truthout.org/articles/most-voters-say-supreme-court-shouldnt-bar-epa-from-regulating-air-pollution/

[MrFanti]

European Parliament backs listing nuclear energy, gas as 'green'
https://www.dw.com/en/european-parliament-backs-listing-nuclear-energy-gas-as-green/a-62377411

[Ben]

Heat emergency declared in England as temperature expected to hit 40C:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jul/15/heat-emergency-declared-in-england-as-temperature-expected-to-hit-40c

[MrFanti]

Overpopulation In The Era Of Climate Change
https://www.magellantv.com/articles/overpopulation-in-the-era-of-climate-change

When you combine logic and simple math, PRESTO! The root cause is quite easy to see!

[trish]

Clearly if there were only ever a few hundred thousand people on Earth burning fossil fuels, we’d never gather enough inertia to budge the planetary heat engine that drives its’ atmospheric and oceanic currents. However, there are over seven billion people on the planet and our economy’s immediate energy source is fossil fuel. It’s our use of fossil fuel that is responsible for the climate’s energy imbalance, that is heating the planet and threatening the future of our children. We can either start losing people or we can start changing the way we produce and use energy.

[broncofan]

I agree Trish. I read the article and it states that we should reduce the rate of population growth. Yet it doesn't make the case that with the current population levels and greenhouse gas emission held constant we wouldn't still have a big problem. So if population levels are the variable we're using, then the author is really talking about unrealistic (and ghoulish) things like driving down the population.

I talked to a Republican I know before the start of covid and they told me covid might be a good thing because overpopulation is a problem. They are not volunteering to leave the planet early or to have tight government controls on how many kids they have. They're showing indifference to the lives of people who they think are more likely to die. Or any reproductive limit should be for other people and nations.

Instead of population being the right variable to influence, how about types of energy use, implementation of new technology, some constraints on manufacturing processes? That's inhumane they say!

[MrFanti]

I agree Trish. I read the article and it states that we should reduce the rate of population growth. Yet it doesn't make the case that with the current population levels and greenhouse gas emission held constant we wouldn't still have a big problem. So if population levels are the variable we're using, then the author is really talking about unrealistic (and ghoulish) things like driving down the population.

I talked to a Republican I know before the start of covid and they told me covid might be a good thing because overpopulation is a problem. They are not volunteering to leave the planet early or to have tight government controls on how many kids they have. They're showing indifference to the lives of people who they think are more likely to die. Or any reproductive limit should be for other people and nations.

Instead of population being the right variable to influence, how about types of energy use, implementation of new technology, some constraints on manufacturing processes? That's inhumane they say!
Again, it's simple math and logic - to illustrate.
One person driving a car, no problem.
1 billion, big problem.

Look at all the "green" areas (deforestation) that are now gone because of population growth.

It doesn't take an Einstein to understand this.

[trish]

I’m not disputing (neither do I believe is broncofan) that seven billion people driving cars, heating and cooling their homes, and using products manufactured in factories all powered by fossil fuels is a problem. The immediate problem is a climate that’s already killing people. So what is your proposal: kill even more people before the climate does, or adopt greener energy policies?

[trish]

It doesn’t help that the U.S. just overthrew Roe vs Wade, and many states are on the brink of outlawing contraception. In 2019 the U.S. birthrate was 1.7 births/woman; i.e., below replacement. A woman’s right chose is crucial, not only to her health and well being, but the well being of all.

[MrFanti]

Brazil: Amazon deforestation up 20% last year — report
https://www.dw.com/en/brazil-amazon-deforestation-up-20-last-year-report/a-62517871

Like I said....simple math of too many people....

[broncofan]

Fanti seriously. You're the only person I've ever encountered who doesn't respond to what people say and just repeats himself.

Everyone agrees that if there were fewer people on Earth there would be less greenhouse gas emissions. If there were no people on Earth humans would not be responsible for any greenhouse gases being released into the atmosphere. This is not mysterious and yet most people don't think that the solution to anthropogenic climate change is to drive the extinction of humanity.

What is your plan to reduce the population without killing people or instituting policies that prohibit people from making their own reproductive choices (to have or have not)?

As an alternative, we could implement new technology that reduces such emissions, or use the technology we have more efficiently. Please don't repeat yourself again. It doesn't do anything except irritate.

[trish]

The actual Malthusian argument is that the human population grows geometrically whereas we can only produce food arithmetically. We’ve already demonstrated that humans, by their own choice, can and have achieved birthrates below replacement. So Malthus was wrong. The math was right, but his assumptions were incorrect.

Nevertheless, we agree with you that seven billion people driving fossil-fueled cars is a problem. How does one ameliorate the problem? One obvious way is to eliminate the fossil-fueled cars.


Perhaps you’re proposing we just do nothing and just let the climate wipe out enough people until balance is restored. How many people do you think it will take? Earth’s population is currently 7.75 billion people; at the start of the industrial revolution and the beginning of the current warming period (roughly 1750 AD) was 0.814 billion. Consider the difference. I don’t believe the petroleum industry really wants to the lose that many customers. What will be the state of the climate when this is achieved? I guarantee it won’t be comfortable: not for people, not for nations, not for civilization, not even for capitalists.

[MrFanti]

Fanti seriously. You're the only person I've ever encountered who doesn't respond to what people say and just repeats himself.

If I don't respond, then there's a good chance that I have that person on ignore and can't see the response ;-)