Re: Climate change could mean the extinction of our species
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Originally Posted by
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.
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.
Re: Climate change could mean the extinction of our species
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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.
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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.
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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.
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...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.
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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.
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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?"
Re: Climate change could mean the extinction of our species
[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.
Re: Climate change could mean the extinction of our species
Quote:
Originally Posted by
trish
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.
Re: Climate change could mean the extinction of our species
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Originally Posted by
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.
Re: Climate change could mean the extinction of our species
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Originally Posted by
Stavros
I would amend your mostly intelligent and eloquent post. ...
I hoped that was my gist,
But I missed.
Amendment accepted.
Re: Climate change could mean the extinction of our species
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
Re: Climate change could mean the extinction of our species
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...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.”
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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.
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I think someone already mentioned that we are living in a relatively cool period...
Relative to the recent past that person would be wrong.
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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?
Re: Climate change could mean the extinction of our species
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Originally Posted by
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.
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?
Re: Climate change could mean the extinction of our species
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.
